The document, whatever we may think of its importance,
has been brought to light by Mr. Forster. Of his other materials
hitherto unpublished, the most important is a letter proving that
Swift's Whig friends did their best to make him a bishop in 1707. This
shows that his own later account of the reasons of his change from Whig
to Tory, if not absolutely untrue, is at least unjust to his former
associates, and had been shaped to meet the charge of inconsistency if
not of desertion to the enemy. Whatever the motives of his change, it
would have been impossible to convince a sincere Whig of their honesty,
and in spite of Mr. Forster's assertion that Addison continued to love
and trust him to the last, we do not believe that there was any
cordiality in their intercourse after 1710. No one familiar with Swift's
manner of thinking will deem his political course of much import in
judging of his moral character. At the bottom of his heart he had an
impartial contempt for both parties, and a firm persuasion that the aims
of both were more or less consciously selfish. Even if sincere, the
matters at issue between them were as despicable to a sound judgment as
that which divided the Big and Little-endians in Lilliput. With him the
question was simply one between men who galled his pride and men who
flattered it. Sunderland and Somers treated him as a serviceable
inferior; Harley and Bolingbroke had the wit to receive him on a footing
of friendship.
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