Note 68 — THACKERY'S "ESMOND"

Thackeray heartily disliked Swift, and said so. "As for Swift, you haven't made me alter my opinion"--he replied to Hannay's remonstrances. This feeling was intensified by the belief that Swift, as a clergyman, was insincere. "Of course,"--he wrote in September, 1851, in a letter now in the British Museum,--"any man is welcome to believe as he likes for me except a parson; and I can't help looking upon Swift and Sterne as a couple of traitors and renegades ... with a scornful pity for them in spite of all their genius and greatness." [69] Some XVIII. Century Men of Letters, 1902, i. 187. The intention was never carried out. In The King over the Water, 1908, Miss A. Shield and Mr. Andrew Lang have recently examined another portrait in Esmond,--that of the Chevalier de St. George,--not without injury to its historical veracity. In these matters, Mr. Lang--like Rob Roy--is on his native heath; and it is only necessary to refer the reader to this highly interesting study.