received as standard literature—than most of the others I have mentioned. Consequently, the evil influence they have exercised has been considerably greater, both in degree and amount. Rochester, Sedley, and D'Urfey have long been read only by the few; but Swift, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne still find readers among the many.
Although I include the name of Swift, let me not be understood to speak of him depreciatingly. Far be it from me to do so. The Pantagruelism of Swift is of a very different kind from that of the authors whose names I have connected with his. That he
"Laugh'd and shook in Rabelais' easy-chair,"
is as unjust an imputation as could well be made, and I wonder that Pope, whose discrimination was generally more accurate, should have lent his authority to such a mistake. Swift inculated noble lessons, the presence of which was clear in every page he wrote, however defiled by the impurity of his unfortunate system. However unpleasing the images he may use, in no case can his writing be called prurient. It is true that he gives the whole of a picture; that he does not suppress, or throw into the shade, any revolting detail it may possess—like Hogarth, whose pictures any man may see and admire in these months. Both men refused to call evil good, or to say to evil-doers, 'Ye shall not surely die.' Like Hogarth again, Swift sometimes chooses a subject of which the total effect is necessarily revolting, but never with the view to inflame any morbid imagination, or to suggest any impure thought, in the mind of his reader. In utter scorn of the corruption which he described, in utter contempt of the weakness which he brought to light, that strong mind wrote. Under his keen castigation how terrible must it have been to writhe! I think that in our noble Carlyle we find an equal strength of mind, an equal scorn of falseness and feebleness, sweetened and modulated by a purer mode of conveying the truths he has to teach.
