Personally, Swift was a gentleman.  When he was scurrilous, abusive, ribald, malicious, it was anonymously.  Is this to his credit?  I should not say so, but if a man is indecent and he hides behind a “nom de plume,” it is at least presumptive proof that he is not dead to shame.

Leslie Stephen tells us that Swift was a Churchman to the backbone.  No man who is a “Churchman to the backbone” is ever very pious:  the spirit maketh alive, but the letter killeth.  One looks in vain for traces of spirituality in the Dean.  His sermons are models of churchly commonplace and full of the stock phrases of a formal religion.  He never bursts into flame.  Yet he most thoroughly and sincerely believed in religion.  “I believe in religion, it keeps the masses in check.  And then I uphold Christianity because if it is abolished the stability of the Church might be endangered,” he said.

Philip asked the eunuch a needless question when he inquired, “Understandest thou what thou readest?” No one so poorly sexed as Swift can comprehend spiritual truth:  spirituality and sexuality are elements that are never separated.  Swift was as incapable of spirituality as he was of the “grand passion.”

The Dean had affection; he was a warm friend; he was capable even of a degree of love, but his sexual and spiritual nature was so cold and calculating that he did not hesitate to sacrifice love to churchly ambition.

He argued that the celibacy of the Catholic clergy is a wise expediency.  The bachelor physician and the unmarried priest have an influence among gentle womankind, young or old, married or single, that a benedict can never hope for.  Why this is so might be difficult to explain, but discerning men know the fact.  In truth, when a priest marries he should at once take a new charge, for if he remains with his old flock a goodly number of his “lady parishioners,” in ages varying from seventeen to seventy, will with fierce indignation rend his reputation.

Swift was as wise as a serpent, but not always as harmless as a dove.  He was making every effort to secure his miter and crosier:  he had many women friends in London and elsewhere who had influence.  Rather than run the risk of losing this influence he never acknowledged Stella as his wife.  Choosing fame rather than love, he withered at the heart, then died at the top.

The life of every man is a seamless garment—­its woof his thoughts, its warp his deeds.  When for him the roaring loom of time stops and the thread is broken, foolish people sometimes point to certain spots in the robe and say, “Oh, why did he not leave that out!” not knowing that every action of man is a sequence from off Fate’s spindle.

Let us accept the work of genius as we find it; not bemoaning because it is not better, but giving thanks because it is so good.

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Well-fed, rollicking priest is Father O’Toole of Dublin, with a big, round face, a double chin, and a brogue that you can cut with a knife.