rse, and rides
away into his own country;"--or, in other words, takes a poor deanery in
Ireland.

Thackeray explains very correctly, as I think, the nature of the weapons
which the man used,--namely, the words and style with which he wrote.
"That Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey's Court, Dublin, on November 30,
1667, is a certain fact, of which nobody will deny the sister-island the
honour and glory; but it seems to me he was no more an Irishman than a
man born of English parents at Calcutta is a Hindoo. Goldsmith was an
Irishman and always an Irishman; Steele was an Irishman and always an
Irishman; Swift's heart was English and in England, his habits English,
his logic eminently English; his statement is elaborately simple; he
shuns tropes and metaphors, and uses his ideas and words with a wise
thrift and economy, as he used his money;--with which he could be
generous and splendid upon great occasions, but which he husbanded when
there was no need to spend it. He never indulges in needless
extravagance of rhetoric, lavish epithets, profuse imagery. He lays his
opinions before you with a grave simplicity and a perfect neatness."
This is quite true of him, and the result is that though you may deny
him sincerity, simplicity, humanity, or good taste, you can hardly find
fault with his language.

Swift was a clergyman, and this is what Thackeray says of him in regard
to his sacred profession. "I know of few things more conclusive as to
the sincerity of Swift's religion, than his advice to poor John Gay to
turn clergyman, and look out for a seat on the Bench! Gay, the author of
_The Beggar's Opera_; Gay, the wildest of the wits about town! It was
this man that Jonathan Swift advised to take orders, to mount in a
cassock and bands,--just as he advised him to husband his shillings, and
put his thousand pounds out to interest."

It was not that he was without religion,--or without, rather, his
religious beliefs and doubts, "for Swift," says Thackeray, "was a
reverent, was a pious spirit. For Swift could love and could pray." Left
to himself and to the natural thoughts of his mind, without those
"orders" to which he had bound himself as a necessary part of his trade,
he could have turned to his God with questionings which need not then
have been heartbreaking. "It is my belief," says Thackeray, "that he
suffered frightfully from the consciousness of his own scepticism, and
that he had bent his pride so far down as to put his ap