ABSTRACT
Few men touched Swift as Addison and Arbuthnot did—drawing forth his liveliest conversation, setting him at ease without weakening their own dignity or Swift’s—keeping his respect as well as his love. These were the ripest of all his masculine friendships. Delany is one of the last (if not the dimmest) of the tradition. George Berkeley and James Stopford were younger echoes of it. There was as well, among those self-portraits of Swift which he sought in others, the very different challenge of the man of the world, whose shining embodiment seems to be Bolingbroke but who was also realized in Fountaine, Ford, and Chetwode.
