The unfortunate little man! One is reminded of
Gulliver's accident in the Brobdignagian cream-pot. In trying to break
the glasses of the coach, which were down, he severely cut his right
hand, and lost the use of two of his fingers,--an addition to his other
deformities not very desirable; and we suspect that Pope thought
Voltaire (who had met him at Bolingbroke's) but a miserable comforter,
when, in a letter of pretended condolence, he asked--"Is it possible
that those fingers which have written 'The Rape of the Lock,' and
dressed Homer so becomingly in an English coat, should have been so
barbarously treated? Let the hand of Dennis or of your poetasters be cut
off; yours is sacred." It was perhaps in keeping that those mutilated
fingers were soon to be employed in attacking Dennis, and that the
embittered poet was about, with the half of his hand, but with the whole
of his heart, to write "The Dunciad."
In the end of April 1727, we find Swift again in Twickenham, where his
irritation at the continued ascendancy of Sir Robert Walpole served to
infuse more venom into the "Miscellanies" concocted between him and
Pope,--two volumes of which appeared in June this year. Gay, also, and
the ingenious and admirable Dr Arbuthnot, contributed their quota to
these volumes. Swift speedily fell ill with that giddiness and deafness
which were the _avant-couriers_ of his final malady; and in August he
left Twickenham, and in October, London and England, for ever.
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