Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/233

Rh sense, defy argument, and are unassailable by learning: but the essentials of religion are never attacked; and that church, for which Johnson entertained the highest veneration, is every where treated with the respect which is due to the glory of the reformation. If, in the book, a flight of fancy now and then occurs which a serious mind would wish away, before Swift be convicted of impiety, the following circumstances ought to be impartially weighed.

In the first place, the Tale of a Tub was the work of a very young man; and although the rule of Horace, Nonum prematur in annum, was observed, it still made its appearance at an early period of the author's life. To say, that he whose youth is not totally exempt from levity will be disgraced by an old age of blasphemy, is perhaps not perfectly consistent with that first of human virtues, charity. But of that virtue the persecutors of Swift seem to have had little or no idea. Secondly, I maintain, that in the work before us there is not a single passage which implies a disbelief of revelation: At the same time I must confess, there are many passages that, with the assistance of well meaning and able commentators, might be so construed as to prove, that the author was an admirer of the Gentoo tenets, and not wholly averse to the god of Thibet. For although my reading cannot as yet have been very extensive, I have read enough to know, that there is not the least necessity for any sort of connexion between the text and the commentary.

Having remarked upon the arguments advanced in support of this charge, I shall now beg leave to offer something on the other side of the question. In