Dean Swift.

Mr. Black gave a lecture on Swift last evening that was the most entertaining lecture he has yet delivered here. He began by saying that Swift was a striking example of those geniuses whom our ancestors worshipped indiscriminately and from whom we have distracted ruthlessly.

Swift was born poor. He lived as a child in an atmosphere of debt, difficulty, and dependence on bounty. At college, be met only failure and disgrace. It was not till he was settled as the secretary of Sir William Temple, one of the most diplomatic counsellors and elegant scholars of the realm, that Swift found himself in congenial circumstances. Out of the great library, he stocked his mind with the literary and political knowledge that made his after career possible.

His first great books were the "Battle of the Books" and the "Tale of a Tub." The first was a vigorous and exuberant satire, racy and picturesque in style, while the second fairly swarmed over with ideas, ideas of nature, of art, of life, all expressed with buoyancy of wit and crispness of statement. It marked perhaps the height of his genius, and won him world-wide reputation.

Soon after Sir Temple died. Swift had gone to London, and soon appeared as a political writer in favor of the whigs. His wit and force made him formidable so that, when be turned to the town, he was received with open arms. He became the intimate friend of the great ministers, was of the highest consequence in the state, and the patron of all literary men.

When the town fell, he withdrew to his deanship at Ireland, embraced the Irish cause, and hurled her rage and wrongs against England. It was at this time that his "Gulliver's Travels" appeared. - beautiful, vivacious, intense in realization and grotesque in combination. Yet, though his best-known work, it is not his most meritorious nor his worst representative.

Over Swift's private life hangs a most perplexing mystery. Because of this, to defame his character is not just, since honorable motives may at all times explain his actions. He lived a hard life, - a bitter one. His mind from early manhood gave signs of darkening, and finally was clouded entirely. Yet that mind, in its prime, one of the most strikingly original the world has seen and, if not sublime, certainly never commonplace and always possessed of universal strength and untainted sincerity.