Swift

“ Every one has a liking for the giant maid of all work, Glumdalelitch, whose affection for her plaything is a quaint inversion of the ordinary relations between Swift and his feminine adorers. The grave, stern, irascible man can relax after a sort, though his strange idiosyncrasy comes out as distinctly in his relaxation as in his passions. ”

“ I think [323] there were many times when he thought as much; but I believe that never a man more often deceived himself than did Swift; and that over and over he mistook the incentives of his own fiery and smarting spirit for the leadings of an angel of light.
When we think of the infrequency and awkwardness of travel in that day, we are not a little amazed to find him going back and forth as he did from Ireland to London. ”

“ Swift, partly from vanity, and partly from a more excusable craving after some recreation of his natural melancholy, had suffered himself to take a pleasure, and exhibit an interest, in the conversation of an intelligent young woman, beyond what he ought to have done. ”

“ Swift says that as he writes his language he “makes up his mouth just as if he was speaking it.” It fits the affectionate caresses in which he is always indulging. Nothing, indeed, can be more charming than the playful little prattle which occasionally interrupts the gossip and the sharp utterances of hope or resentment. In the snatches of leisure, late at night or before he has got up in the morning, he delights in an imaginary chat ”

“ Swift would hardly have allowed of such a strait-laced theory, to make havoc with his darling conundrums; though there is no one whose serious wit is more that of things, as opposed to a mere play either of words or fancy. ”

“ I wish I had your confidence, Tom,” chuckled Mr. Barton Swift, the old inventor.
His son laughed, too. “It isn’t confidence you lack,” he said. “It is just that you are too cautious to seem optimistic.”
“Have it your own way,” rejoined his father. “Just the same, a speed boat for the air, land, and sea that will do all you suggest is something to consider fearfully. Nothing to compare to it has ever yet been launched.”
“But it will be launched,” cried Tom Swift eagerly. “Somebody will put it into the air before we know it. Why not get ahead of the rest of the smart folks? ”

“ Swift has the genius of insult; he is an inventor of irony, as Shakespeare of poetry; and as beseems an extreme force, he goes to extremes in his thought and art. He lashes reason after science, and leaves nothing of the whole human mind. ”

“ Now when Swift had listened to these observations of Slow, set off as they were with the inner truth of numerous authoritative works, his face blossomed, his heart was satisfied, and he said: "Slow, my dear fellow, you are good. Your virtue is something to rely on. ”

“ But so peculiar, complex and wonderful is this web of life, that our very blunders, weaknesses and mistakes are woven in and make the fabric stronger. If Swift had possessed only his mother's merits, without his father's faults, he would never have shaken the world with laughter, and we should never have heard of him. ”

“ Swift has taken a good bird’s-eye view of man’s nature, by abstracting the habitual notions of size, and looking at it in great or in little: would that some one had the boldness and the art to do a similar service, by stripping off the coat from his back, the vizor from his thoughts, or by dressing up some other creature in similar mummery! ”

“ Tom Swift, known to millions of boys of this generation, is a bright ingenious youth whose inventions, discoveries and thrilling adventures are described in these spirited tales that tell of the wonderful advances in modern science. ”

“ Swift hotly. "You have no right to sneak after us."
"I guess the ocean is free," continued the rascally agent.
"Why do you persist in keeping after us?" inquired the aged inventor, thinking it well to ascertain, if possible, just how much the men knew." ”

“ If, in fact, we ask what is the true object of Swift’s audacious satire, the answer will depend partly upon our own estimate of the truth. Clearly it ridicules “abuses;” but one man’s use is another’s abuse: and a dogma may appear to us venerable or absurd according to our own creed. One test, however, may be suggested, which may guide our decision. Imagine the Tale of a Tub to be read by Bishop Butler and by Voltaire, who called Swift a Rabelais perfectionné. Can any one doubt that the believer would be scandalized and the scoffer find himself in a thoroughly congenial element? ”

“ The rage of Swift, without his insanity and impurity, seems to utter in every word the healthier if no less consuming passion of a heart lacerated by indignation and envenomed by contempt as absolute, as relentless, and as inconsolable as his own. ”

“ Swift is akin to these, and is the most wretched of all, because he nourishes his mind, like them, on filth and folly, and because he possesses what they have not, knowledge and disgust.
It is sad to exhibit human folly, it is sadder to exhibit human perversity: the heart is more a part of ourselves than reason: we suffer less in seeing extravagance and folly than wickedness or baseness, and I find Swift more agreeable in his "Tale of a Tub" than in "Gulliver." ”

“ Swift cares nothing for eloquence, or logic, or invective—and little, it must be added, for veracity—so long as he hits his mark. To judge him by a merely literary standard, is to judge a fencer by the grace of his attitudes. Some high literary merits are implied in efficiency, as real grace is necessary to efficient fencing: but in either case, a clumsy blow which reaches the heart is better than the most dexterous flourish in the air. Swift’s eye is always on the end, as a good marksman looks at nothing but the target. ”

“ Otherwise the swift is a perfectly normal little creature, about six inches long from tip to tip, quick of foot, scaly, friendly, wonderfully colored in undulating browns and blues, and looking, on the whole, like a pretty little Noah's-ark alligator.
On the south side of the clump of pines beyond Cubby Hollow is a pile of decaying rails where I have watched the swifts, and they me, for so many seasons that I fancy they know me. Dewberry-vines and Virginia creeper clamber over the pile, and at one end, flaming all through July, burns a splendid bush of butterfly-weed. ”

“ Swift’s peculiarity is in the curious sobriety of fancy, which leads him to keep in his most daring flights upon the confines of the possible. In the imaginary travels of Lucian and Rabelais, to which Gulliver is generally compared, we frankly take leave of the real world altogether. We are treated with arbitrary and monstrous combinations which may be amusing, but which do not challenge even a semblance of belief. ”

“ It is difficult to consider Swift as a poet. So many unamiable, disagreeable, unpoetical ideas are connected with his name, that, great as he was in fame and intellectual vigour, he seems as misplaced in the temple of the muses as one of his own yahoos. But who has not heard of "Swift's Stella?" and of Cadenus and Vanessa? ”

“ They raise their crops with less labor relatively than we. All things considered it is easier to live on Swift than here.
Knowing that my time was limited, I decided to secure some nuggets of truth by a personal interview; so I concluded to appear to the wisest person on the planet, who was a woman of wonderful mental acquirements. In addition to her superior intellect she was also bewitchingly beautiful.
I waited for the best opportunity and came near to her as she was about to spread her wings for a morning flight from
Beautiful Plume on the World of Swift. ”

“ Concentrating his gaze, Tom Swift looked eagerly at a clump of bushes.
“It’s a man,” murmured Tom Swift. “A man, sure enough, and it isn’t one of our workers, either. None of them would sneak around as he is doing.”
For that described exactly the movements of the stranger of whom Tom had caught sight in the darkness as he approached the big fence which surrounded his plant. ”

“ Tom Swift gazed fearlessly into the face of the giant ruler who confronted him. The young inventor said later that he had made up his mind that to show no fear was the only way of impressing the big king, for surely no show of strength could have done it. With one hand the giant could have crushed the life from our hero. ”

“ Swift called his girl-friend Stella, and as Stella she has become famous in our literature. For when Swift was away from home he wrote letters to her which we now have under the name of the Journal to Stella. Here we see the great man in another light. Here he is no longer armed with lightning, his pen is no longer dipped in poison, but in friendly, simple fashion he tells all that happens to him day by day. He tells what he thinks and what he feels, where and when he dines, when he gets up, and when he goes to bed, all the gossiping details interesting to one who loves us and whom we love. ”

“ Mr. Swift opened his eyes as his son approached. He looked around feebly.
"Tom—are you there?" he asked in a whisper.
"Yes, dad," was the eager answer.
"They tell me you—you made a great trip to get Dr. Hendrix—broken bridge—came through the air with him. Is that right?"
"Yes, dad. But don't tire yourself. You must get well and strong."
"I will, Tom. But tell me; did you go in—in the Humming-Bird?"
"Yes, dad."
"How did she work?"
"Fine. Over a hundred, and the motor wasn't at its best."
"That's good. Then you can go in the big race, and win." ”

“ A critic has said that Swift's poetry 'lacks one quality only—imagination,' but verse without [Pg 154] imagination is like a body without a soul, like a house without windows, like a landscape-painting without atmosphere, and no license of language will allow us to call Swift a poet. Enough that he became a master of rhyme, and used it with extraordinary facility. Dr. Johnson's estimate of Swift's powers in this respect is a just one:
'In the poetical works of Dr. Swift there is not much upon which the critic can exercise his powers. ”

“ As fierce a beak and talon as ever struck—as strong a wing as ever beat, belonged to Swift. I am glad, for one, that fate wrested the prey out of his claws, and cut his wings and chained him. One can gaze, and not without awe and pity, at the lonely eagle chained behind the bars. ”

“ To those who know that fondness for conjecture, which may almost be said to be a sort of intellectual appetite, there is nothing in all the wonders which Swift tells us of his fabled Houynhnhms, that marks them more strongly as a different race from mankind, than the total absence of hypothesis from their systems of knowledge. ”

“ It is as easy as lying; but everybody who has seriously tried the experiment knows that even lying is by no means so easy as it appears at first sight. In fact, Swift’s success is something unique. The charming plausibility of every incident, throughout the two first parts, commends itself to children, who enjoy definite concrete images, and are fascinated by a world which is at once full of marvels, surpassing Jack the Giant Killer and the wonders seen by Sinbad, and yet as obviously and undeniably true as the adventures of Robinson Crusoe himself. ”

“ Pogany demonstrates in this new edition of the classic that he is indeed the man for the task. He has achieved in full measure that quality of weird fascination, which is perhaps the chief charm of Swift’s text. His pictures, whether they be the full page plates in color or the little decorations used as headings and tail pieces, really illustrate the story, at the same time supplying the touches of beauty with which a masterpiece such as this should be adorned. ”

“ I find an unwillingness to part with Swift at this period of his life, without showing him in all the various lights in which he then appeared. It is from his meridian height that we are to judge of the splendour and powerful influence of the sun; not from his feeble setting ray, obscured by mists, or intercepted by clouds. Yet it is in this last state only, he has hitherto been represented to the world, in the several memoirs published of him, by those who never saw him but in his decline, and therefore have given a very unfair representation of the man. ”

“ Swift. "I had a chance for it when I passed through the hotel kitchen one day, for I wanted to see what kind of a range they used."
"I guess there's no stopping you from inventing," replied his son with a laugh and a hopeless shake of the head. "But don't let it happen again when you go away to rest." ”

“ Swift, who wrote "cords" of worthless rhymes, squibs, songs, and verses, which live as much by their vulgar smartness as for the slight portion of true wit which tinctures them, says: "Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets with in the world, and that so few are offended with it." ”

“ Because I could not be content Without some grateful compliment, If not the poet, sure the friend Must something on your birth-day send. I scratch'd, and rubb'd my head once more: "Let every patriot him adore." Alack-a-day, there's nothing in't— Such stuff will never do in print. Pray, reader, ponder well the sequel; I hope this epigram will take well. In others, life is deem'd a vapour, In Swift it is a lasting taper, Whose blaze continually refines, The more it burns the more it shines. I read this epigram again, 'Tis much too flat to fit the Dean. ”

“ It is not generally realised that the common swift, so well known in this country, which looks so imposing in flight as it glides overhead with [42] wings extended, is hardly so large, when plucked, as a man’s thumb-joint and weighs slightly over half an ounce. ”

“ Like the Swallow, the Swift haunts the neighbourhood of man, and loves to build its simple nest in the roofs of houses. Almost any hole will do for a Swift to build in, provided that it be tolerably deep; for the bird loves darkness for its nest, though it is essentially in its habits a bird of light. ”