To him they were all, more or less indifferently, rounds
in the ladder by which he hoped to climb. He always claimed to have been
a consistent Old Whig--that is, as he understood it, a High-Churchman
who accepted the Revolution of 1688. This, to be sure, was not quite
true, but it could not have been hard for a man who prided himself on a
Cavalier grandfather, and whose first known verses were addressed to the
non-juring primate Sancroft after his deprivation, to become first a
Tory and then a conniver at the restoration of the Stuarts as the best
device for preventing a foreign succession and an endless chance of
civil war. A man of Swift's way of thinking would hardly have balked at
the scruple of creed, for he would not have deemed it possible that the
Pretender should have valued a kingdom at any lower rate than his
great-grandfather had done before him.
The more important part of Mr. Forster's fresh material is to come in
future volumes, if now, alas! we are ever to have them. For some of what
he gives us in this we can hardly thank him. One of the manuscripts he
has unearthed is the original version of "Baucis and Philemon" as it was
before it had passed under the criticism of Addison. He seems to think
it in some respects better than the revised copy though in our judgment
it entirely justifies the wisdom of the critic who counselled its
curtailment and correction.
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