too nearly.  He knew the real Jacks and Toms as they were over a pot of ale after the scenic illusion was done with.  He saw the destinies of a kingdom controlled by men far less able than himself; the highest of arts, that of politics, degraded to a trade in places, and the noblest opportunity, that of office, abused for purposes of private gain.  His disenchantment began early, probably in his intimacy with Sir William Temple, in whom (though he says that all that was good and great died with him) he must have seen the weak side of solemn priggery and the pretension that made a mystery of statecraft.  In his twenty-second year he writes: 

  Off fly the vizards and discover all: 
    How plain I see through the deceit! 
    How shallow and how gross the cheat!
       * * * * *
    On what poor engines move
  The thoughts of monarchs and designs of states! 
  What petty motives rule their fates!

      I to such blockheads set my wit! 
      I damn such fools! go, go, you’re bit!

Mr. Forster’s own style (simpler now than when he was under the immediate influence of Dickens, if more slipshod than when repressed by Landor) is not in essentials better or worse than usual.  It is not always clear nor always idiomatic.  On page 120 he tells us that “Scott did not care to enquire if it was likely that stories of the kind referred to should have contributed to form a character, or if it were not likelier still that they had grown and settled round a character already famous as well as formed.”  Not to speak of the confusion of moods and tenses, the phrase “to form a character” has been so long appropriated to another meaning than that which it has here, that the sense of the passage vacillates unpleasantly.  He tells us that Swift was “under engagement to Will Frankland to christen the baby his wife is near bringing to bed.”  Parthenogenesis is a simple matter to this.  And why Will Frankland, Joe Beaumont, and the like?  We cannot claim so much intimacy with them as Swift, and the eighteenth century might be allowed to stand a little on its dignity.  If Mr. Forster had been quoting the journal to Stella, there would be nothing to say except that Swift took liberties with his friends in writing to her which he would not have ventured on before strangers.  In the same odd jargon, which the English journals are fond of calling American, Mr. Forster says that “Tom [Leigh] was not popular with Swift.”  Mr. Forster is not only no model for contemporary English, but (what is more serious) sometimes mistakes the meaning of words in Swift’s day, as when he explains that “strongly engaged” meant “interceded with or pressed.”  It meant much more than that, as could easily be shown from the writings of Swift himself.