the decrees of Destiny. This is how I began my review of Swift and his
masterpiece:

"Never anyone living thought like you," said to Swift the woman who
loved him with a passion that had caught some of his own fierceness and
despair. The love which great natures inspire had endowed Vanessa with a
rare inspiration. Half-consciously she has touched the notes that help
us to resolve the discord in Swift's life. Truly, the mind of living man
never worked as Swift's worked. That this is so is visible in every
line, in every word he ever wrote. No phrase of his is like any other
man's; no conception of his is ever cast in the common mould. It is this
that lends something so dreadful and mysterious to all Swift's writings.

From this time I began to get books regularly from _The Spectator_
and to pay periodical visits to the office, where I learned to
understand and to appreciate my chiefs. But more of them later. The year
1886 was one of political convulsion, the year of the great split in the
Liberal Party; the year in which Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain
finally severed themselves from Mr. Gladstone and began that co-
operation with the Conservatives which resulted in the formation of the
Unionist Party. I do not, however, want to deal here with the Unionist
crisis, except so far as it affected me and _The Spectator_. While
my father and my elder brother remained Liberals and followed Mr.
Gladstone, I followed Lord Hartington, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Goschen.
My conversion was not in any way sought by my new friends and chiefs at
_The Spectator_ office, though they at once took the Unionist side.
I have no doubt, however, that my intercourse with Hutton and Townsend
had its effect, though I also think that my mind was naturally Unionist
in politics. I was already a Lincoln worshipper in American history and
desired closer union with the Dominions, not separation. I was for