There are those, of whom, as Mr. Wagstaff would himself say, “I have the honour to be one,” who put the “Polite Conversation” in the very front rank of Swift’s works. It is of course on a far less ambitious scale than “Gulliver;” it has not the youthful audacity and towering aim of the “Tale of a Tub;” it lacks the practical and businesslike cogency of the “Drapier;” the absolute perfection and unrivalled irony of the “Modest Proposal” and the “Argument against abolishing Christianity.” But what it wants in relation to each of these masterpieces in some respects it makes up in others; and it is distinctly the superior of its own nearest analogue, the “Directions to Servants.” It is never unequal; it never flags; it never forces the note. Nobody, if he likes it at all, can think it too long; nobody, however much he may like it, can fail to see that Swift was wise not to make it longer. One of its charms is the complete variation between the introduction and the dialogues themselves. The former follows throughout, even to the rather unnecessary striking in with literary quarrels, the true vein of Swiftian irony, where almost every sentence expresses the exact contrary of the author’s real sentiments, and where the putative writer is made to exhibit himself as ridiculous while discoursing to his own complete satisfaction. It exhibits also, although in a minor key, the peculiar pessimism which excites the shudders of some and the admiration of others in the great satires on humanity enumerated above.