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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.


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