Mr. Whibley, it is only fair to say, is concerned with Swift as a man of letters and a friend, rather than with Swift as a party politician.  The present book is a reprint of the Leslie Stephen lecture which he delivered at Cambridge a few months ago.  It was bound, therefore, to be predominantly literary in interest.  At the same time, Mr. Whibley’s political bias appears both in what he says and in what he keeps silent about.  His defence of Swift against the charge of misanthropy is a defence with which we find ourselves largely in agreement.  But Mr. Whibley is too single-minded a party politician to be able to defend the Dean without clubbing a number of his own pet antipathies in the process.  He seems to think that the only alternative to the attitude of Dean Swift towards humanity is the attitude of persons who, “feigning a bland and general love of abtract humanity ... wreak a wild revenge upon individuals.”  He apparently believes that it is impossible for one human being to wish well to the human race in general, and to be affectionate to John, Peter and Thomas in particular.  Here are some of Mr. Whibley’s rather wild comments on this topic.  He writes: 

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