Letters and Journals of Jonathan Swift (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. THE JOURNAL TO STELLA 1710?1713 lI. THE JOURNAL TO STELLA /et. 42 ? 45. PROM September, 1710, to June, 1713, Swift was in England, and chiefly in London, engaged in the fierce fight of politics: it was now that he wrote the series of " Examiners," the biting satires, the telling broadsides, the elaborate and convincing pamphlets, that told so severely upon Marlborough and the War Party, and rendered the Peace of Utrecht palatable to the nation. During these years of vigorous pamphleteering we shall use few letters to illustrate the life of the writer. There are many; but we shall not require them. The most perfect picture that can be demanded is found in that wonderful " Journal to Stella," in which Swift " set down day by day the incidents of three momentous years; which received every hope, fear, or fancy in its undress as it rose to him; which was written for one person's private pleasure, and has had indestructible attractiveness for everyone since; which has no parallel in literature for the historic importance of the men and the events that move along its pages, or the homely vividness of the language that describes them; and of which the loves, the hates, the joys and griefs, the expectations and disappointments, the great and little in closest neighbourhood, the alternating tenderness and bitterness, and, above all, the sense and nonsense in marvellous mixture and profusion, remain a perfect microcosm of human life." The picture of Swift's life during the three eventful E years of the Harley administration as presented even in the following extracts, which form but a tenth part of the whole journal, is so complete that further description is superfluous. As a record of the writer's thoughts and deeds, the " Journal " is unrivalled. We may wish tha...