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granted to him and his deputy, for he may exercise them by his friend. How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself! A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like. But all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a man's own. So again, a man's person hath many proper1 relations which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak to his son but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms; whereas a friend may speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person. But to enumerate these things were endless. I have given the rule where a man cannot fitly play his own part: if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage.

1 Personal, peculiar.

II

SWIFT

SWIFT:

THE GREATEST ENGLISH SATIRIST

I

N his lecture on Swift, Thackeray gives us a masterly picture of the famous Dean of

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St. Patrick's, but tells us he was a very bad man. Certainly there is nothing very agreeable about Swift, and though we have already described him as in a way the typical preacher of his day, he is not such a man as we should like to have occupy the pulpit of the church we go to. For all that, we are forced to admit that in his writings it is the element of truth that has preserved them. Gulliver's Travels" is read to-day, and will continue to be read by the average man long after every one of Swift's contemporaries has been relegated to the literary attic. Possibly he will be read as a mere story teller, by children who suspect him of ferocity as little as they suspect the pussy-cat in the corner. Still, it is very remarkable that the most pungent satire in the language and one of the most simple and fascinating stories can exist together in the same literary composition. The

only way to account for it is to suppose that Swift told the simple truth without in any way disfiguring it by his moroseness of temper.

In his literary style, Swift belongs to the same classic school as Bacon. Like Bacon, he states simple truths in the plainest and simplest manner; but while Bacon selected profound truths, Swift, actuated by the mad bitterness of his temper, was always putting his finger with unerring accuracy on the weak points of human nature. He tells his simple story in his smooth and simple way, with no ornament, no exaggeration. No reader can question, much less deny, a single syllable; but when he looks up and catches the old fellow's malicious eye, his very flesh creeps under the stinging satire of the truth that the Dean states so suavely and so accurately. The Dean is bitter and malicious as no other man ever was; but he is strictly truthful; and since he is truthful we cannot believe that he has ever done human nature any harm.

To be sure, Swift might have applied the purifying caustic with heartfelt love instead of malicious glee. The "Modest Proposal" for eating children is so repulsive, so sickeningly ferocious, that we prefer to pass it by even though it is one of the most remarkable pieces of literature of its kind. Compare with it the same kind of satire on the same subject, inspired by the same bitterness of heart, that we find in the following paragraph from Ruskin's "Fors Clavigera," à propos

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