Swift noted in one of his "Thoughts on
Religion," "has a hundred to one odds to be either petulancy, ambition,
or pride." Examining Swift's writings on behalf of Ireland by the
criterion provided in this statement, we must acquit him entirely of
misusing any of these qualities. If he were bitter or scornful, he was
certainly not petulant. No one has written with more justice or
coolness; the temper is hot but it is the heat of a conscious and
collected indignation. If he wrote or spoke in a manner somewhat
overbearing, it was not because of ambition, since he was now long past
his youth and his mind had become settled in a fairly complacent
acceptance of his position. If he had pride, and he undoubtedly had, it
was nowhere obtruded for personal aggrandizement, but rather by way of
emphasizing the dignity of citizenship, and the value of self-respect.
Assuredly, in these Irish tracts, Swift was no violent zealot for truth.
Indeed, it is a high compliment to pay him, to say that we wonder he
restrained himself as he did.

Swift, however, had his weakness also, and it lay, as weaknesses
generally lie, very close to his strength. Swift's fault as a thinker
was the outcome of his intellectuality--he was too purely intellectual.
He set little store on the emotional side of human nature; his appeal
was always to the reason. He hated cant, and any expression of emotion
appealed to him as cant. He could not bear to be seen saying his
prayers; his acts of charity were surreptitious and given in secret with
an affectation of cynicism, so that they might veil the motive which
impelled them. It may have been pride or a dislike to be considered
sentimental; but his attitude owed its spring to a genuine faith in his
own thought. If Swift had one pride more than another, it lay in a
consciousness of his own superiority over his fellow-mortals. It was the
pride of intellect and a belief that man showed himself best by
following the judgements of the reason. His disgust with people was born
of their unreasonable selfishness, their instinctive greed and rapacity,
their blind stupidity, all which resulted for them in so much injustice.
Had they been reasonable, he would have argued, they would have been
better and happier. The sentiments and the passions were impulsive, and
therefore unreasonable. Swift seemed to have no faith in their elevation
to a higher intellectual plane, and yet he often roused them by his very
appeals to reason. His