Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/530

 they cheaply purchased credit to themselves, from appearing champions for the dignity of human nature.

Yet there were not wanting others of clearer discernment, and a more liberal turn of mind, who saw this whole affair in its true light. Among these the benevolent and judicious Dr. Hawksworth, steps forth as an advocate for Swift, and decidedly gives judgment in his favour. In one of his notes on Gulliver, he says, "Whoever is disgusted with this picture of a Yahoo, would do well to reflect, that it becomes his own in exact proportion as he deviates from virtue; for virtue is the perfection of reason: the appetites of those abandoned to vice, are not less brutal and sordid than those of a Yahoo, nor is their life a state of less abject servility." And in another of his comments upon a passage wherein Swift had given a lively and true description of the horrours of war, stripped of all the glare and false colouring thrown over it by vain glory and ambition, he explains, justifies, and applauds the author's motive, for exhibiting here, as well as in all other parts of this admirable work, such true pictures of the vicious practices and habits of mankind, however sanctified by custom, or embellished by fashion. His words are these, — "It would perhaps be impossible, by the most laboured arguments, or forcible eloquence, to show the absurd injustice and horrid cruelty of war, so effectually, as by this simple exhibition of them in a new light: with war, including every species of iniquity, and every art of destruction, we become familiar by degrees, under specious terms; which are seldom examined, because they are learned at an age in which the " mind