thinking that he has been extravagantly overrated. He had the good fortune to come at a time when the art of trenchant writing had suffered temporary eclipse, and to espouse popular views against the Court; but Macaulay's casual remark that he was "a most unequal writer,"[1] and De Rémusat's verdict, that he had "more cleverness than inspiration," pretty well reduce him to his proper level.[2] On the whole Swift and Courier seem to be the best instances of transcendent journalism. Now Swift, who is undoubtedly the greatest name in English literature between Milton and Burke, did much more bad work than good when he wrote for the moment. Out of thirty-two articles which he contributed to the Examiner, the one comparing Marlborough to Crassus is the only one that lives and is most remembered. No one but a scholar now reads the pamphlet on the Conduct of the Allies, or that on the Barrier Treaty. The really successful work Swift did as a journalist in the modern sense was in his Drapier's Letters; and even these, and some of the pamphlets on Irish matters, owe their real importance to the fact that the author, almost unconsciously, transcended his own purpose, and advocated the more permanent interests of his country, self-government, and an administration that should be regardful of the poor. Even so Swift owes his place among the immortals to the Tale of a Tub and to Gulliver's Travels, rather than to his attacks on the policy of his own day. We may say equally of Courier—in spite of his own admirable defence of the pamphlet—that he is always best when he handles an adequate theme; and that his Letters to the Censeur would not have been preserved
- ↑ Essay on Warren Hastings.
- ↑ De Rémusat, L'Angleterre au Dix-huitième Siècle, tome ii. p. 191.
