Johnson, in his "Life of Swift," after citing with approval Delany's
character of him, as he describes him to Lord Orrery, proceeds to say:
"In the poetical works there is not much upon which the critic can
exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always light, and
have the qualities which recommend such compositions, easiness and
gaiety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The
diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There
seldom occurs a hard laboured expression or a redundant epithet; all his
verses exemplify his own definition of a good style--they consist of
'proper words in proper places.'"
Of his earliest poems it is needless to say more than that if nothing
better had been written by him than those Pindaric Pieces, after the
manner of Cowley--then so much in vogue--the remark of Dryden, "Cousin
Swift, you will never be a Poet," would have been fully justified. But
conventional praise and compliments were foreign to his nature, for his
strongest characteristic was his intense sincerity. He says of himself
that about that time he had writ and burnt and writ again upon all manner
of subjects more than perhaps any man in England; and it is certainly
remarkable that in so doing his true genius was not sooner developed, for
it was not till he became chaplain in Lord Berkeley's household that his
satirical humour was first displayed--at least in verse--in "Mrs.
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