Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/226



HE principal charges that are stated as affecting the character of Swift are as follows: His want of benevolence, his impiety, and his treatment of Stella and Vanessa. To these I shall reply in the order in which they are here stated. It will however be necessary, before I proceed on the subject of these charges, to take a transient survey of those writers from whose reports the publick have formed their ideas of this illustrious man. His biographers were four in number; Orrery, Hawkesworth, Johnson, and Sheridan: for as to Dr. Delany, Deane Swift, esq., and Mrs. Pilkington, they come under a different description.

How far the biographers of Swift adhered to truth, were uninfluenced by prejudice, or were possessed of information, shall now be inquired.

The first in order is lord Orrery. As, during the life of Swift, this man was the most assiduous of his visitors, and the most servile of his flatterers, when the memoirs of the illustrious dean were announced as coming from the pen of Orrery, expectation waited the appearance of unlimited panegyrick. Great was the disappointment of the world when a libel, replete with the most ungenerous, the most unmerited cusations,