Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/115

Rh place, which it is probable all ministers do, with a sigh.

At the head of the gnomes he sets Umbriel, a dusky melancholy sprite, who makes it his business to give Belinda the spleen; a vile and malicious suggestion against some grave and worthy minister. The vapours, phantoms, visions, and the like, are the jealousies, fears, and cries of danger, that have so often affrighted and alarmed the nation. Those who are described, in the house of spleen, under those several fantastical forms, are the same whom their ill-willers have so often called the whimsical.

The two foregoing spirits being the only considerable characters of the machinery, I shall but just mention the sylph, that is wounded with the scissars at the loss of the lock; by whom is undoubtedly understood my lord Townshend, who at that time received a wound in his character for making the barrier-treaty, and was cut out of his employment upon the dissolution of it: but that spirit reunites, and receives no harm; to signify that it came to nothing, and his lordship had no real hurt by it.

But I must not conclude this head of the characters without observing, that our author has run through every stage of beings in search of topicks for detraction. As he has characterised some persons under angels and men, so he has others under animals and things inanimate: he has even represented an eminent clergyman as a dog, and a noted writer as a tool. Let us examine the former:

—— But Shock, who thought she slept too long, Leapt up, and wak'd his mistress with his tongue. 'Twas then, Belinda, if report say true, Thy eyes first open'd on a billet-doux. By