Historical Characters in the Reign of Queen AnneOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
History
Historical Characters in the Reign of Queen Anne
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Addison, Joseph, 1672-1719; Anne, Queen of Great Britain, 1665-1714; Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731; Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745
Between 1714 and 1726, for a dozen years, he remained in Ireland without
intermission, altogether apart from public life. At the latter date he
went to London, probably needing, after the shock of Miss Vanhomrigh’s
death, and the grievous sense he must have had that it was he who had
killed her, a change of scene; and it was then that “Gulliver” was
published. The latter portions of it which the children have rejected we
are glad to have no space to dwell upon. The bitterness, passion, and
misery of them are beyond parallel. One would like to have any ground
for believing that the Houyhnhms and the rest came into being after
Stella’s death; but this was not the case. She was only a woman, and was
not, after all, of such vital importance in the man’s existence.
Withdrawal from the life he loved, confinement in a narrow sphere, the
disappointment of a soul which felt itself born for greatness, and had
tasted the high excitements of power, but now had nothing to do but
fight over the choir with his archbishop, and give occasion for a
hundred anecdotes in the Dublin coteries, had matured the angry passion
in him and soured the sweetness of nature. Few people now when they take
up their “Gulliver” go beyond Brobdingnag. The rest is like a succession
of bad dreams, the confused miseries of a fever. To think that in a
deanery, that calm seat of ecclesiastical luxury, within sound of the
cathedral bells and the choristers’ chants, a brain so dark and
distracted, and dreams so terrible, should have found shelter! They are
all the more bitter and appalling from their contrast with the
surroundings among which they had their disastrous birth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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