Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 102.djvu/361

Rh and conventionalism, with a Vauxhall sort of light-—himself, on the whole, "a cutting, but not a bitter or bloody satirist," whose "blows, sharp, pungent, and annoying, have a good deal of the effect of a pea-shooter." What would Messieurs of the Academy in Nick's own day, or what will they in our own, think of this pea-shooter? But n'importe; we must revenir à nos moutons: and the next mouton, like (in Speed's phrases) a lost mutton after a laced mutton, is Samuel Butler, whose only sheepish quality, however, was his shyness—who, Mr. Hannay "can quite see," was "a shy, strange, and unmanageable sort of a man, who did not 'come out' in society," and whom Mr. Hannay patronisingly calls "old Butler," and discusses in no very fresh or searching manner. To "old Butler," that "somewhat of an odd fellow," succeeds John Dryden, who "went to work to satirise with the same bluff heartiness with which he did everything else," and whose castigating-rod "has the leaves and blossoms still sticking to it." The measure with which the lecturer metes Glorious John, is borrowed from Bell, not from Macaulay—if borrowed it is at all, which Mr. Hannay, who rejoices in capital I's, would probably disallow.

Upon Swift he has bestowed more abundant pains. For Swift he takes up the cudgels against even Mr. Thackeray. That gentleman is talked at, page after page, for comparing the Dean to a highwayman. If it was honourable for Addison to get himself made Secretary of State, "I am really at a loss," says Mr. Hannay, "to know why Swift is to be likened to a highwayman." "I deny that Swift had no motives but those 'highwayman' ones of getting place." "A man is not necessarily a 'highwayman' because he wants his proper position." Mr. Hannay is as sore about it as though he had been hailed with a tu quoque, "you're another!" He can't bear to hear of the Dean's foibles. He will write him up in the face of all comers, male and female. "Swift," says he, "was a great favourite with women; I don't mean only with your Stellas and Vanessas, but with sensible cultivated ladies," like Lady Betty Germain, Lady Betty Brownlowe, Lady Kerry, and others; and in illustration of this, all to the prejudice of "your Stellas and Vanessas," Mr. Hannay quotes a passage from one of my Lady Betty Germain's later letters, and that passage—worthy of all attention from those who side with or feel for "your Stellas and Vanessas"— is neither more nor less than this: "Adieu, my honoured old friend.” What chance has Stella with Lady Betty after that? But, "I am not going to deal with the 'Stella and Vanessa' question at any length," says Mr. Hannay. "I say, we cannot judge of it fairly. Swift is more to be pitied than anything else; it seems to me." As for Stella,—"if a mysterious destiny compelled him to make her suffer, did not he, too, suffer with her?"—while as for Vanessa, "she seems to have flung her self at Swift's head in the teeth of prudence and judgment," and "was (I fear) a vain dilettante kind of woman," who wanted to play the nouvelle Heloise to this Very Reverend Abélard redivivus, and who, "poor woman!" "flew like the moth to the lamp," and had only herself to blame, for "it is not the lamp's fault." There is plenty here to give us pause; a thumping appeal to our bump of combativeness; but expressive silence is all we can at present award it; and so en avant.

Pope is recognised as "our classical English satirist," on the score of his elaborateness and finish, and his "awful completeness;" though it is