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THE LIFE

OF

JONATHAN SWIFT.

BY JOHN FORSTER.

VOLUME THE FIRST.

1667-1711.

65337-B.

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

1875.

[All Rights Reserved.]

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PREFACE.

THE subject of this book has been in my thoughts for many years, and to the collection of materials for illustration of it I have given much labour and time.

The rule of measuring what is knowable of a famous man by the inverse ratio of what has been said about him, is applicable to Swift in a marked degree. Few men who have been talked about so much are known so little. His writings and his life are connected so closely, that to judge of either fairly with an imperfect knowledge of the other is not possible; and only thus can be excused what Jeffrey hardily said, and many have too readily believed that he was an apostate in politics, infidel or indifferent in religion, a defamer of humanity, the slanderer of statesmen who had served him, and destroyer of the women who loved him. Belief in this, or any part of it, may be pardonable where the life is known insufficiently and the writings not at all; but to a competent acquaintance with either or both, it is monstrous as well as incredible.

Swift's later time, when he was governing Ireland as well as his deanery, and the world was filled with the fame of Gulliver, is broadly and intelligibly written. But as to all the rest, his life is a work unfinished; to which no one has brought the minute examination indispensably required, where the whole of a career has to be considered to get at the proper comprehension of single parts of it. The writers accepted as authorities for the obscurer portion are found to be practically worthless, and the defect is not supplied by the later and greater biographers. Johnson did him no kind of justice because of too little liking for him; and Scott, with much hearty liking as well as a generous admiration, had too much other work to do. Thus, notwithstanding noble passages in both memoirs, and Scott's pervading tone of healthy manly wisdom, it is left to an inferior hand to attempt to complete the tribute begun by those distinguished men.

Some such preface seemed necessary to so full an account of Swift's least important years as the present volume contains; and its minuteness of detail, in the fifth and sixth books more especially, must be left to the explanation its successors will supply. Here is laid the groundwork for the graver time which is to occupy exclusively the rest of the biography; and, excepting for illustration of the individual career, there will be no introduction of history.

Though the original materials thus far employed in the story will speak for themselves, it may be expected that the principal of them, as well as of other new matter to be used in the two remaining volumes that will complete the work, should have mention in this place. When the task was undertaken, Mr. Murray confided to the writer nearly fifty unpublished letters addressed by Swift to Archdeacon Walls after he was Dean of St. Patrick's; and this incentive to farther research led to many richer acquisitions. More than a hundred and fifty new letters have been placed at my disposal.

The value of the results yielded by collation of the later portions of the 'Journal to Stella' with the original manuscript, can be judged only partially by the use of them in this volume. Το later passages of the life their contribution will be extremely important. Some special blanks in the printed journal, on which Scott remarks, are filled up by them.

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