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Jonathan Swift and the Middle Way
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JONATHAN SWIFT AND THE MIDDLE WAY

BY

Jonathan Lucas Thorndike

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1989

@045WV

ABSTRACT
JONATHAN SWIFT AND THE MIDDLE WAY
BY

Jonathan Lucas Thorndike

"Satire is reckoned the easiest wit of all," Swift wrote

in volume 1 of his Miscellanies published in 1712, "for it is

 

as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to
praise well a man of distinguished virtues. It is easy
enough to do either to people of moderate characters."
Moderation is a powerful fiction that never lost its appeal
to Swift. Moderation allows Swift to embrace contradictory
attitudes towards pe0p1e in places of authority. Swift
professes to be the rational, careful, objective voice of
moderation, but ultimately he is a subversive. Often what
Swift writes ostensibly to endorse religious or linguistic
authority has the final effect of undermining those very
sources of authority. Chapter 1 examines Swift's writing
associated with the Church and explores how Swift attempts to
use ”reason" as a source of moderation between the extremes
of free-thinking deists and the pedantic Roman Catholics.

Chapter 2 discusses A Tale of a Tub and Swift's method of

 

putting himself in the center of a boiling cauldron of
ideologies, attempting to find a stable center of orthodoxy

while finally throwing the reader totally off balance. In

Chapter 3, I discuss the problem of categorizing Swift's
poetry as "Augustan" in light of his political portraits and
personal assaults against individuals in ”Verses on the Death
of Dr. Swift" and other poems. Chapter 4 looks at the
Augustan notion of the satirist as a moral reformer and how
in his Irish writing Swift repudiates the ideal of reform and

becomes a political incendiary in The Drapier's Letters and

 

"A Modest Proposal." Chapter 5 examines Swift's attitudes
towards language. Swift portrays himself as the model of
orthodoxy and desires "to fix language for ever," but he
actually embraces specific beliefs about language
considerably more Puritan than strictly Anglican: a
commitment to plain, rational preaching, an awareness of the
corrupting influence of language, a resistance to Scriptural
controversy, and a fear of obscure words and elaborate

interpretations.

Copyright by
JONATHAN LUCAS THORNDIKE

1989

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation bears only two names on the title
page, but I am indebted to many peOple who assisted me during
my research, writing, and revision.

At Michigan State University, Professor Robert Uphaus
introduced me to the pleasures of eighteenth-century
literature, and he proved a tireless and demanding
dissertation director, consistently upholding the highest
standards of scholarly argument and inquiry. Professor
Victor Paananen and the College of Arts and Letters made it
possible for me to travel to Trinity College, where my
acquaintance with Swift and Ireland strengthened and took new
directions. The staff at the old library of Trinity College
assisted me in reading manuscripts, and they suggested many
places of interest to visit in Dublin related to Swift. My
graduate professors Jay Ludwig and Donald Rosenberg read this
manuscript in progress. Conversations I shared with them and
their willingness to read and reflect on the individual
chapters helped me to sharpen my approach.

At Alma College, Professors William Palmer and Joe
Sutfin advised me during several stages of the research and
writing, providing encouragement all along the way. The
library staffs of both Alma College and Michigan State
University patiently endured my questions and searches for
books and articles. My students at Michigan State University
and Alma College took an interest in my research on Swift,
enabling me on occasion to try out my ideas about eighteenth-
century literature in the classroom.

I also need to thank my friends Richard Amidon and Craig
Bernthal, who preceded me in graduate school; through their
positive examples I learned much about the academic world.

I would like to thank my mother Sarah for her support of
my studies. My father, the late Professor Samuel Thorndike,
inspired me to become a professor myself. My son, Jonathan
Frost Thorndike, brought joy to our lives for the past two
years. Lastly, I am grateful to my wife Claudia, for her
careful proofreading, for seeing me through this journey, and
for keeping me happy when I encountered difficulties. I
sometimes felt like a pilgrim in a dark and lonely forest.
This dissertation would not have been possible without the
capable support of the people mentioned above.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1
Moderation, Tyranny, and Corruption

Chapter 2
“Innovators in the Empire of Reason":
The Failure of Moderation in A Tale of a Tub

 

Chapter 3
Swift's Political Portraits:
“The Screen Removed, Their Hearts Are Trembling"

Chapter 4
Swift's Irish Writing: Rage, Resentment, and Reform

Chapter 5
Swift and Language:
Anglican Churchman with Puritan Bible

Appendix
Findings in the Manuscript Department of Trinity
College, Dublin 01d Library

Select Bibliography

vi

44

87

131

167

197

267

INTRODUCTION

I have a distinct memory of reading A Tale of a Tub for

 

the first time some years ago. It was a broiling hot summer
day, and I was crouched in the dark basement of a library
whose walls were dripping with condensation. After finishing
the book, I felt nauseated, exhilarated, challenged, and
betrayed by the barrage of words. The more judgmental I
became, the more the text retaliated in unpredictable ways.

I returned to it again and again during the summer, driven by
some faint hope to “explain" or ”describe" the book by way of
a competition between organization and chaos.

My personal mission for the summer became to gain the
upper hand over this sprawling hallucination. I wanted to
master Jonathan Swift's literary subterfuges and imaginative
fancies in A Tale of a Tub. Swift's alternation among
allegory, exposition, and satire I thought inexplicable but
brilliantly executed. The book kept suggesting itself to my
mind during that summer like a nightmare I could not quite
forget. Fragmentary images kept appearing before me: men
wearing costumes and belching, ladders, lunatics, holy
relics, banquets, and people being thrown out of churches.

My interest in Swift has grown in many ways since then.

I no longer think of reading him as a jungle combat

2
experience, but Swift continues to disturb and challenge me.
When I think of Swift, I think of the ghastly visage of his
death-mask staring out from behind a bookcase in a dark
alcove of St. Patrick's Cathedral. I think of the
irreconcilable worlds of England, Ireland, Parliament,
Church, court, and country through which Swift moved,
assuming different roles as historian, poet, polemicist,
priest, and cultural watchdog. I think of a writer driven by
his love of language and learning, miserably upset at the
human failures around him and determined to have some impact
through his writing. For every image of Swift I carry
around, I can conjure up another contradictory one.

The contradictory Opinions voiced about Swift in
criticism testify to his ability to attract and repel. Like
all great writers, Swift forces the reader to become an
active participant in the creation of meaning. I have
uncovered no impartial assessments of Swift, only forceful
deprecations or lavish praise in critics ranging from F. R.
Leavis to J. A. Downie. Richard H. Rodino has noted that
”Swift critics have never felt easy with pluralistic readings
of their hero, partly because Swift scholarship has
maintained close ties with the history of ideas, but mostly
because the study of Swift since the l93fl's has been heavily

influenced by psychological assumptions."l Scholars often

 

1Richard H. Rodino, Swift Studies: An Annotated
Bibliography (New Ybrk: Garland Press, 1984), xv.

 

3
agree on Swift's use of reading traps, a decentered text, and
the false appearance of logic, but we have nothing like a
consensus on the meaning of crucial works.

This was not always the case. It is easy to overlook
the fact that despite the academic respectability achieved by
Swift studies, Swift's reputation overcame some of the most
negative critical opinions ever voiced against an author. In
the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth
century, with few exceptions, Swift was viewed as a depraved
lunatic who was incapable of the wit of Pope. James Boswell
reported that Dr. Johnson in 1785 thought Swift's writing
would never last because of its deficiencies:

He [Johnson] seemed to me to have an unaccountable

prejudice against Swift; for I once took the liberty to

ask him, if Swift had personally offended him, and he
told me, he had not. He said to-day, 'Swift is clear,
but he is shallow. In coarse humour, he is inferior to

Arbuthnot: in delicate humour, he is inferior to

Addison: So he is inferior to his contemporaries:

without putting him against the whole world. I doubt if

A Tale of a Tub was his: it has so much more thinking,

more knowledge, more power, more colour, than any of the

works which are indisputably his. If it was his, I
shall only say, he was impar sibi.'2

 

 

Disturbed and amazed at Swift's esoteric allegory, Dr.
Johnson reflected the sentiments of many of his
contemporaries. Francis Jeffrey, the famous editor of the
Edinburgh Review, firmly established the direction in which

nineteenth-century Swift criticism would move. Jeffrey's

 

2James Boswell, Journal of_a Tour to the Hebrides with
Dr. Samuel Johnson, LL.D., ed. Frederick A. Pottle and
Charles H. Bennett TNew York: Literary Guild, 1936), 26-7.

 

4

1816 review of a new edition openly admits a bias against
Swift so personal and palpable as to obscure the writing
behind the reputation:

In public life, we do not know where we could have found

any body half so profligate and unprincipled as

himself...nor can we conceive that complaints of
venality, and want of patriotism, could ever come with
so ill a grace from any quarter as from him who had
openly deserted and libelled his party...he was, without
exception, the greatest and most efficient libeller that
ever exercised his trade: and possessed, in an eminent
degree, all the qualifications which it requires:--a
clear head--a cold heart--a vindictive temper--no
admiration of noble qualities--no sympathy with
suffering--not much conscience-~not much consistency--a
ready wit--a sarcastic humour--a thorough knowledge of
the baser parts of human nature--and a complete
familiarity with everything that is low, homely, and
familiar in language.3

The wave of flamboyant condemnations from Macaulay and
Thackeray which followed Jeffrey's example make for
entertaining reading today. Profoundly disgusted, the great
nineteenth-century essayists tended to obscure the small
voices raised in defense of Swift.

Despite the insistence of some critics on Swift's
extremism, Swift embraces the middle way in some of his poems
and prose tracts. In "Sentiments of a Church-of—England
Man,“ Swift writes that to preserve the integrity of Church
and State, "whoever hath a true value for both, would be sure
to avoid the extremes of Whig for the sake of the former, and
the extremes of Tory on account of the latter." Swift tried

to use moderation to appeal to persons in powerful offices in

 

3The Edinburgh Review, XXVII (Sept 1816), 23-38.

 

5
the government and Church, and he fervently desired to
receive a high appointment in the Church of England. One can
still sense Swift's grudging denial of his Irish exile in his
correspondence, such as in his letter to a friend in England
describing himself as "banished to a country of slaves and
beggars: my blood soured, my spirits sunk, fighting beasts
like St. Paul, not at Ephesus, but in Ireland."

Swift preached sermons “On the Excellence of
Christianity” and wanted to appear as the paragon of
moderation in pamphlets like "Sentiments of a Church-of-
England Man." Swift was contemptuous of modern religious
enthusiasm, pedantry, and hack writers, and he sometimes
celebrated a distant past when classical learning reigned in
the schools and an absolute monarch protected the freedom of
his dependents. C. J. Rawson notes that Swift's
contradictory views of authority correspond to contradictions
within himself, and that "his professed admiration for
compromise, moderation, and the common forms is balanced by
moods or contexts of suspicion or dislike for these very
things.“4 The reader is so conditioned to look for satire
and irony in the writing of Swift that it is difficult to
trust anything he says, especially when he confesses whether
to satirize or praise someone is essentially an aesthetic

decision. When dealing with people of moderate characters,

 

4C. J. Rawson, Gulliver and the Gentle Reader (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 57.

6
Swift is liable to take either road.

Swift used both panegyric and satire to direct his
praise and blame at ancients and moderns, reason and
imagination, scholars and pedants, clergy and “wits," and
England and Ireland. On a superficial level, Swift advocated
the established order of Church and State, but his greatest
writing is satire, a genre rarely respectful of authority.

Swift often endorsed the Anglican via media or moderate,

 

orthodox beliefs about theology and man's place in the
hierarchy of creation, but in many of his works like A Tale
of a Tub he ends up, consciously or not, demolishing the
basis for moderation. Swift can so easily switch modes, from
praising Robert Harley to assaulting the Duke of Marlborough,
that the reader approaches his writing with sometimes
unnecessary wariness and suspicion. Swift's education and
the intellectual milieu of the eighteenth-century encouraged
him to embrace "reason" and the natural order as
fundamentally correct principles, but Swift was profoundly
attracted to forms of writing that undermined his ostensible

beliefs.

Chapter 1

Moderation, Tyranny, and Corruption

This study was prompted by a series of questions for
which I did not have immediate answers after reading The
Drapier's Letters, "A Modest Proposal," A Tale of a Tub,

Gulliver's Travels, and other works in which Swift

 

demonstrates his obsession with authority. It is no fresh

insight that the via media or ”middle road" was an important

 

concept for Swift and his contemporaries, but what troubled
me were the powerfully opposed attitudes towards authority in
the political tracts, sermons, poems and pamphlets. What or
who is the authority in Swift's writing about the Church?
Why does Swift seem to waver back and forth from Tory to Whig
positions? Is Swift consistently an advocate of a certain
brand of orthodoxy? If the Church is the authority, why does
Swift satirize some of its rituals and beliefs? If the King
is the authority, why does Swift's defense of him sometimes
sound patently subversive? If God is the authority, why does
not Swift address Him directly?

There are three major bases of authority important to
Swift--the Church of England, the English Parliament, and the
Monarchy. I see many ways in which Swift accumulates
authority for himself to build up the force of his persuasive

tracts and sermons, and ways in which Swift sabotages

8
authority through satirical poems and pamphlets. My thesis
is that Swift is often professing to be the rational,
careful, objective voice of moderation, but that ultimately
he realizes that moderation is impossible. Swift is not a
person for whom moderation is an operative principle. For

example, there is no sustained via media in The Tale of a

 

Tub, which I shall discuss in detail in the next chapter,
because Swift has no concept of what moderation is, although
he offers as his purpose the defense of the Church of England
“as the most perfect of all others in discipline and
doctrine.“ Swift offers no convincing intermediate position
between the "fanaticks" and "Papists" but simply steps into
the contradiction perfectly poised to make cryptic statements
such as

Even I myself, the author of these momentous truths, am
a person, whose imaginations are hard-mouth'd, and
exceedingly disposed to run away with his reason, which
I have observed from long experience, to be a very light
rider, and easily shook off: upon which account, my
friends will never trust me alone, with a solemn
promise, to vent my speculations in this, or the like
manner, for the universal benefit of human kind: which,
perhaps, the gentle, courteous, and candid reader,
brimful of that modern charity and tenderness, usually
annexed to his office, will be very hardly persuaded to
believe.1

 

1"Digression Concerning Madness," The Prose Works of
Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis, 14 vols. (Oxford?*§E§Il
Blackwell, 1939-68), 1: 114. Hereafter referred to in
parenthetical citations as PW. I have departed from Davis in
my quotations in that I have eliminated italics and all
capitals not specifically allegorical. The use of italics
and capitals is a convention of eighteenth-century broadside
printing and does not measurably add to the effect of Swift's
writing.

 

 

9

In his writings about the Church, Swift's contradictory
attitudes towards authority are sometimes expressed in an
implied conflict between "fancy" or imagination and "reason,"
supposedly a guiding principle of the human mind and a force
of moderation. Yet if reason is a "very light rider and
easily shook off," the reader is unable to trust what
authority it may exert over the dangerous delusions of the
"fancy." If the reader is unable to trust the narrator of
The Tale of a Tub with his professed goal of venting
speculations "for the universal benefit of human kind," he is
left with no solid principles to guide him. Receding from
the text one step further, the speaker says that the “gentle,
courteous, and candid reader” surely will listen to his
'friends who do not trust him to deliver these momentous
truths. Of course! Anyone who speaks in double negatives
with this kind of manic bravado and knowing self-
incrimination is to be given wide latitude by the reader: the
reader fears the consequences if his "trust" is taken away.

The problem is that while Swift may cherish authority,
he is dissatisfied with the fact that human beings occupy
positions of power, not projected images of himself. This
provides Swift with an abundance of topics for his writing:
examples of failure in the proper administration of authority
by persons in the Church and government are evident
everywhere, at all times, throughout history, as long as the

speaker is on the outside looking in. In his writing about

16
the Church, Swift often speaks of "reason" as a source of
moderation between the extremes of what he sees as the
freethinking deists and the institution—bound Roman
Catholics. Yet he never offers a consistent definition of
reason nor attempts to explain how it actually operates.
What does not change throughout the span of his career is
Swift's inability to produce a convincing example of
moderation. Swift often attempts to use his own voice or
that of a persona as a source of objective mediation, but the
results can be devastating to that speaker's credibility, as

in A Tale of a Tub or "A Modest Proposal."

 

Swift is different from some of his contemporaries in
that he did not have a static, ideal "reason" to guide him in
areas of disagreement. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester,
writes in his "Satire Against Mankind" that

Our sphere of action is life's happiness

And he who thinks beyond thinks like an ass
Thus, whilst against false reasoning I inveigh
I own right reason, which I would obey

That reason which distinguishes by sense

And gives us rules of good and ill from thence,
That bounds desires with a reforming will

To keep them more in vigour, not to kill.

YOur reason hinders, mine helps to enjoy
Renewing appetites yours would destroy

My reason is my friend, yours is a cheat
Hunger calls out, my reason bids me eat.2

Rochester's "right reason" is based on sensory experience and
does not quell normal desires like hunger, but serves as a

reinforcement to life and inducement to pleasure. This is no

 

2The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, ed. Martin
Price TNew‘YOfk: Oxford University Press, 1973), 51.

11

staunch “reforming will" like that of some Reformation
ascetic such as John Calvin, but a moderate, common sense
guide to life. Reason to Rochester is a secular guiding
principle which helps to distinguish among false impressions
and leads to a life-giving state of happiness. Similarly,
Dryden's Religio Laici or religious belief of the layman
offers a defense of reason as a moderate, Christian guiding
principle against extremes such as the deist philosophy. In
his attack against deism or natural religion, Dryden insists
on the relationship between "borrowed beams" of reason and
the “supernatural light" to which they lead the faithful.

Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars

To lonely, weary, wandering travelers,

Is reason to the soul and, as on high

Those rolling fires discover but the sky,

Not light us here, so reason's glimmering ray

Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,

But guide us upward to a better day.

And as those nightly tapers disappear

When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere

So pale grows reason at Religion's sight:

So does, and so dissolves in supernatural light.3

The dissolution of reason's light means that there is a
continuity between it and the revelations of Christianity,
once they appear. The issue, which also concerned Swift, is
whether man's reason is self-sufficient and needs no external
guide (deism) or whether reason is untrustworthy and can
provide no guidance at all in matters of faith (fideism).

Dryden is striking a middle course between the two extremes,

saying that both independent reason and religious revelation

 

3Ibid., 9a.

12
have a role in matters of faith.

When contrasting Rochester and Dryden with Swift's
“definition” of reason, I can find no similar middle road.

When a man's fancy gets astride of his reason, when

imagination is at cuffs with the senses, and common

understanding as well as common sense, is kicked out of
doors: the first proselyte he makes is himself, and when
that is once compassed the difficulty is not so great in
bringing over others, a strong delusion always operating
from without as vigorously as from within. For cant and
vision are to the ear and the eye, the same that
tickling is to the touch. Those entertainments and
pleasures we most value in life are such as dupe and
play the wag with the senses. For, if we take an
examination of what is generally understood by
happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding
or the senses, we shall find all its prOperties and
adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it

is a perpetual possession of being well deceived (PW l:

108).

Like Rochester, Swift is concerned with man's happiness,
but for him it is an illusion. This famous paragraph has as
its thematic premise that imagination exerts a negative
influence over reason and that we should avoid being deceived
and made false proselytes by having our senses corrupted.

Yet Swift undermines the ostensible point with language that
is richly inventive and figurative: imagination is described
as a brute who ”cuffs" common sense and kicks him out of
doors, creating a proselyte who Operates wonderfully by
”tickling" the senses of his converts, subverting reasonable
faculties of sight and hearing with imaginative bliss.
Finally we are left with the delusion of happiness produced
by this "perpetual possession of being well deceived."

Swift draws a clear distinction between imagination with

13
its self-created figments and reason, which he takes to
correspond to outward reality. Most people prefer to live in
this ”perpetual possession of being well deceived" rather
than face the hard facts of reality. In this way, Swift
resembles an empiricist, although he is not a consistent
adherent of any philosophical school. Swift believes in
drawing rules of living not from abstract theory but from
experience. He often puts himself in situations that require
him to denounce imagination as a delusion corrupting those in
power. In fact, the tension created by Swift's imagination
energizes his writing, sometimes making him an unlikely
proponent of religious orthodoxy. Swift shared with Locke
this fear of "enthusiasm" and the workings of men's
imaginations. Locke questions
Is there any thing so extravagant, as the imaginations
of men's brains? Where is the head that has no chimeras
in it? Or if there be a sober and wise man, what
difference will there be, by your rules, between his
knowledge and that of the most extravagant fancy in the
world? They both have their ideas, and perceive their
agreement and disagreement one with another. If there
be any difference between them, the advantage will be on
the warmeheaded man's side, as having the more ideas,
and the more lively...but of what use is all this fine
knowledge of men's own imaginations, to a man that
enquires after the reality of things? It matters not
what men's fancies are, 'tis the knowledge of things
that is only to be prized: 'tis this alone gives a value
to our reasonings, and preference to one man's knowledge

over another's, that it is of things as they really are,
and not of dreams and fancies.4

Thus the "warm-headed man" with his chimeras and

 

4John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,
ed. Peter H. Nidditch (London: Oxford University Press,
1975), 562-63.

l4
”edifices in the air“ may gain the upper hand over the sober
and wise man who tries to probe inner reality and find out
things as they really are. Conflicting attitudes towards
authority are introduced when the warm-headed man and his
false sense of happiness prevail. He is prevented from
seeing the truth or paying due respect to orthodox positions
because he sees from behind a bank of fog, in what Swift
calls "a perpetual possession of being well-deceived.” Any
man who does not see the reality behind false appearances
cannot possibly understand or appreciate benevolence or
virtues in his leaders. On the other hand, if this man takes
a seat in the government or church not valuing a "knowledge
of things“ but overcome by his own extravagant fancy, there
may be disastrous consequences. The man deluded by
enthusiasm and imagination is capable of abusing the
authority he possesses, content with his own self-image of
power.

F. R. Leavis has raised the issue that we may lack a
positive standard in Swift's writings because even when he
concerns himself with defending something of value, the
effect is essentially negative. Leavis says that "the
positive itself appears only negatively--a kind of skeletal
presence, rigid enough, but without life or body: a necessary

precondition, as it were, of directed negation. The

15
intensity is purely destructive."5 Robert W. Uphaus in his
reader-centered criticism qualifies Leavis in saying that
there are some works which do uphold a positive standard in
the way Swift upholds a person or idea.

Another way of stating this matter is to say that in The
Battle of the Books, "The Argument Against Abolishing__—
Christianity," and The Drapier's Letters Swift serves as
a middleman who simultaneously defends something of
value--be it Sir William Temple, ancient learning, the
Test Act, or Ireland--as he castigates whatever
threatens that value--William Wotton, modern learning,
repeal of the Sacramental Test, or England's oppression
of Ireland. But in Gulliver's Travels or ”A Modest
Proposal," Swift is less a middle-man or intermediary
than he is an aggressor and adversary who, more than
anything else, attacks his readers because he no longer
trusts them.6

 

 

Even with the statement that Swift occasionally acts as
a middleman, the focus of the chapter is on the increasing
'phenomenon of "reader distortion," Swift's loss of faith in
the reader's reason, and his deteriorating faith in social
reform. Uphaus says that "the history of reader responses to

A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels suggests that Swift

 

certainly vexed the world, but the vexation may itself have
been prompted by Swift's inability or unwillingness to
sustain a satisfactory 'positive standard'" (10).

If Swift is seen as a person whose writings vexed the

world, it might come as a surprise that some critics have

 

5F. R. Leavis, "The Irony of Swift" in Swift, A
Collection of Critical Essa s, ed. Ernest Tuveson (Englewood
Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964 , l7.

 

6Robert W. Uphaus, "Swift and the Problematical Nature

of Meaning” in The Im ossible Observer (Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 1979), 9-27.

l6
assumed him to be fundamentally conservative. Phillip Harth
dates the general acceptance of Swift's religious orthodoxy
from the appearance of Ricardo Quintana's The Mind and Art of

Jonathan Swift in 1936. Harth himself endorses the portrait

 

of Swift as "Christian rationalist": he believes Swift's
familiarity with late seventeenth-century religious writers
such as More, Casaubon, Glanvill, and Tillotson is the
essential background for "A Tale of a Tub." Harth's real
accomplishment is in precisely documenting how Swift derived
from these Restoration Anglicans the ideas for his religious
allegory, digression on madness, and exposition on the
learned Aeolists. For example, Swift's treatment of Jack as
one who was driven mad by enthusiasm can be linked to More's
"Enthusiasmus Triumphatus“ and Casaubon's "Treatise
Concerning Enthusiasme."7 Harth's basic thesis is that
Anglican theologians who influenced Swift believed in a
rational faith based on the via media, where reason and faith
cooPerated against the extremes of Puritan enthusiasm and
Roman Catholic dogmatism.

It was usual during the nineteenth century to see Swift
as fundamentally irreligious, as a person who used a career
in the Church to further political ambitions denied to him by
Queen Anne. According to Thackeray, Swift did not respect

traditional Christian beliefs and his religious writings were

 

7Phillip Harth, Swift and Anglican Rationalism (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1961), 72-78.

17
the mechanical product of rationalism without insight or

CODViCtiOU-B Swift's sermons are sometimes regarded as
uninspired orthodoxy, an opinion not passionately denied by
his own correspondence. Writing to his friend and fellow
cleric John Winder, Swift says his sermons ”will utterly
disgrace you...they were what I was firmly resolved to burn,

and especially some of them, the idlest trifling stuff that
ever was writ."9 Satisfied that some of Swift's sermons
escaped the flames, recent criticism has ad0pted an image of
Swift as a pragmatic, convention-bound pastor. David Nokes
says

Swift's sermons are homilies on social, rather than
spiritual topics. They seek to encourage dutiful
behavior and orthodox opinions by eschewing theological
problems and recommending instead a simple, deferential
code of conduct to his parishioners...the sermons
present us with the voice of Swift the Churchman: it is
the voice of a deliberately narrow and shallow
orthodoxy. In his literary and political satires we see
Swift defending positions of orthodoxy with a
bewildering range of unorthodox devices. Few of his
religious writings show anything like the same
versatility, and the inference is inescapable that it
was in his relationship with God that Swift felt most
uneasy.lfl

While it is true that Swift's sermons lack the

 

3William Makepeace Thackeray, “The English Humourists of
the Eighteenth Century," The Com lete Works, 19 vols.
(Boston: William Estes, 1881), 8: 121-27.

9The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold
Williams, 5 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1963-65),

1: 29. Hereafter referred to in parenthetical citations as
Corr.

1“David Nokes, Jonathan Swift, A Hypocrite Reversed
(London: Oxford University Press, I985), 278.

18
imaginative power of his satire, I think Nokes too quickly
settles for the orthodoxy Swift offers because it matches our
expectations. We expect Swift to deliver easily digestible
packages of moral wisdom in sermons which in no way affront
authorities in the church. Yet this is a superficial
orthodoxy, a perfunctory endorsement of established order in
sermons like "On Mutual Subjection" and "On the Excellency of
Christianity." I find that even in the restrained form of
the sermon, Swift's imagination is never completely given
over to exhorting his congregation to adopt certain forms of
behavior. We may expect the voice of the Churchman and
recognize his familiar Christian platitudes, but Swift's
ambivalence towards authority makes him insert some
dangerously heretical logic in the three sermons I shall
discuss, ”The Testimony of Conscience,“ "Mutual Subjection,"
and "The Excellency of Christianity."

Before looking at the sermons, I think it is necessary
to discuss them in light of what Swift wrote to himself in
the form of epigrams or maxims. In "Thoughts on Religion,"
Swift expresses the idea that reason is the liberty of
conscience which may or may not lead to belief in God: "I am
in all opinions to believe according to my own impartial
reason: which I am bound to inform and improve as far as my
capacity and opportunities will permit" (PE 9: 261). The
problem is that reason, once planted by God, may act

independently of external forces or authorities: incentives

l9
and punishments may be used to solicit certain forms of
behavior, but Swift makes it clear that belief itself cannot
be coerced by the violent zeal of a prince or preacher.
Furthermore, when independent reason leads to opinions that
contradict accepted doctrine, Swift feels that every man
ought to be content with his own opinion kept in private
”without perplexing his neighbor or disturbing the
public...the want of belief is a defect that ought to be
concealed when it cannot be overcome."

This idea of the independence of reason which makes for
private misgivings was problematic for many of Swift's
contemporaries like Pope, who wrote of "This light and
darkness in our chaos joined/ What shall divide? The God

within the mind" (Essay on Man, II, 203). When we consider

 

the Enlightenment ideal of universal, natural reason, there
should be ideally no disagreement on matters of faith which
follow from independent contemplation of God's grand design.
Swift is saying that such discrepancies are the unfortunate
product of reason which God has granted to every person: the
best we can do is to conceal such doubts and not let them
influence public behavior. Is such self-discipline, denial
and division really possible? Apparently not, for Swift
advocates the kind of society equipped with safeguards
against subversive behavior at the same time he acknowledges
the intellectual problem of the liberty of conscience. Every

man should enjoy the freedom of possessing his own thoughts

20

and Opinions, but should he decide to act against the
established authority, there must be laws in place to
regulate his behavior. So there is a constant battle going
on inside the mind of this "orthodox" Churchman:

Although reason were intended by providence to govern

our passions, yet it seems that, in two points of the

greatest moment to the being and continuance of the

world, God hath intended our passions to prevail over

reason. The first is, the propagation Of our species,

since no man ever married from the dictates of reason.

The other is, the love of life, which, from the dictates

of reason, every man would despise, and wish it at an

end, or that it never had a beginning.11

Reason and the passions are at war just as social
institutions like marriage demand that men not act on their
private doubts. On the other hand, commonplace wisdom like
the love of life depends on passions sometimes gaining the
upper hand. There is an enormous suppressed energy in the
idea that basic social order depends on this delicate
balance. What if every man were to act on his doubts and
heed the dictates of private reason? What if anti-
rationalism and depravity prevailed? What if the laws of the
nation were an insufficient defense against irrational
behavior? It is clear from "Thoughts on Religion" that we
would have a world blinded by factions, a society of yahoos
competing for personal rewards.

"Thoughts on Religion" is a set Of unrelated maxims,

Swift's private meditations that contradict the more

persuasively-directed ideas in the public discourse of his

 

11"Thoughts on Religion," PW 9: 263.

21
senmons. "On the Testimony of Conscience” is a sermon in
which Swift devotes himself to publicly attacking a view that
he privately believes: individual conscience can function
independently of the laws of God. But to what kind of
authorities does Swift appeal in the sermon? Here Swift
reduces the role of conscience saying it is nothing but what
we are thinking and doing at the moment.

Liberty of conscience is now-a-days not only understood

to be the liberty of believing what men please, but also

of endeavoring to propagate the belief as much as they
can, and to overthrow the faith which the laws have
already established, to be rewarded by the publick for
those wicked endeavors: and this is the liberty of
conscience which the fanaticks are now openly in the
face of the world endeavoring at with their utmost

application (PW 9: 151).

So while Swift seems to advocate freedom of thought in
."Thoughts on Religion," his sermon advocates the suppression
of religious nonconformists and "fanaticks." This includes
groups like Presbyterians, Anabaptists, and Quakers and
individuals like Asgil, Tindal, Toland, and Coward.12 Their
proselytizing is nothing but a "wicked endeavor" to violate
the law and seek public reward for their rebellion.

Swift's sermon "On Mutual Subjection" might be read as
the rehearsal Of a traditional Christian theme expressed by

St. Peter's maxim: "Likewise ye younger submit yourselves

unto the Elder: yea, all of you be subject one to another."

 

12All referred to directly in A Tale of a Tub and "An
Argument To Prove that the Abolishing of Christianity in
England, May As Things Now Stand, Be Attended With Some
Inconveniences."

22
But Swift's imagination capitalizes on the second half of
this phrase, the inversion Of the hierarchy:

For we may Observe by Saint Peter, that having mentioned

the several relations which men bear to each other, as

governor and subject, master and servant, and the rest
which I have already repeated, he maketh not exception,
but sums up the whole with commanding all be subject one
to another. From whence we may conclude, that this
subjection due from all men to all men, is something
more than the compliment of course, when our betters are
pleased to tell us they are our humble servants, but

understand us to be their slaves (PW 9: 141).

The crucial phrase here is "something more than the
compliment of course:" the idea Swift expresses goes beyond
the orthodox, rational assumptions about superiority and
power relationships. There is a latent anarchy in this
mutual subjection which challenges the accepted roles of
governor/subject or master/slave. If those in power are
"pleased" to tell their dependents that they are humble
servants while understanding them to be slaves, is not Swift
hinting at ambivalent attitudes towards authority? It is
impossible to accept conventional patterns without
acknowledging the tension in this sermon that purports to
endorse the status quo. I find nothing in Swift's
explication of St. Peter that defines a middle way between
the roles of master and slave. Swift surreptitiously
questions the idea of authority in this sermon when he writes
that "there must be some kind of subjection due from every
man to every man, which cannot be made void by any power,

pre-eminence, or authority whatever.” Of course we hear of

God's great chain of being and how each person must behave

23
according to his particular station, yet the inversion of
Christ, who washed the feet of his disciples, leads Swift to
other examples of the powerful and powerless:

The Prince cannot say to the merchant, I have no need of

thee. For the poor are generally more necessary members

of the commonwealth than the rich: which clearly shews,
that God never intended such possessions for the sake
and service of those to whom he lends them...Nay, even
the poor beggar hath a just demand of an alms from the
rich man, who is guilty of fraud, injustice, and
oppression, if he doth not afford relief according to

his abilities (PW 9: 143-4).

We are tempted to dismiss this as Swift's feeble attempt
to placate the laboring parishioners as "necessary" for the
good Of the nation. But there is a hidden subversive logic
in the "just demand of an alms" from the rich person who
sounds like a potential target for Swift's satire. It is
impossible to produce an exact date for the composition of
the sermons. We do not know where Swift was living when he
wrote them, but it is likely that the references to ”rich"
and "poor" are based on Swift's feelings about England's
exploitation of Ireland.

Swift's sermon "On the Excellency of Christianity" is
Often used as an example Of his orthodoxy. Louis Landa notes
that Swift's position is the conventional one embodied in
Locke's statement that "the true ground of morality can only
be the will and law of God, who sees men in the dark, has his
hands in rewards and punishments, and power enough to call to

account the proudest offender" (PW 9: 115). In this sermon

Swift tries to persuade his congregation that Christian

24
philosophy is in all things preferable to "heathen wisdom", a
dilemma in itself remembering how passionately Swift
cherished classical authority in tracts like "Contests and
Dissensions in Athens and in Rome." Swift even praises the
ancients in the sermon, saying they "rose to a greater pitch
of wisdom and virtue than was ever known among Christians,
and all this purely upon strength of their own reason and
liberty of conscience" (PW 9: 242). So how does Christianity
ascend over the virtues of Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates?
Swift tries to prove that their philosophy is grounded upon
ignorance and mistakes: they are misled by their own
imperfect reason and moral defects. For example, they cannot
agree on what virtue is or where the happiness of man can be
found.

There are more contradictions in this sermon than
Swift's regard for Christian and classical authority. What
is most revealing is Swift's Opinion that classical
philosophy's emphasis on material rewards for virtue is
mistaken:

Bodily goods, being only suitable to bodily wants, are

no rest at all for the mind: and, if they were, yet are

they not the proper fruits of wisdom and virtue, being
equally attainable by the ignorant and wicked. Now,
human nature is so constituted, that we can never pursue
any thing heartily but upon h0pes of a reward. If we
run a race, it is in expectation of a prize, and the
greater the prize the faster we run...but some of the
philosophers gave all this quite another turn, and
pretended to refine so far, as to call virtue its own

reward, and worthy to be followed only for itself (2W 9:

244).

Swift is saying that human nature is such that we will not

25
pursue anything unless there is the potential for reward, the
carrot held out on the stick. This is not necessarily bad if
the congregation follows the logic of POpe, who wrote that
“Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul: Reason's

comparing balance rules the whole " (Essay On Man, II, 59).

 

But we must remember that for Swift, reason was not such an
unifying force capable of keeping in balance contradictory
urges of mind and body. Swift insists that material rewards
are insufficient motivations for pursuing virtue, "bodily
goods being only suitable for bodily wants, are no rest for
the mind at all." He goes on to say that a man looking for
preferments and prizes will have no hOpe for spiritual
greatness because he has no firm footing.

But wait a minute! This is exactly the plan Swift
advocated in his earlier "Project for the Advancement of
Religion,” a carefully-engineered scheme in which the
appearance of moral integrity is the ticket to political
success. In this tract, Swift suggests that if piety and
virtue were acknowledged as qualifications necessary for
preferment, ”every man thus endowed, when put into great
station, would readily imitate the Queen's example in the
distribution of offices" (EH,2‘ 48). At first glance, it
might seem hypocritical to say that the appearance of
integrity is enough to get someone in office but not enough
to guarantee rest for the mind.

This kind of ethical relativism has been discussed

26
regarding Defoe's use of casuistry by George A. Starr, who
argues that Defoe's use Of "blameworthy" characters compels
the reader's sympathy because the reader appreciates the
difficult cases of conscience which Robinson Crusoe, Moll
Flanders, and Roxana face. Defoe's characters are complex
because they embrace so many different moral tensions as they
try to justify the rules of religion and morality to suit
their particular problems. It was not only in fiction that
“bending the rules" of morality was justified. Starr writes
that

During the seventeenth century...casuistry also found a
host of advocates. John Selden, for instance, advises
that casuistry is one of the "four things a Minister
should be at": casuists, he says, "may be of admirable
use, if discreetly dealt with, though among them you
shall have many leaves together very impertinent." And
George Herbert speaks for many fellow Anglicans when he
declares, in his survey of "The Parson's Accessary
Knowledges," that "He greatly esteemes also of cases of
conscience, wherein he is much versed." In their
visitation charges, various prelates prescribe the study
of casuistry for the clergy of their dioceses. Thomas
Sprat, better known today as the historian of the Royal
Society than as BishOp of Rochester, is typical in
maintaining that "being a sound and well-experienced
casuist is...a most excellent qualification towards all
the other ends of your ministerial office: there being
no kind of skill or proficiency in all your theological
studies that more becomes a divine of the Church of
England, whose highest spiritual art is to speak
directly from his own conscience to the consciences of
all those under his Pastoral care."l3

What sort of casuistry, if any, is taking place in "An
Argument Against Abolishing Christianity?" Swift's use of

irony and satire in support of occasional conformity would

 

13George A. Starr, Defoe and Casuistry, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1971), 6.

27
seem a perfect example of a circumstantial case where the
rules of religion were altered to suit the needs of
government Officials. Swift says that occasional conformity
is better than no conformity at all, but the satirical force
with which he describes how men actually conduct their lives
leaves me to doubt his true intention.

"An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity" is as
close as Swift comes in his writing about the Church to a
truly moderate position. The problem is that the speaker is
tackling three distinct issues at once, which may account for
the dispersion of (or lack of) emotional conviction in his
support Of "occasional conformity." First is the speaker's
advocacy of the Test Act or "nominal Christianity" by which
'Officials in the government demonstrate a token observance of
communion in the Church of England. Second, the speaker
vents his rage directly against Asgil, Tindal, Toland, Coward
and other freethinking deists who believe that official
Christianity impedes their liberty of conscience. A related
purpose is the speaker's ironic concern for the "scrofulous,
consumptive productions furnished by our men of wit and
pleasure." Third and most problematic is the speaker's
statement that despite the sincere altruism of those who
propose to abolish religion, it is impossible to legislate
belief. Just because all parties agree that abolishing
Christianity would enlarge personal freedoms, eliminate

factions, reduce useless bawling on Sunday, and create one

28
more day for commercial enterprise does not mean that people
will actually stOp believing in religion. Swift's casuistry
may Operate at a more Official than personal level, and this
is where I think the moderate position he delineates fails to
convince the reader.

Swift wrote in "Thoughts on Religion“ that “you may
force men, by interest or punishment, to say they believe,
and to act as if they believed. You can go no further." In
the truest sense of belief, the point is that Christianity
cannot be enacted or abolished and the reasonable speaker
fully realizes it. His moderate position between atheism and
true belief is easier and more accessible because he admits
that finally no one actually knows what is believed. The
speaker is caught between having a fine point to argue and
finding an empty spot in the heart of his thinking. Swift's
argument against eliminating religion is an exercise in
rhetorical skill by which he establishes the boundaries Of
occasional conformity, an official position and nothing more.
There is no passionate defense of a moderate position or of
belief itself, the true foundation of Christianity. Swift's
orthodoxy and faith in the Test Act are fully apparent, but
so is the problem of any Official act corresponding to
reality:

Will any man say that if the words whoring, drinking,

cheating, lying, stealing, were by act of parliament

ejected out of the English tongue and dictionaries, we
should all awake next morning chaste and temperate,

honest and just, and lovers of truth? Is this a fair
consequence? Or if the physicians would forbid us to

29

pronounce the words pox, gout, rheumatism, and stone,

would that expedient serve like so many talismans to

destroy the diseases themselves?

So even if everyone should agree to abolish
Christianity, the speaker is saying that abolishing belief is
quite another thing and quite impossible. The parliament may
do all it wishes with words, but words alone are only a faint
indication of what is inside a man's head. Swift is saying
that you may have it your way and abolish Christianity, but
that finally government lacks the authority needed to abolish
belief. This kind of casuistry leaves the door Open to
individual decisions.

Because of the satire and imaginative energy generated
in the defense of nominal Christianity, the reader is left
with the impression that the speaker's real purpose is to
expose the real state of Christianity in England. We know
that Swift was in favor of the Church's authority to forbid
persons from holding office who did not take communion in the
Church Of England, but the force of the essay is in the
speaker's nonchalance and presumptuous tone:

I hOpe, no reader imagines me so weak to stand up in the

defence of real Christianity: such as used in primitive

times (if we may believe the authors of those ages) to
have an influence upon men's belief and actions: to
offer at the restoring of that, would indeed be a wild
project: it would be to dig up foundations: to destroy
at one blow all the wit, and half the learning of the
kingdom: to break the entire frame and constitution of
things: to ruin trade, extinguish arts and sciences with
the professors of them: in short, to turn our courts,
exchanges, and shops into deserts...every candid reader
will easily understand my discourse to be intended only

in defense of nominal Christianity: the other having
been for some time wholly laid aside by general consent,

3%

as utterly inconsistent with our present schemes of
wealth and power (PW 2: 27-8).

These schemes of wealth and power, commerce, education,
courts, and social institutions are the real things the
speaker wishes to point out as more important on a personal
level to the average citizen than Christianity. The point is
that genuine, primitive Christianity is hopelessly
incompatible with the present state of affairs. The speaker
says that we can only laugh at those who assume real
Christianity is a defensible doctrine. How would this be
read by authorities in the church? The answer is that it
would anger them to no end and do more damage with off-hand
irony than it would persuade in favor of the Church's
supremacy.

The speaker tries to model himself as a moderate,
reasonable, middle-of—the-road investigator who will equally
represent both sides. In the organization of his essay, he
is very successful in accomplishing this purpose. The
speaker announces that he will "briefly consider the strength
of both [positions], fairly allow them their greatest weight,
and offer such answers as I think most reasonable." Of
course, the reader is likely to question on what basis an
argument is decided to be reasonable. Is it only according
to the speaker's judgment or is it submitted to an impartial
tribunal? The center of the whole piece is the carefully
crafted line "Nor do I think it wholly groundless, or my

fears altogether imaginary: that the abolishing of

 

(\

31

Christianity may perhaps bring the Church in danger, which
is more a political than religious statement. What follows
is the suggestion that abolishing Christianity "will be the
readiest course we can take to introduce Popery," by which he
implies that Roman Catholics and Dissenters are Christians,
but not proper members of the Church of England and not
pr0per1y admissable to official, government duties.

The argument supposedly attacks hypocrisy by "defending"
the practices of a society that has by common consent adopted
the ideal of nominal Christianity. Here the loss of
Christianity would mean the death of the forbidden fruits of
whoring, gaming, drinking, cheating, and stealing which men
so thoroughly enjoy because they are illicit. With no dog-
tailed parsons walking the streets, the "great wits" would be
deprived an object of scorn and would be forced instead to
revile the government. Swift satirizes the practice of the
great wits while paradoxically performing this same service
in ”defending" the Sunday sabbath:

What if the men of pleasure are forced, one day in the

week, to game at home, instead of the chocolate-house?

Are not the taverns and coffee-houses open? Can there

be a more convenient season for taking a dose of physio?

Are fewer claps got upon Sundays than other days? Is

not that the day for traders to sum up the accounts Of

the week: and for lawyers to prepare their briefs?

(PW 2: 31).

The speaker's dismissal of primitive Christianity is
done at an Official level and he offers no emotionally-driven

reasons why we should not abolish Christianity: he revels in

his exercise Of wit and never comes close to endorsing the

32
authority of the church. If this is not a contradictory
attitude towards authority, written while Swift was trying to
secure a preferment for himself, then the author was either
misguided or totally deluded.

Swift's poetry is equally unsettling if one attempts to
locate a stable center of orthodoxy. The satirical poem "On
the Irish Bishops" was written in 1732, a time when Swift had
permanently settled in Ireland, so he was not in danger of
destroying his chances of returning to England in an official
capacity. Writing to Bishop Stearne, Swift said

when those two abominable bills, for enslaving and

beggaring the clergy, (which took their birth from Hell)

were upon the anvil, if I had found your Lordship's name
among the bishops who would have turned them into a law,

I might have been apt to discover such marks of

indignation, horror, and despair, both in words and

deportment, as would have ill become me to a person of

your station. For, I call God to witness, what I did

then, and do now, and shall for ever, firmly believe,

that every bishop, who gave his vote for either of these
bills, did it with no other view than a premeditated
design, from the spirit Of ambition and love of
arbitrary power, to make the whole body of the clergy
their slaves and vassals until the Day of Judgment,

under the load of poverty and contempt. (Corr IV: 182).

This is exactly the spirit of the poem, but whereas the
letter is a direct indictment of the bishops as self-serving
and tyrannical, the poem with its imaginative comparison
between the bishops and Satan is far more powerful. Swift
says that the bishops, like Satan, are surrounded with
”jewels of sulphur and nitre" and the obsequious parsons,

whom the bishops poke with their croziers to keep them in

place. The established authorities are damnable bishops with

33

underlings who do not have the legitimate right of
succession. This is Swift's satirical portrait of the idea
Of religious authority:

Our bishOps puffed up with wealth and pride:

To hell on the backs of the clergy would ride:

They mounted, and laboured with whip and with spur,

In vain--for the devil a parson would stir.

So the Commons unhorsed them, and this was their doom,
On their croziers to ride, like a witch on a broom.l4

The fact that the Irish House of Commons overturned the
two bills that would have allowed the bishops to divide large
parishes does not matter: Swift's savage attack against the
prevailing order shows how imagination creates effective
vehicles for subversive thoughts. The theme is that of one
set of people metaphorically mounting their horses, living
.off the sweat of other's labor. It is perhaps the most
heretical idea possible for a Churchman that his superiors
may have things in common with the evil one: they may deceive
and appear to be benevolent authorities. Swift's imaginative
indictment is more effective than the straightforward anger
of the letter because in the poem, he uses the outward signs
of authority to destroy the image of moral superiority. For
example, he refers to the vestments and accessories which go

along with the bishOp's office: croziers, mitre, and gowns.

 

14"On the Irish Bishops" in Jonathan Swift: The Complete
Poems, ed. Pat Rogers (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,’1983),

. All subsequent quotations are taken from this edition
and referred to in parenthetical citations as Poems. I am
also indebted to the notes in The Poems of Jonathan Swift,
ed. Harold Williams, 3 vols. (London: Oxford University
Press, 1958).

 

34

Now hear an allusion! A mitre, you know

Is divided above, but united below.

If this you consider, our emblem is right:

The bishops divide, but the clergy unite.

Should the bottom be split, our bishops would dread
That the mitre would never stick fast on their head,
And yet they have learnt the chief art of a sovereign,
As Machiavel taught 'em: 'divide and ye govern.’

But, courage, my lords, though it cannot be said

That one cloven tongue, ever sat on your head:

I'll hold you a groat, and wish I could see't,

If your stockings were Off, you could show cloven feet.

A mitre would be the first thing a common pastor would
notice about the bishOp's appearance, and Swift transforms
it, using it as symbol of the strategy to divide and subdue.
Conventional orthodoxy would have it that any directive from
Church superiors must be received with unquestioned
acceptance, but Swift shows that, like Satan, the bishop's
appearance deceives. They desire to undermine the financial
and spiritual independence of the parish priest by dividing
their glebe lands and sacrificing their tithes: "with the
tithe of the tithe of the tithe to maintain you...you are
only to live four years without victuals." The bishops share
with Machiavelli and corrupt monarchs the power to prevail
over weakness when the opposition is reduced. Although
perhaps the bishops' heads have never been anointed by the
devil, what is worse is that they age the devil: their
stockings pulled Off would reveal the plain fact. The poet
is not deceived by their false appearances. He sees through
their vestments and strategies into the truth of their
identity.

Swift's letter (quoted above) to Bishop Stearne refers

35

to the Day of Judgment as an eventuality, a rite Swift
performs continually. This is a final answering point for
the corrupt Bishops to account for their preying on the
parish lands. Swift's poem with that title is one Of his
most disturbing and surprising, not because it is satirical
but because it is wide-Open and violent. Herbert Davis has
written that the poem "is the complete triumph of the Comic
Spirit, unabashed and unafraid, delighting to overthrow all
mankind's claims to dignity and importance and 'ending with a
puff' the whole heroic and romantic delusion."12 There is a
certain playfulness in the octosyllabic couplets and one
syllable rhymes, concluding with the idea that the reader has
been taken by this "bite" or witty trap. We cannot tell if
the poem is written in a state of dream, illusion, or
madness. What is surprising is that the deity empowered to
make judgments is not the Christian God but the ancient Roman
god of the sky, Jove “armed with terrors," bursting the skies
with thunder and lightning. The poet is amazed and confused
with the rest of the world, his fate in the hands of the
horrific pagan vision.

With a whirl of thought oppressed,

I sink from reverie to rest.

An horrid vision seized my head

I saw the graves give up their dead (Poems, 507).

The shift in tenses and the confusion of consciousness

 

12Herbert Davis, Jonathan Swift: Essays on His Satire
and Other Studies, (New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1964),
198.

36
and dreams give the poem a surreal quality. We do not know
if the poet is suppressing his own thoughts or if Jove or
some other power is forcing him into a dream state. What
Davis calls the "Comic Spirit" is the tremendous authority of
Jove to put humans in their place, calling them an "offending
race...by nature, reason, learning blind." The whole poem is
about damnation. The pride of man has allowed him to divide
the Church into trivial sects and damn each other while
Jove's grand design has been ignored. Jove thunders "I
resent these pranks no more./ I to such blockheads set my
wit! I damn such fools." The authority here rests on
complete acceptance of reason and the avoidance of the faults
of self-deceiving pride and imagination.

That Swift had ambivalent attitudes towards authority is
evident in other poems he wrote about persons in the Church.
Swift's poem "On Dr. Rundle" echoes the condemnations of "The
Irish Bishops" but contrasts their general moral decay with
an individual whom he celebrates for particular virtues,
perhaps as a projected image of himself. I am reminded of
Swift's comment to Pope that "I tell you after all that I do
not hate mankind: it is vous autres who hate them because you
would have them reasonable animals, and are angry for being
disappointed" (QQEE 3: 118). Swift may be disappointed in
the conduct and authority of the Irish Bishops as a group,
but he emphatically supports Dr. Rundle of Derry, a person

who does not abuse his authority. What he explains as

37
Rundle's virtues are exactly the values Swift himself
admires. The other bishOps have quarreled over Rundle's
selection according to Swift because he has learning, sense
and morals.

There is a reason still more weighty:

'Tis granted he believes a deity.

Has every circumstance to please us,

Though fools may doubt his faith in Jesus.

But why should he with that be loaded,

Now twenty years from court exploded?

And, is not this Objection odd

From rogues who ne'er believed a God?

For liberty a champion stout,

Though not so gospel-ward devout.

While others hither sent to save us,

Came but to plunder and enslave us:

Nor ever owned a power divine,

But Mammon, and the German line (Poems, 547).

It is especially revealing that Swift places Rundle's
faith in God (what we would take for granted) as his foremost
virtue because it implies the other bishops cannot claim
virtue. Not only does Rundle have faith, but he is
uninfluenced by religious enthusiasm, not a gospel-ward
devout but sound in his belief in God. Though fools may
doubt his faith, Swift explains that it is real because
Rundle has been "exploded" or away from the court for twenty
years: there is nothing for him to gain through the
appearance of religion: "why should he with that be loaded?"
Rundle's authority as a servant of a living God is genuine.
Others professing to religion have come to Ireland to plunder
and enslave with the authority of commerce or the Hanoverian

monarchy, but Rundle stands out as a champion of liberty,

genuine faith, unenthusiastic devotion and common sense.

38

How does Swift contrast Rundle with the other bishops?
He compares the bishops with Simon Magus, who offered money
to be given the power of laying on of hands and was chastised
by Peter (Pets 3: 9-13). From this episode we derive our
definition of "simony," and it applies to Swift's
condemnation of the bishOps: "Were Peter now alive, perhaps/
He might have found a score of chaps/ Could he but make his
gift appear/ In rents three thousand pounds a year.“ The
Anglican BishOps are, like Simon Magus, vulnerable to bribery
and not above using money to promote themselves, even selling
their children, house, and lands to achieve the authority got
by Rundle through faith alone. The other bishops are not
only possessed by greed, but they also doubt the existence of
a Holy Ghost. Rundle has the better jus divinum and Swift
celebrates his moral integrity amidst this crowd of cheats
and imposters. The real question of authority is thus
divided. First, Swift sees the corrupt money-handling and
hypocrisy which has elevated men like Edmund Gibson, Bishop
of London, into places of power. Second there is Dr. Rundle,
whose faith, sense of moderation, and religious integrity
have allowed him to rise to his new title.

It is revealing to compare the perceived authority of
Dr. Rundle, a man whom Swift personally knew and admired,
with that of Dr. William Sancroft, with whom Swift had an
obscure relationship. The "Ode to Dr. William Sancroft” was

one of Swift's first compositions in verse written to a man

39

whom Swift idealized as an uncompromising religious hero.
The portrait is more abstract and less convincing in some
ways. Swift says that Sancroft is so superior that he "moves
too high/ To be observed by vulgar eye." Yet Swift also
calls Sancroft "primitive" in contrast with the deluded,
mistaken schismatics who want to tear down the Church,
faction by faction. The foolish men in the Church judge what
is best not with reason or common sense but by "flowing
opinion dark and blind." Unlike Sancroft or Rundle, the
reformers with a hunger for power misguide others with their
self-serving philosophy and pride:

SO when Cartesian artists try

To solve appearances of sight

In its reception to the eye,

And catch the living landscape through a scanty light,

The figures all inverted show

And colours of a faded hue...

And some, to be large ciphers in state,

Pleased with an empty swelling to be counted great:

Make their minds travel o'er infinity of space,

Rapt through the wide expanse of thought

And oft in contradiction's vortex caught,

To keep that worthless clod, the body, in one place:

Errors like this did old astronomers misguide,

Led blindly on by gross philosophy and pride

(Low. 61)-

The idea is clear. Certain men within the Church are
like experimental scientists or Cartesians, seeking truth
through physical data and trying to prove that light is
created when it is received by the eye. Mistaken by their
pseudo-scientific certainty, power mongers in the Church

dream of self-importance and make their minds jump over the

humble boundaries of common sense to "travel o'er infinity of

40
space." It is in itself a contradiction because those hungry
for recognition pursue personal gain in a Church supposedly
preaching humility.

Sancroft is like Rundle in that he has attained his
office and position of authority through an independent,
strong faith which Swift celebrates. When Swift writes of
”some high spiritual throne" Sancroft will be given in
heaven, he wants to say that these values are profound and
enduring, not the turbulent fantasy of a vain reformer which
”crumbles into dust." Sancroft is not being led by avarice
and pride because he has persevered through the misguided
philosophy of the schismatics. In other words, though
Swift's two poems are some 45 years apart in date of
composition, his attitude about the source of religious
authority has not changed. Swift displays negative attitudes
towards authority in the church when it is driven by
fanatics, zealots, or fools. These people cannot be shown
respect at any cost. The authority Swift respects is in
people who have attained high office without being made a
prostitute to their imagination and selfish interests, men
like Sancroft and Rundle who have held tightly to an
independent, responsible faith.

Swift may have celebrated the Church of England or
ecclesiastical authority in some of his sermons and
pamphlets, but he openly disparages it in poems like "The

Irish Bishops" and "On Dr. Rundle." Swift's poem "Verses

41
Occasioned by the Sudden Drying Up of St. Patrick's Well"
takes the unorthodox position of comparing the mission of St.
Patrick with the Anglican invasion of Ireland, of which Swift
was a representative. ”St. Patrick's Well" has in common
with the "Ode to Sancroft" a more ornate style which uses
archaic phrases and Latinisms generally lacking in his well-
known poems. Although the poem is a strongly-worded
statement of Swift's view of the Church in Ireland, it is
Often overlooked even by critics concerned with the issue.
It is an excellent example of Swift's contradictory attitudes
towards authority not so much because of its imaginative
content but because in it he writes in the first person,
adopting the voice of St. Patrick.

For all the raillery and contempt Swift has directed
against Ireland and her "Papists," "St. Patrick's Well"
paradoxically champions the ancient celtic race and the
mission of the Hibernian Patron Saint. The most important
word in the poem is "tyranny" through which Swift shows the
wretched changes conceived under Anglican authority:

What else are those thou seest in bishop's gear

Who crOp the nurseries of learning here?

Aspiring, greedy, full of senseless prate.

Devour the church, and chatter to the state.

As you grew more degenerate and base,

I sent you millions of the croaking race:

Emblems of insects vile, who spread their spawn

Through all thy land, in armour, fur and lawn.

A nauseous brood, that fills your senate walls,

And in the chambers of your Viceroy crawls.

See, where the new-devouring vermin runs,

Sent in my anger from the land of Huns:

With harpy claws it undermines the ground,
And sudden spreads a numerous offspring round:

42
The amphibious tyrant, with his ravenous band,
Drains all thy lakes of fish, of fruits thy land.
(ngmg, 376)

We first notice stylistic differences between this and
Swift's other poems. There is some poetic diction such as
"croaking race" or "insects vile," some archaic pronouns, and
frequent use of caesura. More importantly, Swift's use of
animal imagery to represent the Anglican invasion gives the
passage its emotional power. The "nauseous brood” imported
from England is a plague or pestilence which infests the
land. Vile insects infiltrate the seats of authority and
devour it from within. Swift's choice of the rat to
represent corrupt judges and bishops is significant because
it is an “amphibious tyrant" who crosses the sea and harvests
all the fruits from the land, an emblem of absentee landlords
in England living off raw materials from Ireland.

The result is that Ireland suffers under the tyranny of
this ravenous, corrupt brood of officials, symbolized in the
drying up of St. Patrick's well and in the surrender of the
speaker in the poem. As long as these "foreign prelates"
have their way, Ireland cannot have her religious sanctity.
As we have seen in the poems to Sancroft and Rundle,
religious authority according to Swift must respect the
freedom of the individual. The well which was a symbol of
Christian freedom has been drained by the rats, frogs,
magpies, and assorted vermin that represent the oppressive

plague of the Church. That Swift could write with such

43
emotion in the persona of St. Patrick is made more remarkable
by the uncharacteristic inclusion of copious historical notes
and long explanations of classical sources. Swift is not
usually inclined to demonstrate the depth of his learning.
but perhaps because Of the heretical position he takes
against his own church he feels compelled to flesh out his
knowledge base in notes. Swift takes the position that
Ireland would be better off without this invading brood of
Anglicans, an indictment against himself in his roles as
Priest and Dean.

Swift's attitude towards religious authority is based on
the idea that authority must be exercised responsibly,
although there is no genuine portrait of moderation in that
regard. The middle way or a positive standard for Swift may
exist in panegyrical poems, but it is lost as soon as he
looks at how authority is actually used. Because Swift
cannot accept the fact that he did not achieve a position of
authority, he uses satire in his writings about the Church.
While he is capable of praising those who embrace a genuine
faith and lead by example instead of through manipulation,
Swift is still far from being an orthodox, middle-of-the-
road apologist for the Church of England. The most powerful
impression made by Swift's writings about the Church is not
his doctrinal support of the Anglican via media, but his

repudiation of religious tyranny and corruption.

Chapter 2

"Innovators in the Empire of Reason":

The Failure of Moderation in A Tale of a Tub

The reader of A Tale of a Tub is faced with many kinds

 

of authority diametrically opposed to each other: ancients
and moderns, reason and imagination, institutionalism and
enthusiasm, religion and learning, clergy and wits, fact and
fancy, freedom and restraint, Christianity and Gnosticism,
Sir William Temple and Reverend William Wotton, allegory and
digressions, intellect and emotion, philosophy and science,
satire and panegyric, and so forth. In order to make sense
of these Oppositions, the reader relies on conventional
notions about the interactive process between reader and
book. The reader assumes that the author of the Pale knows
what he is doing.

The point I shall argue is that the author of the Pglg
self-consciously mixes disparate forms of authority and
professes to be an epistemological diplomat. That is, he
considers many ways of knowing and tries to define a centrist
position: however, the task the author has set out for
himself is impossible. The author's strategy is well defined
in the "Digression on Madness:" he attempts to moderate the
notions of all mankind "exactly to the same length, and

breadth, and height of his own...this is the first humble and

44

45
civil design of all innovators in the Empire of Reason.“l
If the author is an "innovator in the Empire of Reason,"
the reader must adopt the same strategy if he is to

understand A Tale of a Tub. In other words, the reader must

 

throw caution to the wind and look beyond any transparent
statements the author makes about moderation. The author
puts himself in the center of a boiling cauldron of
converging ideologies and attempts to find a stable center of
orthodoxy or a middle way, appeasing factions in both the
learned and ecclesiastic communities. Yet he is not
successful in trying to be a moderate. The real point of the
Eiifi is that ways of knowing (or reality itself) are likely
to be disturbing and contradictory as one is attracted
'towards or repelled by different forms of authority at
different times. In the reception of reality, Swift's reader
is forced to ”make“ reality.

Many broad implications are at work beyond the paradigm
of author--> book--> reader-—> reality. Since he is dealing

with a book, the reader of A Tale of a Tub attempts to make

 

connections in his mind between the Tale and certain

normative conventions he expects to see fulfilled.2 On one

 

1"A Digression Concerning the Original, the Use and
Improvement of Madness in a Commonwealth" from A Tale of a
Tub (PW 1: 105).

2This issue has been taken up by Gabriel Josipovici in
The WOrld and the Book (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 25-51 and
by George Dillon in Constructing Texts (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1981).

 

 

46

level, A Tale of a Tub is primarily concerned with ways of

 

reading. The conventions behind reading affect not only the
creation of art but also its reception. This applies to A_

Tale of a Tub as a whole unit of meaning and to statements

 

the author makes about that unit of meaning. In the case of
such a diffuse and eccentric book, the reader's deeply-
entrenched attitudes about what a book should be and what a
book ought to do actually interfere with understanding.
Behind every digression and allegorical episode in the Tgig
are hidden impulses forcing the reader to read the individual
sections as they themselves ask to be read. Yet when the
reader attempts to make a "valid" interpretation about the
meaning of the whole book, he is more likely to pay attention
to unconnected units within the book such as the Apology, the
”Digression on Madness," or the allegory.

The problem is that the local features of a digression
or narrative section do not correspond with Swift's stated
purpose for the book. Does this mean the reader needs to
invoke two or more sets of standards to evaluate the 2212?
Are the author's intrusive or external comments subject to
the same kind of scrutiny we give the narrative? One
expectation the reader has of a book is that it will exist as
a coherent unit of meaning, a self-contained universe or
reality that is made accessible or understandable through

reading. This is not the case with A Tale of a Tub: its most

 

characteristic feature is a lack of moderation and a tendency

47
to deconstruct itself. Since no text is self-explicating,
the reader is forced to bring his previous knowledge and
expectations to bear on what he finds in the book. If A Tale
of a Tub means something, then that meaning was constructed
by the reader. Swift did not provide the book with any
consistent, obvious theme, although he wants to create that
impression in the Apology. Even if Swift did have a clearly
formed intention, there is no guarantee that the reader would
agree with the author about the underlying purpose of the
22:.

Because of the indeterminacy of A Tale of a Tub, we

 

cannot be certain that Swift had a stable or coherent purpose
in mind when he wrote it. In fact, quite the opposite is
true. Swift's main purpose is to prevent the reader from
regaining a sense of balance, even though he supposedly
dedicates the book to the Anglican via media. This
introduces the theory that what constitutes a valid reading
of a book is dependent on whether the meaning derived by a
reader corresponds to the stated purpose. When dealing with
a writer such as Swift, the reader may be making a fatal
mistake if he chooses to take any kind of statement of
purpose at face value. If we can demonstrate that the author
does not really control all the meanings generated by his
text, then "it seems to follow that the author's meaning
cannot constitute a general principle or norm for determining

the meaning of a text, and it is precisely such a normative

48
principle that is required in defining the concept of
validity."3 In other words, all the reader can do is make
more or less well-informed guesses and reach for a final
conclusion that seems highly probable. Absolute, normative
certainty is impossible--especially with a text as capricious
as the Tale.

Swift assaults the reader with physical data of such
force that we have the impression there is a clearly-defined
purpose behind it. While the Tale may be dedicated by the
author in one statement to a moderate, Anglican doctrine, the
most powerfully convincing examples of authority are the
extreme positions:

Reason is certainly in the right: and that in most
corporeal beings, which have fallen under my cognizance,
the outside hath been infinitely preferable to the in:
Whereof I have been farther convinced from some late
experiments. Last week I saw a woman flay'd, and you
will hardly believe how much it altered her person for
the worse. Yesterday I ordered the carcass of a beau to
be stript in my presence: when we were all amazed to
find so many unsuspected faults under a suit of cloaths:
Then I laid Open his brain, his heart, and his spleen:
but, I plainly perceived at every operation, that the
farther we proceeded, we found the defects encrease upon
us in number and bulk: from all which, I justly formed
this conclusion to my self: that whatever philosopher or
projector can find out an art to sodder and patch up all
the flaws and imperfections of nature, will deserve much
better of mankind, and teach us a more useful science,
than that so much in present esteem, Of widening and
exposing them (PW 1: 109-10).

The opposition between external appearance (illusion or

imagination) and internal fact (science or reason) is a

 

3E. D. Hirsch, Validit in Interpretation (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1967), 20.

49
typical organizing principle. Swift says that we are missing
the point if we believe in only physical reality or only in
transitory impressions. Similarly from "The Battle of the
Books,” we see the conflict between reason/ tradition and
imagination/ modernism emerging in the dialogue between the
spider and bee. The spider grumbles
What art thou but a vagabond without house or home,
without stock or inheritance? Born to no possession of
your own, but a pair of wings, and a drone-pipe. YOur
livelihood is an universal plunder upon nature: a
freebooter over fields and gardens: and for the sake of
stealing, will rob a nettle as readily as a violet.
Whereas I am a domestick animal, furnisht with a native
stock within my self. This large castle (to shew my
improvements in the mathematicks) is all built with my
own hands, and the materials extracted altogether out of
my own person (PW 1: 149).
What is the reader to make of such dramatic conflict?
In both cases, the reader is attracted to and repelled by the
extremes, and there is no comfortable middle way. Having
read the apology from A Tale of a Tub and Swift's "statement
of purpose," the reader searches in vain for some principle
of moderation. Yet the information and ideas supplied by the

text correspond to neither the reader's expectation of what a

book should be nor to the statement of purpose of A Tale of a

 

$22. The reader expects the allegorical sections to sustain
consistent, stable values that correspond with the three
brothers. The reader expects the digressions to meander away
from the book's thematic premise. In both cases, Swift
deconstructs expectations in that the allegory does not

sustain a consistent set of values and the digressions do not

50
wander away from the main points: they are the main points.
This is a dilemma of the intentional fallacy, or the
false practice of judging the meaning and success of a work
of art based on the author's expressed or ostensible
purpose.4 The reader finds at least two major purposes (and
an infinite number of minor purposes) expressed by the author

of A Tale of a Tub. The first is the statement in the

 

Apology about the Church of England, which I shall examine
first, and the second is the Father's Will, which I will take
up in the latter half of this chapter. In both cases, the
reader assumes that what follows the statement of purpose
directly reflects on, reinforces, dramatizes or explicates
it. Yet one of Swift's real purposes in A Tale of a Tub is
to upset conventional notions about the act of reading and
the creation of meaning. The reader himself becomes an
“innovator in the Empire of Reason" because that is the only
way to respond to the book. Finding that moderation does not
work, the reader is forced to create new ways of receiving
the divergent ideas in each section. In the author's
“Dedication to Prince Posterity," he explains
I can only avow in general to Your Highness, that we do
abound in learning and wit: but to fix particulars, is a
task too slippery for my slender abilities. If I should
venture on a windy day, to affirm to YOur Highness, that
there is a huge cloud near the horizon in the form of a

bear, another in the zenith with the head of an ass, a
third to the westward with claws like a dragon: and YOur

 

4The term was coined by W. K. Wimsatt and M. C.
Beardsley in The Verbal Icon (Lexington: University of
Kentucky Press, 1954).

 

51

Highness should in a few minutes think fit to examine
the truth: 'tis certain, they would all be changed in
figure and position, new ones would arise, and all we
could agree upon would be, that clouds there were, but
that I was grossly mistaken in the zoography and
tOpography of them (PW l: 21).

This precisely describes the problem facing the reader
of the Tale: the reader wants to "fix particulars," but
finding a theme or a convincing middle road is like trying to
describe exactly the location and composition Of a cloud.

The author of A Tale of a Tub does not establish a solid

 

example of moderation between the extremes of radical
enthusiasm and intellectual empiricism because he is himself
torn by the struggle. Writing about himself in the third
person, Swift explains that at the time he wrote the book,
_"the author was then young, his invention at the height, and
his reading fresh in his head. By the assistance of some
thinking, and much conversation, he had endeavour'd to strip
himself of as many real prejudices as he could." The author
goes on to state the purpose of his book: "it celebrates the
Church of England as the most perfect of all others in
discipline and doctrine, it advances no opinion they reject,
nor condemns any they receive“ (PW l: 2).

Does this mean the whole book is authorized by Anglican
doctrine? Does this mean that Swift is really just an
Anglican diplomat wearing scholarly clothing? Does Swift
merely try to safely negotiate his way through controversy
while upsetting no one? Nothing is further from the truth.

For one thing, scholars have demonstrated that Swift wrote

52
his apology some thirteen years after completing the Isle,
partly to defend himself against charges of atheism.5 So the
purposes Swift has in mind thirteen years later may not
accurately reflect his original inspiration. Consider what
Swift has undertaken: An orthodox Churchman attempts to
expose the follies of fanaticism and celebrate the Church of
England as the most perfect of all others by using satire.
This is a dilemma because satire has only one object,
"attack,” and it is not possible to celebrate and attack
simultaneously. This dilemma continues to follow Swift
throughout his life because his natural proclivity is towards
the satiric, and attacking persons in authority is not the
most effective way of ingratiating oneself. Swift confesses
as much in the Apology, saying that the medium he selected
for this message is like trying to pass off a ”dull,
unwieldy, ill-shaped ox" as a horse when the former has none
of the shape, mettle, nor speed of the more noble animal (PW
1: 8). The reader may doubt the success of Swift's project
based on his ostensible purpose and design, or much more
likely, he may doubt the sincerity of the ostensible purpose.
Swift may have desired to put himself in the role of a
diplomatic mediator, but he ends up being an innovator in the
Empire of Reason. There is no convincing example of

moderation in the whole book.

 

5J.A. Downie, Jonathan Swift, Political Writer (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 91.

53

Even from the passage in the apology, the reader can
tell that the author of the Pale is burdened with conflicting
assumptions. While he tries to steer a moderate course and
strip himself Of real prejudices, the author admits that when
he wrote the book he was young and impressionable. Although
“he knew to what dangerous heights some men have proceeded,"
the author indicates that he also aspires towards that same
kind of altitude because he is writing satire. By
definition, satire is a genre that cannot be written by
someone without prejudices. The author further explains that

he wrote A Tale of a Tub "for the universal improvement of

 

mankind.“ Later in the work, he speculates that "there is a
peculiar string in the harmony of human understanding, which
in several individuals is exactly of the same tuning. Thus,
if you can dexterously screw up to its right key, and then
strike gently upon it...it will by a secret necessary
sympathy, strike exactly at the same time" (PW l: 106).
Ironic as they may be, statements like this lead the reader
to hold on to the conventional idea that the author knows
what he is doing. We may yet find some inherent, navigable
middle way or some common chord inside every human that
responds to a moderate view of reality. The author wants the
reader to believe that in his diplomatic capacity, the author
is trustworthy and his statements of purpose can be received
without suspicion.

The eighteenth-century understanding of "author" is

54
crucial to an appreciation of Swift's use of satire and
persona in the 2313. The reader can find references in the
[ale to author in the contemporary broad sense, as a writer
in general. But Samuel Johnson defines more fundamental
shades of meaning, describing an author as l) "The first
beginner or mover of any thing: he to whom any thing owes its
original" and 2) "The efficient cause: he that effects or
produces any thing."5 Johnson cites lines from Coriolanus

and Paradise Lost: "Be such a gosling to obey instinct: but

 

stand/ As if a man was author of himself" and ”Thou art my
father, thou my author, thou/ My being gav'st me: whom should
I obey but thee?"

This definition of author has more implications and is
more political in placing authority in the hands of man
(Shakespeare) or God (Milton). Instead of talking only about
the creator of text, the eighteenth-century author in this
sense is the force behind any political, religious, or
creative act. The author of A Tale of a Tub is this kind of
prime mover: he does not restrict his creative activity to
producing only words. Yet this renders the author more
difficult to understand as a certain kind of person--his
political and literary power are based on many kinds of
authority. To be an author, especially of satire, is to

enter into a dilemma where forms of authority are difficult

 

5Samuel Johnson, LL.D., A Dictionary of the En lish
Lan ua e, 2 vols, (London: W. Strahan, 1755 and New York: AMS
§ress, 1967 facsimile).

55
to sustain.

The author of the EElE is a person who finds all forms
of authority knocking on his door, and he wants to let them
into his house one by one so that the religious zealot or the
”true critick" may have his say. Swift wants to maintain the
guise of an impartial host in his diplomatic capacity,
allowing each person to speak but finally controlling the

tone of the discussion himself. Yet A Tale of a Tub is

 

conspicuous not for its sense of order, restraint, and
moderation but for its imaginative excesses and dynamic
oppositions. Swift fails in his role of objective
facilitator because there is no middle way. Reality for
Swift is not something easily defined by a narrow path
through the forest of competing forms of authority.

According to Gabriel Josipovici, scholars have been
preoccupied with demonstrating how Swift is a part of his
time and how his work is dominated by the traditional
Anglican compromise.

There is little here [in the Tale] of that ultimate
faith in common sense which characterizes even so
radical a thinker as Sterne. Even Nietzsche does not
look with less self-deception at our position in the
world. And yet. And yet. The speaker here is, after
all, not Swift himself, but the Grub Street Hack, and if
there is less of a gap between Swift and his persona
than there is between Chaucer and his, the very creation
of a persona is proof Of Swift's triumph over the
paralysing dichotomy. For the burlesque is the
solution, the Hack's error and madness the gauge of
Swift's sanity. A narrow ledge of sanity, it is true,
and one that is only manipulated by the creation of just
such a work as this, but all the more impressive for
that reason. Swift presents us with no solution to the
dilemma he exposes: the solution is the Tale itself, its

56

creation and its recreation in the mind and ears of
every new reader.7

Exactly! Moderation fails to work in the Tale because the
energy of Swift's writing feeds on these violent
contradictions. The Tale would not be so singular,
challenging, and problematic if it were not for the gaping
holes in the text and the unnerving distance between
intention and execution. Even within the same section, the
reader is faced with constructing his own "narrow ledge of
sanity” in order to make sense of the combative voices. For
example, in the ”Digression Concerning Criticks” the author
says

The true criticks are known by their talent of swarming

about the noblest writers, to which they are carried

merely by instinct, as a rat to the best cheese, or a

wasp to the fairest fruit. So, when the King is a

horse-back, he is sure to be the dirtiest person of the

company, and they that make their court best, are such
as bespatter him most. Lastly, a true critick, in the
perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose
thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests
fling away, and consequently, is apt to snarl most, when

there are the fewest bones (PW 1: 63-4).

In the case of both the "Digression Concerning Criticks“
and the "Dedication," Swift subverts the reader's
expectations. The reader is betrayed by his own instinct
when the author does not follow conventional notions of what
this generic component should do. Instead of a meandering

barrage of words or a wall of contempt for critics, we see

the author becoming a critic, trying to bespatter the king

 

7Gabriel Josipovici, The World and the Book (New York:

 

57
with the rest of them. Instead of a panegyric verbal
ornament, the author says in his "Dedication" that it is
impossible to “affix" anything of meaning.
There is a special dilemma in trying to talk about

Swift, the author, "the hack," the persona or an

autobiographical presence in A Tale of a Tub. We might

 

always be asking if a certain section is the voice of Swift
or of his persona. Should we limit the authorship of A Tale

of a Tub to either Swift or his fictive extension? First, it

 

is impossible to define precisely the qualities of the
persona and keep them distinct from Swift himself. The
problem has been addressed most effectively by Frederik N.
Smith, who writes that Swift's major achievement in the EELS
'is ”to create a loose, flexible satire that is remarkably
unassertive and that is based on the interweaving of his
style with that of his modern...one reason the work is so
difficult is that these two outlooks are not kept closely
apart: a reading of the Pglg_uncovers no easy Opposition
between Swift and a fully developed persona, but a crisscross
of two styles and two ways of knowing."8 Of course in the
chaos of digressions we find more than two ways of knowing.
Smith's thesis is that the style of the Pale corresponds to
the author's and Swift's view of reality. Because Smith

works from a connection between language and reality made by

 

8Frederik N. Smith, Language and Reality in Swift's A
Tale of a Tub (Columbus: Ohio*State University Press, 1979),
5.

 

 

58

Benjamin Lee Whorf, I quote directly from that source:

Actually, thinking is most mysterious, and by far the
greatest light upon it that we have is thrown by the
study of language. This study shows that the forms of a
person's thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of
pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are
the unperceived intricate systemizations of his own
language--shown readily enough by a candid comparison
and contrast with other languages, especially those of a
different linguistic family. His thinking itself is in
a language--in English, in Sanskrit, in Chinese. And
every language is a vast pattern-system, different from
others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and
categories by which the personality not only
communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or
neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels
his reasoning, and builds the house of his
consciousness.9

In reality, every reader while he is reading looks
inside himself into "the house of his consciousness." The
author's text is only a set of lenses through which he sees
reality, and the author asks the reader to look within
himself as he is reading. Without the author's book, perhaps
the reader would not notice new dimensions of his own mind.
If the author of the Pale attempts to establish a middle way
or a moderate position, we might say that it is a form of
thinking and discourse appropriate to Swift's culture and his
historical era. But if Smith (and Whorf by application) are
suggesting that there is a relationship between style and the
author's concept of reality, then Swift's reality is
contained by his language but not limited by the purpose of

diplomatic moderation. After reading A Tale of a Tub, I do

 

9Benjamin Lee Whorf, "Language, Mind, and Reality” in
Language, Thought, and Reality, ed. John B. Carroll
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press, 1956), 252.

59
not carry away an emotional and intellectual sense of balance
and moderation. The remarkable thing about A Tale of a Tub
is that it is an encyclopedia of words, a book of violent
confrontations which make it impossible to remain a passive
reader. The reader of the Pale is assaulted, tricked,
betrayed and shocked at the language and events in the book:
there is no balance. If the reader is to find a sense of
balance, he must construct it for himself. He must find it
within himself. In the words of Frederik N. Smith,

It is no coincidence that what strikes us most
forcefully in A Tale of a Tub is not the mental
configuration stamped by the Modern over the face of
palpable reality but that reality itself. Although we
come away from the Tale with little sense of the Modern
Author as a real person, we retain a keen memory of a
ladder, a post, a ragged coat, a rotten cheese, a
barrel, a well, a crust of bread, a bellows, a cadaver,
and a Bedlamite dabbling in his own urine. The Modern's
rationalism is likewise undermined by Swift's moments
from everyday life: a child whipped with a birch, a man
splattered by the horse ahead of him, a fly feeding
first on a honeypot and then on excrement, and many
other things. The sheer accumulation of these various
empirical fragments is itself an appeal to the reader's
common sense: on every page they call into question the
Modern's purely intellectual approach to the world

140 .

 

If the reader believes the statement in the apology that
the work is dedicated to a defense of Anglican doctrine, he
might be tempted to see moderation as an attempted principle
that fails. But the "failure" is so spectacular that there
can be no doubt as to Swift's underlying satirical purpose.
In order to adequately explain the range of effects in the
Pglg, I need to establish some terms that address problems of

design, purpose, and genre. First is the problem of design.

60

The design Of the Pale in regard to both the digressions
and allegory is a journey from order to chaos with
imagination, invention, enthusiasm, and delusion gaining the
upper hand as the sections progress. The reader is asked to
be more assertive and actively create his own meaning as the
book becomes more chaotic. The possibility of a convincing
middle way becomes more remote as the author's purpose is
subverted by his execution. Whereas Pope would see "Unerring
Nature, still divinely bright,/ One clear, unchang'd, and
Universal Light" (Essay On Man), the author of the Pglg_sees
the reverse of this, Nature's light becoming obscure as
delusion takes over the proper function of the senses. In
schematic form showing the topic of each Section, the pattern
of disintegration is apparent:

Sec. 1: Introduction.

 

Digressions Allegory
Sec. III: The Critics. Sec. II: The Father and
his Will, three sons and coats.
Sec. V: The Modern Kind. Sec. IV: Peter kicks Martin and
Jack out of doors.
Sec. VII: In Praise of Sec. VI: Martin's and Jack's
Digressions. "reforms."
Sec. IX: Madness Sec. VIII: Jack runs mad and

founds sect of Aeolists.
Sec. X: Preface Sec. XI: Jack's adventures.
The Pals consists of a set of preliminaries (apology,
dedications, preface, introduction), the allegory of the
three brothers, and digressions on abuses in learning and

modern writing. Structurally it appears as if Swift is

61

executing a well-developed “trilogy“ of three principal
bodies of information with the allegory and digressions
alternating practically every other section except for
sections IX and X, the digression on madness and the second
”preface.“

What is Swift's purpose in using this design? We might
normally think of an allegory as a cast of metaphorical
characters whose words and actions represent abstract ideas

in a stabilized scheme as in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress,

 

where "Mr. Worldly-Wiseman" represents narrow secular logic
and legality. Assuming for the moment that the allegory of A_

Tale Of a Tub serves as the foundation from which abstract

 

ideas are drawn, then the digressions can be thought of as a
violation of that stability and assurance. Digressions are
not related to the ostensible theme of defining abuses in
religion because they serve no purpose in furthering the main
narrative or premise of the 2212 as in Swift's ”Digression in
Praise of Digressions." But Swift is not using these
techniques as part of a single-minded rhetorical strategy. A
dynamic tension is produced by the reader's expectation of a
theme and variations structure which does not exist. The
effect of the allegory and digressions might be described as
an epistemological warfare that energizes the writing itself.
The reader searches in vain for some mediating principle
between the allegory and digressions, and the final effect is

destructive of sustained forms of authority as each section

62
regresses further from the purpose of the last. The movement
is from order to chaos because Swift in his role of
benevolent overseer delights in the divergent positions
swimming in his head and out on the paper.

The Christian allegory supposedly develops the argument
that Martin (Anglicanism) holds a moderate position between
the dogmatic practices of Peter (Catholicism) and the
fanatical enthusiasm of Jack (Dissenters). If this is true,
the reader expects a much more prominent role to be played by
Martin, but Swift instead asks the reader to become Martin to
make sense of the turbulent assortment of digressions and
competing voices that characterize A Tale of a Tub. One

important point of A Tale of a Tub is that certain kinds of

 

authority such as that recognized by the Church and by the
"illustrious brotherhood" of writers are achieved through the
distortion of reason, wit, the senses, learning, and
religion. The author explains that reason alone is an
insufficient principle of judgment. It is not so simple as
deciding
Whether reason reflecting upon the sum of things, can,
like the sun, serve only to enlighten one half of the
globe, leaving the other half, by necessity, under shade
and darkness: or, whether fancy, flying up to the
imagination of what is highest and best, becomes over-
shot, and spent, and weary, suddenly falls like a dead
bird of paradise, to the ground (PW l: 99).
In a representative passage, the author says "I have thought

fit to make invention the master, and to give method and

reason, the office of its lacquays" (PW 1: 134). In fact,

63

Swift never attempts to balance the forces of reason and
imagination in the Pgig because the overall pattern of the
work is that of distortion and disintegration, a major
characteristic of his practice of satire. We might expect
someone with a passionate interest in history to emphasize
the lessons about the proper use of authority that can be
learned from studying the past. Yet the author of the Pale
consistently dismisses the use of history, memory, and
experience in favor of distortion in this work. Historical
fact and imagination collide and cancel each other out: or to
make matters worse, invention prevails by striking out all
remnants of personal memory. When invention or imagination
is given the upper hand, we can expect a certain attitude
'towards religious authority to evolve, namely satire.

Concerning the genre, the author of the 2312 states that
"he thought the numerous and gross corruptions in religion
and learning might furnish matter for a satyr, that would be
useful and diverting" (PW l: l). The genre Of satire is
cumbersome in that it includes several purposes not entirely
descriptive of Swift's design of allegory and digressions.
In early use, the term satire referred to a discursive
composition in verse treating a variety of subjects. The OPP
says, in classic use, satire means a poem in which prevalent
follies or vices are assailed with ridicule or serious
denunciation. Moreover, satire “is a specific application of

satura medley: this general sense appears in the phrase per

64
saturam, in the lump, indiscriminately: according to
grammarians this is elliptical for lanx satura (literally a
full dish) which is alleged to have been used for a dish
containing various kinds of fruit, and for food composed of
many different ingredients."

Edward W. Rosenheim attempts to clarify the effect of
Swift's satire by distinguishing between ”punitive“ and
"persuasive" varieties. According to Rosenheim, satire in
general is equated with attack. "Persuasive" satire like
that of POpe urges its audience towards some future action
against the Object under attack, while ”punitive" satire
ridicules, exposing evils while not advocating any specific
response. Rosenheim says in punitive satire “no new judgment
is invited: no course of action is urged: no novel
information is produced. The audience, rather, is asked
chiefly to rejoice in the heaping of opprobrium, ridicule, or
fancied punishment upon an object of whose culpability they
are already thoroughly convinced.”10

The Pals leans heavily towards the punitive but instead
of having a fully-formed rhetorical purpose, which is implied
in the term, it is a work composed of violent confrontations.
The Pale is not artistically unified nor rhetorical in any
premeditated sense: it makes the reader do most of the work.

The Tale is arhetorical or beyond categorization if we assume

 

10Edward W. Rosenheim, Jr., Swift and the Satirist's Art
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 13.

65
merely persuasive or punitive intentions. There is no well-
groomed middle way by which the speaker "celebrates the
Church of England as the most perfect of all others in
discipline and doctrine." The diplomat who wrote that line

is never again to be heard from because moderation is not a

thematic principle in A Tale of a Tub.

 

Swift's digressions are the heart of his attack on
moderation. The digressions often allow the persona in the

Tale to accumulate authority for himself. The allegory gives

 

Swift the vehicle by which he can tear down the authority of
Roman Catholics and Dissenters. Swift assumes the role of a
prophet pointing out what is wrong with modern writing,
mimicking its shallowness and hypocrisy, and directing the
way towards real knowledge with his "reason," especially in
the ”Digression on Madness." The reader is to follow the
speaker in the digressions because he is showing him the way.
But as in "A Modest Proposal" there is no mediating principle
or genuine defense of the Church of England. The reader is
forced to come to terms with the strident voice of the
speaker, to agree either with Swift or dismiss everything he
says as delusion:
A man may laugh at the Popish folly of cursing people to
Hell, and imagine them swearing, without any crime: but
lewd words, or dangerous Opinions though printed by
halves, fill the readers mind with ill idea's: and of
these the author cannot be accused. For the judicious
reader will find that the severest stroaks of satyr in
his book are levelled against the modern custom of

employing wit upon these topicks (PW 1: 10).

Is the author saying he cannot be held responsible for

66
any "dangerous opinions" because he is writing satire? The
assumption is that the "judicious reader" will agree with the
goals of Swift's attack. Swift's digressions exert stress on
the reader, forcing him to make sense of the "severest
stroaks" of his satire. The digressions move from
straightforward commentary and invective to finally
transcending the conventions of punitive satire. Section
III, Swift's "Digression Concerning Critics," embraces the
theme of distortion because the speaker says a critic uses
this principle to pass judgment on writing. The critic deals
in self-generated rules by which he defaces the reputation of
ancient and modern writers. This is not to say that the
works he examines are always of any great intrinsic value,
for Swift likens the critic to a man walking in the gutters
trying to examine excrement without stepping in it: "not that
he is curious to observe the colour and complexion of the
ordure, or take its dimensions, much less be paddling in, or
tasting it: but only with a design to come out as clean as
possible." (PW l: 56).

The crucial point is that most critics' minds function
by distortion because "their imaginations are so entirely
possess'd and replete with the defects of other pens.“ The
true critic is like a little machine always faithfully on the
prowl for error, which he translates into a kind of distorted
judgment or evaluation. Swift compares the state of modern

writing to a field of noxious weeds which needs to be trimmed

67

back, but instead is encouraged to grow because "an ass" is
browsing on the weeds, nibbling at the surface of
imperfections. In fact, the animal and insect imagery are
the dominant vehicles of comparison in this section.
The metaphors and similes are erratic and violent, and the
idea of equating filth with criticism is typically Swiftian.
Moreover, the fact that those "that make their court best,
are such as bespatter him most" demonstrates the dilemma Of.A
Tale of a Tub and the genre of satire itself. The problem is
that while Swift may have intended to celebrate the Church of
England and champion the middle way, the effect of satire is
wholly incompatible with that intention. By definition,
there is no way the speaker can both ridicule and praise.
The Church of England is mostly neglected while the wits,
fanatic preachers, scholars, and critics are bespattered
throughout the book. The reader has to make sense of the
chaos.

With each new digression, a more splenetic persona
appears to denounce some aspect of modern learning. The
“Digression on Madness“ of Section IX is the most famous

section of A Tale of a Tub and for good reason: it contains

 

the most explicit statement on how delusion and imagination
are for most people preferable to a comfortable middle way,
and how even reason itself is a mixed blessing because it
finally penetrates to reveal what we do not want to see.

Most people are perfectly content with ”this serene peaceful

68

state of being a fool among knaves." Edward W. Rosenheim
writes that the central section of the digression furnishes
”the substratum of doctrine which informs and enforces so
much of the satire in the 2313" and that the two famous
paragraphs are “a rare instance of Swift's writing at a level
of abstraction which transcends the particulars of either
satire or comedy.”11

The moderate position or middle way asks the reader to
receive both empirical, factual information and intuitive,
imaginative ideas. Yet, according to Swift, people turn away
from what is unattractive not because of what it reveals but
because it is more comfortable to believe what is wrong.
Swift makes a fundamental statement about knowledge and ways
of knowing in the lines "how fade and insipid do all objects
accost us that are not convey'd in the vehicle of delusion?
How shrunk is every thing, as it appears in the glass of
nature?” Fiction has more power than truth not because of
intrinsic properties but because of how it is received.
Imagination and delusion can build more noble scenes and
“produce more wonderful revolutions" that we find in reason
or nature. On the other hand, scientists who attempt to rid
themselves of emotive language and present observations as
completely objective are also deluding themselves:

”Yesterday I ordered the carcass of a beau to be stript in my

11Edward W. Rosenheim, Jr., Swift and the Satirist's Art
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 198.

69
presence...we were all amazed to find so many unsuspected
faults under one suit of cloaths." The middle way or a
successful balance of imagination and reason is nonexistent
in the “Digression on Madness."

When the reader sees Swift's use of "reason" in the
context of madness, he might be tempted to say, aha! Here it
is, Swift's statement of a principle of moderation--his
belief in reason. But again we are talking about human
judgment, which must rely principally on the operation of the
two senses of sight and touch. The kind of information the
human mind receives is limited to the extent that sight and
touch can communicate ideas, and Swift says they "never
examine farther than the colour, the shape, the size and
’whatever other qualities dwell, or are drawn by art upon the
outward of bodies." As long as the senses are more
powerfully moved by art than by fact, reason will fail to
find a middle way.

The speaker is no neutral diplomat or voice of
moderation because he admits that in the case of man, the
outside is infinitely preferable to the in. Although his
tone is that of a scientist conducting ”experiments," he is
repelled by the physical data and fails to make any
conclusions. The speaker tries to be the prophet or guide
whose faith in reason leads the reader to this autopsy saying
that he knows the way, but he falters with his own

observations. What the speaker discovers are "flaws and

70

imperfections of nature" beneath the appearance of things,
and he concludes that a more useful science will be created
by a philosopher or projector who uses art, not reason. For
as long as people are repelled by the ugliness of internal
organs and how things really operate, they will prefer images
of people intact. Metaphorically speaking, man's brain has
receptacles of a certain configuration that freely receive
"films and images that fly off upon his senses from the
superficies of things." According to Swift, perception is
based on skimming the surface, taking the cream off the top
while leaving the unpleasant dregs for philosophy and reason.
This is exactly why people will always prefer to be in this
serene and peaceful state rather than face ugliness. We may
call it madness, but it is a familiar form of madness.

This familiar madness is what issues from the author's
statement that he wrote his book to uphold the middle way.
What about the other major statement of purpose, the Father's
Will beginning the allegory?

Sons: because I have purchased no estate, nor was born

to any, I have long considered of some good legacies to

bequeath you: and at last, with much care as well as
expense, have provided each of you (here they are) a new
coat. Now, you are to understand, that these coats have
two virtues contained in them: one is, that with good
wearing, they will last you fresh and sound as long as
you live: The other is, that they will grow in the same
proportion with your bodies, lengthening and widening of
themselves, so as to be always fit. Here, let me see
them on you before I die. SO, very well, pray children,
wear them clean, and brush them Often. YOu will find in
my Will (here it is) full instructions in every
particular concerning the wearing and management of your

coats: wherein you must be very exact, to avoid the
penalties I have appointed for every transgression or

71

neglect, upon which your future fortunes entirely depend
(PW 1: 44).

Swift introduces another reading problem in this ”statement
of purpose:" what is meant by the Will is not explicit or
Obvious. The Will could mean only the literal sense of a
legal document. Yet the reader might expect a broader
allegorical meaning, equivalent to what The Father wants to
happen to the modern Church. We cannot assume the coats
represent Holy Scripture or the original fabric of
Christianity because of an enormous discrepancy between the
reader's expectations of allegory and Swift's use of this
literary mode. The Father comments only on the external
features of the coats and how they are to be handled: he
assumes that only one kind of reading of his Will is
possible. The Father tries to moderate the possible outcomes

of reading his Will, but in A Tale of a Tub, moderation and

 

interpretation are antithetical purposes. The reader may
expect some kind of value judgement or preferred son to
appear in the Will, but the Will (or what little we have of
it) is strangely directionless. Even so, the Father does not
make a strong case for one kind of ethical standard or moral
code over another as long as the coats remain well-preserved:
the Father and his Will are perfect examples of the failure
of moderation because the reception of the text is based on
anything but moderation. The reception of the text is based
on superficial appearances (like a scientist observing a

cadaver) and on who is receiving it (like a fanatic preacher

72
belching wind). The reader of A Tale of a Tub and the three
brothers are left alone to construct their own meanings and
impose their own preconceptions on the Will. The Father can
provide a document but not an explication.

Swift carries forth his theme of distortion in the way
the Will is received, interpreted, misinterpreted, and used
as a source of power. He who possesses the "meaning" holds
power in his hands. The Will becomes a kind of litmus test
by which the brothers measure and assert their particular
brands of authority. The basis for the brothers' authority
appears to be the control of the text of the Will, but it can
be more accurately described as interpretive abuse. Many
times, the way Peter creates meaning clashes with the text of
the Will, but Peter's imaginative distortion has more force
than words on paper. Because of the Will's inability to
explicate itself, like all texts it is liable to all
varieties of corrupt casuistry and justification: the
brothers' pernicious, tendentious, and distorted readings
change the original spirit of the Will. The reader witnesses
no ”in-between" interpretation of the Will: the Will is
misconstrued in every extreme way by Peter, Martin, and Jack.

For one thing, the Father tells his sons to be mindful
of every particular and to be very exact "to avoid penalties
I have appointed for every transgression or neglect,” but he
is inexact himself. The Father never explains how the sons

are to proceed, what the penalties are, what constitutes a

73
transgression, or exactly how the penalties are administered.
The brothers are given free reign to interpret what
constitutes the spirit of the Will instead of being directed
by specific instructions. Thus the brothers throw common
understanding and judgment out of doors in seeking their
fortunes in the secular world. Although the Will is very
precise in forbidding alteration of the coats except that
which happens naturally through growth, the brothers become
mad innovators, each undergoing a process of self-definition
and each creating his own version of reality through their
readings of the Will.

By using this paradigm of author--> book--> reader-->
reality, Swift demonstrates that reading can be a subversive
act. The way in which each religious faction defines itself
depends on how it has attempted to "create" the text of the
Will. Peter's authority is reinforced by the rituals he
erects around the words, while Jack's authority is based on
his physical manipulations of the text. An interpretation of
information is merely a reception that a reader has imposed
on the underlying words. That is, Swift sees any kind of
interpretation as a potentially violent act because the
meaning derived from each reading changes, depending on who
is reading, and it puts the interpreter in the position of a
tyrant. What is transmitted by Peter, Martin, and Jack to
their "congregation" is only a singular, idiosyncratic, and

distorted creation of the text. Swift means to implicate

74
religion, philOSOphy, criticism, science or any mode of
knowledge by which man creates meaning through reading. Just
like certain kinds of reading, clothing is liable to go in
and out of fashion depending on who is perceived as the
authority. Clothing is a metaphor for how people "read" the
appearances of each other:

To conclude from all, what is man himself but a micro-

coat, or rather a compleat suit of cloaths with all its

trimmings? As to his body, there can be no dispute: but
examine even the acquirements of his mind, you will find
them all contribute in their order, towards furnishing

out an exact dress: to instance no more: is not religion

a cloak, honesty a pair of shoes, worn out in the dirt,

self-love a surtout, vanity a shirt, and conscience a

pair of breeches, which, tho' a cover for lewdness as

well as nastiness, is easily slipt down for the service

According to Swift, abstractions like honesty, self-
love, vanity, and conscience are worn on the outside of one's
body like fashionable accessories because that is all they
are. Even man himself is nothing but what has been added to
the original, a covering or interpretation of a core of
being.

The “scholarly“ Peter demonstrates in his adept
distortion of the letters that he can bridge the gap between
what is fashionably appropriate and what is specifically
forbidden. In other words, explication and distortion can
create new bases for authority. This is exactly what Swift
meant in his earlier dedication ”praising" the tremendous

accomplishments of the vast army of wits, critics, and

scholars in the nation. Peter finds it is easy to receive

75
the text of the Will with his own kind of clothing or
misinterpretation by which he garners authority. The author

notes that the learned brother "had read Aristotelis

 

Dialectica, and especially that wonderful piece d3

 

Interpretatione which has the faculty of teaching its readers

 

to find out a meaning in everything but itself" (PW l, 51).
Peter scatters his knowledge of Greek and Latin through his
twisted readings of the Will, allowing the brothers to find
proof for anything they want. Many techniques can be used by
a trained reader to exert his will over the text. For
example, Peter rummages through the Will to pick out the
individual letters of ”SHOULDER KNOTS" that would allow the
brothers to wear this most fashionable accoutrement. When
‘Peter cannot find the letter "K," he subverts the text with
his own reasoning when he
proved by a very good argument, that K was a modern
illegitimate letter, unknown to the learned ages, nor
any where to be found in antient manuscripts. 'Tis
true, said he, the word calende hath in Q.V.C. been
sometimes writ with a K, but erroneously, for in the
best copies it is ever spelt with a C. And by
consequence it was a gross mistake in our language to
spell knot with a K, but that from henceforward, he
would take care it should be writ with a C. Upon this,
all further difficulty vanished: shoulder-knots were
made clearly out, to be jure paterno, and our three
gentlemen swaggered with as large and flanting ones as
the best (Efl.1‘ 50-51).
This kind of reception is made possible through Peter's
critical faculties that grow more corrupt as the section
progresses. There is nothing even faintly resembling a

common-sensical, moderate interpretation of the Will.

Pet!
Lat
per
adc‘

d0!

w
af
Pe
cr

ac

t]

h

76
Peter's strategy is to create a smoke screen Of confusing
Latin words, glosses, references, scholarly apparatus, and
persuasive energy. For example, when the brothers want to
add gold lace to their coats, Peter says in masterful
doubletalk that “you are to be informed that of wills 922

sunt genera, nuncupatory and scriptory: that in the scriptory

 

Will here before us, there is no precept or mention about

gold lace, conceditur: but, si idem affirmetur de

 

nuncupatorio, negatur." Peter is using a form of Latin
academic disputation to say that if the precept appears in
writing, he agrees with it, but that if the same thing is
affirmed by word of mouth, he denies it. In other words,
Peter demonstrates his violent interpretative power in the
creative ways he can supersede the text regardless of what is
actually written.

Peter proves so skilled at his own brand of
deconstruction that he decides to assume complete authority
himself. Instead of trying to annex, distort, and receive
the Will, Peter decides simply to ignore it. By distancing
himself from the text, Peter broadens the extreme positions
he can take because there is no longer any comparison to be
made. He has succeeded in appropriating all authority for
himself through avoidance.

Fashions perpetually altering in that age, the

scholastick brother grew weary of searching farther

evasions, and solving everlasting contradictions.

Resolved therefore at all hazards, to comply with the

modes of the world, they concerted matters together, and
agreed unanimously to lock up their Father's Will in a

77
strong-box, brought out of Greece or Italy (I have
forgot which) and trouble themselves no farther to
examine it, but only refer to its authority whenever
they thought fit (PW l: 54).
The best examples of how innovative "reading" creates

new kinds of authority are in Peter's manipulation of his

brothers' senses. There is no operative jgre paterno which

 

cannot be corrupted by distorted logic in the 2312. The idle
scholarship of Peter rejects the literal meaning of the Will
in favor of a "mythological and allegorical sense.” He can
find evidence for anything he wants when imagination plays
havoc with reason. Although they start out in the world as
equals, it is because Peter is most skillful at duping the
senses of Martin and Jack that he prevails over them. Not
only can Peter convince his brothers of the truth of his
allegorical interpretation of the Will, but he also gains
authority by convincing them their senses are wrong. It is
not so much that certain rituals have been institutionalized
by the Catholic Church but that the basis for its authority
is in misleading taste, smell, sight, hearing, and touch.
Peter is the strongest character in A Tale of a Tub exactly
because he garners the most authority through his creative
forms of reading and receiving the Will.

Swift's satire against the doctrine of
transubstantiation is at once the most hilarious and
revealing folly Peter tries to pull over on his brothers: it
shows exactly how "reading" can be extended to any way a

person receives information. The information supplied by the

78
senses of Jack and Martin is constantly at war with the
imaginative farce Peter spreads over the surface, like a
philosophy of clothes over the reality of sensory detail:

My Lord, said he, my brother, I suppose is hungry, and
longs for the mutton, your Lordship hath promised us to
dinner. [Peter now calls himself "Lord Peter."] Pray,
said Peter, take me along with you, either you are both
mad, or disposed to be merrier than I approve of: if you
there, do not like your piece, I will carve you another,
tho' I should take that to be the choice bit of the
whole shoulder. What then, my Lord, replied the first,
it seems this is a shoulder of mutton all this while.
Pray sir, says Peter, eat your vittles and leave off
your impertinence, if you please, for I am not disposed
to relish it at present: But the other could not
forbear, being over-provoked at the affected seriousness
of Peter's countenance. By God, my Lord, said he, I can
only say, that to my eyes, fingers, and teeth, and nose,
it seems to be nothing but a crust of bread. Upon
which, the second put in his word: I never saw a piece
of mutton in my life, so nearly resembling a slice from
a twelve-penny loaf. Look ye, gentlemen, cries Peter in
a rage, to convince you, what a couple of blind,
positive, ignorant, wilful puppies you are, I will use
but his plain argument: by God, it is true, good,
natural mutton as any in Leaden-Hall market: and God,
confound you both eternally, if you offer to believe
otherwise. Such a thundering proof as this, left no
further room for objection: the two unbelievers began to
gather and pocket up their mistake as hastily as they
could. Why, truly, said the first, upon more mature
consideration--Ay, says the other, interrupting him, now
I have thought better on the thing, your Lordship seems
to have a great deal of reason (PW 1: 72-3).

Although Peter accuses his brothers of being mad for not
believing him, it is his madness and his reception of
information that allow the illusion to prevail. This is
Peter's “ledge of sanity.” The brother's senses keep
supplying them with the facts that “it seems to be nothing
but a crust of bread" or "I never saw a piece of mutton in my

.life so nearly resembling a twelve-penny loaf." Peter's

pas
tha
prc
no
tic

l!!!

the

he

re
in
ac
te

tC

Fa

a:

79
passionate rage and imaginative fury convince the brothers
that they are blind and ignorant knaves. Peter's thundering
proof is a farce and travesty against fact because there is
no sustained proof of anything attempted, only the hopeless
tickling of the brothers' senses. The most stunning
indictment of the scheme is the brothers' last proclamation
that "your Lordship seems to have a great deal of reason," by
which Swift means the exact Opposite. The more passionate
and enthusiastic Peter grows in his new authority, the more
he lacks basic common sense.

Thus Martin and Jack suffer under ”Lord Peter's" corrupt
reception of the Will. The two brothers excluded from the
interpretive process finally begin to realize that Peter has
achieved his authority through his exclusive access to the
text. Thus Martin and Jack have begun to learn that in order
to create meaning, one must first base that meaning on a
reading of the text. From that point forth, anything is
possible, as Peter has so capably demonstrated. To rectify
the problem, Martin and Jack humbly desire "a copy of the
Father's Will, which had now lain by neglected, time out of
mind.“ After reading it over themselves, the religious power
and authority created through reception become clear to them,
and they resolve to strike out in their own ways.

Each brother creates meaning based on his reception of
the Will. The reader might expect some compensation or

reform following Peter's abuses, but no moderate

80
interpretation emerges even from Martin. Some critics have
described Swift's choice of Martin Luther to represent the

Anglican via media as a strategic mistake. Yet this again

 

assumes that Swift actually intended A Tale of a Tub as a
vehicle for the middle way. Even in the way Martin receives
the Will, the reader finds no real evidence for a reasonable
interpretation. Ehrenpreis writes that ”the treatment of
Martin is weak because it clashes with the programme of the
book as a whole...the safest way to demonstrate its merits is
to admit the flaw and then to consider what Swift
accomplishes in spite of it."12 But to "admit the flaw“ is
to say that Swift did something "wrong“ when comparing it
with something "right." My point is that the author of the
EEiS does not have a firm grasp of what is right. The
extreme positions or wrongs are too attractive for the author
to ignore them.

Historically, Martin Luther was known for his scathing
criticism against and violent hatred of certain Roman
Catholic laws and indulgences. He hardly seems like a
logical candidate for representing the middle way. Luther
characteristically recommends rebellion in tracts like “The
Babylonian Captivity” and "The Liberty of the Christian Man:"

For this reason, although we should boldly resist those
teachers of traditions and sharply censure the laws of

 

121rvin Ehrenpreis, Swift, the Man, his Works, and the
Age, vol 1, Mr. Swift and his Contempgraries (London: Methuen
and Co., 1962), 188.

81

the pOpes by means of which they plunder the people of
God, yet we must spare the timid multitude whom these
impious tyrants hold captive by means of these laws
until they are set free. Therefore fight strenuously
against the wolves, but for the sheep and not also
against the sheep. This you will do if you inveigh
against the laws and the lawgivers and at the same time
observe the laws with the weak so that they will not be
offended, until they also recognize tyranny and
understand their freedom.13

If this does not sound like a moderate position, then it
comes as no surprise that Martin does not adequately

represent moderation in A Tale of a Tub. The only passage

 

from the Tale that even comes close to embracing moderation
is the description in Section VI of Martin "proceeding with
caution" in ripping up his coat:

Martin laid the first hand: at one twitch brought off a
large handful of points, and with a second pull, stript
away ten dozen yards of fringe. But when he had gone
thus far, he demurred a while: he knew very well, there
yet remained a great deal more to be done: however, the
first heat being over, his violence began to cool, and
he resolved to proceed more moderately in the rest of
the work: having already very narrowly scap'd a swinging
rent in pulling off the points, which being tagged with
silver (as we have observed before) the judicious
workman had with much sagacity, double sown, to preserve
them from falling...For the rest, where he observed the
embroidery to be workt so close, as not to hide or
strengthen any flaw in the body of the coat, contracted
by the perpetual tampering of workmen upon it: he
concluded the wisest course was to let it remain,
resolving in no case whatsoever, that the substance of
the stuff should suffer injury: which he thought the
best method for serving the true intent and meaning of
his Father's will (PW 1: 85).

This is the closest we come to any sort of extended

exposition on Martin's ”doctrine." If Martin is to represent

 

13Martin Luther, ”The Liberty of a Christian Man" in
Three Treatises, trans. by W. A. Lambert, revised by Harold
J. Grimm (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1957), 261-316.

the

hat

Sui
exi

arg

no:

vi

3t

82
the middle way by which Swift champions the Church, there is

hardly enough about him to justify his existence in A Tale of

 

a Tub. In other words, Swift ironically implies that in
order to appear genuinely "moderate" you have to be absent.

If A Tale of a Tub is about the creation of meaning, then

 

Swift says the ideal, moderate road to meaning does not
exist. This reveals a principle of Swift's satiric practice:
arguments in support of moderation are best made by
nonexistent people.

Martin and Jack in their own ways both represent a
distorted reception of the Will. Martin's decision to remove
the quandary of lace, ribbons, fringe, embroidery and points
from his coat proceeds from the same logic which motivates
Jack: they are both rebellious and both feel that Peter has
gone too far in institutionalizing his beliefs and claiming
pre-eminence over the Father's Will. Martin acts on the
principle of rebellion against this authority which Peter
commands--he is no closet conservative. Martin is the first
to strip away accessories from his coat and it is only after
stripping away “ten yards of fringe" that he decides to
reconsider his work. There is no predetermined strategy,
common sense, or reasonable moderation at work here.

Finally, at the end of the episode Martin seems to
proceed along some theological lines, trying to consider ”the
wisest course" and attempting to make a decision whether to

strip away or let remain the various additions to his coat.

Hart

1163.7

but

infi

inS'

IL!

was
ref
pre
cor
int
vi<
is

(m:

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to

3a

Pa

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of

at

83
Martin supposedly has arrived at ”the true intent and
meaning" of his Father's Will in delaying his renovations,
but this does not occur to him until well after he has
inflicted severe damage to his coat.

The way that Peter accumulates authority for himself and
institutionalizes his corrupt practices is by observing
”rules" in the Will that he himself creates. Martin attempts
to ameliorate the emotional excess of Jack by saying that "it
was not their business to form their actions by any
reflection upon Peter's, but by observing the rules
prescribed in their Father's Will." This is no easy
consolation! Martin mistakenly assumes that observation and
interpretation are one and the same when he himself has been
'victimized by Peter's distorted reading of the Will. Martin
is no firm advocate of moderation because he refuses or is
unwilling to acknowledge that observing and creating meaning
are totally unconnected activities. Martin attempts to find
some common ground and serve as a moderator in getting Jack
to realize that Peter is still their brother. Yet bringing
Jack to reason is impossible because reason is not a viable
paradigm for interpreting the Will. Everything that has come
‘before proves that if Martin and Jack aspire to the same kind
of authority as attained by Peter, and I think they do, then
a ”reasonable” or moderate position is not an alternative.
There is no moderation as long as factions compete for

authority in the church:

84

The weight of Martin's arguments exalted Jack's levity,
and made him fly out and spurn against his brother's
moderation. In short, Martin's patience put Jack in a
rage...for bringing Martin to reason, as he called it:
or, as he meant it, into his own ragged, bobtail'd
condition: and Observing he said all to little purpose:
what, alas, was left for the forlorn Jack to do, but
after a million of scurrilities against his brother, to
run mad with spleen, and spright, and contradiction. To
be short, here began a mortal breach between these two
(PW 1: 87-8).

Jack is equally successful in creating his own throne
through a distorted explication of the Father's Will. In
founding his sect (the author calls it an "epidemick") of
Aeolists, Jack is forced to rely on the fruitfulness of his
imagination in receiving the Will. Following the example of
Peter, Jack discovers a particular brand of reading, not so
much scholarly or judicious but physical in its nature. The
reader has already learned about the "phenomenon of vapours"
in the "Digression on Madness" by which winds from the lower
extremities ascend to overshadow the brain. This seems a
particularly apt description of Jack's reading:

Jack had provided a fair copy of his Father's Will...he
began to entertain a fancy, that the matter was deeper
and darker, and therefore must needs have a great deal
more mystery at the bottom. Gentlemen, said he, I will
prove this very skin of parchment to be meat, drink, and
cloth, to be the philosopher's stone, and the universal
medicine. In consequence of which raptures, he resolved
to make use of it in the most necessary, as well as the
most paltry occasions of life. He had a way of working
it into any shape he pleased: so that it served him as a
night-cap when he went to bed, and for an umbrello in
rainy weather. He would lap a piece of it about a sore
toe, or when he had fits, burn two inches under his
nose: or if any thing lay heavy on his stomach, scrape
off, and swallow as much of the power as would lie on a
séév§§)penny, they were all infallible remedies (PW l:

1 - o

85

Jack's remedies are infallible because meaning is in the
mind of the reader: the reader is as capable as Peter of
creating through "force of his reasoning” the kind of
authority he wants. Jack attempts to equal the power of
Peter's rituals through mystification of his physical
remedies. Instead of manufacturing a ritual or assuming the
role of a falsely moderate peacemaker, Jack achieves
authority through direct physical contact with the text on
his head, toes, nose, or in his stomach. Yet this provides
no guarantee of a consistent nor predictable mode of behavior
or reading of that text. Jack is the cleric who maintains a
“perpetual flame in his belly" and he preaches with steam
pouring out of his eyes, nose, and mouth. The author notes
that as for reading and interpreting the Will, "the eyes of
the understanding see best, when those of the senses are out
of the way: and therefore, blind men are observed to tread
their steps with much more caution...than those who rely upon
the visual nerve." Swift is saying that sometimes the most
reliable "reading" is performed by men who cannot see.

The allegory and digressions of A Tale of a Tub fail to
elucidate a convincing middle way because Swift has
undermined the accepted purposes for these techniques. In
‘his role as a diplomat of moderation, Swift is more
‘powerfully influenced by and more concerned with the satire
of extreme positions. Swift uses the reader's preconceptions

about what a book should do to throw him off balance. Swift

86
demonstrates that "innovators in the Empire of Reason" are
all around us: when a person must create meaning based on a
text, the words are no guarantee that the reader adopts a
middle course. While the reader of A Tale of a Tub may
expect to see the strengths of a moderate position emerge
from the attack, he finally is left with a violent
confrontation among factions in the Church and in society.
What was ostensibly written to endorse religious and literary
authority has the final effect of undermining the very

sources of that authority.

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Chapter 3

Swift's Political Portraits:

"The Screen Removed, Their Hearts are Trembling."1

In previous chapters, I have shown how Swift adopts the
rhetorical pose of a moderate in some sermons, poems, and
prose tracts. However, in his most vociferous political
poems, Swift rejects the middle way in favor Of an
uncompromising and strident voice. Swift assaults and
insults his readers. Swift uses poetry not for aesthetic
pleasure but to cause pain--he inflicts damage against his
political targets. Swift writes in ”Verses on the Death of
Dr. Swift” that "When E2 are lashed, £221 kiss the rod.“ In
his best political poems, Swift returns the favor.

If Swift's political poems are difficult to categorize
as "Augustan" literature, then how can we describe Swift's
poetic voice? Moreover, how does Swift's poetic voice relate
to his prose voice? What is Swift's attitude towards the
subjects of his poetry? A. B. England notes that some of
Swift's poems depart from orderly forms of discourse and are
subversive of neo-classical orthodoxies like restraint,
proportion, and coherence. One of the ways Swift abandons

moderation is through metaphors "that involve drastic gaps

 

lFrom “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" in Poems, 491.

87

88

between tenor and vehicle: he [Swift] will protract the
elaboration of metaphors to extreme lengths of ingenuity, and
he will allow metaphors to proliferate into unruly
sequences.“2

I disagree with A. B. England's thesis that Swift's
poetic voice can be entirely explained by way of ”mechanical"
features of language. The disorderly energy in Swift's poems
results from a broader discrepancy between intention and
execution. The effect of Swift's poetry far exceeds any
single metaphor or analogy. With reference to Swift's prose,
some critics describe Swift's voice as wholly destructive.
F. R. Leavis, in his essay "The Irony of Swift," examines a
discrepancy between Swift's ostensible moral intentions and
the overwhelmingly negative and destructive tendency of his
prose. According to Leavis, Swift's prose contains “the most
remarkable expression of negative feelings and attitudes that
literature can offer.“ That we sometimes regard him as a
moralist and idealist is "mainly a witness to the power of
vanity, and the part that vanity can play in literary
appreciation: saeva indignatio is an indulgence that solicits
us all.”3 Both the rhetorical criticism of A. B. England and

the affective criticism of Leavis question Swift's use of

 

2A. B. England, Energy and Order in theWPoetry of Swift
(Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Press, 1980),
54.

3F. R. Leavis, ”The Irony of Swift," in Swift: A

Collection of Critical Essa 3 ed. Ernest Tuvefi§53_TEfiglewood
Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 30.

89
irony and satire. Yet both A. B. England and Leavis assume
some external, static, positive standard by which we judge
the effect of satire.

We cannot assume satire to have only one accepted
outcome or intention. Swift is difficult to categorize
because he employs a range of strategies, but some of Swift's
best political poems use the technique of portraiture. Swift
is political from the moment he opens his mouth, and his use
of portraiture heightens the damage inflicted by his satire.
Against his political targets, Swift attacks with a
descriptive force that seizes upon certain individual
qualities of a person and through exaggeration, analogy,
satire, and distortion produces a painfully concise,
'vigorously clear portrait. The difference between Swift's
prose and poetry is that his prose ridicules public, societal
figures whose vices are familiar to many: Swift's portraits
in poetry seize on personal qualities and gain energy from a
personal voice.

For example, Swift's "The Description of a Salamander"
and "The Virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician's Rod" are
distinct from "The Author Upon Himself" and "Horace, Lib. 2,
Sat. 6" because Swift produces a new, personally-motivated
.satirical image to replace the reader's public conception of

a Godolphin or Marlborough.4 In the most powerfully

 

4Sidney, First Earl of Godolphin (1645-1712), was
Secretary of State and Lord Justice under William III.
Godolphin fell from power after the high-flying minister

 

90
indignant political poems, Swift abandons the voice of
moderation in favor of a straightforward, excessive,
vociferous indictment. There is absolutely no compromise or
pretended politeness: these political poems are the real
Swift, the political rabble-rouser and man of excess. The
voice is combative, raucous, and confident.

If we accept the view that Swift's poetic voice differs
from his prose voice, significant critical questions are
raised about Swift's intentions and his use of specific kinds
of satire and irony. For example, what is the reader to make
of the claim from "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" that

His satire points at no defect,

But what all mortals may correct:

For he abhorred that senseless tribe,

Who call it humour when they jibe (ngmg, 497).

This statement from the "impartial narrator" implies some
kind of positive standard by which men can correct

themselves, and it disparages the senseless writers who only

attack without inspiring reform. But what does Swift do in

 

Henry Sacheverell insulted him repeatedly and escaped
punishment. Swift originally looked to Godolphin for
support, but Godolphin's coolness during Swift's campaign on
behalf of the Church of Ireland for the remission of the
First Fruits (1709) inspired a lasting dislike. John
Churchill, First Duke of Marlborou h, was a statesman and
soldier who twice served as Captain General. Marlborough
amassed an enormous personal fortune. He was charged by the
Tories with corruption and forced to live in exile until the
Hanoverian accession (1714). Marlborough was a member of the
Kit-Cat club and was a heroic figure in contemporary
literature, but Swift attacked him for his alleged vices of
avarice, ingratitude, and duplicity. See Dictionary of
National Bio ra h , ed. Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee
(London: Oxford University Press, 1917), 53 vols.

 

91
his most personal political portraits? In the lines from
"Verses on the Death," Swift makes himself out as an ideal
satirist who uses a well-established genre to inspire reform.
This formulaic and inaccurate self-assessment does not
explain the energy and power behind poems like "The Legion
Club” and “The Fable of Midas.“ In his best political poems,
Swift punishes with his verbal whip.

In describing the effect of Swift's poetic satire, what
kinds of comparisons can be made? Does Swift adhere to a
specific school or style of satire? According to the
narrator in "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift," Swift's
satire is primarily benign, easy-going, amusing, and witty.
This variety of satire seeks to ridicule gently the
absurdities and follies of man and assumes a "positive" or
light-hearted response, such as one might expect from Samuel
Butler's description of Sir Hudibras:

Beside, 'tis known he could speak Greek

As naturally as pigs squeak:

That Latin was no more difficile,

Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle.

Being rich in both, he never scanted

His bounty unto such as wanted:

But much of either would afford

To many that had not one word.

For Hebrew roots, although they're found

To flourish most in barren ground

He had such plenty as sufficed

To make some think him circumcised.

And truly so he was perhaps,
Not as a proselyte, but for claps.5

 

58amuel Butler, Hudibras I, Canto I in The Poetic Works
of Samuel Butler, ed. Rev. John Mitford (Boston: Houghton

MiffIIn, 1330), 32.

92

While Swift does write amusing satires, the greatest of
his political portrait poems differ from Butler's satire.
Swift's portraits are direct and personal, assaulting and
insulting with ferocious power. Swift singles out
particularly bad individuals-—according to his own moral
judgment--and lashes out at them in a furious personal
indictment. Another major satirist of the eighteenth
century, Samuel JOhnson, does the exact Opposite. Instead of
tickling the reader with Butler's laughable characters or
assaulting with Swift's moral outrage, Samuel JOhnson takes
on abstract and generalized notions of vice. Deprived of the
particularized detail generated in personal assault,
JOhnson's satire challenges intellectually but never attains
Swift's chaotic, sprawling hatred. JOhnson's speaker
embraces a realistic and harsh tone and uses imagination to
attack vice in the general public with a somewhat cerebral
contempt, as in ”The Vanity of Human Wishes":

Unnumbered suppliants crowd Preferment's gate,

Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great:

Delusive Fortune hears th'incessant call,

They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall.

On every stage the foes of peace.attend,

Hate dogs their flight, and insult mocks their end.

Love ends with hope, the sinking statesmen's door

Pours in the morning worshipper no more:

For growing names the weekly scribbler lies,

To growing wealth the dedicator flies,

From every room descends the painted face,

That hung the bright Palladium of the place,

And smokes in kitchens, or in auctions sold,

To better feature yields the frames of gold:

For now no more we trace in every line

Heroic worth, benevolence divine:
The form distorted justifies the fall,

93

And detestation rids th'indignant wall.6

Compared with Butler and Johnson, Swift's technique of
portraiture creates a multi-dimensional, distorted image of
his Object Of attack. The "positive" is created not in any
sense of inspired reform but in the overwhelming energy of
the assault: Swift bares his soul and deals out his Opinions
with blunt force. In the case of "The Description of a
Salamander," Swift takes on Lord JOhn Cutts, who had acquired
the nickname of "the salamander" for his bravery under fire
at the seige of Namur (1695):

With gaudy coat, and shining train,

But loathsome spots his body stain:

Out from some hole obscure he flies

When rains descend, and tempests rise,
Till the sun clears the air: and then
Crawls back, neglected, to his den.

SO when the war has raised a storm

I've seen a snake in human form,

All stained with infamy and vice,

Leap from the dunghill in a trice:
Burnish and make a gaudy show,

Become a general, peer and beau,

Till peace hath made the sky serene,
Then shrink into its hole again.

All this we grant--why, then look yonder,
Sure that must be a salamander! (Poems, 89).

Swift's portrait of Lord Cutts is distinct from the

satire of both Butler and Johnson.7 Butler gently pokes fun

 

65amuel Johnson, ”The Vanity of Human Wishes" in Samuel
JOhnson: The Oxford Authors Series, ed. Donald Greene
(London: Oxford University Press, 1984), 12-21.

 

7Baron John Cutts fought for William III at the Boyne
(1690). His bravery at the seige of Namur and at Blenhiem
earned him the position of Commander-in-Chief of Ireland
(1705). He was disliked by Swift for personal reasons and
for his ostentation and vanity. See the Dictionary of
National Biography.

 

94
at pedantry and pretense and Johnson castigates with public
generalizations. But Swift's portrait of Lord Cutts
radically distorts the expected direction of the salamander
analogy. Jumping from salamander to serpent, Swift intrudes
his personal animosity with off-hand comments like "I've seen
a snake in human form." Whereas the comparison was intended
as a flattering compliment for a resourceful man who can
adapt to his environment, Swift exploits the negative rather
than the positive implications of the nom de guerre. Swift
launches a vicious indictment against all who assume names
without deserving what is implied: “As we say 'Monsieur' to
an ape/ Without Offence to human shape." Swift uses Lord
Cutts as a typical instance of an undeserved reputation won
by an inordinately vain man.

The colors, textures, and images created in the portrait
help to sharpen Swift's spear and clarify the reasons for his
personal hostility. Swift describes war as a storm and peace
as the serene sky, and Lord Cutts crawls from his hole in his
snake-like form when “tempests rise." Because he has
acquired the right name, Lord Cutts can do no wrong to
further his reputation--he leaps from a dunghill and quickly
wins the respect of the establishment. When the sun comes
out, implying the return of natural reason, Lord Cutts drags
his loathsome spots back into his obscure hole. Swift does
not leave off with Cutts's disappearance, but he pushes the

analogy, leaving nothing more grotesque to the reader's

95
imagination:
Farther we are by Pliny told,
This serpent is extremely cold:
SO cold, that put it in the fire,
'Twill make the very flames expire:
Besides, it spews a filthy froth,
(Whether through rage, or lust, or both)

Of matter purulent and white,

Which happening on the skin to light,
And there corrupting to a wound,
Spreads leprosy and baldness round. (Poems, 91).

Swift plays on folk superstitions about the spread of disease
with disgusting comparisons between pus and the salamander's
excretions. The portrait dwells on the fame Lord Cutts
received but does not deserve: the reader feels Swift's
personal hatred in the suggestion that Lord Cutts should be
avoided like the plague. The reader picks up sexual
_overtones with the juxtaposition of rage and lust, further
implying a connection between Cutts's behavior and a
sexually-transmitted disease, possibly gonorrhea. All filth
and corruption, Lord Cutts's behavior in battle results in a
radically different, embarrassing portrait under the fire of
Swift's detestation.

Clearly, we need to generate some new terms to describe
the effects of Swift's technique of portraiture. It is not
enough to say it is either “positive" or ”negative” or
”indignant." The irony and satire we find in Swift's
political poems can be personally defensive or acrimonious
(offensive) or playful (indifferent). Swift's satire finally
exceeds any categorizations, and I will not suggest that

Swift's poetry accomplishes only three goals. Yet within the

96

range of Swift's poems many variations appear. On one side,
the satire is temperate, gentle, and amusing. In these
poems, Swift gets caught in the middle of a political
squabble, and he needs to be dragged in from the countryside:
he is a reluctant participant. On the other side, for
example in the acrimonious satire of "A Description of a
Salamander,” Swift's voice is overt and obstreperous. The
angry narrator presents examples of corrupt people and
creates portraits overwhelmed by his own chaotic, sprawling
outrage. In this kind of poem, Swift no longer concerns
himself with rhetorical complexity or a middle way as much as
he openly punishes those in places of authority. This
acrimonious, "acid satire" allows Swift to create indelible
images. The most effective weapon in his arsenal, political
portraits go beyond anything merely positive or negative.

Robert W. Uphaus argues that in the absence of any
positive standard in Swift's prose, we find in the poems an
autobiographical presence that is a surrogate positive. The
missing positive that F. R. Leavis was expecting from a
moralist “is continually present in Swift's poetry, but that
positive performs more a personal than thematic function.
That is, in these poems we are continually presented with
Swift's estimate of things--with his personal convictions

rather than his putative fictions--and we can accept or

97
reject his convictions, but we cannot ignore them."8 We
cannot ignore Swift's political portraits because they are so
menacing. Perhaps Swift's portraiture technique is so
effective because when he writes about persons in authority,
the reader expects some kind of accurate likeness or vague
allusion, not a putrid salamander. Yet Swift never appeals
to a patron--apart from his early odes--nor does he present a
flattering portrait of anyone besides himself. As we have
seen in "The Description of a Salamander,“ Swift wages war
most effectively when he can change the course of a metaphor
or make unexpected leaps among associations.

Swift's acrimonious, personal political portraits can be
better appreciated by comparing them with two poems in which
he does not use the technique: "The Author Upon Himself" and
“Horace, Lib. 2, Sat. 6." Both of these poems present a far
different Swift, a graceful political moderate with high
moral standards called in to smooth ruffled feathers and to
“reconcile divinity and wit." Ehrenpreis writes that Swift's
poems about himself divide into two classes, those built on
self-mockery and those leaning toward self-justification.9
"The Author Upon Himself" reveals facts about Swift's self-

concept but it contains no striking political portrait:

 

8Robert W. Uphaus, "Swift's Irony Reconsidered" in
Contemporary‘Studies of Swift's Poetry, ed. John Irwin
Fischer and Donald—CT Mell, Jr., associate ed. David M. Vieth
(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1981), 172.

 

9Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, the Age, 3
vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963-83), 2: 735.

98

Swift had the sin of wit, no venial crime:
Nay, 'twas affirmed, he sometimes dealt in rhyme:
Humour, and mirth, had place in all he writ:
He reconciled divinity and wit.
He moved, and bowed, and talked with too much grace:
Nor showed the parson in his gait or face:
Despised luxurious wines, and costly meat:
Yet, still was at the tables of the great.
Frequented lords: saw those that saw the Queen:
At Child's or Truby's never once had been:
Where town and country vicars flock in tribes,
Secured by numbers from the layman's gibes.
And deal in vices of the graver sort,
Tobacco, censure, coffee, pride, and port...
And now the public interest to support,
By Harley Swift invited comes to court.
In favour grows with ministers of state:
Admitted private, when superiors wait:
And, Harley, not ashamed his choice to own,
Takes him to Windsor in his coach, alone (Poems, 163).

The poem's uneven quality results because Swift's self-
admiration (he calls himself a "genius," "scholar“ and
"poet") subverts the moral outrage of the best sections.
Moreover, Swift describes himself as a man of modesty and
reconciliation, terms not befitting someone filled with 52333

indignatio. In the poem Swift gets called in to consult with

 

Harley because of the respect he commands and because of his
ability to appease contending factions. Can this really be

said about the author of A Tale of a Tub? Not the man of

 

excess, the Swift of "Author Upon Himself“ is regarded as a
compromising politician who moves discretly in important
circles. "Author Upon Himself" conspicuously lacks any
strong portrait, analogy, or metaphor because Swift plays his
cards carefully--not for the sake of his political fortunes
but for his reputation. In this poem, Swift wants to emerge

as one who performed what friendship, justice, and truth

99
demanded and then humbly retired. Swift does not assault and
insult because he wants to preserve an image of non-
participation: he wants to make clear he was wrongfully
accused as a Jacobite and subversive. In the poem Swift
remains every bit the modest country parson--though we hardly
believe it--who scorns the luxuries of the coffee houses.
Because the poem lacks a bold personal portrait, it pales in
comparison with political poems like "The Description of a
Salamander."

The theme and structure of "The Author Upon Himself"
compare with "Horace, Lib. 2, Sat. 6," another poem in which
Swift avoids portraiture. A. B. England describes the
organization of Swift's poem as elegantly symmetrical: the
movement is from the poet's country retreat to the throng of
courtly hangers-on, to Swift and Harley at the center, back
to the deluded crowd, and finally returning once more to the
country retreat.l0 The central thematic principle of
Horace's poem is a contrast between country and city life:
Horace focuses particularly on the peace he enjoys in his
natural retreat and the troubles he endures when he visits
his patron in the city. Swift borrows from Horace this idea
of the country squire invaded by crowds who perceive him as
politically important:

A hundred other men's affairs
Like bees are humming in my ears.

 

10A. B. England, Energy and Order in the Poetry of Swift
(Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Press, 1980), 145.

100

'Tomorrow my appeal comes on,

Without your help the cause is gone--'

'The Duke expects my Lord and you,

About some great affair, at two--'

'Put my Lord Bolingbroke in mind,

To get my warrant quickly signed:'

Consider, 'tis my first request.'

Be satisfied. I'll do my best--

Then presently he falls to tease:

'You may for certain, if you please:

I doubt not, if his Lordship knew--

And Mr Dean, one word from you--' (Poems, 168-9).
Swift holds the same position as in "The Author Upon
Himself“--that is, he serves as a respected intermediary
between political factions. When he actually spends time
with Harley, the conversation centers around "what's
o'clock?” and “how's the wind?" and "have you nothing new
from Pope, from Parnell or from Gay?” Swift plays out a role
as entertainer and conversation partner for Harley, having
none of the political leverage that the petitioners assume
him to possess. Harley wants to be amused with gossip from
the Scriblerians while the average man on the street asks
Swift serious questions about politics, the war, and
government finance. The ironic discrepancy between what the
crowds think Swift knows and what actually transpires in
Harley's court makes the poem light-hearted and amusing. The
vindictive, personal contempt the poem lacks follows from its
missing political portrait. The most harsh lines are given
over to the fools, beggars, and opportunists who want Swift
to be their conduit to the powerful. The hangers-on want

Swift to serve as a vehicle for their political goals when he

only serves an ornamental purpose for Harley.

101

"Horace, Lib. 2, Sat. 6" successfully imitates Horace,
but compared with Swift's other political poems it is not
storming with outrage. "Horace, Lib. 2, Sat. 6” does not
challenge the reader nor inflict pain. It lacks a real
portrait. The poem lacks momentum and dramatic tension. The
reader is never shocked by any of the language of either
"Horace” or ”The Author Upon Himself." In both poems, Swift
tries to play up "positive," moderate roles for himself.
Both poems conclude in a peaceful retirement that is
aesthetically pleasing but incongruous with Swift's
reputation for trouble-making:

Thus in a sea of folly tossed,

My choicest hours of life are lost:

Yet always wishing to retreat:

Oh, could I see my country seat!

There leaning near a gentle brook,

Sleep, or peruse some ancient book:

And there in sweet Oblivion drown

Those cares that haunt a court and town (Peggg, 170).

The real voice of Swift does not retire in pastoral
bliss--witness the kind of casualties Swift can claim when he
really exerts himself. Swift targets even something as small
as a name. Swift combines Godolphin's Christian name,
Sidney, with that of the supposed Arabic author of 223
Quixote, Cid Hamet Benenegli to get "Sid Hamet.” Like
”Salamander,“ ”The Virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician's Rod"
creates a vicious portrait drawn with Swift's personal
energy. The poem uses the device of analogy between

Godolphin's staff of office and rods celebrated in the Bible,

in classical mythology, and in romances. ”Sid Hamet" begins

102
with a simple comparison between Moses' beneficent wand and
Sid Hamet's magical staff. In contrast with Moses, the two
major themes of Sid Hamet's rod involve punishment and
secrecy. Godolphin's white staff symbolizes his office as
Lord Treasurer, and the Queen in fact required Godolphin to
"break thy rod like a naughty lad" when he was removed from
office. But Sid Hamet's rod inverts the conflict of values
represented by Moses and his staff:

Our great magician Hamet Sid,

Reverses what the prophet did:

His rod was honest English wood,

That senseless in a corner stood,

Till metamorphosed by his grasp,

It grew an all-devouring asp:

Would hiss and sting, and roll, and twist,

By the mere virtue of his fist:

But when he laid it down, as quick

Resumed to figure of a stick (Poems, 110).

Instead of remaining dormant in his hand, Godolphin's
rod transforms into a poisonous snake when he holds it.
Swift delights in the portrait of an "all-devouring asp"
undulating in the hand Of Godolphin, a symbol of his moral
weakness and corruption. In fact, in the poem Swift berates
Godolphin for increasingly serious crimes and vices. Swift
draws wild, illogical comparisons between Godolphin's rod and
a witches' broomstick, divining rod, snake, fishing pole,
riding switch, scepter, and penis. The poem proceeds from
one basic comparison to more extreme parallelism among all
kinds of rods in Swift's imagination. Swift exploits the

negative associations with Godolphin's rod and, by

implication, all the accusations trace back to him: Swift

103

wants Godolphin's staff of office to act as a lightning rod
attracting all possible incriminating connotations. The OED
notes a number of nefarious and some impartial associations
with the word, among them "an instrument of punishment" as in
“a rod under one's girdle" implying a whipping or the act of
being whipped. Shakespeare in Measure for Measure picks up
on the possible double meanings:

...Now, as fond fathers,

Having bound up the threat'ning twigs of birch,

Only to stick it in their children's sight

For terror, not to use, in time the rod

Becomes more mocked than feared.11

Thus the range of associations Swift calls into play in
the demolition of Godolphin includes the rod as symbol of
dignity, power and authority and a possible source of humor.
Godolphin's power can just as easily be represented as
tyrannical or devoted to punishment, evil and couched in
secrecy. (See how Swift uses the bundle of twigs in "The
Faggot”) The only really straightforward comparison Swift
invokes is between the rod and Moses' staff. Once Swift
finishes that, he progresses to the more hyperbolic and
imaginative portrait of the witches' broomstick:

So to her midnight feasts the hag

Rides on a broomstick for a nag,

That raised by magic of her breech,

O'er land and sea convey the witch:

But with the morning dawn resumes
The peaceful state of common brooms (Poems, 110).

 

11Wi11iam Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, ed. R. C.
Bald in The Complete Works, ea. Alfred Harbage (New YOrk:
Viking Press, 1969), I, iii, 26.

104

The analogy from the world of magic is more facetious,
especially in the way the witch (Godolphin) raises herself by
the magic of her own breech. Swift openly celebrates the
absurdity of each subsequent comparison, seeming to lapse
into incantations, intoxicated by his own inventive wit.
Swift delights in the game of wit, all the while laughing in
the background as he launches into more ridiculous
associations. The principal moral crimes Swift has accused
Godolphin of (hypocrisy and avarice) multiply into a thousand
distorted hallucinations. The reader takes the charge of
hypocrisy seriously: Godolphin in office, like Marlborough,
was a greedy and self-serving man. Godolphin used his rod to
realize personal profits from gold mines while pretending to
represent impartially the government. The overwhelming
conjuring spell of witchcraft and occult imagery leads to the
connection between Godolphin and gold mines where ”In
Scottish hills [Godolphin] found precious ore/ Where none
e'er looked for it before." Remember this connection when
reading “The Fable of Midas"! Gold leaves its dirty mark on
the fingers that touch it.

The reader assumes all of Swift's charges against
Godolphin have this same basis in fact--they can be traced to
some physical evidence. Swift invokes Moses's walking stick,
Hermes' rod, and Achilles' scepter to give a solid feeling of
Biblical and classical authority to the charges he directs

against Godolphin. But the wild progression of comparisons

105

is anything but logical: walking stick> broomstick> snake>
divining rod> fishing rod. Anything of lengthy, slender
configuration can be worked into the frenzied analogies. But
the most humorous and damaging of the charges is that
Godolphin was a part of some satanic brotherhood. Like
Hermes, Godolphin could induce mortal eyes to sleep and
"drive departed souls to Styx." The enchantment of the wand
of Hermes or Mercury's caduceus is the power to induce sleep,
like Godolphin's inducing sleep in the ministry.

Sid's brethren of the conjuring tribe

A circle with the rod describe,

Which proves a magical redoubt,

To keep mischievous spirits out:

Sid's rod was of a larger stride,

And made a circle thrice as wide:

Where spirits thronged with hideous din,

And he stood there to take them in.

But, when the enchanted rod was broke,

They vanished in a stinking smoke (Poems, 111).
The scene damages because it implies Godolphin is an agent of
hell. With his secret tribe, Godolphin has duped the British
Parliament with mystical incantations. The esoteric, cryptic
rituals were conducted with the host of evil spirits in a
“hideous din“ throwing evil influence over all. Swift moves
from the underworld of Hermes to Achilles' scepter,
representing a long descent of kings who have rightfully
transmitted power down a hero's line of inheritance. Once
again Swift inverts the paradigm because Godolphin emphasizes
the negative aspect of inheritance. His power came through

an ”heirloom." Swift insinuates that Godolphin came to power

through his connection with the Marlborough family (his son

106
married Marlborough's eldest daughter and heiress).

From the range of classical analogies and extended
metaphors, the poem abruptly changes tone in the last stanza.
Here Swift addresses Godolphin as a child in child-like
language with a few more comparisons tossed in for good
measure:

Dear Sid, then why wert thou so mad

To break thy rod like a naughty lad?

YOu should have kissed it in your distress,

And then returned it to your mistress:

Or made it a Newmarket switch,

And not a rod for thy own breech.

But since Old Sid has broken this,

His next may be a rod in piss.

Swift scolds Godolphin directly as if he were a misbehaving
son: the father instructs his son about proper behavior and
laughingly suggests he might have turned his rod into a
horse-switch. But returning the rod "to your mistress" must
imply an illicit affair with the Queen! Or does it mean
Godolphin acquired his power through sexual favors? At least
since Godolphin broke his staff, he may face "a rod in piss,"
a low version of "rod in pickle" or a punishment. But as
with all metaphorical comparisons, multiple meanings reside
beneath the words: “a rod in piss" could easily be taken for
a penis. Hence Godolphin is "broken“ or made impotent, his
reward for his conduct in office.

The basis of Swift's "The Fable of Midas“ is as
hyperbolic as the progression of rod analogies in "Sid

Hamet.” Swift compares Marlborough's management of the war

with Midas, the legendary king who successfully prayed to the

107
gods that everything he touched might turn to gold. The poem
perfectly divides into halves-—the first half devoted to
Midas's story and the second half drawing parallels between
Midas and Marlborough. In "The Fable of Midas," Swift
concentrates on the portrait of Marlborough's avarice, his
corruption in managing Allied troops, and his personal
profits from protracting the war. Swift's pamphlet [We

Conduct of the Allies deals with this issue in a more

 

pragmatic manner, but the tract has little of the imaginative
fury of the poem. The contrast between poetic and prose
voices results because Swift's pamphlet was a public
discourse, part of a sustained propaganda assault, while the
poem's self-contained hostility is personal and direct.
'Midas and Marlborough are different because Midas had a
change of heart: he prayed to the gods to reverse this
”curse“ while Marlborough was forcefully removed from office.
Marlborough suffered but did not repent, according to Swift.
Midas suffers because of unanticipated negative outcomes:

He chipped his bread: the pieces round

Glittered like spangles on the ground:

A codling e'er it went his lip in,

WOuld straight become a golden pippin:

He called for drink, you saw him sup

Potable gold in golden cup.

His empty paunch that he might fill,

He sucked his victuals through a quill:

Untouched it passed between his grinders,

Or't had been happy for gold-finders (Poems, 123).
Midas has been so thoroughly rewarded by his “talent" that

his body cannot receive the nourishment it needs to survive.

Swift strikes the reader with images of such crisp definition

108
that even in this metallic feast we sense a man victimized by
his own greed. People begin to mistake Midas's magic touch
for intelligence (Swift wants the parallel application to
Marlborough), so Midas is called in to decide whether Pan or
Apollo is more musically gifted. Midas decides that Pan is
better, and Apollo bestows on Midas a pair of asses' ears--a
symbol of his moral impurity. Midas finally prays to have
his golden touch rescinded. This is the fate Swift wishes on
Marlborough: fame will spread the news and people will travel
from afar to see ”Midas, exposed to all their jeers,/ Had
lost his art, but kept his ears."

Swift lets out all the stops in the second half of the
poem in the same frenzied manner he extended the rod
associations in "Sid Hamet." The parallels between
Marlborough's management of the war and Midas's touch are
stretched to the limit:

Besides, it plainly now appears

Our Midas too has asses' ears:

Where every fool in his mouth applies,

And whispers in a thousand lies:

Such gross delusions could not pass,

Through any ears but of an ass

But gold defiles with frequent touch,

There's nothing fouls the hands so much:

And scholars give it for the cause,

Of British Midas' dirty paws (Poems, 125).

In addition to the metaphorical savagery, the poem contains
specific and serious charges against Marlborough. The
vicious name-calling and playful comparison contrast with

Swift's serious allegations against Marlborough. Marlborough

profited from perquisites, pensions, bribes, and commissions,

109
and Swift drags him through the mud for it. Swift demolishes
Marlborough in every conceivable way, through political
accusations and, by associating him with an ass, moral
outrage. The portrait is of a man who like "gold-finders"

carts away dung and offal and searches it for gold:
Marlborough had the ability to turn "dung" (unnecessary war)
into gold (personal profit). Swift makes the comparison
because both Midas and Marlborough end up with similar fates,
sunk down by their lascivious pride, on public display with
asses' ears and dirty hands.

When Marlborough died in 1722 ten years after the
publication of "Midas," Swift's feelings about him had not
softened. ”A Satirical Elegy on the Late Famous General"
concludes with the same image of a man sullied by touching
gold and dirtied by his immoral acts:

Let pride be taught by this rebuke,

How very mean a thing's a Duke:

From all his ill-got honours flung,

Turned to that dirt from whence he sprung (Peege, 242).
In these lines, Swift surprisingly did not take up the
opportunity to rhyme ”flung” with his favorite excremental
synonym. Swift subverts the reader's expectations with his
diabolically funny mock-elegy. This is no serious, solemn
meditation on the death of a famous person like that in
classical literature. The speaker laughs irreverently at the
elaborate funeral staged by the Whigs--Marlborough's hearse

was a sumptuously adorned chariot, drawn by eight horses.

James Sutherland suggests that Thomas Gray as a small boy may

110
have witnessed the procession to Westminster Abbey, and he
may have reflected on it when composing his "Elegy on a
Country Churchyard."12 No doubt many conventional elegies
appeared in the popular press, provoking Swift's bitter

inversion:

His Grace! impossible! what, dead!

Of old age too, and in his bed!

And could that Mighty Warrior fall?

And so inglorious, after all!

Well, since he's gone, no matter how,

The last loud trump must wake him now:

And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,
He'd wish to sleep a little longer.

And could he be indeed so old

As by the newspapers we're told?
Threescore, I think, is pretty high:

'Twas time in conscience he should die.
This world he cumbered long enough:

He burnt his candle to the snuff:

And that's the reason some folks think,

He left behind so great a stink (Poems, 242).

Swift capitalizes on a tOpic like Marlborough to bring out
three exclamations within one octosyllabic line! Swift has
in mind a twisted memorial for Marlborough. In the
”Satirical Elegy,” Marlborough himself is bothered by all the
noise raised over his death. Watching the funeral parade
pass by, listening to the loud public clamor, smelling the
smells of death, Swift laments the fact that Marlborough did
not die sooner. Not a hint of guilt or remorse can be found
in Swift's send-up of feigned public sentiment. Instead of

meditating on Marlborough's military success--what we might

 

12James Sutherland, "The Funeral of John, Duke of
Marlboroug " in Back round for Queen Anne (London: Methuen
and COO, 1939), "" 4.

111
find in a traditional elegy--Swift attacks and insults
Marlborough's memory. Marlborough's death makes people cry,
but for the wrong reasons, according to Swift.

Swift's "Satirical Elegy“ expresses moral outrage
against this demon who so long burdened the world with his
life. The “last loud trump" awakening Marlborough recalls 1
Corinthians 15, 52: "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead
shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."
Swift thinks this impossible for Marlborough, and he hopes
that Marlborough rises from the dead because the public
lamentation bothers even him, not because he "shall be
changed.” Swift proves in his mock-elegy that expressing
“grief" can be funny: Swift even makes us laugh with
improbable slant rhymes about sadness over Marlborough's
death:

Behold his funeral appears,

Nor widow's sighs, nor orphan's tears,

WOnt at such times each heart to pierce,

Attend the progress of his hearse (Peege, 242).

Swift lampooned the reader's expectations and the genre
itself in the "Satirical Elegy." A comparable effort against
the ballad-song in "An Excellent New Song Upon a Seditious
Pamphlet” shows how Swift ironically "attacks" his own
pamphlet and ”defends” something he opposes. Ballads are
traditionally associated with non-literate cultures and Often
embrace legendary heroes, supernatural events or passionate

love. Swift's poem inverts expectations because he writes

112

"An Excellent New Song“ in response to the furor raised over
his serious economic tract, "A Proposal for the Universal Use
of Irish Manufacture." In this pamphlet, Swift concentrates
on the mercantilist anti-Irish economic legislation of the
British Parliament, but his efforts to heighten the awareness
of the Anglo-Irish is a political act. The Dublin
establishment took action against the Offensive pamphlet,
Lord Chief Justice Whitshed prosecuting the printer Waters
for disseminating seditious material.13 "An Excellent New
(Song” along with ”Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" was one
of the items seen as most offensive, bringing about the
decision to cancel certain sections of the text in the
Faulkner edition. Comparing the edited version of the
prologue with the original yields valuable information about
what kind of language Swift's readers and editors found most
unacceptable:

Edited: The author having wrote a treatise, advising the

535513 of Ireland to wear their own manufactures, a

prosecution was set on foot against Waters the printer

thereof, which was carried out with so much violence,

that one Whitshed, then Chief Justice, thought proper,

in a manner the most extraordinary, to keep them about

nine hours, and to send them eleven times out of court,
until he had wearied them into a special verdict.

 

13William Whitshed was Chief Justice of the King's Bench
in Ireland. While regarded by Swift as a competent judge
concerning Whig politics, Whitshed's involvement in the
prosecution of Waters in 1720 and in legal battles
surrounding Wood's copper coinage made Whitshed a prime
target in the Drapieeretters and associated poems. See
Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962-83), vol. 3, Dean
Swift, 675-7.

113

Original: The author having writ a treatise, advising
the people of Ireland to wear their own manufactures:
that infamous wretch Whitshed prosecuted Waters the
printer with so much violence and injustice, that he
kept the jury nine hours, and sent them away eleven
times, till out of mere weariness they were forced to
give a special verdict (Poems, 217).

Not only does the edited version contain more words, but the
worst thing it says about Whitshed is that he was "violent,”
not unusual for a prosecutor. Swift's original bestows
Whitshed with indignant descriptive words like ”infamous
wretch," “injustice,“ and "forced." The vociferous preamble
contradicts the intention of the poem, written by a person
supposedly in agreement with Whitshed. Swift pretends to be
a person writing against his own pamphlet. This creates the
ironic discrepancy between Swift's "defense" of Whitshed and
'his ”prosecution” of the printer Waters. Swift wrote the
poem in ballad stanza: the metrical regularity and
alternating concluding lines give it a drinking song vitality
and humor that Swift uses to his advantage in the portrait:
In England the dead in woolen are clad,
The Dean and his printer then let us cry fie on:
To be clothed like a carcass would make a Teague mad,
Since a living dog better is than a dead lion,
Our wives they grow sullen
At the wearing of woolen,
And all we poor shopkeepers must our horns pull in.
Then we'll buy English silks, & c.
Whoever our trading with England would hinder,
To inflame both the nations do plainly conspire:
Because Irish linen will soon turn to tinder:
And wool is it greasy, and quickly takes fire.
Therefore I assure ye,
Our noble Grand Jury,
When they saw the Dean's book they were in a great fury:

They would buy English silk for their wives, & c.
(Basso 217)

114

Every stanza exploits a central metaphor allowing Swift to
point out the ridiculous legal, economic, and social bind the
Anglo-Irish have put themselves in. With their cultural ties
to England, the Anglo-Irish wish to clothe their women in
English silks, damasks, tabbies, and gauzes while ignoring
the economic basis for their own health. Swift's irony
exposes the hypocrisy of the "true Irish hearts" who buy
English cloth. The double-bind of the law requires the
deceased to be buried in woolen (to protect the domestic
industry). Therefore "a living dog better is than a dead
lion." The irony of the situation is that to keep their
cultural ties intact, the landowners bought imported silk
while watching their land values bottom out--forcing the
shopkeepers to “pull their horns in." This perspective Swift

would capitalize on in The Drapier's Letters, but in the case

 

of "An Excellent Song," the poet is a stool-pigeon accusing
another working-class man. The fire metaphor in the third
stanza is beautifully executed, flames meaning to inspire
political controversy, produce worthless goods, put grease
into fire, and inspire emotional passion.

In a letter to Pope dated January 10, 1721, Swift wrote
that during the trial, "the Chief Justice among other
singularities, laid his hand on his breast, and protested
solemnly that the author's design was to bring in the

Pretender, although there was not a single syllable of party

115
in the whole treatise"14 Perhaps the best line in the poem
is the verdict that the printer "Henceforth shall print
neither pamphlets nor linen,/ And, if swearing can do't,
shall be swingingly mauled." This use of "swingingly” is
cited in the OPE as "hugely or immensely," but Swift exploits
the pun of the slang meaning. Swift associates a ”swinging“
with a ”hanging." That is, the printer's fate before the
Anglo-Irish establishment should be decided finally by the
rope if not in the courtroom. This comes from the man who
championed FAIR LIBERTY!

The Anglo-Irish double bind irritates Swift like no
other political problem. Swift assaults and insults both the
Irish 229 the English in a handful of poems, including ”An
Excellent New Song." One of the most bitter poems Swift ever
wrote--”A Character, Description, and Panegyric of the Legion
Club"--also takes up the Anglo-Irish dilemma. Yet ”The
Legion Club” differs from ”An Excellent New Song" and the
”Satirical Elegy“ because it is deadly serious. It creates a
lurid political portrait. Filled with animosity, the poem
was far too dangerous for any Dublin printer to risk
supporting. Swift exerts the portraiture technique against a
host of specific individuals in the Irish House of Commons
because of his general aversion for them and because of

specific events, like the erection of a building. The Irish

 

14The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold

Williams, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963-65), 2:
365-74.

 

116
Parliament had voted to deprive the clergy of pasturage
tithes that were legally due them. They had built a new
Parliament house, a vainglorious and costly edifice
constructed in the Italian style with a facade of Ionic
columns.15 Crucial to the effect of the political portrait
are the seven-syllable lines, which Swift uses only a few
times, and a cluster of images linked to damnation.

One image is a vast "pile” like a new Bedlam. Peter J.
Schakel argues that two central images allow Swift to
describe the Irish Parliament house as both a lunatic asylum
and a kind of hell.16 Swift fuses two concepts of madness
and damnation to give the poem a unified thematic framework.
Exploring the idea of damnation, Schakel demonstrates that
Swift's specific allusions to the Bible and to Aeneas'
journey into the underworld allow Swift to conflate the
classical Hades with the Christian hell, thus bringing
together two disparate sources in a coherent moral indictment
of Irish politics.

However, I disagree with Schakel's otherwise excellent
article because he attributes to the poem a high degree of
conscious artistic design. Swift is not creating a literary

tapestry carefully weaving together strands from various

 

15Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His_Works, and the
Age, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962-83),
3: 828-320

 

16Peter J. Schakel, "Virgil and the Dean: Christian and
Classical Allusion in 'The Legion Club,'" Studies in
PhilOlogy 7a (1973), 427-380

 

117
sources. Any careful reading of A Tale of a Tub will show
that coherent design is more an illusion than a working
architectural principle for Swift. "The Legion Club"
overwhelms the reader as a piece of invective because it is
filled with personal contempt and animosity. The poem is one
of the handful of examples of outright offending satire.
There is nothing to hold Swift back at this point in his life
and career. Swift felt hatred pouring from an open wound,
and he cried out openly at a deserving target.

The aggressive and contradictory title of the poem
refers to a passage in Mark when Jesus asks the "unclean
spirit” possessing the man out of the tombs ”what is thy
name?” The answer is, "my name is Legion, for we are many."
Thereafter, in freeing the man from the evil spirits
occupying his body, Christ forces the devils to enter into a
great herd of swine. Swift uses the same violent force in
his poem, freeing his voice of Anglo-Irish "possession." The
members of Parliament in this analogy are unclean spirits, a
herd of swine feeding in their vainglorious edifice
conducting their club like inmates in an asylum:

Let them, when they once get in

Sell the nation for a pin:

While they sit a-picking straws

Let them rave of making laws:

While they never hold their tongue,

Let them dabble in their dung:

Let then form a grand committee,

How to plague and starve the city:

Let them stare and storm and frown,

When they see a clergy-gown.

Let them, 'ere they crack a louse,
Call for the orders of the House:

118

Let them with their gosling quills,

Scribble senseless heads of bills:

We may, while they strain their throats,

Wipe our arses with their votes.

Let Sir Tom, that rampant ass,

Stuff his guts with flax and grass:

But before the priest he fleeces

Tear the Bible all to pieces.

At the parsons, Tom, halloo boy,

Worthy offspring of a shoe-boy,

Footman, traitor, vile seducer,

Perjured rebel, bribed accuser:

Lay the paltry privilege aside,

Sprung from papist and a regicide:

Fall a-working like a mole,

Raise the dirt about your hole (Poems, 552).
The portrait is characterized more by open hostility than by
cOherent design. We witness a collision of voices between a
mild-mannered, "objective" narrator and the stinging
criticism he delivers. This is the man who “strolls the
city“ and gently invites his muse to take him on a tour of
the asylum: ”Thither, gentle muse, conduct me,/ I should
ask, and thou instruct me.“ Yet the narrator changes his
tune when he arrives at the gates of hell: "In a fright she
[the muse] crept away,/ Bravely I resolved to stay." Swift
distances the ferocity of his anger by momentarily focusing
on the impartial qualities of the narrator--he does it at the
end of the poem again when the narrator retires with spirits
spent. The narrator asks innocent questions, but his
description of the rabble within is horrific. Recurring
clusters of images are pierced with a stench, images Of
disease, filthy excrement and references to the underworld of

Clio, Stygian streams, and satan. But the meek narrator who

119
still utters condemnations changes into a confrontational
zookeeper who demands to inspect the ”heroes" one by one.
The individual names of this dire, infectious brood are
not so important as the intensity of the portrait. This

hell-asylum is more disgusting than anything in A Tale of a

 

Tub. Two male companions bound together in leather kiss and
drink each other's urine. A trio of “Clements, Dilkes and
Harrison" swagger drunkenly out of their garrison. One
prisoner metamorphizes into a snake-haired gorgon, and the
narrator accuses him of incest. A grotesque visage with the
appearance of satan appears at the door. Swift's technique
of portraiture is best represented in self-comparison with
William Hogarth, artistic ally of the Scriblerians:

How I want thee, humorous Hogarth!

Thou I hear, a pleasant rogue art:

Were but you and I acquainted,

Every monster should be painted:

YOu should try your graving tools

On this odious group of fools:

Draw the beasts as I describe 'em,

Form their features, while I gibe them:

Draw them like, for I assure you,

YOu will need no caricatura:

Draw them so that we may trace

All the soul in every face (Poems, 556).
Note the moral dimension--the emphasis is on exposure of the
evil faces and not on artistry. The Irish Parliament is made
of “monsters" that need only be represented, not caricatured.
Their features need not be exaggerated. While Hogarth may
rely on the caricature or distortion of reality, Swift says

in such obvious examples of moral weakness one need only look

at the face. Every foolish or corrupt thought in the heart

120
Swift easily sees on the face of a "beast."

"The Legion Club" stings with the most grotesque
political portrait, but "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift
D.S.P.D" inspires the most contradictory responses. Much
criticism creates a screen through which Swift speaks,
focusing on whether the poem is ironic, impersonal, or
autobiographical. Thus we find various Swiftian images in
criticism such as William Ewald's concept of a rhetorical
philosopher. Ewald writes that in "Verses on the Deat "
Swift uses his greatest satiric mask to fight "the same
battle Milton fought, for a humble, just, and ordered view of
oneself in relation to the world, and against the kind of
distortion of values which deludes man into over-estimation
of his own importance."l7 For generations, critics have
exaggerated the degree of literary artifice in the poem.
Ehrenpreis creates the image of Swift as master impersonator
and believes all of the first section of "Verses on the
Deat " is “ironic, sardonic, or sarcastic with the mock-
skepticism conveyed by the kind of impersonations which Swift
particularly enjoyed.”18 Louis K. Barnett reads "Verses on
the Death" as deliberately misleading and calls it "Swift's

most accomplished effort to impose order on the materials of

 

17William Bragg Ewald, Jr., The Masks of Jonathan Swift
(New York: Russell and Russell, 1967), 183.

 

18Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and The
Age, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962-83),
vol. 3 Dean Swift, 710.

121

posthumous reputation and a worthy culmination to his poetry
of fictive self-portraiture."l9 Maurice Johnson picks up on
the controversial apology, creating the image of Swift as
impartially hosting the final assessment of his life.
JOhnson believes Swift "is ostensibly talking about himself,
[but] Swift has a good deal to say about friendship, envy,
and human relations in general.“20

As long as commentators concern themselves with
separating the ”fictive" from the "true,” they will be misled
by emphasizing Swift's use of apparently biographical
information. Why else would Pope want to squelch the
offensive passages? Pope set the tone for much contemporary
criticism: he thought ”Verses on the Death" was deceitful and
false. Writing to John Boyle, Earl of Orrery, who had first
given him the poem, Pope said ”I return the verses you
favored me with, the latter part of which is inferior to the
beginning, the character too dry, as well as too vain in some
respects, and in one or two particulars not true."21 POpe
may have been offended because in ”Verses on the Death,“
Swift spoofed Pope in certain passages:

Vain humankind! Fantastic race!
Thy various follies, who can trace?

 

l9Louis K. Barnett, Swift's Poetic Worlds (Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 1981), 82.

20Maurice JOhnson, The Sin of Wit: Jonathan Swift as a
Poet (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1950), 59-66.

21The Correspogdence of Alexander Pope, ed. G. Sherburn
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), vol 4: 130.

 

122

Self-love, ambition, envy, pride,

Their empire in our hearts divide:

Give others riches, power, and station,

'Tis all on me a usurpation. (Poems, 486).

On the other hand, some commentators throw out the
endless debate over truth and falsehood in ”Verses on the
Death." Nora Crow Jaffe explains that the poem establishes
an alliance between the poet and reader built upon trust:
”Swift relies on his bond with the reader to enforce his
central point: though all men consult their private ends, and
all men should know themselves well enough to know that
truth, their habitual selfishness need not preclude acts of
public benefit.”22 Robert W. Uphaus writes that the poem
embodies a distinctly unironic and positive affirmation of
the self, a final answer to those who accused Swift of hiding
behind satiric masks:

Swift offers an image to posterity that dares us to
challenge his integrity. He does not conceal himself
through the manipulation of irony: rather, the irony
gives way to autobiographical self-revelation, providing
a complex perspective of a highly complicated man. But
so long as readers talk about the poem in terms of
irony, satire, and persona (or at least hope that these
terms apply), they will remain locked in the seemingly
never-ending debate that finds Barry Slepian asserting
that the poem is an instance of self-irony and JOhn

Middleton Murray assuming that the poem is a monstrous

example of Swift's vanity.23

”Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" is the most memorable

 

22Nora Crow Jaffe, The Poet Swift (Hanover: University
Press of New England, 1977), 19.

23Robert W. Uphaus, "Swift's 'Whole Character': The
Delany Poems and 'Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift,'" Modern
Language Quarterly 34 (1973): 406-16.

 

123

of Swift's portraits because Swift is the hero of the poem,
not his "earnest" defense of FAIR LIBERTY. The poem contains
the most eloquent statement about Swift's real feelings
towards himself and others. Rochefoucauld's maxim ”Dans
l'adversite de nos meilleurs amis nous trouvons quelque
chose, qui ne nous deplaisit pas" moved Swift to realize new
things about himself. Moreover, "Verses on the Death" lashes
out with power and energy created by contradictory portraits.
The poem challenges and disturbs because its purpose is
deeply divided. Swift's self-portraits and those of his
friends and enemies create an explosive, aggressive melting
pot of voices, but there is no coherently artistic mask.
Swift throws his sharpest barbs at everyone who knows him: he
forces on the reader a hostile and contradictory self-
assessment. The argument that ”Verses on the Death" misleads
or does not follow a systematic organizing principle is
irrelevant. “Verses on the Death" is valuable for what it
tells us about Jonathan Swift, not about literary artifice.

In the poem, Swift consults his own private ends,
resulting in portraits more divided and controversial than
anything he ever wrote. Whether or not the portraits-~of
Swift and of others--accurate1y represent the truth is
unimportant. "Verses on the Death" disturbs the reader
because Swift dispenses with all screens and presents an
honest estimate of how he understands himself. The only

screens in the poem are those forced upon it by commentators.

124
When the reader looks into the heart of Swift's self-portrait
in "Verses on the Death," he finds only contradictions,
anger, accusations, reversals, and complexity. Swift says
Openly "this is what I really am!” We mistake ourselves by
separating the man from the poem or by forcing an ordered
view of the universe on the poem. Swift's concept of poetry
is not Pope's: Swift uses poetry as a vehicle to a larger
end. Poetry for Swift is an instrument by which he can
inflict damage and make his friends squirm.

What statements does Swift make about himself in the
poem? Throughout ”Verses on the Death” Swift forcefully
takes care of himself first, and he explains in his sermon
“On Doing Good" that this does not contradict the law of
nature and the law of God. Broadly speaking, the poem moves
from self love (1-72) through irony (73-298) to a portrait of
Swift as a man of absolute integrity (299-488). Each self-
portrait waxes and wanes with chaotic energy because of
Swift's deeply divided understanding of himself. We get at
least three different Swifts in this extended dramatization.

We all behold with envious eyes,

Our equal raised above our size:

Who would not at a crowded show,

Stand high himself, keep others low?

I love my friend as well as you,

But would not have him stop my view:

Then let me have the higher post:

I ask but for an inch at most (Poems, lines 13-20).

The fools, my juniors by a year,

Are tortured with suspense and fear.

Who wisely thought my age a screen,

When death approached, to stand between:
The screen removed, their hearts are trembling,

125

They mourn for me without dissembling. (lines 219-24).

Yet, malice never was his aim:

He lashed the vice but spared the name.

No individual could resent,

Where thousands equally were meant.

His satire points at no defect,

But what all mortals may correct:

For he abhorred that senseless tribe,

Who call it humour when they jibe:

Who spared a hump or crooked nose,

Whose owners set not up for beaux.

True genuine dullness moved his pity,

Unless it Offered to be witty (lines 463-74).

Wait a minute! How is it possible that Swift wallows in the
self-absorbed malice of his friends and enemies in section 2
and confesses in section 3 that ”malice never was his aim"?
The particularized detail of portraits in section 2 stings
with malice and specific name-calling: Swift gets in his most
.vicious rabbit-punches at his enemies before it is too late.
Swift's chance to scream the unvarnished truth results in
this disturbing collision of voices and multiple Swift-images
in 'Verses on the Death." The chaotic, sprawling outrage
does not lend itself to easy categorization or to tidy
rhetorical criticism because the reader responds to the
intensity of Swift's lashing rod.

Notice how easily Swift changes linguistic clothing and
shifts from first to second to third person even within the
same stanza. Swift has no premeditated, coherent theme to
guide him, and even dividing "Verses on the Death" into three
sections seems artificial. The reader confronts

contradictory voices and the power and energy generated in

each portrait. The poem's shotgun method of organization

126
undermines critics who want to see "Verses on the Death" as
an orderly self-justification.

If the poem has structure, it generates itself in
response to Rochefoucauld's maxim. As Robert W. Uphaus has
noted, "there is ample reason to believe that Swift views the
maxim as an expression of a morally neutral fact of human

nature which, it turns out, he earlier examined and defended
is his sermon 'Doing Good' (1724):“

Nature directs every one of us, and God permits us, to
consult our own private Good before the private Good of
any other person whatsoever. We are, indeed, commanded
to love our Neighbour as ourselves, but not as well as
ourselves. The love we have for ourselves is to be the
pattern of that love we ought to have towards our
neighbour: But, as the copy doth not equal the original,
so my neighbour cannot think it hard, if I prefer
myself, who am the original, before him, who is only the
copy. Thus, if any matter equally concern the life, the
reputation, the profit of my neighbour, and my own: the
law of nature, which is the law of God, obligeth me to
take care of myself first, and afterwards of him. And
this I need not be at much pains persuading you to: for
the want of self-love, with regard to things of this
world, is not among the faults of mankind.24

This is exactly what Swift means in "Verses on the Death"
with his lines "I love my friend as well as you,/ But would
not have him stop my view." Yet knowing Swift consults his
own private ends first does not explain later lines like "He
was cheerful to his dying day,/ And friends would let him
have his way.“ Moreover, in certain passages Swift says the

exact opposite, that his own private ends are not as

 

24Robert W. Uphaus, “Swift's 'Whole Character': The
Delany Poems and 'Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift,'" Modern
Language Quarterly 34 (1973): 406-16.

127
important as reconciling friends or "to merit well of
humankind."

Is Swift deceitful or schizophrenic? Is he incapable of
deciding whether his reputation or his integrity matters
more? Part of the dilemma is the "impartial" speaker of
section 3, who has been described as attempting an
autobiographical summary of Swift's career. But the
impartial speaker inaccurately defines Swift's satire
according to certain well-established categories:

Had he but spared his tongue and pen,

He might have rose like other men:

But, power was never in his thought:
And, wealth he valued not a groat:
Ingratitude he often found,

And pitied those who meant the wound:
But, kept the tenor of his mind,

To merit well of humankind:

Nor made a sacrifice of those

Who still were true, to please his foes.
He laboured many a fruitless hour

To reconcile his friends in power:

Saw mischief by a faction brewing,

While they pursued each other's ruin.
But, finding vain was all his care,

He left the court in mere despair (Poems, 494-5).

This formulaic vision of Swift enforces the image of an ideal
satirist, one who championed FAIR LIBERTY and honestly
desired “to merit well of humankind." The impartial narrator
presents a Swift of absolute moral integrity, generosity, and
benevolence, totally at odds with the menacing portraits in
section 2. Remember the savage criticism of Lady Suffolk,
the Queen, St. John, and Swift's female friends!

Kind Lady Suffolk in the spleen,

Runs laughing up to tell the Queen.
The Queen, so gracious, mild, and good,

128

Cries, 'Is he gone? 'Tis time he should.

He's dead you say, why let him rot:

I'm glad the medals were forgot.

I promised them, I own: but when?

I only was a princess then:

But now as consort of the King,

YOu know 'tis quite a different thing...

My female friends, whose tender hearts

Have better learnt to act their parts,

Receive the news in doleful dumps,

'The Dean is dead, (and what is trumps?)

Then Lord have mercy on his soul.

(Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.)

Six deans they say must bear the pall.

(I wish I knew which king to call)‘ (Poems, 490).

As Swift learned so early in his career, satire does not
easily ingratiate itself to those in places of authority. In
fact, at least three radically different self-portraits
dominate "Verses on the Death." The reader cannot accept
Swift's grandiloquent speech about preparing to die for FAIR
LIBERTY having suffered under the stinging whip in section 2.
This is the rub--Swift's poem is filled with such passion
that the reader cannot help getting swept away, even by the
speech about liberty. The fact that the poem is peppered
with historically wrong statements does not explain away its
power. For example, the self-portrait in section 3 includes
the lines ”He never courted men in station,/ Nor persons had
in admiration" (lines 325-6). Swift wrote propaganda for the
Harley administration and openly campaigned for a high
appointment in the Church of England. Furthermore, Swift
writes that

Though trusted long in great affairs,

He gave himself no haughty airs:
Without regarding private ends,

129
Spent all his credit for his friends (lines 329-33).
In fact, Swift was a dangerous person to have in government
and Queen Anne did not trust him--she exiled him to Ireland
after reading A Tale of a Tub. Perhaps most disturbing is

the statement "without regarding private ends" because it
undermines the theoretical premise of the entire poem.

In all distresses of our friends

We first consult our private ends,

While nature kindly bent to ease us,

Points out some circumstance to please us (lines 7-10).
Swift supposedly translates Rochefoucauld's maxim in "Verses
on the Deat " and sets out to teach the reader that accepting
self-love does not necessarily Oppose the pursuit of virtue.
Yet if the poem teaches anything, it cannot be contained only
by this theme. Self-love and the pursuit of virtue are
themes in "Verses on the Death,“ but the final message goes
beyond any single theme or self-portrait. Commentators
endlessly debate the problem of intentional fallacy, but the
greater dilemma is the complexity of the chaotic, sprawling
outrage that motivates the poem. Swift spares nothing: he
confronts people he knows face-to-face.

"Verses on the Death" demonstrates how we cannot assume
satire to have only one accepted outcome and how difficult it
is to make Swift fit into accepted categories. When Swift
uses the technique of portraiture, he sometimes ridicules
public, societal figures whose vices are familiar to many.
But Swift's portraits in poetry are motivated by personal

qualities and gain energy from a personal voice. If we

130
assume Swift to be only satiric or ironic, we isolate
ourselves from broader, more disturbing and contradictory

revelations in his poetry.

Chapter 4

Swift's Irish Writing: Rage, Resentment, and Reform

In his book The Augustan Defence of Satire, P. K. Elkin
argues that late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century
writers justified satire on the grounds of moral function.
Dryden, POpe, and even Swift attempted to define satire as a
vehicle for correction and moral reform. According to this
moralistic view, literature had two primary goals: the
reformation of vice and the promotion of virtue. When
properly employed, satire supposedly identified social "ills"
that any right-thinking, practically-minded citizen might
agree needed reform. Elkin writes that Augustan satire based
'itself on the philosophical notion that men are free and
responsible creatures who can change and improve themselves
and their society through the exercise of reason.

As we have seen in previous chapters, "reason" for Swift
is more often a source of delusion than enlightenment. But
many Augustans like Pope committed themselves to a high-
minded, ideal conception of the satirist as "a worthy citizen
performing a public duty." Elkin quotes from Des Maiseux's
standard defense of the satirist's motives and character:

It is not, either, malice or envy or a sour captious

humour that inclines him to write: but the sole desire

of making men better. It is the consideration of their
disorders that angers him: his sharpness proceeds only

from his vexation to see vice, error, or folly, prevail.
As he has a natural sense of good-nature, justice, and

131

132

humanity, he interests himself in every thing that

concerns other men: he sympathizes with their

misadventures: and the wrong they receive, either in

their person, or reputation, makes as quick an

impression upon him, as if himself had suffer'd those

indignities.1
This sounds very much like one of Pope's letters to
Arbuthnot, in which he writes ”that disdain and indignation
against vice, is, I thank God, the only disdain and
indignation I have." Pope claims “a true love for virtue"
goes hand in hand with satire, because “to reform and not to
chastise, I am afraid is impossible." Pope compares himself
to Horace and Virgil, although he says they enjoyed the
protection of the court. Pope dismisses general satire,
refusing to be afraid of possible retaliation against him
from persons implicated in the writing: "To attack vices in
the abstract, without touching persons, may be safe fighting
indeed, but it is fighting with shadows."2

Swift is another matter. Writing to Pope, Swift states
"I do profess without affectation, that your kind opinion of
me as patriot, since you call it so, is what I do not

deserve: because what I do is owing to perfect rage and

resentment, and the mortifying sight of slavery, folly, and

 

lFrom The Works of Monsieur Boileau (1711) cited in

Peter Kingsley Elkin, The Augustan Defence of Satire (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1973), 91.

2The Works ofAlexander Pope, ed. Rev. Whitwell Elwin,
l0 vols’TLondon: JOhn Murray, 1871), 7: 481.

133

baseness about me among which I am forced to live."3 Swift's
description of "the mortifying sight of slavery" corresponds
with Pope's "disdain and indignation," a sense of moral
outrage necessary to write proper satire. But Swift's
account of his own motives repudiates the Augustan idea of “a
worthy citizen performing a public duty." In Swift's Irish
writing, including his correspondence, The Drapier's Letters,
"A Modest Proposal, and "A Proposal for Giving Badges to
Beggars," we discover an immense store of anger and
frustration directed at Anglo-Irish problems. Frequently
Swift seizes on the metaphor of "a free man among slaves” to
describe his exiled life in Ireland, such as in the poem
”Traulus."

What spirit since the world began,

Could always bear to strive with man?

Which God pronounced he never would,

And soon convinced them by the flood.

Yet still the Dean on freedom raves,

His spirit always strives with slaves.

'Tis time at last to spare his ink,

And let them rot, or hang, or stink.4
Known only by the initials M. B., Swift's Irish tradesman in

his Drapier's Letters directly challenges English political

authority:

 

3The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold

Williams, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963-65), 3: 289.
Henceforth referred to in parenthetical citations as Corr.

4Swift wrote "Traulus" in response to Dr. Patrick
Delany's "Epistle to Lord Carteret," which pleads for a
preferment despite the fact that Delany already held some
valuable offices in the church as a result of Swift's
interest. See Poems, 425.

134

Were not the people of Ireland born as free as those of

England? How have they forfeited their freedom? Is not

their Parliament as fair a representative of the people,

as that of England? Are they not subjects of the same

King? Does not the same sun shine over them? And have

they not the same God for their protector? Am I a free-

man in England, and do I become a slave in six hours, by

crossing the Channel?5

Although we might group Swift with other satirists who
profess the aim of moral improvement, and Swift does at times
argue with moral issues, I must make the distinction between
theory and practice. Swift uses satire to attack in order to
assert his own superiority, not to change the moral or
political climate of Ireland. Satire is Swift's favorite
weapon for both public exposure and personal attack, but he
never seriously believes in any grandiose corrective agenda
like Pope. Swift's satire does not aspire to a moral high
ground implied in overthrowing the tyrant (England) or
freeing the captives (Ireland). While Swift generates Old
Testament prophetic denunciation and ferocity in his Irish
writing, he adopts a corrective agenda only when writing in
the abstract such as in his “Vindication of Gay's Beggar's
Opera.“ Swift sometimes pretends to be inspired by righteous
indignation or cruel injustice, but his fundamental belief in

Irish perversity prevents him from becoming a true believer

in reform. Swift believes the Irish are beyond reform,

 

5"Some Observations Upon a Paper Called the Report of
the Privy Council of England," the third of the Drapier's
Letters in The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed Herbert
Davis et al., 14 vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1939-68),
10: 31. Henceforth referred to in parenthetical citations as
PW.

 

 

135
although it would be a simplistic reduction to suggest that
Swift entirely rejected a moral purpose for his writing.

The master/ slave analogy Swift uses to describe
England's relationship with Ireland is crucial to Swift's
Irish writing. England has the freedom to mold Ireland into
dependency, an issue Swift takes up in the Drapier's Letters.
As the "master," England enjoys the power of controlling the
Irish economy, making Ireland depend on English wool, linens,
food, and manufactures. Ireland's status as a "slave” state
allows England to extract forcibly commodities, precious
metals, raw materials, workers, and finished goods. Most
importantly, Swift's acquired identity as "a free man among
slaves” gives him unique independence and authority--a force
to be reckoned with in his satires. Swift has a problem
dealing with traditional bases of authority like the Irish
Parliament or the English Prime Minister. His "free man
among slaves" image puts him beyond the complete dominion of
both England and Ireland. Swift's freedom allows him to
float unattached between the two nations, asserting his own
superiority while “impartially“ commenting on ills that need
correcting. Swift satirizes English colonialism, but this
very injustice and imbalance provides Swift with the
Opportunity and object of attack: without William Wood,
Walpole, or absentee landlords, Swift would never have vented
his rage and resentment.

This is the paradox and power behind Swift's Irish

136
writing. A free man cannot "reform" slaves because he cannot
identify with the reasons for their captivity. Swift
believes Irish problems to be primarily self-inflicted.
Swift's tone of moral outrage goes hand-in-hand with an
assumed desire for reform in criticizing the master/ slave
paradigm. The fact is Swift never desires to free the
captives because, according to his correspondence, the Irish
are incapable of reform and self-determination.

In his Irish poems and prose, Swift accepts impossible
combinations of zealous support for Ireland and willful
debasement of her citizens and leaders. To discuss the
complexity of the master/ slave paradox purely in terms of
ironic textuality does not answer to the emotional power and
contradictions in the Drapier's Letters or ”A Modest
Proposal." The "free man among slaves" image implies a
definite agenda--overthrowing corrupt regimes, fighting
battles, or standing up against tyranny--that just does not
exist. Paradoxically, Swift accepts the draconian economic
and political control of England and the ruinous relationship
between the two nations at the same time he challenges
representatives of England: William Wood, Lord Lieutenant
Carteret, mercantilists, and political economists. While we
associate with satire some of Pope's idealistic goals of
improving society, Swift never desires to reform English
administration of Ireland nor Ireland herself.

The Augustan belief that satire performs some urgently-

137
needed, civic-minded correction causes the reader to look in
the Irish tracts for Swift's proposed "solution." A
"positive" direction must be hidden somewhere in the satire
and irony, the assumption goes, or else Swift would not have
written about these problems. F. R. Leavis has persuasively
argued that Swift's use of irony and satire may be
discussable as a criticism of vice and folly, but without a
clear reference to a positive standard or a direction for
reform. Leavis says that while Gibbon's use of irony implies
an agenda and "a solidarity with the reader,“ Swift's irony
is “essentially a matter of surprise and negation: its
function is to defeat habit, to intimidate, and to
demoralize." Leavis writes that "the positive itself appears
'only negatively--a kind of skeletal presence, rigid enough,
but without life or body...the intensity is purely
destructive.“6 What Leavis calls Swift's "remarkably
disturbing energy" and “peculiar emotional intensity" does
not originate from a desire to reform. Swift's satire is so
volatile because his fury is often directed at available
targets or at easily-isolated scapegoats such as William
WOOd, the ”ironmonger" behind the proposed English-minted
copper coin for Ireland. Swift desires to rebel, to slap
away the paternalistic hand of English colonialism, but he

advocates nothing with which to replace it.

 

6F. R. Leavis, ”The Irony of Swift" in Swift: Modern
Judgements, ed. by A. Norman Jeffares (New YOrk: Macmillan,

 

138

Other critics make Swift into an Irish hero, a lone
voice in the wilderness who defends Irish liberty at all
costs.7 Peter J. Schakel describes Swift's Irish writing as
divided by two kinds of ”prOphecy" against external and
internal evils. "Much of the evil against which the patriot
declaims, and the source of Ireland's destruction, is
external," writes Schakel. The Drapier warns that England
and William Wood desire the "slavery and destruction of a
poor innocent country.“ But much of the responsibility for
the failure to avert Ireland's destruction Swift places on
internal vices, the laziness and corruption of ”young fOps"
and the vanity, pride and luxury of the women. Thus Swift
continues to cry out against English oppression and to strive
with slaves, "hoping to induce the spirit and wisdom needed
to follow the remedies he regularly proposed to mitigate the
poverty and suffering of the Irish."8

Schakel assumes Swift wanted to reform the Irish. I
contend that Swift is no reformist humanitarian. If one
believes there is any real basis for Swift's concern for
Irish reform, only a brief survey of the correspondence

proves otherwise. Convincing evidence from Swift's

 

7See Oliver W. Ferguson, Jeeathan Swift and Ireland
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962), a well-
researched historical and biographical account of Swift's
years in Ireland documenting the myth of Swift as Hibernian
patriot.

8Peter J. Schakel, The Poetry of Jonathan Swift
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 165.

139

correspondence supports the claim that Swift hates Ireland
with her self-serving government and indolent natives. His
correspondence with friends in England brings out Swift's
unmitigated animosity. Swift's favorite metaphors for
describing his life in Ireland involve damnation and slavery.
Writing to his friend Ambrose Philips in England, Swift
desires Philips to "wish for me amongst you. I reckon no man
is thoroughly miserable unless he be condemned to live in
Ireland: and yet I have not the spleen: for I was not born to
it" (ESEE 3: 154). “I cannot think nor write in his
country,” he complains in his letter to Charles Ford, and
"being in England only renders this place more hateful to me,
which habitude would make tolerable (EQEE 2: 127). Swift
expresses anger to Ford again because the English Parliament
deprives the Irish House of Lords of any real power: "You
fetter a man seven years, then let him loose to shew his
skill in dancing, and because he does it awkwardly, you say
he ought to be fettered for life" (EEEE 2: 342). Writing to
a high-society acquaintance, Lady Worsley, Swift imagines
himself talking with her in person, then "on a sudden I
recollect where I am sitting, banished to a country of slaves
and beggars: my blood soured, my spirits sunk, fighting with
beasts like St. Paul, not at Ephesus, but in Ireland” (92;;
4: 79).

Why does Swift fight with Scripture instead of a

palpable enemy? Because Swift equivocates on identifying the

140

"friend" or "foe." Swift is incapable of a sustained defense
of the native Irish on moral, ethical, religious, and
personal grounds. For example, in argumentative tracts
supporting Ireland's need for self-determination, Swift
continually undermines the ostensible intent with deprecating
comments: "Whoever travels this country, and observes the
face of nature, or the faces, and habits, and dwelling of the
natives, will hardly think himself in a land where either
law, religion, or common humanity is professed."9 Similarly,
in the poem "Ireland" Swift pleads for salvation from this
land of political cronyism, complaining even about his friend
Lord Lieutenant Carteret:10

Remove me from this land of slaves,

Where all are fools, and all are knaves:

Where every knave and fool is bought,

Yet kindly sells himself for naught...

Meanwhile the Whig is always winner

And for his courage gets a dinner.

His excellency too perhaps

Spits in his mouth and strokes his chaps.

The humble whelp gives every vote:

To put the question strains his throat.

His excellency's condescension
Will serve instead of place or pension.

 

9"A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish
Manufacture,” PW 9: 24.

l0JOhn Carteret became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in
1724. Swift generally admired him for his sophistication and
ambition, though Carteret achieved comparatively little in
national politics. Despite the tensions surrounding
Carteret's sudden visit to clear up the Drapier's
controversy, Swift's relations with Carteret were friendly.
Carteret wrote in a letter of 1737, "When people ask me how I
governed Ireland, I say that I pleased Dr. Swift." See
Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Sir Leslie Stephen and
Sir Sidney Lee (London: Oxford University Press, 1917), 53 vols.

141

Thus like "Traulus," the poem "Ireland" remains locked
in the disgust felt by a free man trying to preach to slaves
about something beyond their comprehension. Swift's
obsession with the master/ slave analogy continues the themes
of corruption and the hopelessness of any simply political
solution. In the poem, the Whig wins out not for his moral
courage or intelligence but because he sits on the right side
of the fence. Carteret needs only to spit and rub his chin
to influence Irish politics. The system of political
preferments and the weak-willed Irish Parliament assure the
impossibility of true reform gaining momentum. Swift's frank
assessment of Carteret and the Whigs subverts the reader's
expectations of a Hibernian patriot willing to ”strain his
throat” against a representative of English exploitation of
Ireland.

While he did not believe in Irish reform, Swift was a
complex person, and he gained power from sometimes claiming
moral or reformative goals in writing. Simply because Swift
hated Ireland does not mean he could not present idealized
notions of satire and express a desire for reform when it
suited his purposes. For example, in a letter to Charles
WOgan, Swift describes himself as a man of poetry writing
about trivial topics, “yet never without a moral view."

Swift admits to dealing generally in raillery and satire and
blames his failure to win a high political preferment on

those in power exacting revenge, but "I followed what I

142
thought to be my talent, and charitable people will suppose I
had a design to laugh the follies of mankind out of
countenances, as often to lash the vices out of practice.“
Moreover, Swift writes that he sets himself above Pope and
Gay in ”one important article": he tried to save Ireland from
utter destruction and he did succeed in stopping Wood's coin.
Note that Swift simultaneously claims success in defeating
”evils" that might have overrun the nation at the same time
that he describes Ireland as ”this wretched island" and the
Irish as "vulgar":
I confess myself to be exempted from them in one
article, which was engaging with a ministry to prevent,
if possible, the evils that have over-run the nation,
and my foolish zeal in endeavoring to save this wretched
island. Wherein though I succeeded absolutely in one
important article, yet even there I lost all hope of
favour from those in power, and disobliged the court of
England, and have in twenty years drawn above one
thousand scurrilous libels on myself, without any
recompence than the love of the Irish vulgar, and two or
three dozen sign-posts of the Drapier in this city (Corr
Swift presents a similarly idealized, Augustan notion of

Horatian or ”smiling satire" in his defense of Gay's The

Beggar's Opera.ll While Swift lets the critics debate which

 

writer has the most talent, he says the most useful satire
”gives the least offence" and instead of lashing, "laughs men
out of their follies, and vices." Moreover, this kind of
satire prompts men of genius and virtue "to mend the world as

far as they are able.“ However, Swift expects some kind of

 

llIntelligencer #3, written in Ireland in 1728, PW 12:
32-3 7 o

 

143
reward for this work:
If my design be to make mankind better: then I think it
is my duty: at least, I am sure it is the interest of
those very courts and ministers, whose follies or vices
I ridicule, to reward me for my good intentions (PW 12:
34). '—
These statements about moral intention, satire, and
reform are wholly at odds with the more famous statements

Swift made about "the great foundation of misanthropy" upon

which Gulliver's Travels is constructed. Writing to Pope

 

about the progress of his book, Swift confesses "the chief
end I propose to my self in all my labours is to vex the
world rather then divert it," and if that could be
accomplished without hurting personal fortunes, "I would be
the most indefatigable writer you have ever seen." What
'follows is Swift's notorious confession about the basis for

Gulliver's Travels, one that casts serious doubts on any

 

positive standard that Swift may have held:

Since you will now be so much better employed, when you
think of the world give it one lash the more at my
request. I have ever hated all nations, professions,
and communityes and all my love is towards individuals:
for instance I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love
Councellor such as one, Judge such one, for so with
Physicians (I will not speak of my own Trade) Soldiers,
English, Scotch, French: for the rest but principally I
hate and detest that animal called man, although I
hartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is
the system upon which I have governed my self many years
and so I shall go on till I have done with them. I have
got materials towards a treatis proving the falsity of
that definition animal rationale: and to show it should
be only rationis capax. Upon this great foundation of
misanthrOpy (though not in Timons manner) the whole
building of my Travels is erected (Corr 3: 102-3).

 

Upon reading this passage, POpe interpreted Swift's

144

insistence on the love of individuals as the main point,
unlike later critics like Thackeray, who read the same letter
and described Swift as "filthy and Obscene."12 Pope writes
that he freely enters into "your principle of love of
individuals, and I think the way to have a publick spirit, is
first to have a private one: for who can believe...that any
man can care for a hundred thousand people who never cared
for one?"l3 Pope misses Swift's point. Swift adamantly does
not care for "a hundred thousand people," especially Irish,
nor did he ever pretend to have that care. Swift's point is
that individuals have failed to live up to the ideal
conceptions of nations, professions, institutions, and social
bonds. According to P. K. Elkin, the point Swift expresses
transcends misanthrOpy because "it is the outlook less of a
misanthrope than a moralist, or moral philosopher, who has a
profound sense of the limitations of human achievement and
the shortcomings of human beings in the performance of their
social duties."l4

While Swift is no moral philosopher, the distinction
between individual and institution in his letter to Pope is

clearly related to his Irish identity as "a free man among

 

12William Makepeace Thackeray, "The English Humourists
of the Eighteenth Century,” The Complete Works, 10 vols.
(Boston: Estes, 1881) 8: 125.

 

13The Works 9f Alexander Pope, ed. Rev. Whitwell Elwin,
l0 vols (London: John Murray, 1871), 7: 59.

 

14Peter Kingsley Elkin, The Augustan Defence of Satire
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 96.

145

slaves." Swift is capable of loving individual Irishmen--he
had close Irish friends like Thomas Sheridan--but the mass of
vulgar natives and elite Protestants Swift lumps into this
group of ”slaves." Ireland has become a failed "institution"
unto herself, just as the island's inhabitants have become
slaves to others. One might assume that the individual has
been wrongfully victimized by the institution, but in the
case of Ireland, Swift's satire attacks both. Swift often
sets the individual against an institution (Parliament,
Church, King, or Nation), but he favors satire without
implied corrective measures. While Swift uses satire to
highlight absurd Irish political impotence, he never
seriously believes whole-hearted moral reform of the Irish is
possible.

Swift continues the topics of master, slave and reform

in the Drapier's Letters, using his rustic shopkeeper M. B.

 

to unite the divisive Anglo-Irish and native factions against
England. But we must maintain the distinction between a
“pragmatic“ and an authentic, moral reform. The Drapier's
Letters claim an undeserved importance in many Swift
biographies and period studies.15 Swift does not single-
handedly change the course of English colonialism in Ireland.

Swift succeeds in pragmatically redirecting existing Irish

 

lSSee J. A. Downie. Jonathan Swift, Political Writer
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), F. P. Lock, Swift's
Tory Politics (London: Duckworth, 1983), and Oliver W.
Ferguson, Jonathan Swift and Ireland (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1962).

 

 

146

malaise towards a tangible target, William Wood. The

Drapier's Letters exert a self-assured power over the reader,

 

but Swift still vituperates both against those he defends
(the Irish weavers and tradesmen) and those he Opposes (Wood,
Walpole, and England). Swift's only agenda is to attack, not
to replace Wood's coinage with something better. The best
letters contain many graphic examples of how Swift violently
assaults English authority, but he fails to offer any
positive alternative. For example, in "A Letter to Mr.
Harding, the Printer," the second letter, Swift accuses the
"ironmonger" William Wood of treason and willful debasement
of the Irish currency:
Good God! Who are this wretch's advisers? Who are his
supporters, abettors, encouragers, or sharers? Mr. Wood
will oblige me to take five-pence half-penny of his
brass in every payment. And I will shoot Mr. Wood and
his deputies through the head, like high-way men or
house-breakers, if they dare to force one farthing of
their coin on me in the payment of an hundred pounds.
It is no loss of honour to submit to the lion: but who,
with the figure of a man, can think with patience of
being devoured alive by a rat? (PW 10: 19-20).
The rhetorical question allows Swift to imply a corrupt
underworld of ”supporters, abettors, encouragers," and
"sharers." Wood's gang of mercantilists plunder and invade,
another example of English exploitation of Ireland. Swift
thunders: ”refuse this filthy trash" from Mr. Wood, ”a mean,
ordinary man, a hard-ware dealer."
Swift arouses the reader's animosity against William

Wood when he should assault King George I, the English

Parliament, and the Walpole adminstration directly because

147
they are responsible for authorizing the coinage plan. Wood
is only a front-man for the real enemies of Ireland. Swift
wants to know why a rat (Wood) devours Ireland when Ireland
would willingly submit to a lion (King George). Swift

replaces the traditional symbol of monarchy with the

pernicious vermin, a rodent holding an entire nation hostage.
Swift implies that someone has overthrown King George in the
matter of currency, or far worse, that the King allows
corruption to proliferate.

Recent critics assume a reformist agenda, focusing on
the Drapier's Letters as literary artifacts of a specific
historical era. Some critics search too hard for thematic
unity and attribute to the letters a premeditated design:

they want to see the Drapier's letters as either ”mimetic,“

 

artistic or a pragmatic means to an end, a way to defeat
WOod's coinage. J. A. Downie writes that "Swift was
perfectly sincere in his championing of the weavers. Theirs
was a symbolic struggle for survival." Swift discovered in
the Drapier an opportunity “to rally the nation around a
potent symbol of English oppression."16 F. P. Lock recently
remarked that Swift "went to unusual pains to create the
Drapier as a credible fictive author, even if the mask is

always patently a mask.”l7 Nigel WOOd sees Swift's choice of

 

16J. A. Downie, Jonathen Swift, Political Writer
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 233.

 

17F. P. Lock, Swift's Tory Politics (London: Duckworth,
1983), 164.

148

the Drapier as rhetorically distinct from the Dean and "that
very choice discloses a desire to project his polemic against
Wood's patent from an alternative perspective.”18

I disagree with these pragmatic readings. The Drapier's
Letters are important for what they say about Swift and his
concept of satire, not for that they say about William WOod,
Carteret, or the King. The reckless, emotional fury of M. B.

in the Drapier's Letters results because Swift attempts to

 

justify a radical political act to a nation he believes
incapable of gaining the moral high ground. Swift satirizes
the slave mentality in every one of the letters through
specific economic arguments aimed at awakening the Irish. In
the first letter--"A Letter to the Shopkeepers, Tradesmen,
and Farmers”--Swift describes Wood's coin as “the accursed
thing” and "a plague“ that will infest all economic and
social interaction. On the other hand, Swift says in
politely-framed sentences that the King certainly rea1ize3 no
man is obligated by law to accept the coin:
Therefore, my friends, stand to it one and all: refuse
this filthy trash. It is no treason to rebel against
Mr. Wood. His Majesty in his patent obliges no body to
take these half-pence: our gracious Prince hath no such
ill advisers about him: or if he had, yet you see the
laws have not left it in the King's power, to force us
to take any coin but what is lawful, of right standard,
gold and silver. Therefore you have nothing to fear (PW

10: 11).

Swift says the exact opposite in the second letter, that

 

18Nigel Wood, Swift, Harvester New Readings Series,
(Brighton, England: Harvester Press, 1986), 104-5.

149
“ill advisers" have influenced the King's policy. Every one

of the Drapier's Letters sabotages both English and Irish

 

authority through Swift's manipulation of specific key-words,
all involving concepts too slippery for the average
tradesman. The first letter attacks ”prerogative," the
second ”exigencies of trade," and the fourth a "depending
kingdom.” “A Letter to the Shopkeepers" depends on the
dilemma that Ireland must submit to the English King's
prerogative, yet other "foxes" watching the hen house really
make the day-by-day decisions about how to manage the Irish
economy.

Although Swift recoils at the presence of a supreme
authority like a King, he never openly challenges the King's
'prerogative when it comes to legally-based decisions. But we
can only define prerogative clearly in relation to an
absolute sovereign, which King George is not. The OPP cites
conflicting definitions for prerogative, one arguing for the
integrity of the law and one arguing against it: "The King of
England's very prerogative is no more than what the law has
determined” (from Marvell's "Growth of Popery") and "This
power to act according to discretion for the publick good,
without the prescription of the law, is which is called

prerogative" (from Locke's Government). The King can

 

influence economic matters indiscriminately, but Swift proves
the law says unequivocally that only gold and silver are

legal tender. Swift moves from the difficult political

150
concept of prerogative to the simple matter of metallurgy,
something shOpkeepers understand: “By the laws of England,
the several metals are divided into lawful or true metal and
unlawful or false metal: the former comprehends silver or
gold, and the latter all baser metals" (PW l0: 9). While
prerogative is a murky concept, the law states explicitly
what the average shopkeeper must accept in exchange for
goods.

In a similar manner, Swift seizes on the "exigencies of
trade" in the second letter, "A Letter to Mr. Harding, the
Printer." As in the first, the tone of inflammatory anger
runs through this letter, rousing the Irish landowners and
menacing the complacent English government. The sentences
echo with violence: Swift fans the flames with questions
implying a deeply-entrenched, evil conspiracy. Swift
champions the decision to boycott Wood's half-pence as above
all a moral act, but his disdain for the public shows through
when Swift assesses Ireland's ability to respond:

If I tell you there is a precipice under you, and that

if you go forwards you will certainly break you necks:
if I point to it before you eyes, must I be at the

trouble of repeating it every morning? Are our people's
hearts waxed gross? Are their ears dull of hearing, and
have they closed their eyes? I fear there are some few
vipers among us, who, for ten or twenty pounds gain,
would sell their souls and their country: although at
last, it would end in their own ruin as well as ours (BE
10: 22 .

The prophetic violence of "Letter to Mr. Harding" arises

directly from the questions Swift poses to his readers.

Swift considers how William WOod has fulfilled his contract

151

with the crown: "Contract! With whom? Was it with the
Parliament or the peOple or Ireland? Are not they the
purchasers?" The crux of the letter centers around Wood's
change of heart, his decision to manufacture no more coins
unless the "EXIGENCIES OF TRADE REQUIRE IT" (Swift‘s
capitals). Wood has reduced his original proposal of 108,000
pounds of copper to 40,000, but Swift charges through the
Open door left by the provision: "Again I ask, who is to
judge when the exigencies of trade require it? Without
doubt, he means himself [Wood]: for as to us of this poor
kingdom, who must be utterly ruined if his project should
succeed, we were never once consulted" (PW 10: 18). M. B.
states that he intends his letters ”for all my countrymen. I
have no interest in this affair, but what is common to the
publick." The reader might accept this statement if not for
Swift's belief that Ireland was plagued from within and
without, burdened with a population of "slaves" and
beleaguered by a powerful "master” governing over her.

If the king's “prerogative" and ”exigencies of trade"

propel the first two Drapier's Letters, then in the fourth

 

and most devastating letter, Swift attacks the core issue--
Ireland's political status. Swift addressed the fourth
letter "To the Whole People of Ireland“ and released it on

the day Carteret set foot in Dublin.19 In September of 1724,

 

19See Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and
the Age, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962-

83), 3: 245.

152
London newspapers reported that Catholics in Ireland "enter
into an association to refuse Mr. Wood's copper money."20
Lord Lieutenant Carteret traveled to Ireland on short notice,
frightening many Irish leaders who believed Carteret would
bring down an iron fist, squashing resistance.

Swift puts his genius to work in the fourth letter, a
"Letter to the Whole people of Ireland." Swift scolds and
punishes the Irish for failing to live up to principles set
out in the first letter. Swift writes that Ireland may have
too easily assumed the attitude of a "slave“ state: “people
long used to hardships, lose by degrees the very notion of
liberty: they look upon themselves as creatures of mercy" (PW
10: 53). While handicapped by Swift's belief in Irish
perversity, the Drapier simultaneously embraces a spirit of
rebellion in subverting the accepted definition of a
”depending kingdom." Swift writes that certain ignorant
people say "Ireland is a depending kingdom, as if they would
seem by this phrase to intend that the people of Ireland is
in some state of slavery or dependence different from those
in England." Yet, like the king's prerogative, "depending
kingdom" is a relative concept. Swift demonstrates with
references to legal documents and history how a "depending"
kingdom is never absolutely bound into slavery. Swift's
Obsession with this phrase leads him to write one of the most

politically dangerous paragraphs of his career:

 

2glbid., 248

153

Let whoever think otherwise, I, M. B. Drapier, desire to

be excepted. For I declare, next under God, I depend

only on the King my sovereign, and on the laws of my own
country, and I am so far from depending upon the peOple
of England, that, if they should ever rebel against my
sovereign, (which God forbid) I would be ready at the
first command from his Majesty to take arms against
them: as some of my countrymen did against theirs at

Preston. And, if such a rebellion should prove so

successful as to fix the Pretender on the throne of

England: I would venture to transgress that statute so

far, as to lose every drop of my blood, to hinder him

from being King of Ireland (PW 10: 62).

What infuriates Carteret is how Swift walks the narrow
path between treason and allegiance, between traitor and
patriot. "Depending" cannot be indiscriminately applied to
everything Irish. Swift goes beyond his personal doubts and
the economic background of the problem to champion an ideal,
mythic, unified Ireland, although the reader hardly believes
it because of what Swift has said about the Irish. This
passionate statement of loyalty to the King (far exceeding
the sentiments of the average Englishman) arouses Carteret's
animosity because Swift splits hairs with definitions.
Swift's exuberant defense of the king comes at the same
moment, in the next paragraph, when he subverts the idea of
government itself, seemingly advocating treason against
England and Ireland: ”all government without the consent of
the governed is the very definition of slavery." Swift also
expands the sOOpe of his attack beyond the "diminutive hard-
ware man Wood" to include Prime Minister Walpole, who

threatens to come over personally and cram WOod's brass down

Irish throats. M. B. quotes Walpole swearing he will force

154
the Irish to accept these coins "or eat our brogues." Swift
cannot restrain himself from satirically answering Walpole's
challenge, extending the analogy to frenzied extremes:
This brings to my mind the known story of a Scotch man,
who receiving sentence of death, with all the
circumstances of hanging, beheading, quartering,
embowelling, and the like: cried out, what need of all
this cookery? And I think we have reason to ask the
same question: for if we believe Wood, here is a dinner
getting ready for us, and you see the bill of fare: and
I am sorry the Drink was forgot, which might easily be
supplied with melted lead and flaming pitch (PW 10, 67).
Swift's tone of moral outrage is generated through
attack, not hOpe for reform. The violent energy of the
Drapier condenses the spirit of anger, rebellion, loyalty,
and emotional power, although he is occasionally distracted
with the realization that Ireland cannot really reform
herself. The Drapier carefully avoids any direct reference
to treason, but his patriotic defense of King George still
sounds patently subversive. Swift's negative, destructive
energy lurks beneath the rhetorical fireworks of the
Drapier's Letters: he strongly believes many Irish, from
absentee landlords to Dublin beggars, are unwilling to do
anything about the English economic stranglehold over
Ireland.
Swift's sermon on "Causes of the Wretched Condition of
Ireland" contradicts the image of fierce independence and
Irish unity projected by the Drapier. Swift articulates

three causes of Ireland's misery in "the Wretched Condition,"

and two out of three are directly the fault of the Irish.

155
Swift cannot advocate reform when he so seriously doubts the
necessary Irish sense of injustice. Swift does admit that
Ireland lies under "intolerable hardships" created by
England, "by which we become as hewers of wood and drawers of
water, to our rigorous neighbors" (PW 9: 200). But in
probing the second cause of Irish poverty, Swift attributes
it to the monstrous vanity and ingratitude of Irish landlords
"who think of themselves as too good to live in the country
which gave them birth, and still gives them bread: and rather
chuse to pass their days, and consume their wealth, and draw
out the vitals of the mother kingdom." Swift stretches the
Irish reader to the limit of sympathy when he describes the
third reason for Ireland's malaise:

The natives are from their infancy so given up to

idleness and sloth, that they often chuse to beg or

steal, rather than support themselves with their own
labour: they marry without the least view or thought to
being able to make provisions for their families: and
whereas, in all industrious nations, children are looked
on as a help to their parents, with us, for want of
being early trained to work, they are an intolerable
burthen at home, and a grievous charge upon the public

(PW 9: 201) .

The theme is repeated again and again throughout Swift's
Irish writing. In the sermon, Swift the churchman speaks
fully aware of the impossibility Of Irish reform. In fact,
the self-confident projector of "A Modest Proposal" uses
similar metaphors equating children with natural resources
used by industrious nations. Swift's ambivalence about

Ireland's capacity to save herself punctuates the sermon.

Still, Swift writes with enormous confidence in his right to

156

attack England in other tracts like the Drapier's Letters.

In "A Modest Proposal," Swift's dispassionate,
reasonable tone induces a feeling of compromise and agreement
at the same time the reader is disgusted by the "solution."
In fact, Swift satirizes not only England's exploitation of
Ireland but the English reader's hope for an easy, formulaic
answer to a complex problem. The attack of the proposal
comes around through the back door, implied in how
effectively the projector manages his "slaves," the Irish
poor. The projector's tone suggests what F. R. Leavis calls
"solidarity with the reader"--trust in his evaluations and
conclusions. Yet the attack of the satire and irony deeply
contrasts with the reconciliation and reform implied by the
projector's argument. The predominant impression is that of
a man frustrated with reform, and he offers his scheme as a
cocksure criticism of how England actually uses Ireland.
Swift expresses enormous rage and resentment through the
confidence by which the projector outlines his cannibilistic
solution. Though his language may suggest otherwise,
reconciliation and reform are the last things on the mind of
the projector. His distorted brand of reform demonstrates
how Swift's Irish writing embraces contradictions, both
humanitarian and barbaric solutions to Irish poverty. The
projector equivocates between steadfast loyalty to his
purpose and monstrous cruelty to fellow humans. ”A Modest

Proposal" concerns cannibalism, Irish poverty, English

157
mercantilism, and presumptuous "solutions," but its power
cannot be restricted to a single metaphorical reading.
Because he invokes reform only in mockery, Swift
simultaneously tears down what his projector so vigorously

erects. The Academy of Projectors in Book 3 of Gulliver's

 

Travels mirrors the same tension between promotion and

destruction that motivates the "Modest Proposer:“
None of these projects are yet brought to perfection,
and in the meantime the whole country lies miserably
waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food
or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged,
they are fifty times more violently bent upon
prosecuting their schemes, driven equally by hope and
despair.21
Swift challenges the complacent English reader in “A
Modest Proposal," offering in the guise of a solution a
fundamentally impossible scheme. The reader shudders
instantly at suggestions of cannibalism and mercy because
they happen in the same sentence. The reader responds to the
projector's humane rationality, intellectual manipulations,
and moral outrage instantaneously. The hoped-for "positive
moral ideal” fails to materialize because the projector is
motivated by resentment and despair. Note the collision of
styles employed by the projector, the first humanitarian and

passionate and the second cynically removed and hopeless:

There is likewise another great advantage of my scheme,
that it will prevent those voluntary abortions and that

 

21Gulliver's Travels, ed. Peter Dixon and John Chalker
with introd.(by Michael Foot (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
1967), 222. All other quotations are taken from this edition
and referred to in parenthetical citations.

158

horrid practice of women murdering their bastard

children: alas! too frequent among us: sacrificing the

poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to avoid the expence
than the shame: which would move tears and pity in the

most savage and inhuman breast (PW 12: 110).

Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern

about that vast number of poor people, who are aged,

diseased, or maimed: and I have been desired to employ
my thoughts on what course may be taken, to ease the
nation of so grievous an incumbrance. But I am not in
the least pain upon that matter: because it is very well
known, that they are every day dying, and rotting, by
cold and famine, and filth, and vermin, as fast as can

be reasonably expected (114).

Commentators have labored for years to turn the
projector of "A Modest Proposal” into a rhetorician. Martin
Price emphasizes the image of Swift as master craftsman and
calls the tract "the most economical and intense use of the
ironic mask." Price views the projector as a typical
theorist who attempts what no man has achieved before, "a
reconciliation of England's interest with Ireland's and a
demonstration that in Ireland, as well as in other lands,
people are the riches of a nation."22 Charles A. Beaumont
isolates the projector's coherence and stylistic traits.
Beaumont's rhetorical reading finds the generic structure of
classical oration in "A Modest Proposal" and traces "a
revolutionary new proposal insinuated in a traditional,

respected form."23 Describing Swift as rhetorician assumes

he controls all meanings generated by his writing. Robert W.

 

22Martin Price, Swift's Rhetorical Art (London: Archon
BOOKS, 1963). 71-74.

23Charles A. Beaumont, Swift's Classical Rhetoric
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1961), 16.

159

Uphaus argues the opposite, that reader responses to both
Gulliver's Travels and "A Modest Proposal" point to the wide
range of possible meanings. Swift's own language becomes a
liability because he presents "observer narrators who, though
initially confident of the self-sufficiency of reason,
willingly or unwillingly become participants, and sometimes
victims, of the very actions they wish to describe with
rational detachment."24

Swift's projector may be rationally detached, but he has
no intention of social reform: certain aspects of Irish
society such as the master and slave division between the
ruling class and the population are beyond even the most
radical revisions. The voice, projecting what F. R. Leavis
calls "a remarkably disturbing energy,“ does not originate
from desire to reform. The projector's hysteria stems from
both resignation and rebellion. Swift talks about the native
poor of Ireland and packages his analysis in terms of an I
English political economist. I doubt the observations are
wholly ironic, although irony is an ingredient, because Swift
expresses the same ideas in straightforward sermons. That
the projector believes murdering bastard children would "move
tears and pity in the most savage and inhumane beast" points

to the commingled hOpe and despair in the essay. The

 

24Robert W. Uphaus, "Swift and the Problematical Nature
of Meaning" in The Impossible Observer: Reason and the Reader
in lBth-Ceptury Prose (Lexington: University of—Kentucky
Press, 1979), 14.

 

160
projector calls the unwanted children "poor innocent babes,"
in the same breath adopting the language of mercantilist
cattle breeders. The ironic, implied meaning that England
literally feeds on the ”natural resources“ of Ireland has an
appallingly real presence throughout the proposal. While
directing his attack against the victimized instead of the
aggressors, the projector's energy perfectly represents a man
frustrated from years of straightforward, failed attempts at
reform.

The projector's use of animal metaphors reduces the
Irish to the level of beasts, while his self-assured pedantry
and pretended concern for the public savages English
complacency. The projector dehumanizes the Irish, then
"processes" them into various kinds of food and clothing for
the enjoyment of gentlemen and ladies. The reader must
accommodate images like "dropped from its dam," ”reserved for
breed," and "render them plump and fat for a good table“ with
”the fore and hind quarters will make a reasonable dish" and
the skin will make "admirable gloves for ladies and summer
boots for fine gentlemen."

The projector's style also contributes to his mixed
purposes. Consistent, credible, and authoritative, the
projector creates the impression of someone well-meaning and
serious. The long title evokes an air of authority even
though it is "modest," or a humble offering in the interest

of public welfare. The projector's familiarity with the

161
language of political economists allows him to compute,
reckon, and calculate financial information about maintaining

a breeding stock: this per annum basis for evaluation is a

 

brutal metaphor for the avoidance of emotion, and it
reinforces Ireland's "slave" mentality. The projector's use
of irony, such as his objection to hunting adolescents as
"cruel,” reinforces the frustrated tone of his commentary.
The projector's harsh control over his emotions prohibits him
from the dynamic assaults that characterize the Drapier's
Letters. The projector only once directly comments on the
”several young girls of the town" who appear in public
wearing imported fineries. The author's reliance on
statistical data provides him with a language through which
~he can reduce the issue of human suffering to numerical
values. The projector's naive, Optimistic reduction of
poverty allows him to dismiss real solutions as utOpian and

impractical. As in A Tale of a Tub, the real message of ”A

 

Modest Proposal" is found in the digression following
“Therefore, let no man talk to me of other expedients" in
which Swift advocates taxes on absentee landlords, a rebirth
of patriotism, forbidding the import of foreign fineries. and
quitting factions and animosities.

The final autobiographical remark that the projector has
no children of an age suitable for slaughter and that his
wife is beyond breeding age also mirrors a man frustrated by

reform. The projector finally confesses that he will not

162
escape from the consequences of project, but the lack of an
emotional response heightens suspicions about his honesty.
The projector boasts that his personal situation proves that
he is free from self-interest because, luckily, he has
nothing to gain from the project. The projector defines
"luck” according to the distorted logic of his proposal,
confessing he is "lucky” to have no children to contribute to
his own scheme.

One of Swift's final proposals, and one of the few to
which he signed his name, was "A Proposal for Giving Badges
to Beggars." Swift's scheme advocates identifying all the
"proper" beggars in each Dublin parish with badges, "well
sewn upon one of their shoulders, always visible, on pain of
being whipped and turned out of town.” The proposal
continues the theme of master and slave in that Swift
disposes, manages, punishes, and rewards his “slaves" as he
sees fit. In talking about the endless numbers of bastard
children and "foreign beggars” streaming into the city from
the countryside every day, Swift adopts the same tone as the
projector in "A Modest Proposal.” The beggars are
commodities to be managed like livestock, maintained as
objects of charity appropriate to the mission of the Church.
But more fundamentally unsettling is the contempt and
hostility Swift expresses not towards poverty but towards the
beggars themselves. This time the ironic detachment is no

literary game. Swift presents himself as a frequenter of

163
Dublin streets, one "personally acquainted with a great
number of street beggars," but he is irritated by their
pretensions. While the proposal has the tone of a serious
project for reform, Swift undermines it with satire and
personal contempt for the Irish poor.

What Swift attempts to justify as a "solution" comes
across as a truly misanthropic statement. Although Swift
proposes to alleviate the problem of foreign beggars, he
substitutes critical evaluation with rage and resentment:

They are too lazy to work: they are not afraid to steal,

nor ashamed to beg, and yet are too proud to be seen

with a badge, as many of them have confessed to me, and
not a few in very injurious terms, particularly the

females. They all look upon such an obligation as a

high indignity done to their office. I appeal to all

indifferent people whether such wretches deserve to be
relieved. As to my self, I must confess, this absurd
insolence hath so affected me, that for several years

past, I have not disposed of one single farthing to a

street beggar, nor intend to do so until I see a better

regulation...if beggary be not able to beat out pride,

it cannot deserve charity (PW 13: 134-35).

The ”better regulation" is what Swift supposedly advances in
the proposal, but his comments about the beggars subvert the
entire basis for the argument because Swift states the
beggars are not worth saving. The idea of begging is that
unfortunate paupers can appeal to the generosity of street-
walkers and scratch out a living. Swift seems bent on
driving out the last vestige of humanity from the street
people, demanding that the beggars lose their sense of pride

or lose their right to charity. Swift denies the beggars

even basic human personality, reducing them to a mindless lot

164
of creatures to be labeled and redirected.

It is not so much the tone of disgust that upsets the
reader as much as the underlying assumption that certain
kinds of people (impoverished Irish) are disposable. Genuine
reform is impossible, for one thing, because the Irish are
reduced to a starving condition not only by "the work of God"
but ”merely from their own idleness, attended with all manner
of vices, particularly drunkenness, thievery, and cheating.”
Swift does not believe in reform because he treats the
symptoms of poverty, not the cause. These “slaves" may be
overcome by idleness and "all manner of vices," but instead
of receiving some kind of moral instruction the reader
expects from a cleric, Swift attempts to pass the buck, to
treat the superficial reality instead of the problem. The
crux of Swift's solution is that the beggars can do what they
choose, but not in his backyard: "What shall we do with the
foreign beggars? Must they be left to starve? No: but they
must be driven or whipt out of town: and let the next county
parish do as they please, or rather after the practice of
England, send them from one parish to another." Swift does
not associate the problem of foreign beggars wandering in
from the countryside with the problem of absentee landlords
or the lack of incentive to improve agricultural methods, as
he does in earlier tracts like "A Proposal for the Universal
Use of Irish Manufacture." Swift is an old man made bitter

by years of failed attempts to alert people. The "solution"

165
is in fact only a disguise for Swift's outright animosity for
Ireland and the poor: "To say the truth, there is not a more
undeserving, vicious race of human kind than the bulk of
those who are reduced to beggary, even in this beggarly
country.”

Ireland defies logical, reasonable solutions and reform,
because it is "the only Christian country where people,
contrary to the old maxim, are the poverty and not the riches
of the nation: so, the Blessing of increase and multiply is
by us converted into a curse." It is no wonder, therefore,
that the prospect of reform in Swift's Irish writings
elicited nothing but rage and resentment. Swift cannot
resist satirical shots at the "beneficial branch of commerce"
conducted by England whereby great colonies of English
beggars are shipped annually to Ireland in exchange for
money.

These [beggars] are they so kind to send over Gratis,

and duty-free. I have had the honour more than once to

attend large cargoes of them from Chester to Dublin: and

I was so ignorant as to give my Opinion, that our city

should receive them into Bridewell, and after a month's

residence, having been well whipt twice a day, fed with
bran and water, and put to hard labour, they should be
returned honestly back with thanks as cheap as they
came: Or, if that were not approved of, I propose, that
whereas one English man is allowed to be of equal
intrinsick value with twelve born in Ireland, we should
in justice return them a dozen for one, to dispose of as

they pleased (PW 13: 136-7).

Swift is more interested in satire for the purpose of

destruction than for reform, propelled by his own resentment

and rage at the ease with which England dumps anything of ill

166
value on her colony. Like the Drapier's Letters and "A
Modest Proposal," "A Proposal for Giving Badges to Beggars"
leaves the indelible impression of a writer made bitter and
hopeless. Swift's method of demonstrating his superiority
over these problems is to destroy anything in his way.
Swift's identify of "a free man among slaves" incites him to
write these Irish proposals and tracts. For Swift, satire is
not so much a vehicle to criticize vice and folly in hope of

improvement as it is an assertion of his own authority.

Chapter 5

Swift and Language:

Anglican Churchman with Puritan Bible

Recent critics have made divergent claims about Swift's
understanding and use of language. Ann Cline Kelly believes
that in his proposals arguing for linguistic preservation
Swift consciously determined to ”improve the world." Kelly
writes that like the early humanists, Swift ”entertained a
vision of the world bound together by the clear and honest
use of language--a vision epitomized in his ideal of
conversation, a subject that preoccupied him throughout his
life."1 Kelly's thesis is that Swift saw himself as a
linguistic savior protecting the fundamental truths conveyed
by language, fighting against improper discourse and
corruption that might lead civilization into decay. In so
far as Swift concerned himself with language as a social
fabric, he had an abiding belief that exposing error and
promoting rational norms would induce social progress and
encourage clear communication.

While Swift's concern about language was genuine, Kelly
assumes that Swift's linguistic agenda naturally led to him

to the position of social reformer. As discussed in the

 

1Ann Cline Kelly, Swift and the English Language
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 19 ), 3.

167

168
previous chapter, Swift often repudiates the Augustan idea of
the satirist as "a worthy citizen performing a public duty."
Swift often goes on the attack in his Irish writing in order
to assert his own superiority, not to change the moral or
political climate of Ireland.

In Jonathan Swift and the Vested Word, Deborah Baker
Wyrick explores Swift's use of language in the context of a
referential theory of language that asserts words mean things
to which they refer, and their purpose is to name and
therefore to make ordered sense out of the real world. Swift
alternately and sometimes simultaneously embraces and rejects
the referential theory and does not arrive at a synthesis.
According to wyrick, Swift's contradictions, retreats, and
denials create a "negative dynamic“ that returns to the text
itself. Each of Swift's negative dynamics “generates a new
investigation from another linguistic or textual angle,
investigations that keep centering upon the phenomenon of the
word, the topography of meaning, the risks of writing, and
the threats of interpretation."2 wyrick argues that Swift
used the metaphor of clothing as language as "a complex
semiotics at once didactic and self-reflective.“ But the
nature of Swift's relationship with language remains Obscured
in wyrick's attempt to persuade in the terms of contemporary

criticism. wyrick's use of "textocentric" and

 

2Deborah Baker Wyrick, Jonathan Swift and the Vested
WOrd (Chapel Hill: University of’North Carolina Press, 1988),

169
"somatocentric" to describe the power of Swift's writing
detracts from the good points in her book. For example, in a
chapter on "Transvestitures," wyrick writes that Swift
incorporates features of nonverbal discourse into his
writing:

When a nonverbal network of signifiers is subjected to

the same risks of loss and strategies of conservation as

is language, it becomes what can be called a

transvestiture, a figural exploration of language

activity that uses terms drawn from nonlinguistic
discourse. A Swiftian transvestiture is an elaborate
intertextual tr0pe that conveys meaning through the
communication of its own components and through its
metaphorical or allegorical relationships with language

(129).

That is precisely the problem with Wyrick's approach: she
forces terms from the realms of semiotics, phenomenology, and
.linguistics into accounting for Swift's use of arcane
clothing metaphors. wyrick emasculates Swift in a
theoretical and philosophical clothing of her own
manufacture. wyrick makes a serious mistake in trying to
employ so many ”modern" assumptions against a man whose love
of language led him into satirizing the artificial constructs
of pedantry of this very sort.

Language is power, and Swift creates textual authority
for himself by relying on Scriptural authority and the
language of the Book of Common Prayer in his writings about
language. Swift deeply desires a "corrected, improved,
ascertained" language and the cultural benefits it might

assure such as a wide audience for his work and a continuing

reputation as a writer. Swift sees a need for some

170
benevolent despot to oversee the use of language because it
is a dangerous, fluid medium prone to corruption and
barbarisms. Swift believes the English language, as a part
of an educational background and cultural heritage, must
withstand innovations and corruptions. But Swift is equally
fascinated by the arcane, nonstandard, bizarre, and

hallucinatory uses of language as any reader of A Tale of a

 

Tee might attest.

Though in theory Swift advocates the need for a
standardized, institution-bound language, he instinctively
resents boundaries and limits. Swift always wants to test
the limits, to see how many insults, satires, puns, and
parodies the reader can tolerate. In his most famous tracts
and poems, Swift enjoys walking the narrow line between the
acceptable and the unacceptable. Swift portrays himself as
the model of orthodoxy and desires “to fix language for
ever,” but he actually embraces specific beliefs about
language considerably more Puritan than strictly Anglican: a
commitment to plain, rational preaching, an awareness of the
corrupting influence of language, a resistance to Scriptural
controversy, a desire to reform, and a fear of obscure words
and elaborate interpretations. This chapter explores the
contradictions between Swift's Anglican inheritance and his
Operative Puritan beliefs about language. While we
categorize Swift as an author of the eighteenth century,

“Project for the Advancement of Religion," "Letter to a YOung

171
Gentleman Lately Entered Into Holy Orders," and "Proposal for
Correcting the English Tongue" actually reflect a
seventeenth-century dispute in the Church over the proper use
of language.

Historians sometimes insist on a division between
Anglicans and Puritans on a variety of topics: preaching,
Scriptural exegesis, church government, the sanctity of the
text, and reform. The traditional understanding of English
Protestantism emphasizes how the Anglicans approved of Roman
Catholic doctrine and ritual but claimed the English Church
as independent of authority in Rome. In this sense, the
Anglican is an adherent to the doctrine and discipline of the
reformed Church Of England. Anglicans believe in church
government through the authority of bishops. Anglicans
believe their Church to be a genuine representative of the
“Catholic Church," but they repudiate certain institutional
tenets of Catholicism as corruptions.

On the other hand, Puritan groups from within the Church
of England regarded the reformation under Elizabeth as
incomplete and called for its further purification. People
resisting the bishops' attempts to enforce conformity in
worship and Church discipline began to be called "Puritans"
in the 1560's.3 The name Puritan gained acceptance for

identifying persons reforming the established Church from

 

3William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New YOrk:
Columbia University Press, 1938), 83.

 

172
within. More radical groups like Anabaptists and Separatists
were not called Puritans because they pursued new religious
practices apart from the established Church. Above all, the
Puritans stressed the Bible as the basis for worship and
faith, and in doing so encouraged specific uses of language,
some of which Swift energetically adopted.

The argument between orthodox Anglicans and Puritans
took root in a conflict over how much authority should be
granted to the Bible over the governing authority of the
Church, and the subsequent issue of who was qualified to
interpret Scripture. Puritans objected to what they
considered unscriptural or corrupt forms of ceremony held
over from the Catholic church. Puritans protested any form
of worship, ritual, or doctrine they believed to be at
variance with New Testament principles. Sixteenth-century
Puritans like Benjamin Hoadly and Thomas Cartwright passed on
to Swift specific beliefs about the use of the Bible in their
scrupulous Observance of the text and strict adherence to a
plain style of preaching. Yet Anglican apologists such as
Richard Hooker and Thomas Cranmer also placed strong emphasis
on the sanctity of the Bible and the careful reverence with
which it should be studied.

Swift's use of the language of Scripture as textual
authority, his respect for the power of words, and his belief
in reforming language indicate more Puritan than Anglican

affinities. Charles Beaumont has written that "Swift cared

173
little for men who always had a phrase of Scripture on their
tongues" and that ”Swift's quotations are sometimes merely
verbally facile in the surface of the text with no profound
allusive quality."4 I completely disagree. Swift creates.

textual power through his use of Scripture in the Drapier's

 

Letters, A Tale of a Tub, and his best poems. Swift's

 

respect for the written "Word of God” allows him to deflect
away from himself dangerous political positions and cite an
external authority. Through reference to Scripture, Swift
avoids personal ownership for ideas seen as radical to
orthodox Anglicans. Swift builds up the credibility of his
arguments with the language of Scripture and with Biblical
ferocity. For example, Swift warns against Wood's debased
currency in his "Letter to Mr. Harding," quoting from Psalm
58: “Be not like the deaf adder, who refuses to hear the
voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely." In the poem
”Traulus, The first Part," Swift attacks Lord Allen,
employing the language of Mark 5:

Directing every vice we find

In Scripture, to the devil assigned:

Sent from the dark infernal region

In him they lodge, and make him Legion.

Of brethren he's a false accuser,

A slanderer, traitor and seducer:

A fawning, base, trepanning liar

The marks peculiar of his sire (Poems 424-25).

The Puritans regarded reading the Bible as empowering, a

transformative force in their daily lives. Wide circulation

 

4Charles Allen Beaumont, Swift's Use of the Bible
(Athens: University of George Press, 1965), vii.

174

of the Bible in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gave
ordinary people access to the "mysteries" of Christianity.
While priests and scholars wanted to limit Scriptural
exegesis to an educated elite, Puritans celebrated the
individual receiving the "inner light" of Christ through
reading. Although all English Protestants believed in the
Bible as the word of God, John R. Knott believes "the Bible
was much more alive for some than for others, in the sense
that they felt themselves dramatically changed by reading it
for themselves or by hearing it preached." Some Puritan
groups were “convinced that the energy of the spirit was
manifesting itself in a continuing reformation."5

Laymen preachers like John Bunyan and Arise Evans
interpreted the Bible with little formal education, but they
opened the door for many English readers. Evans wrote that
before his awakening to the power of the Bible's words, ”I
looked upon the Scripture as a history of things that passed
in other countries, pertaining to other persons, but now I
looked upon it as a mystery to be opened at this time,
belonging also to us."6 Puritan reactions to the language of
the Bible injected an element of radicalism into seventeenth-

century English society. John Jewel portrayed the

 

5John R. Knott, Jr., The Sword of the spirit: Puritan

Responses to the Bible (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
I580), 39.

6Arise Evans, An Eccho to the Voiee of Heaven (1653)
quoted by Christopher Hill,The World Turned Upside Down (New
YOrk: Viking Press, 1972), 72.

175
transformative power of reading Scripture with enormous
confidence:

So constant is he that hath learned the word of God, and

hath set his delight upon it, and is through it assured

of the will of God. Heaven shall shake: the earth shall

tremble: but the man of God shall stand upright...Such a

ground, such a foundation, such a rock is the word of

God.7

Some clergymen thought the Puritan response to the Bible
too emotional and self-directed. Anglican apologists often
stressed the role of reason in Scriptural exegesis and
attempted to preserve the mysteries of Christianity,
rendering them inaccessible to individuals.

As an Anglican clergyman and supporter of High Church
doctrine, Jonathan Swift might seem the extreme antithesis of
-English Puritanism. In "Sentiments of a Church-of-England
Man," Swift writes that a true Church man "abhors the humour
of the age, in delighting to fling scandals upon the clergy
in general: which, besides the disgrace to the reformation,
and to religion itself, casts an ignominy upon the kingdom"
(PW 2: 9). Yet Swift shared more beliefs with the Puritans
than he was willing to admit. Swift had in common with
Puritans a disdain for lax living and a belief in simplicity.
Yet Swift was unlike the Puritans in his attempt to avoid

Scriptural controversy. Moreover, Swift championed the role

of reason in exegesis.

 

7BishOp John Jewel, quoted by John R. Knott, Jr., The
Sword of the Spirit: Puritan Res onses to the Bible (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980), 28.

 

176

Swift's experience as an Anglican clergyman led him to
distinct views about the appropriate use and control of
language. Above all, Swift held tightly to Puritan beliefs
about language and the sanctity of authority of the Bible and
Book of Common Prayer. Swift's position in ”Sentiments of a
Church-of-England Man" links him with a tradition of Anglican
apologists who voiced similar views on the Church,
government, Scriptural authority, and language. Seventeen-
century Anglican apologists like Thomas Cranmer and Richard
Hooker advocated authoritarian views on language, Scriptural
exegesis, and the final authority of the Church to regulate
language transactions. Swift had in common with these
theologians a resistance to Scriptural controversy, a respect
for reason and revelation, and a profound reliance on the
language of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer as vehicles
of truth needed to negotiate one's way through a dangerous
world. However subversive and aberrant some of Swift's
satire, he was always loyal to the Church and to this
specific view of language from ”A Proposal for Correcting the
English Tongue":

If it were not for the Bible and Common-Prayer Book in

the vulgar tongue, we should hardly be able to

understand any thing that was written among us an

hundred years ago: which is certainly true: for those

books being perpetually read in churches, have proved a

kind of standard for language, especially to the common

people. And I doubt whether the alterations since

introduced, have added much to the beauty or strength of

the English tongue, although they have taken off a great
deal from that simplicity, which is one of the greatest
perfections in any language...I am persuaded that the

translators of the Bible were masters of an English

177
style much fitter for that work, than any we see in our
present writings: which I take to be owing to the
simplicity that runs through the whole. Then, as to the
greatest part of our liturgy, compiled long before the
translation of the Bible now in use, and little altered
since: there seem to be in it as great strains of true
sublime eloquence, as are any where to be found in our

language (PW 4: 14-15).

In other words, the Bible and Book of Common Prayer have
ensured the preservation of language and set the standard for
eloquence, simplicity, and truth. From that straightforward
base of linguistic authority, one might assume profound
agreement within the Church about the nature of Scriptural
interpretation. This was not the case. As we shall see,
Swift advocates a specifically Puritan model of reading
Scripture and ascertaining the truth of Christianity in
"Letter to a YOung Gentleman Lately Entered Into Holy Orders"
and "Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue."

In all his writing about language and the Church, Swift
locates the boundaries of his discussion, pointing out the
spectrum of possible extreme abuses. Swift champions the
authority of the Bible and a "reasonable” interpretation of
Scripture. Most importantly, this kind of reading
fundamentally depends on the maintenance of clear standards
and on the reader's ability to free himself from personal
bias. It requires that a preacher respect the impenetrable
mysteries of Christianity and be aware of the notoriously
unreliable mechanism of human understanding. Though language

is an imperfect medium, Swift believes in absolute control

and absolute authority.

178

"Before things proceed to violence," Swift writes in
"Sentiments of a Church of England Man," the most noble
service a citizen may hope to do for his country is "by
unbiassing his mind as much as possible, and then
endeavouring to moderate between rival powers." This desire
for a "fair proceeding with the world“ exactly describes
Swift's opinion on the regulation, reform, and use of
language. Though faced with corruption from all sides by
religious sects, illiterate gentry, pedants and hacks, Swift
believes the safe course of Scriptural exegesis preserves the
integrity of language and the nature of Christian truth.
Swift sees linguistic authority as intimately tied to reading
the Bible and to an unbiased mediation of competing
explications.

Phillip Harth describes three major attitudes in the
seventeenth-century Anglican Church regarding the basis of
faith and Scriptural interpretation.8 The deists believed
that reason was sufficient for discovering all kinds of
truth, and it alone provided the basis for religion. On the
other hand, the fideists believed that reason was
incompatible with the basis for supernatural religion, and
that only through divine revelation was the reader made aware
of the truth of Christianity. The Puritans rejected the use

of reason in interpretation of Scripture, arguing that an

 

8Phillip Harth, Swift and Anglican Rationalism (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1961), 14-52.

179
“inner light“ provided for “a special illumination of the
Holy Ghost." A middle course between the two extremes was
developed by proponents of "Anglican rationalism," the tOpic
of Harth's study. These moderates believed that both reason
and revelation had a place in Scriptural interpretation,
together providing a basis for faith and Christianity. This
was the predominant attitude of the seventeenth-century
Anglican Church that Swift inherited. While Puritans felt
that only in divine revelation as expressed in Scripture did
one find the grounds for religion, the Anglican divines
stressed the role of reason in religion and the authority of
Scripture. This was Swift's dilemma: while Puritans insisted
on the authority and force of Scripture, Anglican Apologists
like Richard Hooker argued against Scripture as self-
authenticating.

Let me further illustrate opposing views among Anglican
clergy about Scriptural authority and interpretation by
examining the writings of Benjamin Hoadly and Richard Hooker.
Benjamin Hoadly was the leader of extreme latitudinarians who
firmly upheld the principles of the Puritan revolution.

While accepting of the episcopacy and the standard form of
worship, Hoadly did not actively support the bishops'
authority, nor did he insist on strict adherence with
established Church doctrine. Hoadly attempted to minimize
the mystery and doctrinal content in religion through

emphasis on the otherworldliness of the Kingdom of Christ.

180

In his ”Sermon Preach'd before the King," Hoadly writes
only Christ "hath an absolute authority in interpreting any
written or spoken laws: it is He, who is truly the law-giver,
to all intents and purposes: and not the person who first
wrote, or spoke them."9 According to Hoadly, in English
society the interpretation of law or existing authority is
not absolute because many legislators did not author the laws
over which they preside. Corruption begins when men take
over the authority once lodged in Christ: ”they then become
the legislator, and not Christ: and they rule in their own
Kingdom, and not his.“

This position completely contradicts the opinions of
Richard Hooker, who asserts the authority of the visible
Church and the necessity of interpreting Scripture in the

light of reason. Hooker's influential defense On the Laws of

 

Ecclesiastical Polity became the official treatise of High-
Church Anglicans and many members of the Church of England,
including Swift. Hooker believed that God made a revelation
to man through Scripture, repeating natural truths necessary
for salvation:

The mayne drifte of the whole newe Testament is that
which Saint John setteth down as the purpose of his owne
historie. These things are written, that yee might
believe that Jesus is Christ the Sonne of God, and that
in believing Yee might have life through his name...the
holie Scriptures are able to make thee wise unto
salvation...so our owne wordes also when wee extol the

 

9Benjamin Hoadly, "Sermon Preach'd before the King" in
Jonathan Swift: The Contemporary Background, ed. Clive T.

Probyn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978), 81.

181
complete sufficience of the whole entire body of the
Scripture, must in like sorte be understoode with this
caution, that the benefite of natures light be not
thought excluded as unnecessarie, because the necessitie
of a diviner light is magnifyed. There is in Scripture
therefore no defect, but that any man what place or
calling Whatsoever hee holde in the Church of God, may
have thereby the light of his natural understanding so
perfected.lfl
Swift was characteristically Anglican in his belief in a
reasonable interpretation of Scripture, but more Puritan in
his emphasis on a plain style of preaching and his references
to Scriptural authority. Swift believed the preacher should
strive for a common currency of language that transcends
divisions of age, class, education, and intellect. In
“Letter to a YOung Gentleman," Swift writes that without
simplicity, "no human performance can arrive to any great
.perfection" (PE 9: 68). In "Proposal for Correcting the
English Tongue," Swift argues that the simplicity of the
Bible and Common-Prayer Book "have added much to the beauty
and strength of the English Tongue" (PE 9: 15). A simple
style of preaching sometimes implies the simplification of
Scripture itself. Nicholas Udall's seventeenth-century
preface to the New Testament was dedicated to simplifying
Scripture for the "unlearned multitudes," and he describes
parishioners who yearn "for the simple and plain knowledge of

God's word: not for contentious babbling, but for innocent

living: not to be curious searchers of the high mysteries,

 

 

lflRichard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,
ed. Georges Edelen (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvar
University, 1977), 128-29.

182
but to be faithful executors and doers of God's biddings."ll

In "Letter to a Young Gentleman," Swift carefully minds
this middle road. He writes that "a Divine hath nothing to
say to the wisest congregation of any parish in this kingdom,
which he may not express in a manner to be understood by the
meanest among them" (3! 9: 66). Swift's advice to young
clerics in the pulpit in “Letter to a Young Gentleman” is to
be mindful of both passion and reason:

If your arguments be strong, in God's name offer them in

as moving a manner as the nature of the subject will

properly admit: wherein reason, and good advice will be
your safest guides: But beware of letting the pathetick
part swallow up the rational: For, I suppose,
philosophers have long agreed, that passion should never

prevail over reason (Pg 9: 70).

"A Letter to a YOung Gentleman Lately entered into Holy
Orders” is written not by a parish priest or dean but by ”a
person of quality." In some ways, Swift's choice of this
persona is a distancing device that allows him to look
objectively at the art of preaching. The tone of the first
half of the letter is like the instruction given by Swift's
contemporary Lord Chesterfield to his son, Philip Stanhope.
Chesterfield attempts to supplement his son's scholastic
education with lessons on decorum and ”practical morality."
In strangely Swiftian terms, Chesterfield tells his son if he

really wants to know a man, to paint a portrait that includes

his weaknesses and to “suspend your last finishing strokes

 

11Nicholas Udall quoted in John R. Knott, The Sword of
the Spirit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 26.

 

183
till you have attended to and discovered the operations of
his inferior passions, appetites, and humours.”12 Of course,
Swift will not tell a young cleric to dwell on the inferior
passions of his congregation. But in "Letter to a Young
Gentleman," Swift does describe a very systematic,
simplified, and reasonable use of language and Scriptural
authority.

Simplification of Scripture might be wrongly associated
with deception on the part of the preacher. Many Anglicans
felt it was their duty to mediate between Scripture and
interpretation, smoothing over complexities and refocusing
the Bible for the needs of a congregation. Thomas Cranmer
incorporated Scripture into the Anglican routine of worship
with his Book of Common Prayer. Cranmer simplified Scripture
and ensured its acceptance into daily reading.

Robert W. Uphaus approaches the problem of language and
reception in his discussion of "dissimulation" in the novels
of Defoe. According to Uphaus, Defoe's dissimulation allows
him to break down the sense of distance between the author

and characters in Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and

 

Roxanna. Defoe projects himself entirely into a character's
mind and allows the reader to participate in active thoughts,
observations, and interactions with other characters. Uphaus

quotes a letter from Defoe to Robert Harley in which Defoe

 

12Lord Chesterfield, Letters to His Son and Others, ed.

R. K. Root (London: J. M. Dent, 1929), 135.

 

184
recommends a dissimulation "which is not unlike what the
Apostle sayes of himself: becoming all things to all men,
that he might gain some. This hypocrisie is a vertue, and by
this conduct...you shall be faithfull and usefull to the
soveraing and belov'd by the people.“13 While it is possible
to dismiss Defoe's method as directionless or lacking
conviction, he clearly attempts to link it with the authority
of Scripture in the way the Apostle Paul hides under a false
appearance for the public good. Defoe desires to use
dissimulation in order to make his characters flexible and
successful. Uphaus writes that dissimulation reflects on the
needs of the individual and society:
Conventional morality tends to regard dissimulation as
hypocrisy, as something akin to vice, but Defoe's
fiction frequently represents dissimulation as the
necessary means of achieving and consolidating public
success, as well as the occasion for expressing the
secret desires and needs of his own readers. Defoe's
dissimulating characters act out what is at least latent
in the lives of many of his readers: the need to
dissimulate in order to preserve secrets and the desire
to know the secrets of others as they dissimulate in
public life (49).
In ”Project for the Advancement of Religion and the
Reformation of Manners," Swift embraces dissimulation as a
means of using language to encourage religion and morality.

Swift acknowledges the behavior of clergymen contributes to

the problem: “I mean, by affecting so much to converse with

 

13From The Letters of Daniel Defoe, ed. George Harris
Healy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 42-43. Quoted in
Robert W. Uphaus, The Im ossible Observer: Reason and The
Reader in lBth-Century Prose (Lexington: University of
Kentucky Press, 1979), 48.

185

each other, and caring so little to mingle with the laity,
they have their particular clubs, and particular coffee-
houses, where they generally appear in clusters” (PE 2: 52—
3). In order to promote his plan, Swift--like Defoe-~cites
the Scriptural authority of St. Paul's letter to the
Corinthians for the very definition of dissimulation:

I do not see any other method left for men of that

function to take, in order to reform the world, than by

using all honest arts to make themselves acceptable to

the laity. This, no doubt, is part of that wisdom of

the serpent, which the author of Christianity directs:

and is the very method used by St. Paul, who became all

things to all men, to the Jews a Jew, and a Greek to the

Greeks (PW 2: 54).

The "honest arts” of the clergy and ”wisdom of the

serpent" would seem antithetical doctrines, but St. Paul

clearly shows his purpose in 1 Corinthians 10:27-- "If one of

 

the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to
go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any
questions on the grounds of conscience...give no offense to
Jews or Greeks or to the Church of God.”

Swift's use of Scriptural authority and his desire to
instigate reform are noticeably Puritan in tone. Swift rants
and raves with prophetic denunciation about the great need
for religion and morality in England: "I suppose it will be
granted, that hardly one in a hundred among people of
quality, or gentry, appears to act by any principle of
religion“ (PW 2: 44). The center of the "Project" is Swift's
assessment of human nature and his proposed solution:

Thus human nature seems to lie under this disadvantage.

186

that the example alone of a vicious Prince, will in time

corrupt an age: but the example of a good one will not

be sufficient to reform it without further endeavors.

Princes must therefore supply this defect by a vigorous

exercise of that authority, which the law hath left

them, by making it every man's interest and honour to

cultivate religion and virtue: by rendering vice a

disgrace, and the certain ruin to preferment or

pretensions (PW 2: 47).

Swift cites Scriptural authority and passionately
advocates making piety and virtue "qualifications necessary
for preferment," but the implications of such a plan shock
the reader. Swift uses dissimulation and advocates becoming
all things to all people as one of the props of reform.
Therefore people understand religion as a necessary
prerequisite for success. Swift's connection of piety and
virtue with preferment would seem the logical extension of
such principles, but it clearly Opens the door to hypocrisy,
false appearances, and corruption. How could the Queen
possibly know whether all her preferments were given to pious
men? Would she constantly monitor their behavior once in
office? Swift seems to admit that the appearance of religion
and morality is the next best thing to actual virtue.

Swift's position closely resembles his veiled advocacy of
occasional conformity in "An Argument Against Abolishing
Christianity," a High-Church, Tory position. So while
“Project for the Reformation of Religion" contains Puritan
vehemence and cites Scriptural authority, it collapses upon

itself in Swift's advocacy of the essentially orthodox

doctrine of nominal Christianity.

187

Moreover, Swift contradicts himself if we compare his
"Project for the Advancement of Religion” with his sermon "On
the Excellence of Christianity." In the sermon, Swift
attempts to defend Christianity against all forms of
classical philosophy, and in doing so he explains "the second
great defect in the Gentile philosophy was, that it wanted
some suitable reward proportioned to the better part of man,
his mind, as an encouragement for this progress in virtue"
(PW 9: 244). Swift faults his own "Project“ in arguing that
material rewards “are no rest for the mind: and if they were,
yet are they not the proper fruits of wisdom and virtue,
being equally attainable by the ignorant and wicked."
Exactly! The Queen cannot expect a genuine reformation of
“morals when she rewards it with political power and wealth.
Swift correctly surmises that virtue and "bodily goods" are
incompatible sources of motivation for the average person.

Swift embraces a decidedly more overt, orthodox attitude
towards language in ”Letter to a Ybung Gentleman Lately
Entered into Holy Orders." While the "Letter” is usually
read as a discussion of style, the real point is that the
preacher must think, write, and speak according to "a plain
convincing reason." Through this moderate, simple mode of
speaking, the clergyman can effectively reach the most
illiterate and the most educated members of his congregation:

A plain convincing reason may possibly operate upon the

mind both of a learned and ignorant hearer, as long as

they live: and will edify a thousand times more than the
art of wetting the handkerchiefs of a whole

188

congregation, if you were sure to attain it (PW 9: 70).

Swift's belief in the power of reason links him with the
writings of Hooker and Cranmer, especially regarding
understanding the mysteries of Scripture. The author is an
advocate of a specific kind of exegesis appropriate for an
Anglican priest. The author says certain obscure terms
should be avoided in sermons because they are beyond the
comprehension of the average man:

I defy the greatest Divine, to produce any law either of

God or man, which obliges me to comprehend the meaning

of omniscience, omnipresence, ubiquity, attribute,

beatifik vision, with a thousand others so frequent in
pulpits...I may venture to insist further, that many
terms used in Holy Writ, particulary by St. Paul, might
with more discretion be changed into plainer speech (PW

9: 66).

Swift says difficult words should be avoided because
Scripture speaks most directly in its most direct form, as in
the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Moreover, a preacher
does not want to appear pedantic and falsely educated. A
priest should utter no sentence that cannot be understood by
the wisest and meanest member of the congregation.

Swift embraces the orthodox Anglican position in his
fear of Scriptural controversy. The preacher must be mindful
of a certain boundary of comprehension that cannot be
crossed. Swift warns against exposing too much information
or probing profound mysteries: "As I take it, human
comprehension reacheth no further: Neither did our Saviour

think it necessary to explain to us the nature of God:

because I suppose it would be impossible, without bestowing

189
on us other faculties than we possess at present" (PW 9: 73).
The human mind has inherent limitations that must be
respected. A preacher must strive for simplicity and
clarity, for "proper words in proper places" and avoid
pedantry and ostentation, but his words are still vulnerable
to any number of misinterpretations. Swift wants to believe
that if a speaker allows himself to be directed by his own
natural reason, a man's words will gravitate towards
simplicity and perfection: this is the spectrum of human
understanding and perception. Strong eloquence or erudite
wit misleads because it is outside of the boundaries imposed
by the process of understanding. Swift also envisions a
congregation of "rational hearers" who are naturally ashamed
and intolerant of any preacher who tries to penetrate
unspeakable mysteries.

But Swift adopts more strongly Puritan attitudes about
language in his fear of the corrupting influence of language,
especially regarding deists and free-thinkers in his
congregation. Swift wants to distance himself and prove he
is above them in every way because free-thinkers are the most
prone to the distortion of language. While a true Church man
is properly educated and knows how to decipher books, a free-
thinker reads only "in order to transcribe wise and shining
remarks, without entering into the genius and spirit of the
author“ and ends up creating only an "incOherent piece of

patchwork."

19$

Swift also satirizes the corruption of language in his
description of the word machine at the Academy of Lagado in
Gulliver's Travels. The illustration in the book
demonstrates how language is compartmentalized and dissected:
both the production and reception of language happen
independently of each other in this fragmented, unsystematic
word factory. The Professor shows Gulliver "several volumes
in large folio already collected, of broken sentences, which
he intended to piece together, and out of those rich
materials to give the world a complete body of all arts and
sciences."l4

Swift embraces decidedly Puritan attitudes towards
language in "Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and
Ascertaining the English Tongue," In the "Proposal," Swift
intends to reform language and establish an academy to
preserve the nation's culture. Swift means by "ascertaining"
to find the perfect language through investigation and
discovery: however, he contradicts the explicit goal of
fixing language. Language cannot be hermetically sealed from
the turbulent forces of social change until it has been
perfected, and Swift several times confuses himself with his
indecision on this point. Swift cannot decide if society
should perfect language before it is "fixed,” or if it is

enough merely to prevent change:

 

14Gulliver's Travels, ed. Peter Dixon and John Chalker
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967), 229.

191
The English tongue is not arrived to such a degree of
perfection, as, upon that account, to make us apprehend
any thoughts of its decay; and if it were once refined
to a certain standard, perhaps there might be ways to
fix it for ever, or at least till we are invaded, and
made a conquest by some other state (PW 4: 9)
I am of opinion, that it is better a language should not
be wholly perfect, than that it should be perpetually

changing: and we must give over at one time or other, or
at length infallibly change for the worse (PW 4: 14).

The main problem crippling the effectiveness of Swift's
proposal is that he finds people responsible for the
production of language have actually encouraged its distorted
reception. The "Proposal” becomes more a personal vendetta
against these people than a serious-minded attempt at public
reform. Instead of setting up guidelines, procedures,
principles, and standards, Swift's “Proposal for Correcting
the English Tongue" launches into a frenzied assault on the
very people who should be the responsible guardians of
culture and linguistic good taste. As it turns out, Swift
has only three vaguely prescriptive recommendations to make:
first that simplicity is the greatest perfection in any
language, second that the Prime Minister should somehow take
on the role of ”inspecting our language and rending it fit to
record the history of so great and good a princess" (PW 4:
l7), and third that women should monitor social conversation.

There are several problems with these statements and
with "Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue" as a whole
document. The "Proposal“ confuses because Swift undermines

his own arguments. Swift describes the problem when the

192
reader expects a proposal to carry prescriptive solutions.
Swift never gets around to describing exactly how this
proposed academy might prohibit linguistic change and
corruption and ensure cultural continuity. The entire
"Proposal" is undermined by Swift's vagueness and satirical
remarks about certain privileged gentlemen who pretend to
"know the world" through conversation. Swift excels in
elaborating on how absurdly shallow-brained and fashion-
driven the production of language has become, and in doing
so, he sounds very Puritan. Swift believes corrupt
pronunciation, abbreviations, and mannered styles of writing
have become the norm instead of simple clarity. For his
standard of excellence, Swift consistently refers to
Scripture.

Although he upholds the Bible and Book of Common Prayer,
Swift does not explain how his academy might effectively
regulate language as well as he documents, and to some degree
accommodates, the various barbarisms he wishes to avoid.
Swift's proposal insinuates a radical and authoritarian
intention, imposing a fundamental linguistic improvement upon
society by a centralization of power into the hands of the
Prime Minister, to whom the pamphlet is addressed. Swift's
premise is that an elite institution under the able
leadership of the Lord High Treasurer Robert Harley will lead
the nation into linguistic purity. In fact, Herbert Davis

argues that the lengthy panegyric to Harley praising him as

193
"one who saved his country from ruin by a foreign war"
clearly establishes the tract as Tory and ministerial (PW 4:
xii).

I submit that the ”Proposal for Correcting the English
Tongue" has just as much to do with Swift's views on language
as politics. Swift wants to establish some standard of what
is appropriate in writing and conversation, and for this he
turns to his Puritan understanding of Scriptural authority.
The standards of former years no longer work. The court used
to be the standard of propriety and correctness in speech
during Queen Elizabeth's reign, but Swift admits "I think
[the court] hath ever since continued the worst school in
England, for that accomplishment: and so will remain, till
-better care be taken in the education of our young nobility"
(PW 4: 10).

In his assessment of how language is actually used,
Swift looks at the privileged and powerful, the gentry and
peerage segment of society who should be responsible
guardians of language. Swift assaults the “dunces of figure”
who take credit for introducing a new word or turn of phrase
into conversation, soon transferring it into the "current
scribbles of the week." Whereas poets should be sensible
craftsmen and careful etymologists, Swift blames them for
introducing "that barbarous custom of abbreviating words to
fit them to the measure of their verses." The poets corrupt

language with jarring sounds so difficult to utter that ”none

194
but a Northern ear could endure." Another segment of
language-producing society Swift describes are the young men
at universities. These men should be cultivating the highest
regard for propriety and learning from the rich heritage of
English letters. Instead they are driven by a “fear of
pedantry.“

Several young men at the universities...think all

politeness to consist in reading the daily trash sent

down to them from hence: this they call knowing the
world, and reading men and manners. Thus furnished,
they come up to town: reckon all their errors for
accomplishments, borrow the newest set of phrases: and
if they take a pen into their hands, all the odd words
they have picked up in a coffee-house, or a gaming
ordinary, are produced as flowers of style: and the
orthography refined to the utmost. To this we owe those
monstrous productions, which under names of trips,
spies, and amusements, and other conceited appellations,

have over-run us for some years past (PW 4: 12).

Having thus surveyed the wide assortment of illiterate
abusers of language, it comes as no surprise that Swift sees
English society as ill-equipped to deal with its reformation
and preservation. Swift describes the English as naturally
not very polite because of "the barbarity of those Northern
nations from whom we are descended." One of the few
prescriptive comments that Swift makes in his "Proposal” is
also one of the strangest. After having assessed and
discounted the usual arbiters of taste, the educated and
privileged classes, Swift turns to an unexpected quarter: "If
the choice had been left to me, I would rather have trust the

refinement of our language...to the judgement of women than

of illiterate court-fops, half-witted poets, and university-

195
boys." This seriously undermines the intention of the whole
proposal. Swift spreads out his search for a proper and pure
language so far that any genuine idea is likely to be
dismissed.

One of the few times when Swift actually makes a
specific recommendation is when he mentions the Bible and
Common Prayer Book, widely studied by all levels of society.
If not for these two books, Swift feels "we should hardly be
able to understand anything that was written among us an
hundred years ago." Swift's insistence on Scriptural
authority in matters of language regulation sounds much more
Puritan than orthodox Anglican. On one level, Swift honestly
wants to be the man who subdues "barbarism, rudeness, and
rusticity."

In his writing about language, Swift sees himself
leading civilization into a glorious era of eternal truth and
beauty of expression, just as the Puritan movement attempted
to reform the Church of England. Although Swift portrays
himself as the model of orthodoxy and desires "to fix
language for ever," his belief in plain, rational preaching.
his awareness of the corrupting influence of language, his
resistance to Scriptural controversy, and his fear of obscure
words and elaborate interpretations demonstrate many more
Puritan than Anglican tendencies. On many points, Swift
agreed with Thomas Cartwright's new conception of Scriptural

authority, since "it would above all else have made the

196
ministers supreme, since they alone were the final

interpreters of Scripture...from which every other rule of

life could be by them infallibly deduced."15

 

15William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1938), 12.

 

APPENDIX
Findings in the Manuscript Department of the Trinity

College, Dublin Old Library.

TCD MS lflSD Table of Contents (as written):

 

I. A short account of the family and life of Dr. Jonathan

Swift, Dean of St. Patrick, in his own hand writing. Given
to the library by Deane Swift, Esq--July 23. 1753. It was
first published, with some notes, by that gentleman in his
Essay on the Life, Writings, and Character of Dr Jonathan
Swift--Republished also by Sir Walter Scott in the first vol.

of his Edition of Swift's works--p. SUD.

II. A Sermon on brotherly love, by the Dean, in his own
handwriting--Preached at St. Patricks Decr. 1st 1717.
Published in Sir Walter Scotts Ed. of Swifts works--vol. vii

p. 461. Given to the library, April 2nd 1754.

III. An Autographed Letter from the Dean to Mrs. Swanton in
St. Peter's Street, dated "Deanery House, July 12th 1733”
with C01 Dwyer's letter, by whom it was presented to the
University, Oct. 13 1831. This letter is not published in
his works. [probably refers to Scott's edition: it does

appear in Harold Williams' edition]

IV. "Doctor Sw--ts Circular Letter to the Clergy of the

197

198
Diocese of Dublin, exhorting them in the conduct of their
lives to regulate themselves always according to the present
humour of the times--" With Sir W. Scotts letter relative to
it--dated 7th March 1818. This scarce tract was evidently

written against the Dean, not by him.

V. An autograph letter of Sir Walter Scott, dated Edinb. 7
March 1818, addressed to T.C.G. Gordonly relative to a MS. in

this volume .

VI. The Legion Club, in Swifts autograph (???) (This MS. I
purchased from a dealer in Dublin, for L 3.66. I have added
it to this collection Mar 15 1855.) This in my judgement is

not in Swift's handwriting. J.K.A., Librarian June 1900.

Commentary

 

I.

The autobiography fragment is in good condition, a
little thin and faded around the edges. The paper is in
excellent condition considering it is over 250 years old.
The sheets are approximately 6" X 8" and are glued by the
edge to the TCD binding. One additional sheet of paper
separates each leaf. Swift's papers are folded in half, and
I can deduce his method of composition from looking at the

arrangement of the script. The bulk of the autobiography is

written in a 3" X 8" space.

199
It appears that Swift folded the paper in half to create
a margin for himself, allowing him to write a gloss of
comments, titles, section headings, and notes to himself in
the space at left. In this area Swift also edits the

composition: crossed off lines at right are revised and

rewritten in the space left of the margin. In some places
entire lines are rewritten and then crossed and circled over
many times, as if Swift wrote a revised sentence and then
changed his mind, going back to the original version.
Occasionally Swift makes reference notes to himself, like
"see a book called Mercurion's Dublin and another in a
folder."

The quality of the handwriting is very legible in the
beginning. The letters are in black ink, very small, with
occasional blots and thick letters across the page. The hand
looks slightly unsteady, but in general the lines are very
straight. There is an average of about 5 words per line, 24
lines per page, approximately 120 words per page of
manuscript. In characteristic eighteenth-century practice,
Swift writes the last word of a page at the bottom right, a
repetition of the first word on the next page.

Pages 13-14 contain the famous, probably fabricated
anecdote about Swift being stolen as a baby. He writes about
himself in the third person: ”When he was a year old, an
event happened to him that seems very unusual: for his nurse,

who was a woman of Whitehaven, being under an absolute

200
necessity of seeing one of her relations, who was then
extremely sick, and from whom she expected a legacy: and
being at the same time extremely fond of the infant, she
stole him on shipboard unknown to his mother and uncle, and
carried him with her to Whitehaven, where he continued for
almost three years. For when the matter was discovered, his
mother sent orders by all means not to hazard a second
voyage, till he could better able to bear it."

On pages 17-18, the manuscript changes in quality.
Swift is not writing on both sides of his center margin and
the handwriting is smaller, more obscure, averaging about 180
words per page. This section tells the story of Swift's
apprenticeship with Temple and his early school days,
including his time at TCD. The final page is 20 and on it
are written only the words "were then 30 years old." There
is something scribbled out at the bottom of the pages and
obviously the fragment ends abruptly.

II.

The manuscript of the sermon is written in a different
manner. The date at the top of the page reads Nov. 24, 1717,
which does not agree with the date given in the table of
contents. Swift is using the same size paper, but the
handwriting is clearer and larger, perhaps so that he could
read it from the pulpit. Again this is not a finished draft
but a manuscript with many lines crossed over and writing

between lines. Swift still folds the paper in half but

261
writes across the whole width, approximately 8 words per line
and 22 lines per page. Swift writes large numbers in the
margins to correspond with the three main points of his
sermon, for example "First I shall enquire into the Causes of

this great Want of brotherly Love among us." The sermon

touches on the division between "Papists and Fanaticks.“
Swift draws horizontal lines at the end of the line when the
words do not reach the edge of the paper, as if he needs to
fill up the entire page.

On the whole, Swift seems to write a more finished text
in the sermon. There are fewer crossed out words. Perhaps
the organization of the three-point sermon allows him to more
freely proceed without too many digressions. But which
method produces more effective writing? Swift is not known
to have been a brilliant preacher. Every time Swift reaches
the next point, he writes the number in the margin,
announcing that he has arrived to the second and third
points. In this hierarchical strategy, there are subheadings
under each main point, such as "the 3rd reason for restoring
brotherly love." On the final page, 26, Swift tries to cram
the last 16 lines at the bottom quarter of the page. For
some reason, he apparently feels that a manuscript should not
exceed 26 pages, yet this sermon is more densely packed with
words than the autobiography because of Swift's change in
writing practice. The last section of the sermon is a

summary of the main points and Swift's reasoning behind the

262
sermon. A note at the bottom reads "finished Novbr. 29,
1717." So apparently he finished writing it a day or two
before he was to preach it. Swift did not preach every
Sunday, but perhaps required the impending date to motivate
himself to write a sermon.

III.

Text of the letter from Col. Dwyer:
"Dawson Court, Bootertown 13 Oct 1831.
Dear Sir,

I beg leave to Enclose the letter of Dean Swift which I
mentioned to you yesterday when you were so very obliging to
me and my East India friends, in Shewing us the curiosities
Contained in the Library of your University.

The paper may be deemed original Curious in itself as
the original writing of the Dean, but it is also curious from
the subject and manner in which his Strong mind treated it.
My Brother, the Rev'd Geo Dwyer, lately got it in the Co.
Galway by accident, and gave it to me. I do not see that I
can better store it than through your Hand, in the College
Library should you deem it worth a place there.

YOur Obliged Servant,

T. Dwyer, Lt. Col.

To the Rev'd Doctr. Tadler."

Swift's letter is in the same handwriting as the
autobiography and sermon. It is folded three times into

thirds with the outer leaf serving as an envelope. Mrs.

263
Swanton's address is written on the outside.
”Madam,
I have been considering the account you gave of me of your
eldest daughter's privately conveying her self out of your
house and taking all her cloaks with her determining to put
her-self out of your Protection. I have been assured that
there is a man in the case, and that she hath been enticed by
some Servant of yours to run into the arms of some beggarly
rascal, who would pass for a Gentleman of fortune. Although
such an action in a daughter whom you have used so well can
deserve no pardon, yet I would have you leave her without.
Sent to her to come home. If she refuse, send a second and
third time and if she still refuseth: Let her know in plain
terms that you will never have the least correspondence with
her, that you will never see her, nor give or leave her or
her children (if she shall have any) a morsel of bread. Let
her know, Ybu have given her fair warning, and if she will
run into destruction with her eyes open, against common
sense, and the opinion of all rational people, she hath none
to blame but herself: And that she must not expect to move
your compassion some years hence with the cryes of half a
dozen children at your door for want of bread. Let this and
whatever else you think proper be writ to her in your own
hand and let your letter be given to her before witnesses,
and keep a copy of it to produce when there is occasion: And

show the Copy you keep to any acquaintance who may be willing

264
to see it. And let whoever pleaseth, see this letter of mine
as the best advice I can give you. For you are to suppose
that you never had such a daughter, and that her children
will have no more title to your charity, than the brats and
bastards of any other common beggar. This is all I think
necessary to say upon so disagreeable a subject. So I
conclude.
Madam. Your most obedient servt.
Jonath. Swift.
Deanery-house
Jul 12th 1733"

Figures written on outside of envelope:

14-4 12-
4-6 12—4
9-1a 14—4
14 4 9—16
4-6

IV. & V

I cannot read Sir Walter Scott's handwriting, but he is
saying that the manuscript called "Doctor Sw--ts Circular
Letter to the Clergy of the Diocese of Dublin, exhorting them
in the conduct of their lives to regulate themselves always
according to the present humour of the times--“ is authentic.
Comparing this to other documents in this collection, it
becomes obvious that the MS. is not Swift's handwriting. The

date of Scott's letter is 1818, well after he had published

265
his edition of Swift's collected works, which would lead one
to conclude that Scott did not read many manuscripts for his
compilation.
VI.

The Legion Club MS. is in much poorer condition. It

does not resemble Swift's handwriting in the autobiography,
sermon, and letter. The letters are much straighter and more
patiently drawn, with wider gaps in the middle of letters.
It is heavily faded brown paper glued on another backing and
it appears to have suffered water damage. The paper is
folded both lengthwise and crosswise, not in Swift's manner
of folding only lengthwise. The paper is also taller and
more narrow than the paper characteristically used by Swift.
The pamphlet is unsigned and is bound in a multi-colored
blotter paper, perhaps by someone selling the manuscript for
its supposed authenticity.

There is also an envelope of thin blue paper on which
there is written ”enclosed is a title page of 'Legion Club'
cut from original MS in Swift's own handwriting.“ Apparently
the autobiography, sermon and letter were on display in a
glass case at one time because there are also large-letter
titles for them. A note inside the blue envelope reads
"Given to Libris Trin Col Dublin Feb 21, 1871 by Dennis
Crofton A.B. This page officially belonged to the MS now in
the College Library and was removed when the MS underwent the

trimming and strengthening process by orders of the Late J.H.

266

Lord D.D. Dennis Crofton Feb 9, 1871."

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS BY JONATHAN SWIFT

The Complete Poems. Ed. Pat Rogers. Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1983.

 

The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift. Ed. Harold Williams.
5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1963-65.

Gulliver's Travels. Ed. Peter Dixon and John Chalker.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.

 

The Poems of Jonathan Swigt. Ed. Harold Williams. 3 vols.
London: Oxford UP, 1958.

 

The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift. Ed. Herbert J. Davis et
a1. 14 vols. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1937-68.

 

OTHER WORKS

Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and
the Critical Tradition. London: Oxford UP, 1953.

Adams, Robert M. "The Mood of the Church and A Tale of Tub."
England in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century:
Essays on Culture and Society. Ed. H. T. Swedenberg,
Jr. Los Angles: U of California P, 1972.

 

Addison, Joseph, and Richard Steele. The Spectatgg. Ed.
Donald F. Bond. 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1965.

 

Barnett, Louis K. Swift's Poetic Worlds. Newark: U of
Delaware P, 1981.

Battestin, Martin C. The Providence of Wit: Aspects of Form
in Au ustan Literature and the Arts. Oxford: Clarendon
P, l 4.

 

 

Beaumont, Charles Allen. Swift's Classical Rhetoric.
Athens: U of George P, 1961.

 

- - -. Swift's Use of the Bible: A Documentation and a Study
in Allusion. Athens: U of Georgia P, I965.

 

 

Beckett, J.C. The Anglo-Irish Tradition. Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell UP, 1976.

267

268

 

Bertelsen, Lance. "Ireland, Temple, and the Origins of the
Drapier." Papers on Language and Literature 13 (1977):

Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry.
New York: Oxford UP, 1975.

 

Boswell, James. Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Dr.
Samuel Johnson, LL.D., ed. Frederick A. Pottle and
Charles H. Bennett. New York: Literary Guild, 1936.

 

— - -. The Life of Johnson. Ed. by ChristOpher Hibbert.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.

 

Bottigheimer, Karl S. Ireland and the Irish. New York:
Columbia UP, 1982.

 

Bredvold, Louis I., Alan D. McKillop, and Louis Whitney, eds.

Eighteenth Century Poetry and Prose. New York: Ronald
P, 1956.

 

Butler, Samuel. The Poetic Works of Samuel Butler. Ed. Rev.
John Mitford. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1886.

 

Canavan, Thomas L. "Robert Burton, Jonathan Swift, and the
Tradition of Anti-Puritan Invective." Journal of the
History of Ideas 34 (1973): 227-42.

 

 

Carnochan, W. B. Confinement and Flight: _An Essaygg
English Literature of the Eighteenth Century. Los
Angeles: U of California P, 1977.

 

 

Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell U , .

 

Clark, John R. Form and Frenzy in Swift's Tale of a Tub.

Clifford, James. L. "Gulliver's Fourth Voyage: Hard and
Soft Schools of Interpretation." In Quick Springs of

Sense: Studies in the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Larry S.
Champion. Athens: U of Georgia P, .

Cook, Richard I. Jonathan Swift as a Tory Pamphleteer.
Seattle: U of Washington P, 1967.

 

 

Corbett, Edward P.J. "A Method of Analyzing Prose Style with
a Demonstration Analysis on Swift's Modest Proposal.“
Qontemporary_Essays on Style: Rhetoric, Linguistics, and
Criticism. Ed. Glen A. Love and Michael Payne.
Glenview, Ill: Scott, Foresman, 1969.

 

 

Davis, Herbert. ”Literary Satire in A Tale of a Tub."

Swift: Modern Judgments. Ed. A Norman Jeffares.
London: Macmillan, 1969.

 

269

- — -. Jonathan Swift: Essays on His Satire and Other
Studies. New York: Oxford UP, 1964.

Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. Ed. Harvey Swados. New
York: Signet, 1962.

- - —. Moll Flanders. Ed. with an intro. by James
Sutherland. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959.

DePorte, Michael V. Nightmares and Hobbyhorses: Swift,
Sterne, and Augustan Ideas of Madness. San Marino,
Cal.: Huntington Library, 1974.

 

Dillon, George. Constructing Texts. Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 1981.

Donoghue, Denis. Jonathan Swift: A Critical Introduction.
London: Cambridge UP, I969?

Downie, James A. Jonathan Swift, Political Writer. London:

Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984.

 

. Robert Harley_and the Press: Propaganda and Public
-Opinion in the A e of Swift and Defoe. Cambridge:
Cambr1dge UP, 19 9.

 

Ehrenpreis, Irvin. Literary Meaning_ and Augustan Values.
Charlottesville: U of Virgin1a P, 1974.

_p_ _. ”Swift's Letters." Focus: Swift. Ed. C.J. Rawson.
London: Sphere Books, 1971.

_. Swift: The Manrjhis Works and the A e. 3 vols.
Mr. Swift and His Contem oraries, 196 . Dr. Swift,
I967. Dean Swift, 1999. Cambridge: Harvard UP.

Elkin, Peter Kingsley. The Augustan Defence of Satire.

Oxford: Clarendon P, 1973.

 

England, A.B. Energy and Order in the Poetry of Swift.
Cranbury, N. J.: Associated UP, 1986.

Ewald, William Bragg, Jr. The Masks of Jonathan Swift.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1954.

Ferguson, Oliver W. Jonathan Swift and Ireland. Urbana: U
of Illinois P, 1962.

Fielding, Henry. The History of Tom Jones. Ed. R. P. C.
Mutter. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.

216

Firth, Charles. H. "The Political Significance of Gulliver's
Travels. In Swift: Gulliver's Travels: A Casebook.
Ed. Richard Gravil. London: Macmillan, 1974.

 

 

Fischer, John Irwin. On Swift's Poetry. Gainesville: U of
Florida P, 1978.

 

Fussell, Paul. The Rhetorical World of Augustan Humanism:
Ethics and Imagery from Swift to Burke. London: Oxford
UP, 1965.

 

 

Greene, Donald. "The Via Media in an Age of Revolution:
Anglicanism in the Eighteenth Century." The Varied
Pattern: Studies in the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Peter
Hughes and David Williams. Toronto: A.M. Hakkert, 1971.

 

 

Hall, Basil. "'An Inverted Hypocrite': Swift the Churchman."
The World of Jonathan Swift: Essays for the
Tercentenary. Ed. Brian Vickers. Eambridge: Harvard
6?, 1968.

 

Haller, William. The Rise of Puritanism. New York: Columbia
UP, 1938.

Harth, Phillip. Swift and Anglican Rationalism: the

Religious Background of A Tale of a Tub. Ch1cago: U
of Chicago P, 1961.

 

 

 

Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical
Ideas During the English Revolution. New York: Viking,
1972.

 

 

Hirsch, E.D. Validity in Interpretation. New Haven: Yale
UP, 1967.

 

Hooker, Richard. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Ed.
Georges Edelen. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press 0 Harvard
UP, 1977.

Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of'Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic
Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978.

 

 

 

Jaffe, Nora Crow. The Poet Swift. Hanover: UP of New
England, 1977.

 

Johnson, Denis. ”Swift of Dublin." Eire-Ireland 3, (1968):
38-56.

 

Johnson, Maurice. The Sin of Wit: Jonathan Swift as a Poet.
Syracuse: Syracuse UP, I956.

 

211

 

Johnson, Samuel. ”Life of Swift." Lives of the En lish
Poets. Ed. G. B. Hill. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1965.

— - -. "The Vanity of Human Wishes." The Oxford Authors.
Ed. with an intro. by Donald Greene. New YOrk: Oxford
UP, 1984.

 

Johnston, Edith Mary. Ireland in the Eighteenth Century.
Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1974.

 

Josipovici, Gabriel. The World and the Book. New York:
Macmillan, 1971.

 

Kelly, Ann Cline. Swift and the English Lan ua e.
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Knott, John R., Jr. The Sword of the Spirit: Puritan
Regponses to the Bible. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.

 

 

Kramnick, Isaac. Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics
9; Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole. Cambridge: Harvard
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Leavis, F. R. "The Irony of Swift." Swift: a Collection of
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Prentice-Hall, 1964.

 

 

Lock, F. P. Swift's Tory Politics. London: Duckworth, 1983.

Locke, John. An Essay Cogcerning Human Understanding. Ed.
Peter H. Nidditch. London: Oxford U , 1975.

 

Luther, Martin. "The Liberty of a Christian Man.” Three
Treatiseg. Trans. by W. A. Lambert. Ed. Harold J.
Giimm. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg P, 1957.

 

Mayhew, George P. nge or Raillery: The Swift Manuscripts at
the Huntin ton Library. San Marino, Cal.: Huntington
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Mercier, Vivian. "Swift and the Gaelic Tradition.” Fair
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Jonathan Swift 1667-1745. Ed. A. Norman Jeffares.
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Milic, Louis Tonko. A_9u§gtitative Approach to the Style of
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Murray, John Middleton. Jonathan Swift: A_Critical
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Paulson, Ronald. The Fictions of Satire. Baltimore: JOhns
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- - -. The Corrgspondence 95 Alexander Pops. Ed. G.
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- - -. Swift's Rhetorical Art: A Study in Structure and
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