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Studies of Modern Mind and Character at Several European Epochs
Studies of Modern Mind and Character at Several European Epochs Author:John Wilson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 69 JONATHAN SWIFT. The Life of Jonathan 8ift. By John Forster. Volume the First. 1C67-1711. London, 1876.' Our old friend Christopher North, in one of h... more »is convivial sallies, altogether disclaimed being ' that faultless monster whom the world ne'er saw,' and claimed, on the contrary, to be a faulty monster seen by all the world. That faulty monster Swift will now, we hope, be shown to all the world in his true dimensions, though he cannot be washed exactly white. Mr. Forster has some more than ordinary qualifications for the task he has set himself. He is not ' suspect' of Toryism, nor consumed with the zeal of retrospective Whiggism to the pitch of regarding apostacy from Godol- phin to Harley, in the days of Queen Anne, as deserving a political auto da fe in those of Queen Victoria. He has spared neither time nor pains in research of documents and materials from all quarters; and brings in his present volume much fresh information on Swift's career and character.2 And finally, he has that 'hearty liking' and 'generous admiration ' for his subject which he justly attributes to his great precursor Scott, and which are indispensably requisite to render biography a labour of love. That Swift was, in his sane and manly years, loveable, seems sufficiently proved by the fact that he was more or less loved, or liked, by every woman of intelligence and every man of genius with whomhe came in personal contact and intercourse. He was loved in tragic earnest by poor Esther Johnson and poor Hester Vanhomrigh. He was loved by Pope, Gay, Steele, Con- greve, Bolingbroke, Arbuthnot, Addison; and lastly, and posthumously, his memory is loved by Mr. Forster.1 1 From the Quarterly Heeinr, Janu:,ry 1876. Mr. Forster's death unfortunately followed soon after the publication of the firs...« less