There is a winnowed purity about it,
and a kind of elfish grace; and with both these things there mixes,
strangely enough, a certain homely, almost Dutch domesticity, quaint
and mellow and a little wanton--like a picture by Jan Steen.
54. JONATHAN SWIFT. TALE OF A TUB.
Swift's mysterious and saturnine character, his outbursts of terrible
rage; his exquisite moments of tenderness; his sledge-hammer blows;
his diabolical irony; form a dramatic and tragic spectacle which no
psychologist can afford to miss.
With the "saeva indignatio" alluded to in his own epitaph, he puts his
back, as it were, to the "flamantia moenia mundi" and hits out,
insanely and blindly, at the human crowd he loathes. His secretive and
desperate passion for Stella, his little girl pupil; his barbarous
treatment of Vanessa--his savage championship of the Irish people
against the Government--make up the dominant "notes" of a character so
formidable that the terror of his personality strikes us with the
force of an engine of destruction.
His misanthropy is like the misanthropy of Shakespeare's Timon--his
crushing sarcasms strike blow after blow at the poor flesh and blood
he despises.
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