"
He searches all the shop in vain.
"Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane,
I sent them with a load of books
Last Monday to the pastrycook's.
To fancy they could live a year!
I find you're but a stranger here.
The Dean was famous in his time,
And had a kind of knack at rhyme.
His way of writing now is past,
The town has got a better taste."'

Enough has been transcribed to show Swift's art in this poem, which is
of considerable, but not of wearisome length. Perhaps ten or twelve
pieces, in addition to those already mentioned, will repay the student's
attention. One of the worthiest is a _Rhapsody on Poetry_. _Baucis and
Philemon_, too, is a lively piece that pleased Goldsmith, and will
please every reader. It was much altered from the original draught at
Addison's suggestion; but the alterations are not improvements.[43] _The
City Shower_ is a piece of Dutch painting, reminding us of Crabbe. _Mrs.
Harris's Petition_ is an admirable bit of fooling; _Mary the Cook-Maid's
Letter_, is in its way inimitable; and so, too, is the amusing talk of
'my lady's waiting-woman' in _The Grand Question Debated_.

It is difficult, unhappily, to pursue one's way through Swift's poems,
without being repelled again and again by the filth in which it pleases
him to wade. _The Beast's Confession_, which has been reprinted in the
_Selections from Swift_ (Clarendon Press), is not obscene, like _The
Lady's Dressing-Room_, _Strephon and Chloe_, and other poems of the
class; but it has the inhumanity which deforms the description of the
Houyhnhnms. Strange to say, in private life Swift appears to have been
not only moral in conduct, but refined in conversation, and he is even
said to have rebuked Stella on one occasion for a slightly coarse
remark. His imagination was diseased, and he was himself always
apprehensive of the calamity under which he became at last 'a driveller
and a show.' 'I shall be like that tree,' he said once to the poet
Young, 'I shall die at the top.'

It has been already said that _The Tale of a Tub_ was written at Moor
Park. It appeared in 1704, and although published anonymously and never
owned, the book effectually stood in the way of Swift's high preferment
in the Church. Queen Anne declined, and not without reason, to make its
author a bishop.

It is a satire of amazing power, written by a man who takes, as Swift
took throughout life, a misanthropical view of human nature, a