s alone till the end. There is nothing in literature more
profoundly melancholy than Swift's own eloquent tribute to the memory
of his dead wife, written in a room to which he has removed so that he
may not see the light burning in the church windows, where her last
rites are being prepared. There is no greater and no sadder life in
all the history of the last century. The man himself was described in
the very hours when he was most famous, most courted, most flattered,
as the most unhappy man on earth. Indeed he seems to have been most
wretched; he certainly {238} darkened the lives of the two or three
women who were so unfortunate as to love him. But we may forget the
sadness of the personal life in the greatness of the public career.
Swift was the ardent champion of every cause that touched him; the good
friend of Ireland; he was always torn with "fierce indignation" against
oppression and injustice. Thackeray, whose reading of the character of
Swift is far too generally accepted, finds fault with the phrase, and
blames somewhat bitterly the man who uses it, "as if," he says, "the
wretch who lay under that stone waiting God's judgment had a right to
be angry." But it was natural that Swift, scanning life from his own
point of view, should feel a fierce indignation against wrong-doing,
injustice, dishonesty. He was an erring man, but he had the right to
be angry with crimes of which he could never be guilty. His ways were
not always our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts; but he walked his
way, such as it was, courageously, and the temper of his thoughts was
not unheroic. He was loyal to his leaders in adversity; he was true to
friends who were sometimes untrue to him; his voice was always raised
against oppression; he had the courage to speak up for Ireland and her
liberties in some of the darkest days in our common history. To
Thackeray he is only a "lonely guilty wretch," a bravo, and a bully--a
man of genius, employing that genius for selfish or vindictive purpose.
To soberer and more sympathetic judgment Thackeray's study of Swift is
a cruel caricature. He may have been "miserrimus," but Grattan was
right when he appealed long after to the "spirit of Swift" as the
spirit of one in true sympathy with the expanding freedom of every
people--a champion, strenuous to his uttermost, of liberty.

{239}

CHAPTER XXXVII.

CHESTERFIELD IN DUBLIN CASTLE.

[Sidenote: 1746--Chesterfield in Dublin Castle