The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-06-05

sion to the king. This was his first step
towards the social life of London. Into
this social life Swift entered, and as the
years passed, by the exercise of his dom
inant will, he became most prominent
parsonage socially. He left behind him
his days of humble living, his days of de-
pendence, his simple Irish parish, and be-
came the dean of st. Patricks, a man of
letters. a politician to be feared, a satir-
list to be hated. He was unlovely to the
superlative degree, and yet, two women
would have died for him. They both
died of broken hearts, and the dean was
responsible for the tragedy In both in
stances.
Swift has been assigned a place among
the worlds humorists, but for the life of
me / cannot see why His humor is but
incidental. 1t Is merely a subordinate at
tendant upon his sinister sarcasm. He
could laugh at the world but not with it.
He could sneer at men, like Voltaire, but
could not smile with them like Montaigne
or Laurance sCerne. Wit may possess an
element Of bitterness; not so with humor.
It has no admixture Of caustic contempt,
nor does it point out the follies of men
for derision. Its mission Is loftier. 1t is
distinguished by kindness of heart and
sympathy. simultaneously it laughs and
weeps. Thackeray said: THE best humor
Is that which contains most humanity.
and is favored throughout with tender
ness and kindness" In his Brown the
Younger" Thackeray says: 'In those
admirable touches Of tenderi humor land
I should call humor, Bob, mixture of
love and witt, who can equal this great
very heart of hufnor, and he thought
Dickens to. be the best of them. But one
will look in vain in Dickens works, from
1.-THE Sketches CHS flrst)> to The MysI
terry Of Edwin brood" (his lasD, for any
thing that will suggest the vitriolic utter.
ances of Swift and this statement holds
good In regard to Thackeray, Charles
Lamb, Thomas Hood, oliver Goldsmith,
Douglas Jerrold, oliver Wendell Holmes,
and dear old Mark Twain, upon whose
pathetic grave the whole world lays its
flowers of loving sympathy.
But Swift, bah! He was hater, a
satir1st, and sometimes lampoonist. as
in the case of Partridge, the almanac
maker. It is doubtful II Swift ever had
an equal in the use of satiric invective,
not excepting Juvenal or Horace, or the
writer Of THE Letters of Junius," but as
a humorist there are so many who ex-
cell him that he is not to be named
among them.
The deans disQualiflcations for humor,
pure and simple, are all too we'll known
on this particular subject, says of Swift.
Excess Of scorn, implicable irony, crush
ing logic. the cruel smile of the foeman,
who sees beforehand the pot where he
will wound his enemy mortally, advances
towards him, tortures him deliberately,
eagerly, with enJoyment-such were the
feelings that leavened him. The word
tenderness seemed to have no place in
his lexicon, save one person, and that
one person he destroyed.
These characteristics grew with his
years. In a letter to Lord Bollingbroke
Swift wrote: II find myself disposed every
year. or rather every month, to be more
angry and revengeful, and my rage is SO
ignoble that 1t descends even to resent
the folly and baseness of the enslaved
people among whom I live" He was a
butcher, though a clergyman, and bore
a butchers cleaver, hewing right and left.
He had genius for insulting men and
women, and to disagree with him was to
invite torrent of vulgarisms which one
dare not place upon paper.
His metrcal satires are a mingled
yarn" of the vilest suggestion, the most
loathsome references and language that
is wholly indefensible in any form. He
lacked the first element of the poetic In
stinct Imagination; but writes metrical
lines whose thoughts are repulsive and
Stencn IN the uostrlls. reIer not now,
to his short verses to Stella and few
other poems.
He Is always seeking to cudgel some
one. No matter how fair the surface of
his writing, beneath 1t there is an arrow
of sarcasm directed at somebody's heart
Even his "Gullivers Travels" which Les
lie Stephen has pronounced the finest
book for children, and which is indeed a
most wonderful story. has. beneath the
printers ink well OF poisonous sarcasm.
His Tale of Tub" Is funny beyond
words, but It Is not for purest minds to
read. Referring to this story, or satire.