CHAPTER IX. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
(1700-1800)The proper study of Mankind is Man.
The same ambition can destroy or save,
And makes a patriot as it makes a knave.
Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw:
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite:
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer books are the toys of age:
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before;
Till tired he sleeps, and Life’s poor play is o’er.^156JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745)
In each of Marlowe’s tragedies we have the picture of a
man dominated by a single passion, the lust of power for its
own sake. In each we see that a powerful man without self-
control is like a dangerous instrument in the hands of a child;
and the tragedy ends in the destruction of the man by the un-
governed power which he possesses. The life of Swift is just
such a living tragedy. He had the power of gaining wealth,
like the hero of theJew of Malta; yet he used it scornfully, and
in sad irony left what remained to him of a large property to
found a hospital for lunatics. By hard work he won enormous
literary power, and used it to satirize our common humanity.
He wrested political power from the hands of the Tories, and
(^156) Compare this with Shakespeare’s "All the world’s a stage,"inAs You Like
it, II, 7.