raphers": it is not easy for an English critic to
please Irishmen--perhaps to try and please them. And yet Johnson truly
admires Swift: Johnson does not quarrel with Swift's change of politics,
or doubt his sincerity of religion: about the famous Stella and Vanessa
controversy the Doctor does not bear very hardly on Swift. But he could
not give the Dean that honest hand of his; the stout old man puts it into
his breast, and moves off from him.(27)

Would we have liked to live with him? That is a question which, in dealing
with these people's works, and thinking of their lives and peculiarities,
every reader of biographies must put to himself. Would you have liked to
be a friend of the great Dean? I should like to have been Shakespeare's
shoeblack--just to have lived in his house, just to have worshipped him--to
have run on his errands, and seen that sweet serene face. I should like,
as a young man, to have lived on Fielding's staircase in the Temple, and
after helping him up to bed perhaps, and opening his door with his
latchkey, to have shaken hands with him in the morning, and heard him talk
and crack jokes over his breakfast and his mug of small beer. Who would
not give something to pass a night at the club with Johnson, and
Goldsmith, and James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck? The charm of Addison's
companionship and conversation has passed to us by fond tradition--but
Swift? If you had been his inferior in parts (and that, with a great
respect for all persons present, I fear is only very likely), his equal in
mere social station, he would have bullied, scorned, and insulted you; if,
undeterred by his great reputation, you had met him like a man, he would,
have quailed before you,(28) and not had the pluck to reply, and gone
home, and years after written a foul epigram about you--watched for you in
a sewer, and come out to assail you with a coward's blow and a dirty
bludgeon. If you had been a lord with a blue ribbon, who flattered his
vanity, or could help his ambition, he would have been the most delightful
company in the world. He would have been so manly, so sarcastic, so
bright, odd, and original, that you might think he had no object in view
but the indulgence of his humour, and that he was the most reckless,
simple creature in the world. How he would have torn your enemies to
pieces for you! and made fun of the Opposition! His servility was so
boisterous that it looked like independence;(29) he would have done you