shows us where the calvarium had been sawn, and the pericranium drawn over it subsequently, and this indentation accurately corresponds with the division of the skull found in Swift's coffin, in 1835, thus proving incontestably the identity of both; they also correspond in the breadth, height, and general outline and measurements of the forehead, allowing about three-sixteenths of an inch for the thickness of the integuments. Posteriorly, however, the bust and skull do not correspond; nevertheless this fact does not in any way militate against our argument, but rather tends to strengthen it, for upon a careful examination of the bust, it is at once manifest that all

the posterior part is fictitious, and evidently finished out, and modelled in clay, and afterwards the plaster rasped down according to the eye of the artist. It was made in two parts, and the difference in surface between the hinder part and the smooth, polished, anterior portion, at once stamps it as fictitious. There is no ear' upon the left side, and that upon the right was evidently taken off the body separately, and afterwards fitted into the bust. That it was a cast from the ear of Swift, the reader has only to look at Lord Orrery's portrait, or any of the busts of the Dean, to be convinced, for Swift's ear was of a very pecu

liar formation.

"This bust, like the skull, is quite edentulous; the nose slightly turned to the left side, and the left eye much less full and prominent than the right; in fact, it is comparatively sunken and collapsed within the orbit. It is well known that Swift had remarkably large, full, and prominent blue eyes. We may, perhaps, account for the hinder portion of the bust being constructed in the manner I have described, by the fact of the Dean having a quantity of long, white hair on the back of his head, which his attendants would not permit to be either removed or injured by taking the mould."-pp. 63–67.

We find Mr. Wilde expressing surprise "that Swift did not become deranged years previously. But that Swift was either mad in middle life, or mad or imbecile in late years, as tried and tested by the meaning and definition of these terms, as laid down by the most esteemed authors, has not been proved." In all this we differ from Mr. Wilde. We think it would be difficult to frame any definition of insanity which would exclude such a case as Swift's. The mere fact of the logical powers still existing in unimpaired vigor, is little to the purpose; for we are not quite sure that one of the characteristics of insanity is not the selfwilled and disputative temper that disregards every consideration of time, and place, and circumstance. When there is conduct such as Swift's, and with it organic disease of the brain, we think it approaches to certainty that the two are connected; and from a very early period, we think Swift had

sion existed.

Mr. Wilde tells us that there is a general belief that Swift was the first patient in his own hospital, although," as he adds, "it was not erected for several years after his death." Mr. Wilde refers this popular belief to a careless expression of Lord Orrery's. Speaking of Swift's state after 1742, he says: "His rage increased absolutely to a degree of madness; in this miserable state, he seemed to be appointed as the first proper inhabitant of his own hospital, especially as from an outrageous lunatic he sank afterwards into a quiet speechless idiot, and dragged out the remainder of his life in that helpless situation."

We think the fact of Swift's marriage with Stella has been too easily believed. It was first published by Lord Orrery, many years after Swift's death. The evidence on which the report rests has been examined by Mr. Mason in his "History of St. Patrick's," and we cannot but agree in his conclusion that the balance of probabilities is greatly against any ceremony of marriage having ever taken place. Mr. Wilde believes the fact of a marriage, and that on the day of its celebration it was communicated to Swift that both he and Stella were children of Sir William Temple. The circumstances of Swift's birth render the fact of his being Temple's son impossible; and if there were any object in examining the evidence as to Stella, when the case as to Swift is disposed of, as to her too it is, above measure, unlikely. She and her mother were both brought from Lady Giffard's house to Temple's, and Stella was educated under Lady Temple's care; a fact in itself, perhaps, not inconsistent with the supposition which Mr. Wilde countenances; but assuredly her mother, were the story of her being Temple's mistress true, would not be allowed to reside in the same house with Lady Temple in any capacity whatever. We think if there was any deeper mystery

*Swift's parents resided in Ireland from before 1665, until his birth in 1667; and Temple was residing as ambassador in Holland, from April, 1666, to January, 1668."-Scott.

in Swift's not marrying than the absorbing passion of saving money, and the fear of the expenses that marriage would bring with it, it most probably was his consciousness of lurking insanity, which he feared to transmit to children. His uncle, Godwin Swift, had died in a state not very different from that in which the last years of Swift's life were passed; and as Mr. Mason reasonably suggests, Swift might have known in his family other instances of the same malady,

of which we have now no record.

An interesting document, for the first time published in Mr. Wilde's book, is Stella's will. It is in her maiden name-on our theory, she had no other-but this incident has been laid hold of by Swift's biographers as a proof that she felt impatiently towards him. So far from this, we agree with Mr. Wilde that the will must have been drawn up by Swift himself, or under his immediate directions. In both Swift's will and hers, certain of the bequests are given only during the continuance of the present Established Episcopal Church as the national religion of the kingdom. This alone would, as Mr. Wilde says, point to one author of both

wills.

It is quite impossible in a notice of this kind to bring forward all that is new in Mr. Wilde's remarkable book. A very interesting part of it is his criticism on the portraits of Stella. The picture in Mr. Berwick's possession, which Scott believed to be genuine, is disproved by its having brown, not black hair. Mr. Wilde himself gives us two, which have not been before engraved; one a medallion painted on one of the walls at Delville-Delany's residence-which tradition calls a portrait of Stella; another-and this manifestly the picture of a very beautiful woman-engraved as the frontispiece to Mr. Wilde's book, answers every description of Stella, and is confirmed (as far as there can be confirmation of such a kind) by the skull of Stella, as exhibited in 1835. It was in the possession of the Fords of Wood park, where Stella had been some months in 1723, "where," says Mr. Wilde, "it was probably painted."

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broken thread of tradition attached to it, till it came, with the property and effects of the Ford family, into possession of the Preston family. It whose kindness we have been permitted to ennow belongs to Mr. Preston of Bellinter, through grave it. The hair is jet black, the eyes dark to match, the forehead high and expansive, the nose rather prominent, and the features generally regular and well-marked. Notwithstanding that it has not been highly worked by the artist, there is a pale cast of thought' and an indescribable exinterest its historic recollections awaken. She is pression about this picture, which heightens the attired in a plain white dress, with a blue scarf; and around her bust a blue ribbon, to which a locket appears to be attached; and she wears a white and red rose. It is a very good full-sized oil-painting, and matches one of the Dean, which have been painted by Jervas, who was a particuis likewise preserved in the same family. It may lar friend of Swift's.—p. 120.

Mr. Wilde's volume closes with a number of political poems, some of them very spirited, which have been found in Swift's handwriting; but as among them are some transcripts from well-known poems of others, it is impossible, from the single circumstance of their being in Swift's handwriting, to infer anything as to the authorship. Many of them are, however, very curious, and some of them may be, and probably are, Swift's.

To the future biographer of Swift this volume will be truly valuable. There is not a page of it that does not supply much that is new. Its great value is, no doubt, the accurate examination of a very singular case of disease, exhibited with such perspicuity of detail, as even to be interesting to readers who would, in ordinary circumstances, lay aside what would seem at first to be a mere professional essay. But in addition to this its great merit, there is the illustration which it throws on every part of Swift's life, and the refutation which it contains of many popular errors. Scott's life of Swift is an exceedingly amusing romance, weaving together whatever he found related of his hero by any one and every one. We, however, agree with Mr. Wilde in thinking Mr. Mason's "Life of Swift" the best that we have. Mr. Wilde's own volume in every point of view in which we can consider it, is a most valuable addition to the literature of his

THE name of Geoffrey or Geffray Chaucer, | has a grateful sound to English ears, and the image which it conjures up, purified by time from every taint of ignoble association, looms large to us through the mists of the five centuries which intervene. We regard it as the "sacra et major imago" of the founder of that goodly fellowship of the gifted, which, since the dawn of civilization, has been the salt and the savor of our English life, and we cherish it, as well we may, with a reverent and pious affection. But what the image of the poet thus gains in grandeur it loses in distinctness, and for our own interest, at all events, it may well be questioned whether this distant and misty reverence is exactly the species of incense which it becomes us to offer to one who, during more than half a century, within the range of our authentic history, was the greatest lay-intelligence in England, and whose life was perhaps as pregnant with consequences to our national development as that of any one man who ever existed in England at all. Would it not be more profitable to us, and perhaps not less acceptable to the shade of him, who was certainly no friend to unreasoning adoration, if we endeavored to form for ourselves something like a definite notion of his character both as a poet and as a man, and thus to place our respect (if such should still remain to us) on the firmer basis of individual knowledge? Is it wise to rest contented with mere hearsay and second-hand information, when the question regards the first in point of time, and, in one department at least, the second in point of excellence of our native poets; or is it meet that those who would blush to be found tripping in the minutest details of classical philology, or of the modern tongues, should unhesitatingly confess, as they but too often do, their ignorance of an author, an acquaintance with whom, apart altogether from his intrinsic merits, is indis

pensable to a knowledge of the historical development of the language which they speak? Truly the object seems worthy of some slight effort.

In order to deal with the utilitarian spirit which perhaps not improperly influences the choice of the many, in literature as in more vulgar matters, and to fix, as it were, the marketable value of Chaucer, the first question, as it seems to us, which we are bound at once to ask and to answer, is-belongs he to the living or to the dead; does he or does he not speak words of living interest to living men; is he or is he not an integral part of our existing civilization?

The world is old enough to have seen many intellectual as well as political revolutions, and there are eras which boasted probably of no mean culture, irrevocably lost in the darkness of time. They are past, dead even in their effects-at least we can trace no influence which they exercise over our present life. Mediately they may work, as the civilization of Egypt through that of Greece, and it is nothing more than reasonable to suppose that by unseen links the earliest and the latest efforts of intelligence may be bound together; but the Pyramids teach no audible lesson except that of the mutability of human affairs, and the vast Sphinx is as silent as the sand at its base. These, for the present, we may not unfittingly hand over to the investigations of the curious; for although it were rashness to set limits to what learning and industry may yet effect in these darker regions, the popular reader may well be excused from intrusting himself to the labyrinth, till the clew has been found by more adventurous spirits.

But do the sayings and doings of Chaucer thus fall beyond the pale of general interest; does his image thus shrink into the shadowy past? Nothing can be more erroneous than such a supposition, and indeed, so far is his

story from being strange and distant to us, that we believe every one who investigates it for the first time will feel astonished that it should have been possible for any one, in the times of Cressy and of Poictiers, to lead a life in all respects so nearly resembling that of an accomplished and successful civilian at the present day. It may make us think better of the liberality of our ancestors also, when we find that among iron-coated warriors and hooded monks, there was one who was neither a soldier nor a priest who advanced himself to celebrity and fortune, and during a long life under three monarchs enjoyed both honor and wealth by dint of his intellectual gifts and graces alone.

It is an extremely common error, both with vulgar narrators and careless readers, to lay hold of the points of dissimilarity between distant ages and those in which they live, to the almost total exclusion of the often much more important features of resemblance, and this error it is which has so singularly estranged us from the early history of our country. We are told, for instance, that Chaucer lived before the invention of printing, in times of the darkest Popish superstition, when men believed in alchemy and astrology, wore armor, and fought for the most part with bows and arrows; and we immediately form to ourselves the picture of a barbarous and benighted age, and of a quaint and curious, but ignorant and bigoted old man, with whom we of this generation of light can have no species of sympathy or fellowship. We forget, however, that by drawing the picture a little nearer to us we should probably have discovered many objects of far more interesting contemplation in the features of resemblance which lie hidden behind the few fantastic forms of unlikeness which have attracted our eye in the foreground, and that, in short, our superficial glance has been resting upon the rude and barren crags which jut up prominently in the distance, instead of luxuriating in the fertile valleys and sunny fields, which a closer inspection would have revealed to our view. Now, if we would approach the father of our poetry in a spirit of erect and manly, but of respectful inquiry-if we would set about investigating his life and his writings, with the view of discovering not wherein he, in common with every man in Europe of his day, differed from the men of modern times, but wherein he resembled us, not in the unchangeable features of humanity alone, but in the peculiar characteristics of race and of nation-if we would compare with our own

the manners and feelings of our own ancestors, as they move before us in their domestic and familiar intercourse in his graphic delineations, we should not only become reconciled to the character of the poet himself, but we should discover that he lived among a people possessing in the highest degree those distinctive features, that sharp and prominent nationality which distinguishes the present inhabitants of England from every other people. We should discover that same joyous and exuberant reality, that hatred of "humbug" which distinguishes us now, existing alongside of those superstitious observances which we rightly attribute to that distant age, and exhibiting itself, as it has ever since done in England, in a tendency, on the part of all classes of the people, to attack falsehood by the arms of argument and ridicule, rather than by an ebullition of sudden violence, which should peril the advantages of their present position, to risk a positive good for a possible better. We should meet, in the morning of our English life, with that same spirit which now sneers in Punch and wrestles in the Times, awake and busy with Pardoner, and monk, and mendicant, and with all that then was vicious and absurd, and we should perceive, moreover, that then, as now, it was no spirit of indiscriminate destruction-that though it was revolutionary in appearance, it was conservative at heart, and that it consequently acted with perfect consistency in permitting to stand, as we know that it did for two centuries longer, a religious system of the imperfections of which it was perfectly conscious, but the uses of which it also recognized.

It has come

Much has been done in later times to approach us to our ancestors, and the gulf which threatened to separate us from them forever, has been bridged over by the adoption of a principle little regarded by the writers of history of the last age." to be perceived that the importance of an historical fact is often by no means in proportion to its apparent magnitude, and that the trivial occurrences of domestic life, and the usages of familiar intercourse, form very frequently a more accurate measure, both of the genius and culture of a people, than their great public events. It was long forgotten, that although trying situations may call forth striking manifestations of individual or of national peculiarities, it is in the peaceful and

See remarks on Robertson's Charles V. in Maitland's "Dark Ages.”

normal condition alone that we can hope to | analyze that infinitely complex idea which corresponds to the character of a man or of an age; and that it is only when we behold it at rest and examine it in detail, that we can detect the individual colors which compose the variegated web of human life. In the hurry of a battle, or the confusion of a political revolution; in the panic of a pestilence, or the depression of a famine, men of all races, and in all ages, must manifest many features of resemblance, for this simple reason, that their actions are for the time under the dominion of necessity, or at all events of a few simple and overwhelming emotions; and to prove that their conduct had been similar in such circumstances, would be but to prove that they belonged to the common family of mankind. If their courage or their pusillanimity, their clemency or their cruelty, had been very remarkable, we should then indeed have the broad and general ideas that they were heroes or cowards, that they were men of mercy or men of blood; but as to their position on the intellectual or social scale, we should still be utterly at sea, since a barbarian may be generous, and poets and philosophers have been known who were no heroes. So long as the conduct of an individual is very powerfully influenced by the external circumstances which surround him at the time, it forms but a rude and general index to his character; and it is only when his actions proceed from the unfettered dictates of his reason or of his caprice, that its light becomes a clear and trusty guide. If we had heard the orders of Harold to his nobles, and known every circumstance of his conduct, and even every thought which passed through his mind during the battle of Hastings, we might have judged perhaps of the talents of the general, or even of the determination and energy of the man, but we should have known less of the civilization either of him or of his age, than if we had conversed with him, as he buckled on his spurs for the battle, or had played the eaves-dropper, when, in days of careless joy, he lingered by the side of the swan-necked Edith. Of all the days of Harold's life, perhaps the least instructive in this respect would have been that of the battle of Hastings.

Since the days of the learned and laborious Tyrwhitt, and the loving and enthusiastic but injudicious Godwin, numerous have been the attempts to bring us once again face to face with the father of our poetry. We have had "Chaucer Modernized," "Tales from Chau

cer,' ," "Riches of Chaucer," "Selections from Chaucer," with notes and illustrations and biographies without end, and to little good end or purpose either, so far as we can judge. They have failed one and all, for this good and simple reason, that they satisfied the requirements of no class of readers. Tiresome to the indolent, for whom they were intended, they in vain endeavored to rival with them the attractions of the slightest novel of the day; useless to the vainglorious, for it was impossible to boast of such an acquaintance with the poet as they conveyed, and to the better class of readers, the learned and serious, not holding out even the promise of satisfaction, they fell, as might have been anticipated, nearly stillborn from the press.* Possessing neither brilliancy nor depth, they came within the category of that species of easy writing which, according to Sheridan, is hard reading.

A work of far higher merit, though of far humbler pretension, is one which, under the title of "Pictures of English Life," with accompanying selections from the Canterbury Tales, appeared some time ago in that best of all popular series, "Knight's Weekly Volume.' Its author, Mr. Saunders, is entitled to the praise of having succeeded, in one little book, in doing what Godwin attempted and failed to do in two large ones, viz: in transporting us from the England of the 19th back into the England of the 14th century; in forcing us not only to acknowledge, but to feel our kindred with our ancestors; that blood is indeed thicker than water, and that between the English then, and the English now, there is more real community than be

*To "those ornaments of this civilized age, and

patterns to the civilized world, the ingenuous, intelligent, well-informed, and artless young women of England," to whom it seems Mr. Cowden Clarke gallantly dedicates his labors, they may, and we hope have been useful, though from what we have ourselves occasionally observed in these same ingenuous and artless young ladies, we must beg leave to doubt whether such a profession was the most effectual means which might have been adopted to propitiate their favor. We believe that a professed ladies' writer, like a professed ladies' man, rarely meets with the gratitude to which he may naturally conceive himself entitled, and his productions, we fear, will run some small risk of being classed with that gratification to which a popular proverb has likened a saltless egg. That there are many passages in old Dan Chaucer unsuited for the eyes or and these we think Mr Clarke ought quietly and ears of juvenile gentlewomen we most readily grant, unostentatiously to have omitted from a publication of the kind which he meditated.