baseness of the enslaved people among whom I live.” Swift endured the horror of anticipating insanity, knowing that he must like a blasted tree "die first at the top."

Though Swift writes with the deliberate incisiveness of a surgeon and the cold gravity of a judge, he fails to be truly literary in that he addresses only particular truths to a certain few with the desire for present success, rather than general truths to all with the desire for immortality by the embodiment of eternal beauty. He is one of the most original writers and a master of prose, but his work is not wholesome reading, because it is, as a whole, a ferocious, monstrous satire on humanity, a rending of the veil which modesty would hang before ugly uncleanness. Yet there is another Swift, whose Journal to Stella shows him in his rare moments of tenderness; whose Drapier's Letters halted the English politicians and brought temporary relief to the suffering Irish; whose Bickerstaff Almanac inspired Steele to create his delightful character Isaac Bickerstaff; and finally, whose Meditations upon a Broomstick and A Scheme to Make a Hospital for Incurables give him an abiding place among the periodical essayists. The letter To a Very Young Lady on Her Marriage contains some wholesome advice, though it is spoiled by the bitterness and coarseness so much a part of Swift, whose attitude toward woman in this letter makes us wonder whether he could have loved and respected his mother. "I never yet knew a tolerable woman to be fond of her own sex.

Your sex employ more thought, memory, and application to be fools than would serve to make them wise and useful. . . . When I reflect on this I cannot con

ceive you to be human creatures, but a sort of species hardly a degree above a monkey; who has more diverting tricks than any of you, is an animal less mischievous and expensive, might in time be a tolerable critic in velvet and brocade, and, for aught I know, would equally become them." Surely this is the essence of brutality. What a piteous spectacle is this intellectual giant shackled prone in the mire of hate, disgust, and mental filth-he who should have looked with the eyes of his genius into the face of the sun as he trod the mountain tops in the high clear air of the spirit!

CHAPTER VI

THE SHORT-STORY ESSAY

I do not write a novel because I am terribly afraid I should show up all my friends.-HOLMES

BACKGROUND

To say that a cup of coffee may give direction to the destiny of a nation is, perhaps, to put an unwarranted strain upon the credulity of the normal person; yet there is no doubt that the clubs and the coffeehouses of the early eighteenth century were the most important factors not only in English social life but in the promulgation of the democratic ideal in her political life as well. Men's words and manners naturally improved as they came together in the intimacy of these convivial meeting-places. Above all must be attributed to the coffeehouses the miraculous creation of a new ideal in the English mind, despite its long-established immunity to new ideals. Though political freedom had been attained and there was a rather well-developed system of public instruction in matters of government, the nation, Niobe-like, still wore its widow's weeds and sighed for the dear dead days of royalty. In the clubs and the coffeehouses was engendered the spirit which through the medium of literature was to make real citizens of the English people. With these gathering-places as inspira

tion and as patron, political, social, and religious literature was published broadcast throughout England. Daily newspapers helped to spread the rapidly growing national spirit. It was an age when party interests were very strong and when great writers employed satiric prose as a means to further party ends. In one way it was, however, a dangerous age in which to write, because any freedom with the reputation of one's neighbor brought a writer into unpleasant conflict with severe and far-reaching libel laws. As a result the literary gossiper avoided untimely extinction by the simple expedient of inventing a fictitious narrative with rather obvious moral application to certain existing conditions and with characters which were in everything but name impersonations of the author's dearest enemies. For his own safety the essayist relied on the supposition that though a man must claim the shoe which fits him, he may prefer to take it surreptitiously and to put it on in the privacy of his own room.

In conditions such as these Sir William Temple (1628-1699) discovered the germ of the short-story essay and in "Health and Long Life" brought it to the attention of the reading public. His laudable aim was, as he tells us, "to give men the occasion to consider more than they do." But it was Daniel Defoe who popularized the new form by his gossipy yet refreshing style, his decided interest in life, his determined point of view, his clear-sighted though vulgar realism, his bravery in the face of repeated social snubs, and his sympathetic knowledge of his fellow men, influential or humble.

DEFINITION

The short story, as linked up with the eighteenthcentury essay, is not the modern story perfected by Poe, but is a delightfully unconventional little creature, happily ignorant of all restraining rules Coming into view apparently from nowhere it ambles gracefully 7 along, chuckling to itself as it relates to a chance companion a moral narrative, a tale without a plot, a tale permitting endless digressions, fanciful illustrations, and comments; then, with a sly wink and perhaps a judicial thumb turned down, it suddenly disappears, leaving its comrade with the feeling that he has just heard some particularly spicy gossip. (The personality of the writer is always in evidence, and in its limitations of time, place, and knowledge the short-story essay is very like the story told in the first person. The modern short story even when told in the first person takes strictest care to eliminate everything not vital to the development of the plot and the characters-if its limited action permits the characters to develop. The shortstory essay, on the contrary, is a spineless creature, sans plot, sans character, sans everything that makes the story of today, save narrative, which is made for carrying-power rather than for speed. This inimitable literary form, which piques one's descriptive expression into a riot of metaphors, was to the eighteenthcentury writer what the faithful Modestine was to Stevenson, a little pack mule on which his genius rode to fame. To the short-story essay we owe our most intimate acquaintance with gallant "Dick" Steele, with