This, indeed, is one of the points upon which Swift’s Toryism was unlike that of some later periods. He always disliked and despised soldiers and their trade. “It will no doubt be a mighty comfort to our grandchildren,” he says in another pamphlet,[28] “when they see a few rags hung up in Westminster Hall which cost a hundred millions, whereof they are paying the arrears, to boast as beggars do that their grandfathers were rich and great.” And in other respects he has some right to claim the adhesion of thorough Whigs. His personal attacks, indeed, upon the party have a questionable sound. In his zeal he constantly forgets that the corrupt ring which he denounces were the very men from whom he expected preferment. “I well remember,” he says[29] elsewhere, “the clamours often raised during the late reign of that party (the Whigs) against the leaders by those who thought their merits were not rewarded; and they had, no doubt, reason on their side, because it is, no doubt, a misfortune to forfeit honour and conscience for nothing”—rather an awkward remark from a man who was calling Somers “a false, deceitful rascal” for not giving him a bishopric! His eager desire to make the “ungrateful dogs” repent their ill-usage of him prompts attacks which injure his own character with that of his former associates. But he has some ground for saying that Whigs have changed their principles, in the sense that their dislike of prerogative and of standing armies had curiously declined when the Crown and the army came to be on their side. Their enjoyment of power had made them soften some of the prejudices learnt in days of depression. Swift’s dislike of what we now call “militarism” really went deeper than any party sentiment; and in that sense, as we shall hereafter see, it had really most affinity with a radicalism which would have shocked Whigs and Tories alike. But in this particular case it fell in with the Tory sentiment. The masculine vigour of the Examiners served the ministry, who were scarcely less in danger from the excessive zeal of their more bigoted followers than from the resistance of the Whig minority. The pig-headed country squires had formed an October Club, to muddle themselves with beer and politics, and hoped—good honest souls—to drive ministers into a genuine attack on the corrupt practices of their predecessors. All Harley’s skill in intriguing and wire-pulling would be needed. The ministry, said Swift (on March 4th), “stood like an isthmus” between Whigs and violent Tories. He trembled for the result. They are able seamen, but the tempest “is too great, the ship too rotten, and the crew all against them.” Somers had been twice in the queen’s closet. The Duchess of Somerset, who had succeeded the Duchess of Marlborough, might be trying to play Mrs. Masham’s game. Harley, “though the most fearless man alive,” seemed to be nervous, and was far from well. “Pray God preserve his health,” says Swift; “everything depends upon it.” Four days later, Swift is in an agony. “My heart,” he exclaims, “is almost broken.” Harley had been stabbed by Guiscard (March 8th, 1711) at the council-board. Swift’s letters and journals show an agitation, in which personal affection seems to be even stronger than political anxiety. “Pray pardon my distraction,” he says to Stella, in broken sentences. “I now think of all his kindness to me. The poor creature now lies stabbed in his bed by a desperate French popish villain. Good night, and God bless you both, and pity me; I want it.” He wrote to King under the same excitement. Harley, he says, “has always treated me with the tenderness of a parent, and never refused me any favour I asked for a friend; therefore I hope your Grace will excuse the character of this letter.” He apologizes again in a postscript for his confusion; it must be imputed to the “violent pain of mind I am in—greater than ever I felt in my life.” The danger was not over for three weeks. The chief effect seems to have been that Harley became popular as the intended victim of an hypothetical Popish conspiracy; he introduced an applauded financial scheme in Parliament after his recovery, and was soon afterwards made Earl of Oxford by way of consolation. “This man,” exclaimed Swift, “has grown by persecutions, turnings out, and stabbings. What waiting and crowding and bowing there will be at his levee!”
Swift had meanwhile (April 26) retired to Chelsea “for the air,” and to have the advantage of a compulsory walk into town (two miles, or 5748 steps each way, he calculates). He was liable, indeed, to disappointment on a rainy day, when “all the three stage-coaches” were taken up by the “cunning natives of Chelsea;” but he got a lift to town in a gentleman’s coach for a shilling. He bathed in the river on the hot nights, with his Irish servant, Patrick, standing on the bank to warn off passing boats. The said Patrick, who is always getting drunk, whom Swift cannot find it in his heart to dismiss in England, who atones for his general carelessness and lying by buying a linnet for Dingley, making it wilder than ever in his attempts to tame it, is a characteristic figure in the journal. In June Swift gets ten days’ holiday at Wycombe, and in the summer he goes down pretty often with the ministers to Windsor. He came to town in two hours and forty minutes on one occasion: “twenty miles are nothing here.” The journeys are described in one of the happiest of his occasional poems—
’Tis (let me see) three years or more
(October next it will be four)
Since Harley bid me first attend
And chose me for an humble friend:
Would take me in his coach to chat
And question me of this or that:
As “What’s o’clock?” and “How’s the wind?”
“Whose chariot’s that we left behind?”
Or gravely try to read the lines
Writ underneath the country signs.
Or, “Have you nothing new to-day,
From Pope, from Parnell, or from Gay?”
Such tattle often entertains
My lord and me as far as Staines,
As once a week we travel down
To Windsor, and again to town,
Where all that passes inter nos
Might be proclaimed at Charing Cross.
And when, it is said, St. John was disgusted by the frivolous amusements of his companions; and his political discourses might be interrupted by Harley’s exclamation, “Swift, I am up; there’s a cat”—the first who saw a cat or an old woman, winning the game.
Swift and Harley were soon playing a more exciting game. Prior had been sent to France to renew peace negotiations, with elaborate mystery. Even Swift was kept in ignorance. On his return Prior was arrested by officious custom-house officers, and the fact of his journey became public. Swift took advantage of the general interest by a pamphlet intended to “bite the town.” Its political purpose, according to Swift, was to “furnish fools with something to talk of;” to draw a false scent across the trail of the angry and suspicious Whigs. It seems difficult to believe that any such effect could be produced or anticipated; but the pamphlet, which purports to be an account of Prior’s journey given by a French valet, desirous of passing himself off as a secretary, is an amusing example of Swift’s power of grave simulation of realities. The peace negotiations brought on a decisive political struggle. Parliament was to meet in September. The Whigs resolved to make a desperate effort. They had lost the House of Commons, but were still strong in the Peers. The Lords were not affected by the rapid oscillations of public opinion. They were free from some of the narrower prejudices of country squires, and true to a revolution which gave the chief power for more than a century to the aristocracy: while the recent creations had ennobled the great Whig leaders, and filled the bench with low churchmen. Marlborough and Godolphin had come over to the Whig junto, and an additional alliance was now made. Nottingham had been passed over by Harley, as it seems, for his extreme Tory principles. In his wrath, he made an agreement with the other extreme. By one of the most disgraceful bargains of party history, Nottingham was to join the Whigs in attacking the peace, whilst the Whigs were to buy his support by accepting the Occasional Conformity Bill—the favourite high church measure. A majority in the House of Lords could not indeed determine the victory. The Government of England, says Swift in 1715,[30] “cannot move a step while the House of Commons continues to dislike proceedings or persons employed.” But the plot went further. The House of Lords might bring about a deadlock, as it had done before. The queen, having thrown off the rule of the Duchess of Marlborough, had sought safety in the rule of two mistresses, Mrs. Masham and the Duchess of Somerset. The Duchess of Somerset was in the Whig interest; and her influence with the queen caused the gravest anxiety to Swift and the ministry. She might induce Anne to call back the Whigs, and in a new House of Commons, elected under a Whig ministry wielding the crown influence and appealing to the dread of a discreditable peace, the majority might be reversed. Meanwhile Prince Eugene was expected to pay a visit to England, bringing fresh proposals for war, and stimulating by his presence the enthusiasm of the Whigs.
Towards the end of September the Whigs began to pour in a heavy fire of pamphlets, and Swift rather meanly begs the help of St. John and the law. But he is confident of victory. Peace is certain; and a peace “very much to the honour and advantage of England.” The Whigs are furious; “but we’ll wherret them, I warrant, boys.” Yet he has misgivings. The news comes of the failure of the Tory expedition against Quebec, which was to have anticipated the policy and the triumphs of Chatham. Harley only laughs as usual; but St. John is cruelly vexed, and begins to suspect his colleagues of suspecting him. Swift listens to both, and tries to smooth matters; but he is growing serious. “I am half weary of them all,” he exclaims, and begins to talk of retiring to Ireland. Harley has a slight illness, and Swift is at once in a fright. “We are all undone without him,” he says, “so pray for him, sirrahs!” Meanwhile, as the parliamentary struggle comes nearer, Swift launches the pamphlet which has been his summer’s work. The Conduct of the Allies is intended to prove what he had taken for granted in the Examiners. It is to show, that is, that the war has ceased to be demanded by national interests. We ought always to have been auxiliaries; we chose to become principals; and have yet so conducted the war that all the advantages have gone to the Dutch. The explanation of course is the selfishness or corruption of the great Whig junto. The pamphlet, forcible and terse in the highest degree, had a success due in part to other circumstances. It was as much a State paper as a pamphlet; a manifesto obviously inspired by the ministry and containing the facts and papers which were to serve in the coming debates. It was published on Nov. 27th; on December 1st the second edition was sold in five hours; and by the end of January 11,000 copies had been sold. The parliamentary struggle began on December 7th; and the amendment to the address, declaring that no peace could be safe which left Spain to the Bourbons, was moved by Nottingham, and carried by a small majority. Swift had foreseen this danger; he had begged ministers to work up the majority; and the defeat was due to Harley’s carelessness. It was Swift’s temper to anticipate though not to yield to the worst. He could see nothing but ruin. Every rumour increased his fears, The queen had taken the hand of the Duke of Somerset on leaving the House of Lords, and refused Shrewsbury’s. She must be going over. Swift, in his despair, asked St. John to find him some foreign post, where he might be out of harm’s way if the Whigs should triumph. St. John laughed and affected courage, but Swift refused to be comforted. Harley told him that “all would be well;” but Harley for the moment had lost his confidence. A week after the vote he looks upon the ministry as certainly ruined; and “God knows,” he adds, “what may be the consequences.” By degrees a little hope began to appear; though the ministry, as Swift still held, could expect nothing till the Duchess of Somerset was turned out. By way of accelerating this event, he hit upon a plan, which he had reason to repent, and which nothing but his excitement could explain. He composed and printed one of his favourite squibs, the Windsor Prophecy, and though Mrs. Masham persuaded him not to publish it, distributed too many copies for secrecy to be possible. In this production, now dull enough, he calls the duchess “carrots,” as a delicate hint at her red hair, and says that she murdered her second husband.[31] These statements, even if true, were not conciliatory; and it was folly to irritate without injuring. Meanwhile reports of ministerial plans gave him a little courage; and in a day or two the secret was out. He was on his way to the post on Saturday, December 28th, when the great news came. The ministry had resolved on something like a coup d’état, to be long mentioned with horror by all orthodox Whigs and Tories. “I have broke open my letter,” scribbled Swift in a coffee-house, “and tore it into the bargain, to let you know that we are all safe. The queen has made no less than twelve new peers ... and has turned out the Duke of Somerset. She is awaked at last, and so is Lord Treasurer. I want nothing now but to see the duchess out. But we shall do without her. We are all extremely happy. Give me joy, sirrahs!” The Duke of Somerset was not out; but a greater event happened within three days; the Duke of Marlborough was removed from all his employments. The Tory victory was for the time complete.
Here, too, was the culminating point of Swift’s career. Fifteen months of energetic effort had been crowned with success. He was the intimate of the greatest men in the country; and the most powerful exponent of their policy. No man in England, outside the ministry, enjoyed a wider reputation. The ball was at his feet; and no position open to a clergyman beyond his hopes. Yet from this period begins a decline. He continued to write, publishing numerous squibs, of which many have been lost, and occasionally firing a gun of heavier metal. But nothing came from him having the authoritative and masterly tone of the Conduct of the Allies. His health broke down. At the beginning of April, 1712, he was attacked by a distressing complaint; and his old enemy, giddiness, gave him frequent alarms. The daily journal ceased, and was not fairly resumed till December, though its place is partly supplied by occasional letters. The political contest had changed its character. The centre of interest was transferred to Utrecht, where negotiations began in January, to be protracted over fifteen months: the ministry had to satisfy the demand for peace, without shocking the national self-esteem. Meanwhile jealousies were rapidly developing themselves, which Swift watched with ever-growing anxiety.
Swift’s personal influence remained or increased. He drew closer to Oxford, but was still friendly with St. John; and to the public his position seemed more imposing than ever. Swift was not the man to bear his honours meekly. In the early period of his acquaintance with St. John (February 12, 1711), he sends the Prime Minister into the House of Commons, to tell the Secretary of State that “I would not dine with him if he dined late.” He is still a novice at the Saturday dinners when the Duke of Shrewsbury appears: Swift whispers that he does not like to see a stranger among them; and St. John has to explain that the Duke has written for leave. St. John then tells Swift that the Duke of Buckingham desires his acquaintance. The Duke, replied Swift, has not made sufficient advances: and he always expects greater advances from men in proportion to their rank. Dukes and great men yielded, if only to humour the pride of this audacious parson: and Swift soon came to be pestered by innumerable applicants, attracted by his ostentation of influence. Even ministers applied through him. “There is not one of them,” he says, in January, 1713, “but what will employ me as gravely to speak for them to Lord Treasurer, as if I were their brother or his.” He is proud of the burden of influence with the great, though he affects to complain. The most vivid picture of Swift in all his glory, is in a familiar passage from Bishop Kennett’s diary:—
“Swift,” says Kennett, in 1713, “came into the coffee-house, and had a bow from everybody but me. When I came to the antechamber to wait before prayers, Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business, and acted as minister of requests. He was soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother the Duke of Ormond to get a chaplain’s place established in the garrison of Hull, for Mr. Fiddes, a clergyman in that neighbourhood, who had lately been in jail, and published sermons to pay fees. He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake with my Lord Treasurer that according to his petition he should obtain a salary of 200l. per annum, as minister of the English Church at Rotterdam. He stopped F. Gwynne, Esq., going in with the red bag to the queen, and told him aloud he had something to say to him from my Lord Treasurer. He talked with the son of Dr. Davenant to be sent abroad, and took out his pocket-book and wrote down several things as memoranda, to do for him. He turned to the fire, and took out his gold watch, and telling him the time of day, complained it was very late. A gentleman said, “it was too fast.” “How can I help it,” says the Doctor, “if the courtiers give me a watch that won’t go right?” Then he instructed a young nobleman that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist), who had begun a translation of Homer into English verse, for which, he said, he must have them all subscribe. ‘For,’ says he, ‘the author shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him.’ Lord Treasurer, after leaving the Queen, came through the room, beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him; both went off just before prayers.”
There is undoubtedly something offensive in this blustering self-assertion. “No man,” says Johnson, with his usual force, “can pay a more servile tribute to the great than by suffering his liberty in their presence to aggrandize him in his own esteem.” Delicacy was not Swift’s strong point; his compliments are as clumsy as his invectives are forcible; and he shows a certain taint of vulgarity in his intercourse with social dignitaries. He is perhaps avenging himself for the humiliations received at Moor Park. He has a Napoleonic absence of magnanimity. He likes to relish his triumph; to accept the pettiest as well as the greatest rewards; to flaunt his splendours in the eyes of the servile as well as to enjoy the consciousness of real power. But it would be a great mistake to infer that this ostentatiousness of authority concealed real servility. Swift preferred to take the bull by the horns. He forced himself upon ministers by self-assertion; and he held them in awe of him as the lion-tamer keeps down the latent ferocity of the wild beast. He never takes his eye off his subjects, nor lowers his imperious demeanour. He retained his influence, as Johnson observes, long after his services had ceased to be useful. And all this demonstrative patronage meant real and energetic work. We may note, for example, and it incidentally confirms Kennett’s accuracy, that he was really serviceable to Davenant,[32] and that Fiddes got the chaplaincy at Hull. No man ever threw himself with more energy into the service of his friends. He declared afterwards that in the days of his credit he had done fifty times more for fifty people, from whom he had received no obligations, than Temple had done for him.[33] The journal abounds in proofs that this was not overstated. There is “Mr. Harrison,” for example, who has written “some mighty pretty things.” Swift takes him up; rescues him from the fine friends who are carelessly tempting him to extravagance; tries to start him in a continuation of the Tatler; exults in getting him a secretaryship abroad, which he declares to be “the prettiest post in Europe for a young gentleman;” and is most unaffectedly and deeply grieved when the poor lad dies of a fever. He is carrying 100l. to his young friend, when he hears of his death. “I told Parnell I was afraid to knock at the door, my mind misgave me,” he says. On his way to bring help to Harrison, he goes to see a “poor poet, one Mr. Diaper, in a nasty garret, very sick,” and consoles him with twenty guineas from Lord Bolingbroke. A few days before he has managed to introduce Parnell to Harley, or rather to contrive it so that “the ministry desire to be acquainted with Parnell, and not Parnell with the ministry.” His old schoolfellow Congreve was in alarm about his appointments. Swift spoke at once to Harley, and went off immediately to report his success to Congreve: “so,” he says, “I have made a worthy man easy, and that is a good day’s work.”[34] One of the latest letters in his journal refers to his attempt to serve his other schoolfellow, Berkeley. “I will favour him as much as I can,” he says; “this I think I am bound to in honour and conscience, to use all my little credit toward helping forward men of worth in the world.” He was always helping less conspicuous men; and he prided himself, with justice, that he had been as helpful to Whigs as to Tories. The ministry complained that he never came to them “without a Whig in his sleeve.” Besides his friend Congreve, he recommended Rowe for preferment, and did his best to protect Steele and Addison. No man of letters ever laboured more heartily to promote the interests of his fellow-craftsmen, as few have ever had similar opportunities.