the mental attitude of spectators of a
scene of high comedy--the comedy which is dashed with satire and has a
tragical side to it. We are behind the scenes in Vanity Fair, and
listening to the talk of three of its most famous performers, doubting
whether they most deceive each other or the public or themselves. The
secret is an open one for us, now that the illusion which perplexed
contemporaries has worn itself threadbare.

The most impressive letters are undoubtedly those of Swift--the stern
sad humourist, frowning upon the world which has rejected him, and
covering his wrath with an affectation, not of fine sentiment, but of
misanthropy. A soured man prefers to turn his worst side outwards. There
are phrases in his letters which brand themselves upon the memory like
those of no other man; and we are softened into pity as the strong mind
is seen gradually sinking into decay. The two other sharers in the
colloquy are in effective contrast. We see through Bolingbroke's
magnificent self-deceit; the flowing manners of the statesman who,
though the game is lost, is longing for a favourable turn of the card,
but still affects to solace himself with philosophy, and wraps himself
in dignified reflections upon the blessings of retirement, contrast with
Swift's downright avowal of indignant scorn for himself and mankind. And
yet we have a sense of the man's amazing cleverness, and regret that he
has no chance of trying one more fall with his antagonists in the open
arena. Pope's affectation is perhaps the most transparent and the most
gratuitous. His career had been pre-eminently successful; his talents
had found their natural outlet; and he had only to be what he apparently
persuaded himself that he was, to be happy in spite of illness. He is
constantly flourishing his admirable moral sense in our faces, dilating
upon his simplicity, modesty, fidelity to his friends, indifference to
the charms of fame, till we are almost convinced that he has imposed
upon himself. By some strange piece of legerdemain he must surely have
succeeded in regarding even his deliberate artifices, with the
astonishing masses of hypocritical falsehoods which they entailed, as in
some way legitimate weapons against a world full of piratical Curlls and
deep laid plots. And, indeed, with all his delinquencies, and with all
his affectations, there are moments in which we forget to preserve the
correct tone of moral indignation. Every now and then genuine fe