His hatred of mankind seems genuine; there is nothing _falsetto_ about it. He is always in sober, deadly earnest when he abuses his fellow-men. What an odd revenge we have taken! His gospel of hatred, his testament of woe--his ‘Gulliver,’ upon which he expended the treasures of his wit, and into which he instilled the concentrated essence of his rage--has become a child’s book, and has been read with wonder and delight by generations of innocents. After all, it is a kindly place, this planet, and the best use we have for our cynics is to let them amuse the junior portion of our population. I only know one good-humoured anecdote of Swift; it is very slight, but it is fair to tell it. He dined one day in the company of the Lord Keeper, his son, and their two ladies, with Mr. Cæsar, Treasurer of the Navy, at his house in the City. They happened to talk of Brutus, and Swift said something in his praise, and then, as it were, suddenly recollecting himself, said: ‘Mr. Cæsar, I beg your pardon.’ One can fancy this occasioning a pleasant ripple of laughter. There is another story I cannot lay my hands on to verify, but it is to this effect: Faulkner, Swift’s Dublin publisher, years after the Dean’s death, was dining with some friends, who rallied him upon his odd way of eating some dish--I think, asparagus. He confessed Swift had told him it was the right way; therefore, they laughed the louder, until Faulkner, growing a little angry, exclaimed: ‘I tell you what it is, gentlemen: if you had ever dined with the Dean, you would have eaten your asparagus as he bade you.’ Truly a wonderful man--imperious, masterful. Yet his state is not kingly like Johnson’s--it is tyrannical, sinister, forbidding.