Obscurity and idleness were not for Swift. Love, that gradually consumed the unoccupied girl, was not even this man's recreation. Impatient of banishment, he went to London and mixed with the wits of the age. Addison, Steele, and Arbuthnot became his friends, and he quickly proved himself worthy of their intimacy by the publication in 1704 of his Tale of a Tub. The success of the work, given to the world anonymously, was decisive. Its singular merit obtained for its author everlasting renown, and effectually prevented his rising to the highest dignity in the very church which his book labored to exalt. None but an inspired madman would have attempted to do honor to religion in a spirit which none but the infidel could heartily approve.
Politicians are not squeamish. The Whigs could see no fault in raillery and wit that might serve temporal interests with greater advantage than they had advanced interests ecclesiastical; and the friends of the Revolution welcomed so rare an adherent to their principles. With an affected ardor that subsequent events proved to be as premature as it was hollow, Swift's pen was put in harness for his allies, and worked vigorously enough until 1709, when, having assisted Steele in the establishment of the Tatler, the vicar of Laracor returned to Ireland and to the duties of a rural pastor. Not to remain, however! A change suddenly came over the spirit of the nation. Sacheverell was about to pull down by a single sermon all the popularity that Marlborough and his friends had built up by their glorious campaigns. Swift had waited in vain for promotion from the Whigs, and his suspicions were roused when the Lord-Lieutenant unexpectedly began to caress him. Escaping the damage which the marked attentions of the old Government might do him with the new, Swift started for England in 1710, in order to survey the turning of the political wheel with his own eyes, and to try his fortune in the game. The progress of events was rapid. Swift reached London on the 9th of September; on the 1st of October he had already written a lampoon upon an ancient associate; and on the 4th he was presented to Harley, the new Minister.
The career of Swift from this moment, and so long as the government of Harley lasted, was magnificent and mighty. Had he not been crotchety from his very boyhood, his head would have been turned now. Swift reigned; Swift was the Government; Swift was Queen, Lords, and Commons. There was tremendous work to do, and Swift did it all. The Tories had thrown out the Whigs and had brought in a Government in their place quite as Whiggish to do Tory work. To moderate the wishes of the people, if not to blind their eyes, was the preliminary and essential work of the Ministry. They could not perform it themselves. Swift undertook the task and accomplished it. He had intellect and courage enough for that, and more. Moreover, he had vehement passions to gratify, and they might all partake of the glory of his success; he was proud, and his pride reveled in authority; he was ambitious, and his ambition could attain no higher pitch than it found at the right hand of the Prime Minister; he was revengeful, and revenge could wish no sweeter gratification than the contortions of the great who had neglected genius and desert, when they looked to them for advancement and obtained nothing but cold neglect. Swift, single-handed, fought the Whigs. For seven months he conducted a periodical paper, in which he mercilessly assailed, as none but himself could attack, all who were odious to the Government and distasteful to himself. Not an individual was spared whose sufferings could add to the tranquillity and permanence of the Government. Resistance was in vain; it was attempted, but invariably with one effect—the first wound grazed, the second killed.
The public were in ecstasies. The laughers were all on the side of the satirist, and how vast a portion of the community these are, needs not be said. But it was not in the Examiner alone that Swift offered up his victims at the shrine of universal mirth. He could write verses for the rough heart of a nation to chuckle over and delight in. Personalities to-day fly wide of the mark; then they went right home. The habits, the foibles, the moral and physical imperfections of humanity, were all fair game, provided the shaft were tipped with gall as well as venom. Short poems, longer pamphlets—whatever could help the Government and cover their foes with ridicule and scorn, Swift poured upon the town with an industry and skill that set eulogy at defiance. And because they did defy praise, Jonathan Swift never asked, and was ever too grand to accept it.
But he claimed much more. His disordered yet exquisite intellect acknowledged no superiority. He asked no thanks for his labor, he disdained pecuniary reward for his matchless and incalculable services—he did not care for fame, but he imperiously demanded to be treated by the greatest as an equal. Mr. Harley offered him money, and he quarreled with the Minister for his boldness. "If we let these great Ministers," he said, "pretend too much, there will be no governing them." The same Minister desired to make Swift his chaplain. One mistake was as great as the other. "My Lord Oxford, by a second hand, proposed my being his chaplain, which I, by a second hand, refused. I will be no man's chaplain alive." The assumption of the man was more than regal. At a later period of his life he drew up a list of his friends, ranking them respectively under the heads "Ungrateful," "Grateful," "Indifferent," and "Doubtful." Pope appears among the grateful. Queen Caroline among the ungrateful. The audacity of these distinctions is very edifying. What autocrat is here for whose mere countenance the whole world is to bow down and be "grateful!"
It is due to Swift's imperiousness, however, to state that, once acknowledged as an equal, he was prepared to make every sacrifice that could be looked for in a friend. Concede his position, and for fortune or disgrace he was equally prepared. Harley and Bolingbroke, quick to discern the weakness, called their invulnerable ally by his Christian name, but stopped short of conferring upon him any benefit whatever. The neglect made no difference to the haughty scribe, who contented himself with pulling down the barriers that had been impertinently set up to separate him from rank and worldly greatness. But, if Swift shrank from the treatment of a client, he performed no part so willingly as that of a patron. He took literature under his wing and compelled the Government to do it homage. He quarreled with Steele when he deserted the Whigs, and pursued his former friend with unflinching sarcasm and banter, but at his request Steele was maintained by the Government in an office of which he was about to be deprived. Congreve was a Whig, but Swift insisted that he should find honor at the hands of the Tories, and Harley honored him accordingly. Swift introduced Gay to Lord Bolingbroke, and secured that nobleman's weighty patronage for the poet. Rowe was recommended for office, Pope for aid. The well-to-do, by Swift's personal interest, found respect, the indigent, money for the mitigation of their pains. At Court, at Swift's instigation, the Lord Treasurer made the first advances to men of letters, and by the act made tacit confession of the power which Swift so liberally exercised, for the advantage of everybody but himself. But what worldly distinction, in truth, could add to the importance of a personage who made it a point for a Duke to pay him the first visit, and who, on one occasion, publicly sent the Prime Minister into the House of Commons to call out the First Secretary of State, whom Swift wished to inform that he would not dine with him if he meant to dine late?
A lampoon directed against the Queen's favorite, upon whose red hair Swift had been facetious, prevented the satirist's advancement in England. The see of Hereford fell vacant in 1712. Bolingbroke would now have paid the debt due from his Government to Swift, but the Duchess of Somerset, upon her knees, implored the Queen to withhold her consent from the appointment, and Swift was pronounced by Her Majesty as "too violent in party" for promotion. The most important man in the kingdom found himself in a moment the most feeble. The fountain of so much honor could not retain a drop of the precious waters for itself. Swift, it is said, laid the foundations of fortune for upward of forty families who rose to distinction by a word from his lips. What a satire upon power was the satirist's own fate! He could not advance himself in England one inch. Promotion in Ireland began and ended with his appointment to the Deanery of St. Patrick, of which he took possession, much to his disgust and vexation, in the summer of 1713.
The summer, however, was not over before Swift was in England again. The wheels of government had come to a dead lock, and of course none but he could right them. The Ministry was at sixes and sevens. Its very existence depended upon the good understanding of the chiefs, Bolingbroke and Harley, and the wily ambition of the latter, jarring against the vehement desires of the former, had produced jealousy, suspicion, and now threatened immediate disorganization. A thousand voices called the Dean to the scene of action, and he came full of the importance of his mission. He plunged at once into the vexed sea of political controversy, and whilst straining every effort to court his friends, let no opportunity slip of galling their foes. His pen was as damaging and industrious as ever. It set the town in a fever. It caused Richard Steele to be expelled from the House of Commons, and it sent the whole body of Scotch peers, headed by the Duke of Argyle, to the Queen, with the prayer that a proclamation might be issued for the discovery of their libeller. Swift was more successful in his assaults than in its mediation. The Ministers were irreconcilable. Vexed at heart with disappointment, the Dean, after his manner, suddenly quitted London, and shut himself up in Berkshire. One attempt he made in his strict seclusion to uphold the Government and save the country, and the composition is a curiosity in its way. He published a proposition for the exclusion of all Dissenters from power of every kind, for disqualifying Whigs and Low Churchmen for every possible office, and for compelling the presumptive heir to the throne to declare his abomination of Whigs, and his perfect satisfaction with Her Majesty's present advisers. Matters must have been near a crisis when this modest pamphlet was put forth; and so they were. By his intrigues Bolingbroke had triumphed over his colleagues, and Oxford was disgraced. The latter, about to retire into obscurity, addressed a letter to Swift, entreating him, if he were not tired of his former prosperous friend, "to throw away so much time on one who loved him as to attend him upon his melancholy journey." The same post brought him word that his own victory was won. Bolingbroke triumphant besought his Jonathan, as he loved his Queen, to stand by her Minister, and to aid him in his perilous adventure. Nothing should be wanting to do justice to his loyalty. The Duchess of Somerset would be reconciled, the Queen would be gracious, the path of honor should lie broad, open, and unimpeded before him. Bolingbroke and Harley were equally the friends of Swift. What could he do in his extremity? What would a million men, taken at random from the multitude, have done, had they been so situated, so tempted? Not that upon which Swift in his chivalrous magnanimity, at once decided. He abandoned the prosperous to follow and console the unfortunate. "I meddle not with Lord Oxford's faults," is his noble language, "as he was a Minister of State, but his personal kindness to me was excessive. He distinguished and chose me above all men when he was great." Within a few days of Swift's self-denying decision Queen Anne was a corpse, Bolingbroke and Oxford both flying for their lives, and Swift himself hiding his unprotected head in Ireland amidst a people who at once feared and hated him.
During Swift's visit to London in 1710 he had regularly transmitted to Stella, by which name Esther Johnson is made known to posterity, an account of his daily doings with the new Government. The journal exhibits the view of the writer that his conduct invariably presents. It is full of tenderness and confidence, and not without coarseness that startles and shocks. It contains a detailed and minute account, not only of all that passed between Swift and the Government, but of his changeful feelings as they arose from day to day, and of his physical infirmities, that are commonly whispered into the ear of a physician. If Swift loved Stella in the ordinary acceptation of the term, he took small pains in his diary to elevate the sentiments with which she regarded her hero. The journal is not in harmony throughout. Toward the close it lacks the tenderness and warmth, the minuteness and confidential utterance, that are so visible at the beginning. We are enabled to account for the difference. Swift had enlarged the circle of his female acquaintance whilst fighting for his friends in London. He had become a constant visitor, especially, at the house of a Mrs. Vanhomrigh, who had two daughters, the eldest of whom was about twenty years of age, and had the same Christian name as Stella. Esther Vanhomrigh had great taste for reading, and Swift, who seems to have delighted in such occupation, condescended, for the second time in his life, to become a young lady's instructor. The great man's tuition had always one effect upon his pupils. Before Miss Vanhomrigh had made much progress in her studies she was over head and ears in love, and, to the astonishment of her master, she one day declared the passionate and undying character of her attachment. Swift met the confession with a weapon far more potent when opposed to a political foe than when directed against the weak heart of a doting woman. He had recourse to raillery, but, finding his banter of no avail, endeavored to appease the unhappy girl by "an offer of devoted and everlasting friendship, founded on the basis of virtuous esteem." He might with equal success have attempted to put out a conflagration with a bucket of cold water. There was no help for the miserable man. He returned to his deanery at the death of Queen Anne with two love affairs upon his hands, but with the stern resolution of encouraging neither, and overcoming both.
Before quitting England he wrote to Esther Vanhomrigh, or Vanessa, as he styles her in his correspondence, intimating his intention to forget everything in England and to write to her as seldom as possible. So far the claims of Vanessa were disposed of. As soon as he reached his deanery he secured lodgings for Stella and her companion, and reiterated his determination to pursue his intercourse with the young lady upon the prudent terms originally established. So far his mind was set at rest in respect of Stella. But Swift had scarcely time to congratulate himself upon his plans before Vanessa presented herself in Dublin, and made known to the Dean her resolution to take up her abode permanently in Ireland. Her mother was dead, so were her two brothers; she and her sister were alone in the world, and they had a small property near Dublin, to which it suited them to retire. Swift, alarmed by the proceeding, remonstrated, threatened, denounced—all in vain. Vanessa met his reproaches with complaints of cruelty and neglect, and warned him of the consequences of leaving her without the solace of his friendship and presence. Perplexed and distressed, the Dean had no other resource than to leave events to their own development. He trusted that time would mitigate and show the hopelessness of Vanessa's passion, and in the meanwhile he sought, by occasional communication with her, to prevent any catastrophe that might result from actual despair. But his thoughts for Vanessa's safety were inimical to Stella's repose. She pined and gradually sunk under the alteration that had taken place in Swift's deportment toward her since his acquaintance with Vanessa. Swift, really anxious for the safety of his ward, requested a friend to ascertain the cause of her malady. It was not difficult to ascertain it. His indifference and public scandal, which spoke freely of their unaccountable connection, were alone to blame for her sufferings. It was enough for Swift. He had passed the age at which he had resolved to marry, but he was ready to wed Stella provided the marriage were kept secret and she was content to live apart. Poor Stella was more than content, but she overestimated her strength. The marriage took place, and immediately afterward the husband withdrew himself in a fit of madness, which threw him into gloom and misery for days. What the motives may have been for the inexplicable stipulations of this wayward man it is impossible to ascertain. That they were the motives of a diseased, and at times utterly irresponsible, judgment, we think cannot be questioned. Of love, as a tender passion, Swift had no conception. His writings prove it. The coarseness that pervades his compositions has nothing in common with the susceptibility that shrinks from disgusting and loathsome images in which Swift reveled. In all his prose and poetical addresses to his mistresses there is not one expression to prove the weakness of his heart. He writes as a guardian—he writes as a friend—he writes as a father, but not a syllable escapes him that can be attributed to the pangs and delights of the lover.