We know well enough whither universal philanthropy leads us. The Friend of Man is seldom the friend of men. At his best he is content with a moral maxim, and buttons up his pocket in the presence of poverty. "I _give_ thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first!" It is not for nothing that Canning's immortal words were put in the mouth of the Friend of Humanity, who, finding that he cannot turn the Needy Knife Grinder to political account, give him kicks for ha'pence, and goes off in "a transport of Republican enthusiasm." Such is the Friend of Man at his best. "At his best" is good. It makes one realize that Mr. Whibley is merely playing a game of make-believe, and playing it very hard. His indictment of humanitarians has about as much, or as little, basis in fact as would an indictment of wives or seagulls or fields of corn. One has only to mention Shelley with his innumerable personal benevolences to set Mr. Whibley's card-castle of abuse tumbling. With Mr. Whibley's general view of Swift as opposed to his general view of politics, I find myself for the most part in harmony. I doubt, however, whether Swift has been pursued in his grave with such torrential malignity as Mr. Whibley imagines. Thackeray's denigration, I admit, takes the breath away. One can hardly believe that Thackeray had read either Swift's writings or his life. Of course he had done so, but his passion for the sentimental graces made him incapable of doing justice to a genius of saturnine realism such as Swift's. The truth is, though Swift was among the staunchest of friends, he is not among the most sociable of authors. His writings are seldom in the vein either of tenderness or of merriment. We know of the tenderness of Swift only from a rare anecdote or from the prattle of the _Journal to Stella_. As for his laughter, as Mr. Whibley rightly points out, Pope was talking nonsense when he wrote of Swift as laughing and shaking in Rabelais's easy chair. Swift's humour is essentially of the intellect. He laughs out of his own bitterness rather than to amuse his fellow-men. As Mr. Whibley says, he is not a cynic. He is not sufficiently indifferent for that. He is a satirist, a sort of perverted and suffering idealist: an idealist with the cynic's vision. It is the essential nobleness of Swift's nature which makes the voyage to the Houyhnhnms a noble and not a disgusting piece of literature. There are people who pretend that this section of _Gulliver's Travels_ is almost too terrible for sensitive persons to read. This is sheer affectation. It can only be honestly maintained by those who believe that life is too terrible for sensitive persons to live! (2) SHAKESPEARE