Nobody has brought out more effectively than Mr. Churton Collins[A] Swift’s almost ceaseless literary activity. To turn over Scott’s nineteen volumes is to get some notion of it. It is not a pleasant task, for Swift was an unclean spirit; but he fascinates and makes the reader long to peep behind the veil, and penetrate the secret of this horrible, yet loveable, because beloved, man. Mr. Collins is rather short with this longing on the part of the reader. He does not believe in any secret; he would have us believe that it is all as plain as a pikestaff. Swift was never mad, and was never married. Stella was a well-regulated damsel, who, though she would have liked very much to have been Mrs. Dean, soon recognised that her friend was not a marrying man, and was, therefore, well content for the rest of her days to share his society with Mrs. Dingley. Vanessa was an ill-regulated damsel, who had not the wit to see that her lover was not a marrying man, and, in the most vulgar fashion possible, thrust herself most inconveniently upon his notice, received a snubbing, took to drink, and died of the spleen. As for the notion that Swift died mad, Mr. Collins conceives himself to get rid of that by reprinting a vague and most inconclusive letter of Dr. Bucknill’s. The mystery and the misery of Swift’s life have not been got rid of by Mr. Collins. He has left them where he found them--at large. He complains, perhaps justly, that Scott never took the trouble to form any clear impression of Swift’s character. Yet we must say that we understand Sir Walter’s Swift better than we do Mr. Collins’. Whether the Dean married Stella can never be known. For our part, we think he did not; but to assert positively that no marriage took place, as Mr. Collins does, is to carry dogmatism too far. A good deal of fault has lately been found with Thackeray’s lecture on Swift. We still think it both delightful and just. The rhapsody about Stella, as I have already hinted, is not to our mind. Rhapsodies about real women are usually out of place. Stella was no saint, but a quick-witted, sharp-tongued hussy, whose fate it was to win the love and pacify the soul of the greatest Englishman of his time--for to call Swift an Irishman is sheer folly. But, apart from this not unnatural slip, what, I wonder, is the matter with Thackeray’s lecture, regarded, not as a storehouse of facts, or as an estimate of Swift’s writings, but as a sketch of character? Mr. Collins says quite as harsh things about Swift as are to be found in Thackeray’s lecture, but he does not attempt, as Thackeray does, to throw a strong light upon this strange and moving figure. It is a hard thing to attempt--failure in such a case is almost inevitable; but I do not think Thackeray did fail. An ounce of mother-wit is often worth a pound of clergy. Insight is not always the child of study. But here, again, the matter should be brought to the test by each reader for himself. Read Thackeray’s lecture once again.