he, for the first time since the death of Queen Anne, made a visit to England, apparently not unwilling to tender or accept overtures of reconciliation with the Court. He found Pope and Gay intimate with Lady Suffolk; he speedily became the friend of their friend; and this was a channel of communication with her mistress, then Princess of Wales. Yet Swift declares that, when the Princess wished to see him, she sent "at least nine times" before he would obey her summons. When at length he did come, she received him very graciously. He began the conversation by telling her, that he was informed Her Royal Highness loved to see odd persons; and that, having sent for a wild boy from Germany, she had a curiosity to see a wild Dean from Ireland.* His powers of wit fully atoned for his want of courtly manners; and, during the few months of his stay, he became no unfrequent visitor at Leicester House. With Walpole, also, the Dean, by means of Lord Peterborough, obtained an interview, on the plea of laying before him the real state of Ireland. The Minister received him with civility, heard him with attention, and asked him to dinner at Chelsea. But, if Swift expected any offers to be made for his advancement, or even any wish to be expressed for his support, he was wholly disappointed. Walpole, with his usual disregard of literary eminence, took no pains to conciliate this most powerful writer, and appears to have treated him exactly as he would any other Dean from Ireland. No wonder that Swift thought his great abilities misunderstood and slighted. He writes to Lady Suffolk, "Pray tell Sir Robert Walpole that, if he does not use me better next summer than he did last, I will study revenge, and it shall be VENGEANCE ECCLESIASTIQUE;"-and he kept his word! His second, and, as it proved, his last, journey to England, early next year, was heralded by the publication of his Gulliver's Travels; the most admirable satire ever conveyed in a narrative, and the most plausible disguise that fiction ever bore. So well is the style of the Old English navigators copied; so much does there seem of their honest simplicity and plain common sense; so consistent is every part of the story; so natural all the events after the first improbability; that the fable, even in its wildest flights, never loses an air of real truth. "I lent the book," says Arbuthnot, "to an old gentleman, who went immediately to his map to search for Lilliput." In Ireland, one Bishop sagely observed, that for his part he hardly believed a word of it!|| We may also observe in these Travels, as the especial talent of Swift, his manner of implying or assuming as certain the charge he wishes to convey. To give only one instance:-"In Lilliput the Swift to Lady E. Germaine, January 8, 1733. The "wild boy from Germany" was found in the woods of Hanover, in 1725, and considered a great phenomenon. See a note to Swift's Works, vol. xiii. p. 197. † Swift to Lord Peterborough, April 28, 1726. Letter of February 1, 1727. Letter to Swift, November 8, 1726. Swift to Pope, November 17, 1726. style of writing is very peculiar, being neither from the left to the right, like the Europeans; nor from the right to the left, like the Arabians; nor from up to down, like the Chinese; but aslant from one corner of the paper to the other, like ladies in England!" At the time of the publication, also, many strokes of satire, now no longer applicable, and therefore scarcely perceived, gave infinite delight. In the following passage, for example, he doubtless had in view the proceedings against Atterbury and Layer, and some of the Royal speeches at that period:-"It was a custom in Lilliput, that, after the Court had decreed any cruel execution, the Emperor always made a speech to his whole Council, expressing his great lenity and tenderness, as qualities known and expressed by all the world. This speech was immediately published throughout the kingdom; nor did any thing terrify the people so much as these encomiums on His Majesty's mercy; because it was observed, that the more these praises were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the sufferer more innocent!" Yet, though Gulliver thus abounds with satire upon Courts, he became a great favourite at the little Court of the Princess of Wales. Lady Suffolk and the Princess herself eagerly read the book, and warmly welcomed the author. Her Royal Highness graciously accepted from him a present of some Irish silks for herself and the young Princesses, and promised him in return some medals, which, however, were at first delayed, and afterwards forgotten. Such little neglect is not very uncommon in private life, and does not seem to call for any very extraordinary indignation. But by Swift it was most bitterly resented: he has recorded it again and again both in prose and verse; and almost to the close of his life we find him complaining of the forgotten medals and unrequited silks! He might have known that in those times few things were less remembered than presents to Princes. A popular German writer tells us that, having once offered a costly picture to his sovereign, he was honoured with a warm embrace, and his picture with one of the best places in the gallery. But only a year afterwards he stood by, when his Highness showed the picture to a foreign minister, and said, "It is really a fine piece, and I rather think that I bought it cheap!"* From the manner in which Swift always harps upon his petty grievance of the medals, we may conclude that he had no greater to urge against the Court. On the death of George the First, he kissed their new Majesty's hands, and for some time buoyed himself with expectations; but finding, to his mortification, Walpole confirmed in power, and more hostile than ever, he returned to Ireland; yet he did not, for some years, relinquish his friendly correspondence with Lady Suffolk; until at length losing all hope, and with hope all patience, he renounced her as false and faithless; declaring that "Bob, the poet's foe," possessed her ear; and from that time * See Knigge, Umgang mit Menschen, vol. iii. p. 10, ed. 1813. also he began to make the Queen the object of some of his sharpest satirical attacks.* The resentment of Gay against the Queen had still less foundation. He had paid her assiduous court as Princess; and, a few weeks after coming to the throne, she said to Lady Suffolk, in allusion to one of Gay's Fables, that she would now take up the Hare with many Friends.† Accordingly she obtained for him the appointment of Gentleman Usher to one of the princesses, a child about two years old. It was, in fact, an honourable sinecure, affording a provision for his wants, at the same time with leisure for his pen. An easy place of 2007. a year was surely no contemptible offer to one who had begun life as apprentice to a silk mercer, and who was now a thoughtless man of genius, without any knowledge of affairs. Yet Gay was persuaded by some officious friends, not merely to decline the offer, but to resent it as an insult. Soon afterwards he joined the Opposition, and declared his quarrel by the production of the Beggar's Opera, teeming with satirical strokes against the Court and Government. The name of Bob Booty, for example, always raised a laugh, being understood as levelled at Sir Robert Walpole. The first idea of this play appears to have sprung from a suggestion of Swift; but the praise of its execution belongs entirely to Gay. Its brilliant success (it was acted for sixty-three nights without intermission) may be ascribed, in some degree, like that of Cato under Queen Anne, to party zeal: yet the pleasure with which it is still seen upon the stage is a proof of its real merit. It must be owned, however, that the attacks of Gay and other dramatic authors at this time far outstepped the bounds that any Government could sanction. Not only did the measures of Walpole stand exposed to every kind of misrepresentation and malignity, but his person was brought on the stage, and his character made the sport of the players. The sequel which Gay wrote to the Beggar's Opera, under the name of Polly, went as far beyond it in violence as it fell short of it in talent; and the Lord Chamberlain exerted his almost dormant privilege to forbid it.§ Gay was more than recompensed for this disappointment, through a subscription so liberally filled by the Opposition as to gain him nearly 12007., while the Beggar's Opera had only brought 4007.; so that, as Johnson observes, "what he called oppression ended in profit." Other writers, having no such reputation as his to hazard, were restrained by no regard to it. Scurrilous personalities, low buffoonery, and undisguised sedition took possession of the stage, and the licentiousness of morals under Charles the Second, was now exchanged for death. See especially the Directions for writing a Birth-day Ode, and the Poem on his own Swift to Lady E. Germaine, January 8, 1733. Spence's Anecdotes, p. 159. The Beggar's Opera first appeared in 1728, and Polly in 1729. Baker's Biographia Dramatica, vol i. p. 186. Life of Gay. See also Spence's Anecdotes, p. 214. the licentiousness of liberty. The necessity of some curb to these excesses became evident to all parties. In 1735, Sir John Barnard brought in a Bill to restrain the number of play-houses, and regulate the stage; nor did there appear at first a single dissenting voice; but on Walpole attempting to introduce a clause to enlarge the power of the Lord Chamberlain, Barnard declared that he thought that power too great already, and the Bill was dropped. In 1737, however, another occasion offered for Walpole to effect his object. A farce, called the Golden Rump, abounding in sedition and blasphemy, was brought to him in manuscript, with the hope that he might give a considerable sum to purchase and suppress it. Walpole paid the money, but immediately proceeded to extract the most objectionable passages, which he laid before several members of both parties, asking them, whether such a system should be suffered to continue. Being promised their support, he brought in his famous Playhouse Bill, under the form of an Amendment to the Vagrant Act. It declared, that any actor, without a legal settlement, or a license from the Lord Chamberlain, should be deemed a rogue and vagabond. To the Lord Chamberlain it gave legal power, instead of customary privilege; authorising him to prohibit the representation of any drama at his discretion, and compelling all authors to send copies of their plays fourteen days before they were acted, under forfeiture of 501. and of the license of the House. Moreover, it restrained the number of playhouses, by enjoining that no person should have authority to act, except within the liberties of Westminster, and where the King should reside. This last clause appears to have been Sir John Barnard's first proposal.* The Bill passed rapidly, and, as it would seem, without any division, through both Houses, but not without some very strong opposition, especially a celebrated speech from Lord Chesterfield. All parties agree in representing this effort of his oratory as one of the most brilliant ever yet heard in Parliament.' It contains many eloquent predictions, that, should the Bill be enacted, the ruin of liberty and the introduction of despotism must inevitably follow. Yet even Chesterfield owns that he has "observed of late a remarkable licentiousness in the stage. In one play, very lately acted (Pasquin), the author thought fit to represent the three great professions, religion, physic, and law, as inconsistent with common sense; in another • See Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 516. Tindal's Hist. vol. viii. p. 350; and Baker's Biographia Dramatica, Introduction, p. xlii. [Lord Hervey says of it, "Lord Chesterfield made one of the most lively and ingenious speeches against the Bill I ever heard in Parliament, full of wit, of the genteelest satire, and in the most polished, classical style that the Petronius of any time ever wrote: it was extremely studied, seemingly easy, well delivered, and universally admired. On such occasions nobody spoke better than Lord Chesterfield; but as he never could, or at least never did, speak but prepared, and from dissertations he had written down in his closet, and got by heart, he never made any figure in a reply, nor was his manner of speaking like debating, but declaiming." Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, vol. ii. chap. xxxii.] -- (King Charles the First), a most tragical story was brought upon the stage, a catastrophe too recent, too melancholy, and of too solemn a nature, to be heard of any where but from the pulpit. How these pieces came to pass unpunished, I do not know; if I am rightly informed, it was not for want of law, but for want of prosecution, without which no law can be made effectual. But, if there was any neglect in this case, I am convinced it was not with a design to prepare the minds of the people, and to make them think a new law necessary!" Such an insinuation could not fail to have weight out of doors; and still more adapted to popular effect was the name he gives the proposed licensing department, as "a new Excise Office!" But the following plausible arguments might have misled superior understandings:-"The Bill, my Lords, at first view, may seem to be designed only against the stage; but to me it plainly appears to point somewhere else. It is an arrow that does but glance upon the stage: the mortal wound seems designed against the liberty of the press. By this Bill you prevent a play's being acted, but you do not prevent its being printed. Therefore, if a license should be refused for its being acted, we may depend upon it the play will be printed. It will be printed and published, my Lords, with the refusal, in capital letters, upon the titlepage. People are always fond of what is forbidden. LIBRI PROHIBITI are, in all countries, diligently and generally sought after. It will be much easier to procure a refusal than it ever was to procure a good house or a good sale; therefore we may expect that plays will be wrote on purpose to have a refusal: this will certainly procure a good house or a good sale. Thus will satires be spread and dispersed through the whole nation; and thus every man in the kingdom may, and probably will, read for sixpence what a few only could have seen acted, and that not under the expense of half a crown. We shall then be told, What! will you allow an infamous libel to be printed and dispersed, which you would not allow to be acted? . . . If we agree to the Bill now before us, we must, perhaps, next session agree to a Bill for preventing any plays being printed without a license. Then satires will be wrote by way of novels, secret histories, dialogues, or under some such title; and thereupon we shall be told, What! will you allow an infamous libel to be printed and dispersed, only because it does not bear the title of a play? Thus, my Lords, from the precedent now before us, we shall be induced, nay, we can find no reason for refusing, to lay the press under a general license, and then we may bid adieu to the liberties of Great Britain." Yet, however ingenious this reasoning, it has been refuted by that greatest of all controversialists-Time. The Bill has passed, and a hundred years have rolled away; yet still we are not a people of slaves. The liberty of the press stands more firmly than ever. The stage has lost its disgraceful personalities, not its salutary satire. No genius has been checked, no freedom violated, and the powers of the Lord Chamberlain's department have been exercised with less VOL. I. 2E |