Swift was known, from this time, by the appellation of the dean. He was honoured by the populace as the champion, patron, and instructor of Ireland; and gained such power as, considered both in its extent and duration, scarcely any man has ever enjoyed without greater wealth or higher station.
He was, from this important year, the oracle of the traders, and the idol of the rabble, and by consequence was feared and courted by all to whom the kindness of the traders or the populace was necessary. The Drapier was a sign; the Drapier was a health; and which way soever the eye or the ear was turned, some tokens were found of the nation’s gratitude to the Drapier.
The benefit was indeed great; he had rescued Ireland from a very oppressive and predatory invasion; and the popularity which he had gained he was diligent to keep, by appearing forward and zealous on every occasion, where the publick interest was supposed to be involved. Nor did he much scruple to boast his influence; for when, upon some attempts to regulate the coin, archbishop Boulter, then one of the justices, accused him of exasperating the people, he exculpated himself by saying, “If I had lifted up my finger, they would have torn you to pieces.”
But the pleasure of popularity was soon interrupted by domestick misery. Mrs. Johnson, whose conversation was to him the great softener of the ills of life, began in the year of the Drapier’s triumph to decline; and, two years afterwards, was so wasted with sickness, that her recovery was considered as hopeless.
Swift was then in England, and had been invited by lord Bolingbroke to pass the winter with him in France, but this call of calamity hastened him to Ireland; where, perhaps, his presence contributed to restore her to imperfect and tottering health.
He was now so much at ease, that, 1727, he returned to England; where he collected three volumes of Miscellanies, in conjunction with Pope, who prefixed a querulous and apologetical preface.
This important year sent likewise into the world, Gulliver’s Travels; a production so new and strange, that it filled the reader with a mingled emotion of merriment and amazement. It was received with such avidity, that the price of the first edition was raised before the second could be made; it was read by the high and the low, the learned and illiterate. Criticism was for awhile lost in wonder; no rules of judgment were applied to a book written in open defiance of truth and regularity. But when distinctions came to be made, the part which gave the least pleasure was that which describes the Flying island, and that which gave most disgust must be the history of the Houyhnhnms.
While Swift was enjoying the reputation of his new work, the news of the king’s death arrived; and he kissed the hands of the new king and queen three days after their accession.
By the queen, when she was princess, he had been treated with some distinction, and was well received by her in her exaltation; but whether she gave hopes which she never took care to satisfy, or he formed expectations which she never meant to raise, the event was, that he always afterwards thought on her with malevolence, and particularly charged her with breaking her promise of some medals which she engaged to send him.
I know not whether she had not, in her turn, some reason for complaint. A letter was sent her, not so much entreating, as requiring her patronage of Mrs. Barber, an ingenious Irishwoman, who was then begging subscriptions for her poems. To this letter was subscribed the name of Swift, and it has all the appearances of his diction and sentiments; but it was not written in his hand, and had some little improprieties. When he was charged with this letter, he laid hold of the inaccuracies, and urged the improbability of the accusation; but never denied it; he shuffles between cowardice and veracity, and talks big when he says nothing[105].