cast the ingenious theory which they have so industriously reared upon it, unreservedly, to the winds!

To conclude. It will be the abiding glory of the Revised Version,' (thanks to Dr. Hort), that it has brought to the front a question which has slept for about 100 years; but which may not be suffered now to rest undisturbed any longer. It might have slumbered on for another half-century, a subject of deep interest to a very little band of Divines and Scholars; of perplexity and distrust to almost all the world besides ;-but for the incident which will make the 17th May, 1881, for ever memorable in the annals of the Church of England. The publication on that day of the Revised English Version of the New Testament' instantly concentrated public attention on the hitherto neglected problem: for men saw at a glance that the Traditional Text of 1530 years standing, (the exact number is Dr. Hort's, not ours,)—had been unceremoniously set aside in favour of a widely different Recension. The true authors of the mischief were not far to seek. Just five days before,-under the editorship of Drs. Westcott and Hort, (Revisionists themselves,) had appeared the most extravagant Text which has seen the light since the invention of printing. No secret was made of the fact that, under pledges of strictest secrecy, a copy of this wild performance (marked Confidential') had been entrusted to every member of the Revising body: and it has since transpired that Dr. Hort advocated his own peculiar views in the Jerusalem Chamber with so much eloquence, eagerness, pertinacity, and plausibility, that eventually-notwithstanding the warnings, the remonstrances, the entreaties of Dr. Scrivener,-his counsels prevailed; and the utter shipwreck of the Revised Version' has been the disastrous consequence.

6

·

But in the meantime there has arisen this good out of the calamity,—namely, that men will at last require that the Textual problem shall be fairly threshed out. They will insist on having it proved to their satisfaction,-(1) That Codices B and are indeed the oracular documents which their admirers pretend; and (2) That a narrow selection of ancient documents is a secure foundation on which to build the Text of Scripture. Failing this, (and the onus probandi rests wholly with those who are for setting aside the Traditional Text in favour of another, entirely dissimilar in character,)-failing this, we say, it is reasonable to hope that the counsels of the Quarterly Review' will be suffered to prevail. In the meantime we repeat that this question has now to be fought out: for to ignore it any longer

1 See Scrivener's Introduction, p. 432.

is impossible. Compromise of any sort between the two adverse parties, is impossible also; for they simply contradict one another. Codd. B and & are either among the purest of manuscripts, or else they are among the very foulest. The text of Drs. Westcott and Hort is either the very best which has ever appeared, or else it is the very worst; the nearest to the sacred autographs, or the furthest from them. There is no room for both opinions; and there cannot exist any middle view. The question will have to be fought out; and it must be fought out fairly. It may not be magisterially settled; but must be advocated, on either side, by the old logical method. If Continental Scholars join in the fray, England,—which, in the last century, took the lead in these studies,—will, it is to be hoped, maintain her ancient reputation and again occupy the front rank. The combatants may be sure that, in consequence of all that has happened, the public will be no longer indifferent spectators of the conflict; for the issue concerns the inner life of the whole community,-touches their very heart of hearts. Certain it is that 'GOD defend the Right'! will be the one aspiration of every faithful spirit among us. THE TRUTH,(we avow it on behalf of Drs. Westcott and Hort as eagerly as on our own behalf,)-GOD'S TRUTH will be, as it has been throughout, the one object of all our striving. Aiλivov alivov εἰπὲ, τὸ δ' εὖ νικάτω.

ART. II.-1. The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin. Edited, with Notes and a Life of the Author, by Walter Scott, Esq. Eighteen volumes. Second edition. Edinburgh, 1824.

2. The History and Antiquities of the Collegiate and Cathedral Church of St. Patrick, near Dublin. Collected chiefly from sources of original record, by William Monck Mason, Esq. Dublin, 1819.

3. The Life of Jonathan Swift. By John Forster. Volume the First. London, 1875.

E know Swift as we know no other of those eminent men who have made the first four decades of the eighteenth century memorable in literary history. A mere glance at the materials to which his biographers have had access will suffice to show that our information regarding him is of such a kind as to leave scarcely anything to be desired. In the first place, we have his own voluminous correspondence-a correspondence which is, from a biographical point of view, of peculiar value. For as the

majority

majority of his letters are addressed to intimate friends, and were intended only for the eyes of those friends, they exhibit him at times when the mask falls off, even from the most guarded. They were, moreover, written in all moods, without premeditation, without reserve, with the simple object of unburdening his mind, in no case with a view either to publication or to display. When I sit down to write a letter,' he used to say, 'I never lean upon my elbow till I have finished it.' Again, in the Journal to Esther Johnson, he has not only left a minute record of his daily life during a space of nearly three years, but he has with unrestrained garrulity given expression to whatever happened at the moment to be passing through his thoughts. Nor is this all. He appears, like Johnson and Coleridge, to have found an eccentric pleasure in communing with himself on paper. Many of these soliloquies accident has preserved. They throw the fullest light on his innermost thoughts and feelings. They enable us to determine how far as a Churchman he was honest, how far as a Politician he was consistent. His Memoir of himself remains unfortunately a fragment, but enough was completed to illustrate that portion of his career during which his correspondence is most scanty. If to this mass of autobiographical matter be added the innumerable passages in his public writings which elucidate his personal history, the evidence which is of all evidence the least open to suspicion may be regarded as ample even to superabundance.

But if we owe much to the communicativeness of Swift himself, we owe much also to the communicativeness of his friends. Seven years after his death appeared the famous Letters by John Lord Orrery. The indignation which this work excited among Swift's admirers is well known. The picture which Orrery drew of the Dean was certainly not a pleasing one, and he was accused of having malignantly endeavoured to indemnify himself for the long and not very successful court he paid to Swift when alive by a series of calumnious attacks upon him when dead. We have not much respect for Orrery either as a writer or as a man, but we believe him to have been guiltless of any such intention. Careful study of the letters has satisfied us that they are on the whole what they profess to be. Orrery was, as we learn from other sources, no favourite with Swift. He saw him, therefore, not as he presented himself to the fascinated eye of friendship, but as he presented himself to the impartial eye of critical curiosity. It should be remembered too that he knew him only in his decadence. Had Orrery's object been detraction, he would have withheld praise where praise was due, and when direct

censure

censure was hazardous he would have resorted to misrepresentation. There is nothing of this spirit discernible. He fully admits the greatness, he fully admits the many virtues, of the man whose portrait he has delineated in such harsh and disagreeable colours. What he painted was what he saw, and what he saw were those features in Swift's character which Delany and Deane Swift have piously done their best to soften or conceal. The truth is, that the Swift of Orrery is the Swift of the Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, and of the Verses to the Legion Club. The Letters of Orrery elicited two years afterwards the observations of Delany. Few men were better qualified to speak of Swift than Delany. He had been on terms of intimacy with him for upwards of a quarter of a century. He had been his companion in business and recreation. He had been acquainted with those who had known him from early youth. But Delany's object was eulogy, and for this due allowance must be made. He is, however, one of those witnesses whose loquacity forms a perpetual corrective to their prejudice, and his observations are so rich in reminiscence and anecdote, that a shrewd reader is in little danger of being misled. On the whole, we are inclined to think him the most trustworthy and valuable of all the original authorities. Delany's observations were succeeded, at an interval of a year, by Deane Swift's Essay. This is a very disappointing book, though, as the writer was the son-in-law of Mrs. Whiteway, and had as a young man frequently conversed with Swift, what he says of the Dean's character and habits is of importance, and we are moreover indebted to him for many interesting particulars not preserved elsewhere. In Mrs. Pilkington and the compiler of the 'Swiftiana' we are not inclined to place much confidence. Hawkesworth's Memoir, which was published in 1755, and Johnson's Life, which was published in 1781, added little or nothing to what was already known. But in 1784 came out the Memoir by Thomas Sheridan, not, of course, the Thomas Sheridan who was the friend of Swift, but the son of Swift's friend. As Sheridan professed to have derived information from his father, and has on the authority of his father contributed new biographical matter, his name stands high, much higher than it is entitled to stand, among Swift's biographers.

Then came the era of original research. This may be said to date from Dr. Barrett's Essay on the College Days of Swift, which appeared in 1808. A few years afterwards Scott undertook to embody in a comprehensive narrative the information which lay scattered through the publications to which we have just referred. He did this, and he did much more. Indeed

he

he produced a work which still remains, with all its defects, the best complete biography of Swift in existence. Scott had many advantages. His editorial labours peculiarly fitted him for the office of biographer, and those labours had been greatly facilitated both by Hawkesworth and Nichols, whose valuable editions of the Dean's collected writings had appeared at intervals between 1784 and 1808. Scott's own distinguished position in the world of letters gave, moreover, something of a national importance to his work. All who could in any way assist him eagerly proferred their services. Escritoires were ransacked, family archives explored. One gentleman placed at his disposal the correspondence between Swift and Miss Vanhomrigh; another lent him the memoranda of Dr. Lyons. Every year augmented his treasures, and on the completion of his task in 1814 he could boast that he had been able to add upwards of a hundred letters, essays, and poems to those which had already seen the light. In fine, had Scott made the best of his opportunities, had his information been as accurate as it was comprehensive, and had his patience and industry been equal to his genius and literary skill, any other Life of Swift would have been a mere work of supererogation. But unhappily his biography of Swift is marred by the same defects which marred his biography of Dryden. It is essentially unthorough-the work of a man,-of a very great man,-who was contented with doing respectably what with a little more trouble he might have done excellently. Hence, though he is always interesting and always instructive, he is seldom altogether satisfactory. We doubt very much whether any reader, after closing Scott's memoir, would have any clear impression of Swift's character. Indeed, to speak plainly, we doubt whether Scott had himself taken the trouble to form any clear conception of that character. But his most serious defect is his careless credulity. To the relative value of testimony he appears to attach little importance. He places, for example, the same implicit confidence in statements which rest on no better authority than that of Theophilus Swift and the younger Sheridan, as he places on statements which rest on the authority of Swift's own intimate associates. The result is, that what is authentic and what is apocryphal are so interwoven in his narrative, that it is never possible to follow him without distrust and suspicion.

While Scott was busy with Swift, another writer was similarly engaged. In 1819 Monck Mason published his History and Antiquities of St. Patrick's Cathedral, a goodly quarto of some five hundred pages. More than half of this formidable volume is devoted to an elaborate biography of Swift. But Monck

Mason's