Mrs. Oliphant

“ Every man was more or less for his own hand, and the balance of popular feeling fluctuated between war and peace: between pride and the glory of England on the one hand, and horror of the sacrifices and misery involved in the long-continued, never-ending campaigns of Marlborough on the other—almost as much as Queen Anne wavered between the influence of the imperious duchess and the obsequious Abigail. There was no shame to Swift at such a moment in the sudden revolution he made. ”

“ His story is full of charm, of humor, and sentiment far beyond the reach of Defoe. Nothing could be more tender, more delightful, than the idyl of the two lovers cut off from all mankind, lost in the silence of the seas. But in every way his isle is an enchanted isle. Not only is it peopled with love and all the graces, but it is running over with every convenience,—everything that is useful and beautiful. The inexhaustible ingenuity of the lover is not more remarkable than the wealth of necessary articles of every kind that turns up at every step. ”

“ Without these the life of the dean would not have touched our human sympathies at all, but now that time has let us thus fully into his confidence, and opened to our sight what was never intended for any but hers and those of her shadow, her guardian, the humble third in this profound and perfect union, it is with moistened eyes that we read the ever living record. There is nothing in the coarse and struggling potency of those books which critics applaud, that comes within a hundred miles of the delightful life and ease of these outpourings of Swift’s innermost soul. ”

“ But in the midst of its agitations and all its exuberant life—the wars abroad, the intrigues at home, the secret correspondences, the plots, the breathless hopes and fears—it is half ludicrous, half pathetic, to turn to the harmless figure of Queen Anne in the center of the scene—a fat, placid, middle-aged woman full of infirmities, with little about her of the picturesque yet artificial brightness of her time, and no gleam of reflection to answer to the wit and genius which have made her age illustrious. ”

“ But when it is Sarah of Marlborough, with all the defects of temper that we know in her, who, while her lord fights abroad, has to fight for him at home, to scheme his enemies out of, and his friends into, power, to keep her hold upon her mistress by every means that her imagination can devise, the idea that some nobler motive than mere self-aggrandizement may be in the effort occurs to no one, and the hatred of political enmity is mingled with all the ridicule that spiteful wit can discharge upon a feminine squabble. Lady Marlborough was far from being a perfect woman. ”

“ And what picture could be more terrible than that of the childless old man with his bleeding heart, himself deserted of all that made life sweet, thus facing the world with scorn so infinite that it transcends all symbols of passion, bidding it consume what it has brought forth?
But Swift, unfortunately for himself and her, loved Ireland as little when he thus made himself her champion as he had done throughout his life. At all times his longing eyes were turned toward the country in which life was, and power, and friends, and fame. ”

“ Swift rises into bitter and terrible tragedy, while Defoe sinks into matter of fact and commonplace; but the shipwrecked sailor on his desolate island, and the exile at the courts of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, both in the beginnings of their careers hold our imaginations captive, and are as fresh and as powerful to-day as when, the one in keen satire, the other in the legitimate way of business, they first made their appearance in the world. It is a singular link between the men who both did Harley’s dirty work for him, and were subject to a leader so much smaller than themselves. ”

“ This is the one infallible distinction of genius above all commoner endowments. Of all the actors in that stirring time Sir Roger remains the most living and real. The queen and her court are no more than shadows moving across the historic stage. Halifax, and Somers, and Harley, and even the great Bolingbroke, what are they to us? Figures confused and uncertain, that appear and disappear in one combination or another, so that our head aches in the effort to follow, to identify, to make sure what the intrigues and the complications mean. ”

“ It pleases the fancy to step historically from queen to queen, and to find in each a center of national greatness knitting together the loose threads of the great web. “The spacious times of great Elizabeth” bulk larger and more magnificently in history than those of Anne, but the two eras bear a certain balance which is agreeable to the imagination.{1} And we can scarcely help regretting that the great age of Wordsworth and Scott, Byron and Wellington, should not have been deferred long enough to make the reign of Victoria the third noblest period of modern English history. ”

“ This curious spectator of all things, this impartial yet eager looker-on, determined to see all that can be seen, prudent yet fearless, adopting every precaution, yet neglecting no means of investigation, inquiring everywhere, always with his eyes and ears open, at once a philosophical inquirer and an eager gossip, is without doubt Defoe himself. But he is also a marked figure of the time. He is like Pepys; he is almost, but for the unmistakable difference between the bourgeois and the fine gentleman, like Evelyn. He is one of the special kind of man born to illustrate that period. ”

“ He looks on at the others fighting, always with a nod of encouragement for the man of honor and virtue, of keen scorn for the selfish and evil-minded, of pity for the fallen. But it is not his part to fight. He makes no pretense of any inclination that way. He is the looker-on; and, as such, more valuable than a thousand men-at-arms.
He died at Holland House, that fine historical mansion sacred to the wits of a later age, but which in Addison’s time contained no tyrannical tribunal of literary patronage, whatever else there might be there which was contrary to peace. ”

“ Thus this jeu d’esprit—the first exercise of Defoe’s special and most characteristic gift, that of endowing a fictitious production with every appearance of reality—set the world aflame. It is almost a more astonishing feat than the narratives which look so like literal transcripts of experience; for the subtle power which, by a cunning fitting together of actual utterances, could thus indicate the alarming tendency and danger of a great party, is more wonderful than to create an imaginary man and trace his every action as if he were a real one. ”

“ It is needless for us to attempt a history of the great war which was one of the most important features in Anne’s reign. No student of history can be ignorant of its general course, nor of the completeness with which Marlborough’s victories crushed the exorbitant power of France and raised the prestige of England. There is no lack of histories of the great general and his career of victory: how he out-fought, out-marched, and out-generaled all his rivals, and scarcely in his ten years of active warfare encountered one check ”

“ But there are many who, despite Macaulay’s great authority, find a certain difficulty in distinguishing Addison from Steele and Steele from Addison, and are inclined to find the latter writer as entertaining and as gifted as the former. No question could be more difficult to settle. As we glance over the little gray volumes which bring back to us dimly the effect which the little broadsheet must have had when it appeared day by day, there is no doubt that the eye is oftenest caught by something which, when we look again, proves to be from Addison’s hand. ”

“ He had no longer his popular and beloved Mary to leave behind him in England as his representative when he set out for the wars, and there were few in England whom he trusted fully, or who trusted him. To die at the beginning of a great European struggle, leaving the dull people whom he disliked to take his place in England, and the soldier whom he had crushed and subdued and sternly held in the shade as long as he was able, to assume his baton, and win the victories it had never been William’s fortune to gain, must have been bitter indeed. ”

“ She was only a woman, and was not, after all, of such vital importance in the man’s existence. Withdrawal from the life he loved, confinement in a narrow sphere, the disappointment of a soul which felt itself born for greatness, and had tasted the high excitements of power, but now had nothing to do but fight over the choir with his archbishop, and give occasion for a hundred anecdotes in the Dublin coteries, had matured the angry passion in him and soured the sweetness of nature. ”

“ We would not have the old man mocked at any more than Mr. Addison would, but kiss his kind old hand as we smile at those little foibles which are all ingratiating and delightful. In that generation, with all its wars and successes, there was, perhaps, no such gain as Sir Roger. Marlborough’s victories made England feared and respected, but cost the country countless treasure, and gave her little advantage; the good knight cost nobody anything, and made all the world the richer. ”

“ Johnson, Scott, Macaulay, Thackeray, not to mention many lesser names, have all taken her injured innocence to heart. And nobody notes the curious fact that Stella herself never utters any complaint, nor indeed seems to feel the necessity of being unhappy at all, but takes her dean most cheerfully,—laughing, scolding, giving her opinion with all the delightful freedom of a relationship which was at once nature and choice, the familiar trust and tenderness of old use and wont with the charm of voluntary association. ”

“ Two persons so remarkable threw into the shade even Churchill and Sarah, much more good Anne and George. We have no reason to suppose that Mary entertained any particular sentiment whatever toward her sister, from whom she had been entirely separated for the greater part of her life, and the history of their relations is a painful one from beginning to end. No doubt the queen regarded the household of the princess with the contempt which a woman with so entirely different a code would naturally entertain for a family in which the heads were so lax and secondary, the counselors so prominent. ”

“ It is this that has got Swift his hold upon many a reader, who, beginning by hating him, the coarse and bitter wit, the scorner of men and crusher of women’s hearts, has suddenly found his own heart melt in his breast to see the giant lay by his thunders and prattle like an old gossip, like a tender mother, father, all in one, in the baby-talk that first had opened to him the knowledge of all that is sweetest in life. ”

“ His art is the antipodes of that satirical art which allows human excellence only to gird at it, and insinuate motives which diminish or destroy. Addison, on the other hand, allows imperfections which his interpretation turns into something more sweet than virtue, and throws a delightful gleam of love and laughter upon the eccentricities and characteristic follies of individual nature. That he sees everything is one of the conditions of his genial forgiveness of everything that is not mean or base or cruel. ”

“ No doubt he marked the fluctuating crowd as keenly as if he had been a careless spectator at a window, and saw Colonel Jack and his brother pickpockets threading devious ways among the multitude, with here and there a gallant from St. James in his long curled periwig fluttering on the edge, and the tradesmen, half curious, half unwilling to join in the riot, looking on from their doors. A pillory is a coign of vantage when the man upon it has eyes like Defoe’s. ”

“ Whether it is that the historian is impatient at finding himself arrested by the troublesome personalities of a woman, and that a certain resentment of her intrusion colors his appreciation of her, or that her appearance naturally possesses an individuality which breaks the line, it is difficult to tell; but the calmest chronicler becomes a partizan when he treats of Mary and Elizabeth, and no man can name Sarah of Marlborough without a heat of indignation or scorn, almost ridiculous, as being so long after date. ”

“ There is no such love as a young girl’s adoration for a beautiful young woman, a little older than herself, whom she can admire and imitate and cling to, and dream of with visionary passion. This was the kind of sentiment with which the little princess regarded the bright and animated creature in her young stepmother’s train. Mary of Modena was herself only a few years older than her stepchildren. ”

“ A homeless boy, with none of the traditions of a family, finding his unlovely life not less but more unpromising in his first experiences of Temple’s luxurious English home, what a sudden fountain of sweetness must have opened to him in the prattle of the delightful child, which was a new revelation to his heart—revelation of all that kindred meant, and delightful intimacy and familiar love. ”

“ It is only the favored few of mankind who are wiser and better, not feebler and less noble, as life draws toward its end.
Anne was, like Elizabeth, the daughter of a subject. Her mother, Anne Hyde, the daughter of the great Clarendon, though naturally subjected to the hot criticism of the moment on account of that virtue which refused anything less from her prince than the position of wife, was not a woman of much individual character, nor did she live long enough to influence much the training of her daughters. ”