This celebrated production is founded upon a simple and obvious allegory, conducted with all the humour of Rabelais, and without his extravagance.* The main purpose is to trace the gradual corruptions of the church of Rome, and to

can help you to a little gravel." This he said so significantly, that Arbuthnot hastily snatched back his letter, to save it from the fate of the capital of Lilipat. Their acquaintance had not then, however, ripened into intimacy; for when Arbuthnot's name first occurs in the Journal to Stella, it is not rightly spelled, and he is mentioned as a stranger.

Among the Dean's books, sold by auction 1745, was an edition of Rabelais' works, with remarks and annotations in his own hand. This, could it be recovered, would be a work of no little interest, considering that the germ, both of the Tale and of Gulliver's Travels, may be traced in the works of the French Lucian. Swift was not, indeed, under the necessity of disguising his allegory with the buffoonery and mysticism affected by Rabelais; but the sudden and wide digressive excursions, the strain of extraordinary reading and uncouth learning which is assumed, together with the general style of the whole fable, are indisputably derived from the humorous philosopher of Chinon. A strange passage, which Quevedo has put into the mouth of a drunken bully, may, in the opinion of Mr T. Swift, have suggested the noted ridicule on transubstantiation. It occurs in the tenth chapter of the History of Paul the Sharper.

While on this subject, the Editor cannot suppress his opinion, that Swift's commentators have, in some instances, overstrained his allegory, and attempted to extort deep and recondite allusions, from passages where the meaning lay near the surface Thus, the wars between the Eolists and the monster Moulinavent, appear to mean nothing more than that the

exalt the English reformed church at the expence both of the Roman catholic and presbyterian establishments. It was written with a view to the interests of the high-church party, and it succeeded in rendering them the most important services; for what is so important to a party in Britain, whether in church or state, as to gain the laughers to their side. But the raillery was considered, not unreasonably, as too light for a subject of such grave importance; and it cannot be denied, that the luxuriance of Swift's wit has, in some parts of the Tale, carried him much beyond the bounds of propriety. Many of the graver clergy, even among the Tories, and particularly Dr Sharpe, the archbishop of York, were highly scandalized at the freedom of the satire; nor is there any doubt that the offence thus occasioned, proved the real bar to Swift's attaining the highest dignities in the church. King and Wotton, in their answers to the Tale, insisted largely upon the inconsistence between the bold and even profane turn of the satire, and the clerical character of the reputed author. For similar reasons, the Tale of a Tub was hailed by the infidel philosophers on the Continent,

fanatics, described under the former denomination, spent their time in combating imaginary spiritual obstacles to their salvation, as the distempered imagination of Don Quixote converted windmills into giants.

as a work well calculated to advance the cause of scepticism, and, as such, was recommended by Voltaire to his proselytes, because the ludicrous combinations which are formed in the mind by the perusal, tend to lower the respect due to revelation. Swift's attachment to the real interests of religion are so well known, that he would doubtless rather have burned his manuscript, than incurred the slightest risk of injuring them. But the indirect consequences of ridicule, when applied to subjects of sacred importance, are more extensive, and more prejudicial than can be calculated by the author, who, with his eye fixed on the main purpose of his satire, is apt to overlook its more remote effects.

The Tale of a Tub had for some years attracted the notice of the public, when Dr Thomas Swift, already mentioned as Swift's relation and fellow-student at Trinity College, set up pretensions to a share in that humorous composition. These he promulgated, in what he was pleased to entitle," A complete Key to the Tale of a Tub," printed in 1710, containing a flimsy explanation of the prominent points of the allegory, and averring the authors to be "Thomas Swift, grandson to Sir William Davenant, and Jonathan Swift, cousin-german to Thomas Swift, both retainers to Sir William Temple." Our Swift, it may be easily imagined, was not greatly pleased by an arrangement, in which his cousin is distinguished as a

wit, and an author by descent, and he himself only introduced as his relative; and still less could he endure his arrogating the principal share of the composition, and the corresponding insinuation, that the work had suffered by his cousin Jonathan's inability to support the original plan. The real author, who, at the time the Key appeared, was busied in revising a new edition of the book, wrote a letter to his bookseller, Benjamin Tooke, sufficiently expressive of his feelings. "I have just now your last, with

Dr Thomas Swift's pretensions are thus arrogantly set forth in a sort of preface to the Key, on the occasion of writing the Tale of a Tub.

"A preface of the bookseller to the reader, before the Battle of the Books, shews the cause and design of the whole work, which was performed by a couple of young clergymen in the year 1697; who, having been domestic chaplains to Sir William Temple, thought themselves obliged to take up his quarrel, in relation to the controversy then in dispute between him and Mr Wotton, concerning Ancient and Modern Learning.

"The one of them began a defence of Sir William under the title of a Tale of a Tub; wherein he intended to couch the general history of Christianity, shewing the rise of all the remarkable errors of the Roman church, in the same order they entered, and how the Reformation endeavoured to root them out again, with the different temper of Luther from Calvin (and those more violent spirits,) in the way of his reforming. His aim was to ridicule the stubborn errors of the Romish church, and the humours of the fanatic party; and to shew that their superstition has somewhat very fantastical in it,

the complete Key. I believe it so perfect a Grub Street piece, it will be forgotten in a week. But

which is common to both of them, notwithstanding the abhorrence they seem to have for one another.

"The author intended to have it very regular, and withal so particular, that he thought not to pass by the rise of any one single error, or its reformation. He designed at last to shew the purity of the church in the primitive times; and consequently how weakly Mr Wotton passed his judgment, and how partially, in preferring the modern divinity before the ancient, with the confutation of whose book he intended to conclude. But when he had not yet gone half way, his companion, borrowing the manuscript to peruse, carried it with him to Ireland, and having kept it seven years, at last published it imperfect; for indeed he was not able to carry it on af ter the intended method: for divinity, though it chanced to be his profession, had been the least of his study. However, he added to it the Battle of the Books, wherein he effectually pursues the main design of lashing Mr Wotton; and having added a jocose epistle dedicatory to my Lord Somers, and another to Prince Posterity, with a pleasant preface, and interlarded with four digressions: 1. Concerning critics:-2. In the modern kind:-3. In praise of digressions:-4. Concerning the original use and improvement of madness (with which he was not unacquainted,) in a commonwealth; concludes the book with a fragment of the first author's, being a Mechanical Account of the Operation of the Spirit, and which he intended should have come in about the middle of the Tale, as a preli minary to Jack's character.

"Having thus shewn the reasons of the little order observed in the book, and the imperfectness of the Tale, it is so submitted to the reader's censure."-A Complete Key to the Tale of a Tub, London, 1714, 12mo. 3d edit.