historical. But Mrs. Woods sets forth to
translate them back into fiction, not as subordinate characters, but
as protagonists. She has chosen to work within the difficult limits I
have indicated. But there are others which might easily have cramped
her hand even more closely.

A Tale of Passion to be told in Terms of Reason.

The story of Swift and Esther Vanhomrigh is a story of passion, and
runs on the confines of madness. But it happened in the Age of Reason.
Doubtless men and women felt madness and passion in that age:
doubtless, too, they spoke of madness and passion, but not in their
literature. And now that the lips are dust and the fiery conversations
lost, Mrs. Woods has only their written prose to turn to for help. To
satisfy the pedant she must tell her story of passion in terms of
reason. In one respect Thackeray had a more difficult task in
_Esmond_; for he aimed to make his book a reflection, in every page
and line, of the days of Queen Anne. Not only had he, like Mrs. Woods,
to make his characters and their talk consistent with that age; but
every word of the story is supposed to be told by a gentleman of that
age, whereas Mrs. Woods in her narrative prose may use the language of
her own century. On the other hand, the story of _Esmond_ deals with
comparatively temperate emotions. There is nothing in Thackeray's
masterpiece to strain the prose of the Age of Reason. It is pitched in
the key of those times, and the prose of those times is sufficient and
exactly sufficient for it. That it should be so is all the more to
Thackeray's honor, for the artist is to be praised in the conception
as duly as in the execution of his work. But, the conception being
granted, I think _Esther Vanhomrigh_ must have been a harder book than
_Esmond_ to write.

For even the prose of Swift himself is inadequate to Swift. He was a
great and glaring anomaly who never fell into perspective with his age
while he lived, and can hardly be pulled into perspective now with the
drawing materials which are left to us. Men of like abundant genius
are rarely measurable in language used by their contemporaries; and
this is perhaps the reason why they disquiet their contemporaries so
confoundedly. Where in the books written by tye-bewigged gentlemen, or
in the letters written by Swift himself, can you find words to explain
that turbulent and potent man? He bursts the capacity of Addison's
phrase and Pope's couplet. He was too big for a