ritable
verdict is that the evil in his conduct through life had its origin in
congenital disorder; and in his days of apparent sanity, the character of
his eccentric actions is to be palliated, if not entirely excused, on the
plea of insanity. Additional force is given to this judgment by the fact
that, when he died, it was found that he had left his money to found a
hospital for the insane, illustrating the line,--

A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind.

In that day of great classical scholars, Swift will hardly rank among the
most profound; but he possessed a creative power, a ready and versatile
fancy, a clear and pleasing but plain style. He has been unjustly accused
by Lady Montagu of having stolen plot and humor from Cervantes and
Rabelais: he drew from the same source as they; and those suggestions
which came to him from them owe all their merit to his application of
them. As a critic, he was heartless and rude; but as a polemic and a
delineator of his age, he stands prominently forth as an historian, whose
works alone would make us familiar with the period.

OTHER WRITERS OF THE AGE.

_Sir William Temple_, 1628-1698: he was a statesman and a political
writer; rather a man of mark in his own day than of special interest to
the present time. After having been engaged in several important
diplomatic affairs, he retired to his seat of Moor Park, and employed
himself in study and with his pen. His _Essays and Observations on
Government_ are valuable as a clue to the history. In his controversy with
Bentley on the _Epistles of Phalaris_, and the relative merits of ancient
and modern authors, he was overmatched in scholarship. In a literary point
of view, Temple deserves praise for the ease and beauty of his style. Dr.
Johnson says he "was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose."
"What can be more pleasant," says Charles Lamb, "than the way in which the
retired statesman peeps out in his essays, penned in his delightful
retreat at Shene?" He is perhaps better known in literary history as the
early patron of Swift, than for his own works.

_Sir Isaac Newton_, 1642-1727: the chief glory of Newton is not connected
with literary effort: he ranks among the most profound and original
philosophers, and was one of the purest and most unselfish of men. The
son of a farmer, he was born at Woolsthorpe, in Lincolnshire, after his
father's death,--a feeble, sickly child. The year of his birth was tha