ion, he was unable to make his affection a
source of happiness to himself or to others. Although he always chose
for companionship the most refined and cultivated women, the wisest and
most honored men, his mind dwelt by preference on the most terrible
examples of human depravity, and he gave permanent form, in his
literary productions, to ideas from which a healthy mind must always
turn with horror and disgust. His misanthropy was founded partly on
observation of the evil and corruption which he saw about him, and
partly on the suspicions and exaggerations of his own imagination. He
gave up writing a history of England, because, in his own words, he
found the characters of history such a pack of rascals that he would
have no more to say to them. He made a "List of Friends," which he
classified as Grateful, Ungrateful, Indifferent, and Doubtful. Of these
friends, forty-four in number, only seventeen were marked with the _g_
which signified that their friendship was trusted. We cannot
disassociate Swift from his own time, nor can we attribute simply to a
melancholy life or to mental aberration the revolting conceptions which
his works contain. The coarseness and corruption which marked the
private and public life of Swift's day had their share in the
production of such poems as The "Lady's Dressing-Room," and such
degrading views of human nature as are expressed in the "Voyage to the
Houyhnhnms."

It is a significant sign of the times that Hogarth, the greatest
English painter, and Swift, the greatest English writer, should have
employed their talents in caricature and in satire. In the wonderful
allegory of the "Tale of a Tub," in which the corruptions and failings
of the English, Roman, and Presbyterian churches were ridiculed in the
persons of Jack, Peter, and Martin, Swift displayed at an early age his
exuberant wit and surpassing satirical power. The "Tale of a Tub" was
succeeded by the "Battle of the Books," an imaginary conflict between
volumes in a library, which exposed the absurdity of the controversy
over the relative merits of the ancients and the moderns. But Swift's
satire became most fierce and brilliant when it was turned from rival
creeds and rival literatures, and directed toward mankind itself.

The "Travels of Lemuel Gulliver" were dropped, said the publisher, at
his house, in the dark, from a hackney-coach. In regard to this work,
the Dean followed his custom of sending out his writings to the world