English Literature For Boys And Girls by H.E. Marshall

H >> H.E. Marshall >> English Literature For Boys And Girls

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45

Defoe was now well off. He had built himself a handsome house
surrounded by a pleasant garden. He had carriages and horses and
lived in good style with his wife and beautiful daughters. There
seemed to be no reason why he should not live happily and at ease
for the rest of his life. But suddenly one day, for some unknown
reason, he fled from his comfortable home into hiding. Why he
did this no one can tell. For two years he lived a homeless,
skulking fugitive. Then in 1731 he died, if not in poverty at
least in loneliness and distress of mind.

BOOKS TO READ

Robinson Crusoe, abridged by John Lang. Robinson Crusoe, retold
by Edith Robarts, illustrated by J. Hassall, R. I. Robinson
Crusoe (Everyman's Library).

Chapter LXIII SWIFT--THE "JOURNAL TO STELLA"

WE all know what it is to feel hurt and angry, to feel that we
are misunderstood, that no one loves us. At such times it may be
we want to hurt ourselves so that in some mysterious way we may
hurt those who do not love us. We long to die so that they may
be sorry. But these feelings do not come often and they soon
pass. We cry ourselves to sleep perhaps and wake up to find the
evil thoughts are gone. We forget all about them, or if we
remember them we remember to smile at our own foolishness, for we
know that after all we are understood, we are loved. And when we
grow old enough to look back upon those times, although we may
remember the pain of them, we can see that sometimes they came
from our own fault, it was not that we were misunderstood so much
as that we were misunderstanding. Yet whether it be our own
fault or not, when such times do come, the world seems very dark
and life seems full of pain. Then think of what a whole life
filled with these evil thoughts must be. Think of a whole life
made terrible with bitter feelings. That would be misery indeed.

Yet when we read the sad story of the life of Jonathan Swift who
has in Gulliver's Travels given to countless children, and grown-
up people too, countless hours of pleasure, we are forced to
believe that so he passed a great part of his life. Swift was
misunderstood and misunderstanding. It was not that he had no
love given to him, for all his life through he found women to
love him. But it was his unhappiness that he took that love only
to turn it to bitterness in his heart, that he took that love so
as to leave a stain on him and it ever after. He had friendship
too. But in the hands stretched out to help him in his need he
saw only insult. In the kindness that was given to him he saw
only a grudging charity, and yet he was angry with the world and
with man that he did not receive more.

In the life of Jonathan Swift there are things which puzzle even
the wisest. Children would find those things still harder to
understand, so I will not try to explain them, but will tell you
a little that you will readily follow about the life of this
lonely man with the biting pen and aching heart.

Jonathan Swift's father and mother were very poor, so poor indeed
that their friends said it was folly for them to marry. And when
after about two years of married life the husband died, he left
his young wife burdened with debts and with a little baby girl to
keep. It was not until a few months after his father's death
that Jonathan was born.

His mother was a brave-hearted, cheerful woman, and although her
little son came to her in the midst of such sorrow she no doubt
loved him, and his nurse loved him too. Little Jonathan's father
and mother were English, but because he was born in Dublin, and
because he spent a great deal of his life there, he has sometimes
been looked upon as an Irishman.

Jonathan's nurse was also an Englishwoman, and when he was about
a year old she was called home to England to a dying friend. She
saw that she must go to her friend, but she loved her baby-charge
so much that she could not bear to part from him. He had been a
sickly child, often ill, but that seemed only to make him dearer
to her. She held him in her arms thinking how empty they would
fell without their dear burden. She kissed him, jealous at the
thought that he might learn to know and love another nurse, and
she felt that she could not part with him. Making up her mind
that she would not, she wrapped him up warmly and slipped quietly
from the house carrying the baby in her arms. She then ran
quickly to the boat, crept on board, and was well out on the
Irish Sea before it was discovered that she had stolen little
Jonathan from his mother. Mrs. Swift was poor, Jonathan was not
strong so the fond and daring nurse was allowed by the mother to
keep her little charge until he was nearly four. Thus for three
years little Jonathan lived with his nurse at Whitehaven, growing
strong and brown in the sea air. She looked after him lovingly,
and besides feeding and clothing him, taught him so well that
Swift tells us himself, though it seems a little hard to believe,
that he could spell and could read any chapter in the Bible
before he was three.

After Jonathan's return to Ireland his uncle, Godwin Swift, seems
to have taken charge of him, and when he was six to have sent him
to a good school. His mother, meanwhile, went home to her own
people in England, and although mother and son loved each other
they were little together all through life. At fourteen Godwin
Swift sent his nephew from school to Trinity College, Dublin.
But Swift was by this time old enough to know that he was living
on the charity of his uncle and the knowledge was bitter to his
proud spirit. Instead of spurring him on the knowledge weighed
him down. He became gloomy, idle, and wild. He afterwards said
he was a dunce at college and "was stopped of his degree for
dulness and insufficiency." But although at first the examiners
refused to pass him, he was later, for some reason, given a
special degree, granted by favor rather than gained by desert "in
a manner little to his credit," says bitter Swift. Jonathan gave
his uncle neither love nor thanks for his schooling. "He gave me
the education of a dog," was how he spoke of it years after. Yet
he had been sent to the best school in Ireland and to college
later. But perhaps it was not so much the gift as the manner of
giving which Swift scorned. We cannot tell.

Soon after Jonathan left college he went to live in the house of
Sir William Temple. Temple was a great man in his day. He had
been an Ambassador, the friend of kings and princes, and he
considered himself something of a scholar. To him Swift acted as
a kind of secretary. To a proud man the post of secretary or
chaplain in a great house was, in those days, no happy one. It
was a position something between that of a servant and a friend,
and in it Swift's haughty soul suffered torments. Sir William,
no doubt, meant to be kind, but he was cold and condescending,
and not a little pompous and conceited. Swift's fierce pride was
ready to fancy insults where none were meant, he resented being
"treated like a schoolboy," and during the years he passed in Sir
William's house he gathered a store of bitterness against the
world in his heart.

But in spite of all his miseries real or imaginary, Swift had at
least one pleasure. Among the many people making up the great
household there was a little girl of seven named Esther Johnson.
She was a delicate little girl with large eyes and black hair.
She and Swift soon grew to be friends, and he spent his happiest
hours teaching her to read and write. It is pleasant to think of
the gloomy, untrained genius throwing off his gloom and bending
all his talents to the task of teaching and amusing this little
delicate child of seven.

With intervals between, Swift remained in Sir William's household
for about five years. Here he began to write poetry, but when he
showed his poems to Dryden, who was a distant kinsman, he got
little encouragement. "Cousin Swift," said the great man, "you
will never be a poet." Here was another blow from a hostile
world which Swift could never either forget or forgive.

As the years went on Swift found his position grow more and more
irksome. At last he began to think of entering the Church as a
means of earning an independent livelihood and becoming his own
master. And one day, having a quarrel with Sir William, he left
his house in a passion and went back to Ireland. Here after some
trouble he was made a priest and received a little seaside parish
worth about a hundred pounds a year.

Swift was now his own master, but he found it dull. He had so
few parishioners that it is said he used to go down to the
seashore and skiff stones in order to gather a congregation. For
he thought if the people would not come to hear sermons they
would come at least to stare at the mad clergyman, and for years
he was remembered as the "mad clergyman." And now because he
found his freedom dull, and for various other reasons, when Sir
William asked him to come back he gladly came. This time he was
much happier as a member of Sir William's household than he had
been before.

It was now that Swift wrote the two little books which first made
him famous. These were The Battle of the Books and A Tale of a
Tub. The Battle of the Books rose out of a silly quarrel in
which Sir William Temple had taken part as to whether the ancient
or the modern writers were the best. Swift took Temple's side
and wrote to prove that the ancient writers were best. But, as
it has been said, he wrote so cleverly that he proved the
opposite against his will, for nowhere in the writings of the
ancients is there anything so full or humor and satire as The
Battle of the Books.

Swift imagines a real battle to have taken place among the books
in the King's library at St. James's Palace. The books leave the
shelves, some on horseback, some on foot, and armed with sword
and spear throw themselves into the fray, but we are left quite
uncertain as to who gained the victory. This little book is a
satire, and, like all Swift's famous satires, is in prose not in
poetry. In the preface he says, "Satire is a sort of glass,
wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but
their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it
meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with
it." It is not a book that you will care to read for a long
time, for to find it interesting you must know both a good deal
about Swift's own times and about the books that fight the
battle.

You will not care either for A Tale of a Tub. And yet it is the
book above all others which one must read, and read with
understanding, if one would get even a little knowledge of
Swift's special genius. It was the book, nevertheless, which
more than any other stood in his way in after life.

A Tale of a Tub like The Battle of the Books is a satire, and
Swift wrote it to show up the abuses of the Church. He tells the
story of three brothers, Peter, Martin and Jack. Peter
represents the Roman Catholic, Martin the Anglican, and Jack the
Presbyterian Church. He meant, he says, to turn the laugh only
against Peter and Jack. That may be so, but his treatment of
Martin cannot be called reverent. Indeed, reverence was
impossible to Swift. There is much good to be said of him.
There was a fierce righteousness about his spirit which made him
a better parish priest than many a more pious man. He hated
shams, he hated cant, he hated bondage. "Dr. Swift," it was
said, "hated all fanatics: all fanatics hated Dr. Swift."* But
with all his uprightness and breadth he was neither devout nor
reverent.

*Lord Orrery.

When Sir William Temple died Swift went back to Ireland, and
after a little time he once more received a Church living there.
But here, as before, his parish was very small, so that sometimes
he had only his clerk as congregation. Then he would begin the
service with "Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and
me," instead of "Dearly beloved brethren," as the Prayer Book has
it.

Sir William had left Swift some money; he had also left some to
Esther Johnson, the little girl Swift used to teach. She had
grown into a beautiful and witty woman and now she too, with a
friend, went to Ireland, and for the rest of her life lived there
near Swift.

The strange friendship between these two, between Esther Johnson
and Swift, is one of the puzzles in Swift's life. That they
loved each other, that they were life-long friends, every one
knows. But were they ever married? Were they man and wife?
That question remains unanswered.

Esther is the Persian word for star; Stella the Latin. Swift
called his girl-friend Stella, and as Stella she has become
famous in our literature. For when Swift was away from home he
wrote letters to her which we now have under the name of the
Journal to Stella. Here we see the great man in another light.
Here he is no longer armed with lightning, his pen is no longer
dipped in poison, but in friendly, simple fashion he tells all
that happens to him day by day. He tells what he thinks and what
he feels, where and when he dines, when he gets up, and when he
goes to bed, all the gossiping details interesting to one who
loves us and whom we love. And with it all we get a picture of
the times in which he lived, of the politics of the day, of the
great men he moved among. Swift always addresses both Stella and
her companion Mistress Dingley, and the letters are everywhere
full of tender, childish nonsense. He invented what he called a
"little language," using all sorts of quaint and babyish words
and strange strings of capital letters, M. D., for instance,
meaning my dears, M. E., Madam Elderly, or D. D., Dear Dingley,
and so on. Throughout, too, we come on little bits of doggerel
rimes, bad puns, simple jokes, mixed up with scraps of politics,
with threatenings of war, with party quarrels, with all kinds of
stray fragments of news which bring the life of the times vividly
before us. The letters were never meant for any one but Stella
and Mistress Dingley to see, and sometimes when we are reading
the affectionate nonsense we feel as if no one ought to have seen
it but these two. And yet it gives us one whole side of Swift
that we should never have known but for it. It is not easy to
give an idea of this book, it must be read to be understood, but
I will give you a few extracts from it:--

"Pshaw, I must be writing to those dear saucy brats every night,
whether I will or no, let me have what business I will, or come
home ever so late, or be ever so sleepy; but an old saying and a
true one,

'Be you lords, or be you earls,
You must write to saucy girls.'

"I was to-day at Court and saw Raymond among the beefeaters,
staying to see the Queen; so I put him in a better station, made
two or three dozen of bows, and went to Church, and then to Court
again to pick up a dinner, as I did with Sir John Stanley, and
then we went to visit Lord Mountjoy, and just now left him, and
'tis near eleven at night, young women."

Or again:--

"The Queen was abroad to-day in order to hunt, but finding it
disposed to rain she kept in her coach; she hunts in a chaise
with one horse, which she drives herself, and drives furiously,
like Jehu, and is a mighty hunter, like Nimrod. Dingley has
heard of Nimrod, but not Stella, for it is in the Bible. . . .
The Queen and I were going to take the air this afternoon, but
not together: and were both hindered by a sudden rain. Her
coaches and chaises all went back, and the guards too; and I
scoured into the marketplace for shelter."

Another day he writes:--

"Pish, sirrahs, put a date always at the bottom of your letter,
as well as the top, that I may know when you send it; your last
is of November 3, yet I had others at the same time, written a
fortnight after. . . . Pray let us have no more bussiness,
busyness. Take me if I know how to spell it! Your wrong
spelling, Madam Stella, has put me out: it does not look right;
let me see, bussiness, busyness, business, bisyness, bisness,
bysness; faith, I known not which is right, I think the second; I
believe I never writ the word in my life before; yes, sure I
must, though; business, busyness, bisyness.-- I have perplexed
myself, and can't do it. Prithee ask Walls. Business, I fancy
that's right. Yes it is; I looked in my own pamphlet, and found
it twice in ten lines, to convince you that I never writ it
before. O, now I see it as plain as can be; so yours is only an
s too much."

Chapter LXIV SWIFT--"GULLIVER'S TRAVELS"

DURING the years in which Swift found time to write these playful
letters to Stella he was growing into a man of power. Like Defoe
he was a journalist, but one of far more authority. The power of
his pen was such that he was courted by his friends, feared by
his enemies. He threw himself into the struggle of party, first
as a Whig, then as a Tory; but as a friend said of him later, "He
was neither Whig nor Tory, neither Jacobite nor Republican. He
was Dr. Swift."* He was now, he says:--

*Lord Orrery.

"Grown old in politicks and wit,
Caress'd by ministers of State,
Of half mankind the dread and hate."*

*Cadenus and Vanessa.

And he felt that he deserved reward for what he had done for his
party. He thought that he should have been made a bishop. But
even in those days, when little thought was given to the fitness
of a man for such a position, the Queen steadily refused to make
the author of A Tale of a Tub a bishop.

Again Swift felt that he was unjustly treated, and even when he
was at length made Dean of St. Patrick's that consoled him
little. He longed for power, and owned that he was never so
happy as when treated like a lord. He longed for wealth, for
"wealth," he said, "is liberty, and liberty is a blessing fittest
for a philosopher." And if Swift was displeased at being made
only a Dean, the Irish people were equally displeased with him as
their Dean. As he rode through the streets of Dublin to take
possession of his Deanery, the people threw stones and mud at him
and hooted him as he passed. The clergy, too, made his work as
Dean as hard as possible. But Swift set himself to conquer them,
and soon he had his own way even in trifles.

We cannot follow Swift through all his political adventures and
writings. In those days the misgovernment of Ireland was
terrible, and Swift, although he loved neither Ireland nor the
Irish, fought for their rights until, from being hated by them,
he became the idol of the people, and those who had thrown mud
and stones now cheered him as he passed. Wherever he went he was
received with honor, his birthday was kept as a day of rejoicing
by Irishmen with gratitude. But even in his hour of triumph
Swift was a lonely and discontented man as we may learn from his
letters.

It was now that he published the book upon which his fame most
surely rests--Gulliver's Travels. It is a book which has given
pleasure to numberless people ever since. Yet Swift said
himself: "The chief end I propose to myself in all my labours is
to vex the world rather than divert it, and if I could compass
that design without hurting my own person or fortune, I would be
the most indefatigable writer you have ever seen. . . . I hate
and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John,
Peter, Thomas, and so forth. . . . Upon this great foundation of
misanthropy, the whole building of my Travels is erected."

But whether Swift at the time vexed the world with Gulliver or
not, ever since he has succeeded in diverting it. Gulliver's
Travels is an allegory and a satire, but there is no need now to
do more than enjoy it as a story.

The story is divided into four parts. In the first Captain
Lemuel Gulliver being wrecked finds himself upon an island where
all the people are so small that he can pick them up in his thumb
and finger, and it requires six hundred of their beds to make one
for him.

In the second part Gulliver comes to a country where the people
are giants. They are so large that they in their turn can lift
Gulliver up between thumb and finger.

In the third voyage Gulliver is taken by pirates and at last
lands upon a flying island, and from there he passes on to other
wonderful places.

In the fourth his men mutiny and put him ashore on an unknown
land. There he finds that horses are the rulers, and a terrible
kind of degraded human being their slaves and servants.

In the last part the satire is too bitter, the degradation of man
too terribly insisted upon to make it pleasant reading, and
altogether the first two stories are the most interesting.

Here is how Swift tells us of Gulliver's arrival in Lilliput, the
country of the tiny folk. After the shipwreck and a long battle
with the waves he has at length reached land:--

"I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where I
slept sounder than ever I remember to have done in my life, and,
as I reckoned, about nine hours; for when I awaked, it was just
daylight. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for as
I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were
strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which
was long and thick, tied down in the same manner.

"I could only look upwards, the sun began to grow hot, and the
light offended my eyes. I heard a confused noise about me, but
in the posture I lay, could see nothing except the sky. In a
little time I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which
advancing gently forward over my breast, came almost up to my
chin; when bending my eyes downwards as much as I could, I
perceived it to be a human creature not six inches high, with a
bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his back.

"In the meantime, I felt at least fifty more of the same kind (as
I conjectured) following the first. I was in the utmost
astonishment, and roared so loud, that they all ran back in a
fright; and some of them, as I was afterwards told, were hurt
with the falls they got by leaping from my sides upon the ground.
However, they soon returned, and one of them, who ventured so far
as to get a full sight of my face, lifting up his hands and eyes
by way of admiration, cried out in a shrill, but distinct voice,
Hekinah degul: the others repeated the same words several times,
but then I knew not what they meant.

"I lay all this while, as the reader may believe, in great
uneasiness: at length, struggling to get loose, I had the
fortune to break the strings, and wrench out the pegs that
fastened my left arm to the ground; for, by lifting it up to my
face, I discovered the methods they had taken to bind me, and at
the same time with a violent pull, which game me excessive pain,
I a little loosened the strings that tied down my hair on the
left side, so that I was just able to turn my head about two
inches.

"But the creatures ran off a second time, before I could seize
them; whereupon there was a great shout in a very shrill accent,
and after it ceased, I heard one of them cry aloud Tolgo phonac;
when in an instant I felt above an hundred arrows discharged on
my left hand, which pricked me like so many needles; and besides,
they shot another flight into the air, as we do bombs in Europe,
whereof many, I suppose, fell on my body (though I felt them not)
and some on my face, which I immediately covered with my left
hand.

"When this shower of arrows was over, I fell a-groaning with
grief and pain, and then striving again to get loose, they
discharged another volley larger than the first, and some of them
attempted with spears to stick me in the sides, but, by good
luck, I had on a buff jerkin, which they could not pierce."

Gulliver decided that the best thing he could do was to lie still
until night came and then, having his left hand already loose, he
would soon be able to free himself. However, he did not need to
wait so long, for very soon, by orders of a mannikin, who seemed
to have great authority over the others, his head was set free.
The little man then made a long speech, not a word of which
Gulliver understood, but he replied meekly, showing by signs that
he had no wicked intentions against the tiny folk and that he was
also very hungry.

"The Hurgo (for so they call a great lord, as I afterwards
learnt) understood me very well. He commanded that several
ladders should be applied to my sides, on which above an hundred
of the inhabitants mounted and walked towards my mouth, laden
with baskets full of meat, which had been provided and sent
thither by the King's orders, upon the first intelligence he
received of me. I observed there was the flesh of several
animals, but could not distinguish them by the taste. There were
shoulders, legs, and loins, shaped like those of mutton, and very
well dressed, but smaller than the wings of a lark. I ate them
by two or three at a mouthful, and took three loaves at a time,
about the bigness of musket bullets. They supplied me as fast as
they could, showing a thousand marks of wonder and astonishment
at my bulk and appetite. I then made another sign that I wanted
to drink. They found by my eating, that a small quantity would
not suffice me; and being a most ingenious people, they slung up
with great dexterity one of their largest hogsheads, then rolled
it towards my hand, and beat out the top; I drank it off at a
draught, which I might well do, for it did not hold half a pint,
and tasted like a small wine of Burgundy, but much more
delicious. They brought me a second hogshead, which I drank in
the same manner, and made signs for more, but they had none to
give me. When I had performed these wonders, they shouted for
joy, and danced upon my breast, repeating several times as they
did at first Hekinah degul."