“He’s gone—the rank infection still remains;
Which to repel requires eternal pains:
No force to cleanse it can a river draw,
Nor Hercules could do’t, nor great Nassau.”[[501]]
It was not difficult to predict that Swift would be one of the first to lend his too powerful aid to darken the portraits of the Whigs, when any future cloud should throw a gloom over those services and talents which he once magnified and extolled.
The advocate of Somers, and of Halifax, Oxford, and Portland, in 1701, Swift had now become the friend of Addison, Steele, Arbuthnot, and other noted men, whom he met at Button’s coffee-house, and to whom, not knowing his rare talents, nor hearing him at first even utter a syllable, they gave the name of “the mad parson.” The appearance of the “Tale of a Tub,” in 1704, published in spite of his intimacy with the little knot of friends, called “Addison’s senate,” in order to benefit the interests of the high church party, by exposing the errors and corruptions of Popery, concentrated the good-will of the Tory chiefs, who could not be blind to the powerful assistance of one who could aid them with the engine of ridicule. But, in giving to the world this production, Swift proved himself to be, like many unprincipled men, near-sighted, and destroyed all hopes of that high preferment to which he aspired. Although the “Tale of a Tub” has since been claimed, but with no certainty, as the original idea of Somers,[[502]] and although it was, at the time of its publication, imputed to a pedantic and simple cousin of Swift, the real author was tolerably well surmised, and eventually ascertained.[[503]]
The real lovers of religion, and the sincere adherents of the Church of England, were shocked and disgusted by this celebrated satire, and Queen Anne could never be prevailed upon to bestow on the author the preferment which he panted to obtain, by fair, or, if these were inexpedient, by any means.
If other statements are to be credited, one who held a high place in her Majesty’s confidence was the original framer of the bold composition.
Whether this conjecture be true or not, there is abundant reason to conclude that Swift enriched the original design by the effusions of his surpassing wit, to which he sacrificed the all important considerations of character. It was not long before he gave proofs, that if he were not the sole author of the “Tale of a Tub,” he was fully capable of being so, by his Letter on the “Relaxation of the Sacramental Text,” which he also endeavoured, but vainly, to conceal.[[504]] But it was at a later period that Swift began that series of attacks upon the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, and on their party, in his papers in the “Examiner,” a periodical paper set on foot by himself, Dr. Atterbury, St. John, Prior, Dr. Frend, and other Tory writers, after the administration had passed from the hands of Godolphin and Marlborough into those of Harley and his party. To this powerful production, sustained with an apparent calmness and exactness of statement, which gave indescribable effect to its bitter remarks and searching analyses, the Duchess of Marlborough was indebted for much of her unpopularity, and Harley for a considerable proportion of his influence over the public mind.[[505]] The portion of the papers for which Swift was solely responsible, are acknowledged to be greatly superior to the subsequent essays. Swift himself prophesied the inferiority. Upon the publication of number forty-four, which was the last he wrote, he intimated to his friends that the rest would be “trash for the future;” and the subsequent papers were, he says, “written by some under-spur leathers in the city, and were designed merely as proper returns to those Grub-street invectives which were thrown out against the (Tory) administration by the authors of the ‘Medley’ and the ‘Englishman,’ and some other abusive detracting papers of the like stamp.”
The result fully bore out this prediction; and the “Examiner,” of all the attacks which were made upon the Marlborough party and their friends, the most obnoxious to them, and beneficial to their enemies, soon sank in reputation, and altogether ceased. But its disparaging effects upon those whom it assailed were long experienced; and the party which this celebrated publication attacked, never recovered the popularity and stability which it first undermined.