From “Sketches of English Literature.”

JONATHAN SWIFT, born in Ireland on the thirtieth of November, 1667, has been most inappropriately called by Voltaire the English Rabelais. Voltaire relished only the impieties of Rabelais, and his humor, when it is good; but the deep satire on society and man, the lofty philosophy, the grand style of the curé of Meudon, escaped his notice, as he saw only the weak side of Christianity, and had no idea of the intellectual and moral revolution effected in mankind by the Gospel.

  The “Tale of a Tub,” in which the Pope, Luther, and Calvin are attacked, and “Gulliver,” in which social institutions are stigmatized, exhibit but faint copies of “Gargantua.” The ages in which the two writers lived produce, moreover, a wide difference between them: Rabelais began his language; Swift finished his. It is not certain, however, that the “Tale of a Tub” is Swift’s, or that it was written entirely by him; Swift amused himself by manufacturing verses of twenty, thirty, and sixty feet. Velly, the historian, has translated the satire on the peace of Utrecht, entitled “John Bull.”

  William III., who did so many things, taught Swift the art of growing asparagus in the Dutch manner. Jonathan fell in love with Stella, took her to his deanery of St. Patrick, and at the end of sixteen years, when he was at the end of his passion, he married her. Esther Vanhomrigh conceived an affection for Swift, though he was old, ugly, and disgusting. When she learned that he was absolutely married to Stella, who had become quite indifferent to him, she died; Stella soon followed Esther. The hard-hearted man, who caused the death of these two beautiful young women, was not able, like the truly great poets, to bestow on them a second life.

  Steele, a countryman of Swift, became his rival in politics. Having obtained a seat in the House of Commons, he was expelled from it as the author of seditious libels. On the creation of twelve peers, during the administration of Oxford and Bolingbroke, he addressed a cutting letter to Sir Miles Wharton, on the making of peers for particular occasions. Steele did not enrich himself by this connection with the great corrupter Walpole; relinquishing his pamphlets, he turned his attention to mechanical literature, and invented a machine for conveying salmon fresh to London.

  Steele has been deservedly commended for having cleansed the drama of those obscenities with which the writers of the time of Charles II. had infected it: this was so much the more meritorious in the author of the “Conscious Lovers,” inasmuch as his own manners were far from regular. Meanwhile, his contemporary, Gay, the fabulist, brought upon the stage “The Beggar’s Opera,” the hero of which is a robber and the heroine a prostitute. “The Beggar’s Opera” is the original of our melodramas of the present day.