: ‘To learn by hearsay or enquiry’ (Greek).‘BD’ after a name indicates that further information about the person may be found in the ‘Biographical Dictionary’; a ‘G’ after a reference indicates that further information appears in the ‘Glossary’.
When I come to be old
First published 1765. A witty reversal of the conventions of ‘advice’ literature, in which an older man counsels an inexperienced youth about how to conduct his life, these resolutions were written just before or after the death of Sir William Temple on 27 January 1699. Copy-text: Forster autograph copy.
1. or let them… hardly: These words have been crossed out in the copy-text and omitted in DS ’65.
2. et eos… vitare: ‘And to hate and shun those who grasp at an inheritance’ (Latin).
3. opiniatre: A French term then in vogue, meaning ‘opinionated, or obstinate in maintaining one’s view’; perhaps an ironic glance at Temple’s dilettantism and preoccupation with style.
A Meditation upon a Broom-Stick
First published 1710. Written in 1702 or 1703 as a parody of Robert Boyle’s Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects (1665), this piece was part of a successful hoax in which it was represented to Lady Berkeley as Boyle’s own reflections. The natural philosopher Boyle was an apt target for Swift because of his strongly Puritan bent, his role as co-founder of the Royal Society, and his interest in forms of hermetic thought ridiculed in A Tale of a Tub (1704). Swift also judged him to be ‘a very silly writer’ (M.: Burnet).
1. a universal Reformer… sweep away: Wording suggestive of the Modern critics in A Tale of a Tub.
2. worn to the Stumps… warm themselves by: This passage plays upon several meanings of ‘stump’ to suggest male impotence and inability to satisfy female desires.
The Story of the Injured Lady. Written by Herself. In a Letter to her Friend. With his Answer
First published 1746. Provoked by the Act of Union between England and Scotland, this pamphlet was probably written shortly after the Union Treaty’s ratification (1707) and is Swift’s earliest sustained protest against Ireland’s colonial status. Influenced by Molyneux, it takes the form of an allegory, the ‘Gentleman in the Neighbourhood’ representing England; his ‘two Mistresses’, Scotland and Ireland; and the ‘publick Wedding’, the Act of Union. The Friend’s ‘Answer’, chastising the Lady for attacking the Mistress rather than forming an alliance with her based on their common victimization, emphasizes the need for the Irish to help themselves through organized political action and resistance. Copy-text: F ’46.
1. Company of Rogues… Mischief: Evokes the insubordination and unruliness associated with the Scottish Highlanders.
2. she broke into his House… set it on Fire: Glances at Scotland’s invasions of England in support of Parliament during the English Civil Wars (1642–51). Swift blamed the ‘cursed Hellish Scots’ for many of the war’s worst offences (M.: Clarendon).
3. his poor Steward was knocked on the Head: Refers to the beheading of Charles I on 30 January 1649.
4. to act like a Conqueror: A particularly damning accusation in light of Molyneux’s insistence that King Henry II’s expedition to Ireland (1172) was not a ‘conquest’ since the Irish received Henry in peace and were granted concessions ‘of the like Laws and Liberties with the People of England’.
5. an Under-Steward… his Directions: That is, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland (G).
6. my Tenants shall be obliged… filthy Hands: Refers to a series of legislative acts (e.g. the Woollen Act of 1699) restricting Irish trade. See A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture.
7. some Servants… on his Estate: Refers to the absentee office-holders and landlords, a recurring target of Swift’s wrath and chief among those he repeatedly blamed for Ireland’s poverty.
8. to carry it with a high Hand: England’s ‘high-handed’ behaviour consisted of passing the English Alien Act (1705), which mandated a ban on Scottish imports to England and the treatment of the Scots as aliens if Scotland refused to accept the Hanoverian succession or declined to enter into negotiations for a union.
9. I would stand by him… upon it: That is, Ireland’s unquestioning loyalty to England—its House of Lords had declared absolute allegiance to the Hanoverian Succession—helped ‘soften’ Scotland into submission.
10. a certain Great Man… her Will: Refers to James Francis Edward Stuart, or ‘The Old Pretender’ (BD).
11. an old Compact… I approved of: Refers to the letters freely given to Henry II by the clerics and nobles of Ireland, ‘swearing Fealty to him and his Heirs for ever’ (1172); also evokes later documents supporting Ireland’s parity with England, such as the Magna Charta granted to Ireland by Henry III in 1216.
12. her Encroachments… direct you: Refers to the large-scale migration of Scotsmen to Ulster.
13. this Gentleman kept her… Lodging: Refers to England’s military occupation of Scotland under Oliver Cromwell after his rout of Charles II and the king’s Scottish forces at Worcester in 1651.
The Bickerstaff Papers
Predictions for the Year 1708
First published 1708. These ‘Predictions’ follow Tom Brown’s burlesque, The Infallible Astrologer (1700), in satirizing John Partridge (BD), producer of the extremely popular almanac, Merlinus Liberatus. Their attack is three-fold: on the pseudo-science of astrology; on the almanac as a base literary form reflective of Grub Street (G); and on the Nonconformist Partridge, who used his almanac to attack the Anglican church as ‘only Pop’ry by another Name’. So successful was Swift’s hoax that Partridge was in effect ‘killed off’, struck from the rolls of the Company of Stationers and prevented by an injunction of the Lord Chancellor from ever again printing or selling his almanac. Personages and incidents connected with the then ongoing War of the Spanish Succession (G) form a backdrop to many of Bickerstaff’s predictions.
1. ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esq.: The headnote to F’35 explains that the author took this name from a sign over a locksmith’s house in Long-Acre; it was later used by Richard Steele in The Tatler.
2. Gadbury… Weather: The astrologer John Gadbury (1627–1704), Partridge’s mentor. Bickerstaff parodies Partridge’s later attacks on Gadbury, as well as Gadbury’s rejection of his own mentor, William Lilly.
3. their Advertisements… little to do: A typical almanac contained not only a calendar with astronomical data, astrological charts and weather forecasts, but also items about politics, food, gardening, etc., and advertisements promoting (e.g.) quack cures for venereal diseases and sexual dysfunction.
4. Miscarriage at Toulon… Admiral Shovel: After its unsuccessful campaign against the French at Toulon, an English fleet commanded by Admiral Cloudesley Shovell headed back to England on 22 October 1707 but ran aground on the Bishop Rock off the Scillies in thick fog; all aboard were lost in the shipwreck.
5. the Battle at Almanza… Consequences thereof: A military engagement in August 1707 in which the Earl of Galway’s troops were defeated by a Franco-Spanish army—a circumstance that eliminated the possibility that (as England had hoped) the Archduke Charles would be accepted as King of Spain.
6. the Old Stile… mention: The Julian calendar was reformed by Pope Gregory XIII via a papal bull (1582) which declared that 4 October be immediately followed by 15 October. This ‘New Style’ was not adopted by England until 1752; until then England’s calendar was eleven days behind other countries in Europe.
7. Beginning of the natural Year: After the Norman Conquest, 25 March was officially recognized as the first day of the new year, to mark the conception of Christ; it was replaced by 1 January in 1752. Aries, the first sign of the Zodiac, was placed at the beginning of the year from the spring equinox, 21 March.
8. the Duke of Anjou: Philippe of Anjou (1683–1746), grandson of Louis XIV of France, became King Philip V in 1700 after being named by the dying Charles II of Spain as his heir.
9. Insurrection in Dauphine… some Months: Dauphiné, a region in south-eastern France, was the scene of unrest and rebellion stemming from Louis XIV’s persecutions of the local Protestant population.
10. Death of the Dauphin… Kingdom: Louis, eldest son of Louis XIV, was known as the ‘Great Dauphin’ (1661–1711); the title of ‘Dauphin’ was held by the eldest son of the King of France from 1349 to 1830.
11. the Prophets… Events: Refers to the Camisards, a group of French Protestant peasants who fled to England to escape the religious persecutions of Louis XIV. Claiming prophetic powers, they aggressively proselytized in London and published ominous predictions while attacking the Established Church.
12. Cardinal Portocarero… false: Luis Manuel Portocarrero (1635–1709) reportedly influenced King Charles II of Spain on his deathbed to choose the Bourbon Philip, Duke of Anjou, as his successor over the Habsburg Archduke Charles, who proclaimed himself King Charles III after invading Spain (1704).
13. the Duke of Burgundy’s Administration: Eldest son of the ‘Great Dauphin’, Louis, Duke of Burgundy (1682–1712) was serving at the time as Joint Commander-in-Chief at Oudenaarde, in Flanders.
14. The Affairs of Poland… the Emperor: In 1697 Augustus II, the Elector of Saxony, was elected to the Polish throne and began a war with Charles XII of Sweden, who forced him to give up the throne in 1706.
15. The Pope… Sixty-One Years old: Clement XI (1649–1721) initially supported the Bourbon claim to the Spanish throne by Philip V, but later acknowledged the Archduke Charles as King of Spain.
16. Alter erit… Heroas: ‘Then there will be another Tethys, and another Argo to carry chosen heroes’: Virgil, Eclogue 4.34–5. Swift substitutes the sea goddess Tethys (for Queen Anne?) for Virgil’s Tiphys, pilot of the Argo.
17. a great Revolution… 1688: The Glorious Revolution (G).
18. have it printed in Holland: As a republic without an established religion (obviously not an ideal for the Anglican Swift), Holland had a more liberal attitude towards the free expression of ideas.
The Accomplishment of the First of Mr. Bickerstaff’s Predictions
This piece was published on 30 March, one day after the predicted date of Partridge’s death.
1. Dr. Case and Mrs. Kirleus… to him: ‘Two famous Quacks at that Time in London’ (note in F ’35).
2. a mean Trade: Partridge was originally a cobbler; Swift’s ‘Elegy on Mr Partrige’ notes the analogy ‘ ’twixt Cobling and Astrology’: ‘How Partrige made his Opticks rise,/From a Shoe Sole to reach the Skies.’
A Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.
First published 1709.
1. Mr. Partrige… Learned: Refers to Partridge’s comments in his Almanac for 1709 that ‘Bickerstaff’ was a ‘sham-name’ assumed by ‘an impudent lying fellow’ who made false predictions about Partridge’s death.
2. the Inquisition in Portugal… Readers of them: ‘This is Fact, as the Author was assured by Sir Paul Methuen, then Ambassador to that Crown’ (note in F ’35).
3. a Nation… an Alliance: Portugal was an ally of England in the War of the Spanish Succession and the two countries enjoyed close trading ties, which were strengthened by the Methuen Treaty of 1703.
4. transcribing… in my own Vindication: ‘The Quotations here inserted, are in Imitation of Dr. Bentley, in some Part of the famous Controversy between him and Charles Boyle, Esq; afterwards Earl of Orrery’ (note in F ’35). This refers to the dispute between the ‘Ancients’ and the ‘Moderns’ over the authenticity of the Epistles of Phalaris, edited by Boyle but attacked as spurious by Richard Bentley (BD).
5. most learned Monsieur Leibnitz: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646–1716), German philosopher and mathematician, best known for his theory of monads and belief in the pre-established harmony of the universe, which gave rise to his view that this is ‘the best of all possible worlds’ (mocked by Voltaire in Candide). This view, combined with his close ties to the House of Hanover, his enthusiastic support of the New Science as practised by the Royal Society, and his mechanical experiments and inventions (e.g. the calculating machine) rendered him a ripe target for Swift’s satire.
6. Illustrissimo Bickerstaffio Astrologiæ Instauratori, &c.: ‘To the most illustrious Bickerstaff, restorer of astrology’ (Latin).
7. Monsieur le Clerc… Ità nuperimè Bickerstaffius magnum illud Angliæ sidus: Jean Le Clerc (1657–1736) was a Swiss theologian and biblical scholar whose scriptural commentaries laid the ground for scientific criticism of the Bible… ‘Thus most recently [has written] Bickerstaff, that great star of England’ (Latin).
8. Bickerstaffius… Princeps: ‘Bickerstaff, great Englishman, easily first among astrologers of the present age’ (Latin).
9. Signior Magliabecchi… Praises: Antonio Magliabechi (1633–1714) was a renowned Florentine scholar and bibliophile who served as court librarian to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III de’ Medici.
10. Pace tanti viri dixerim: ‘I should say, in spite of the great man’ (Latin).
11. Vel forsan… doctissimus, &c.: ‘Or perhaps a typographical error, since otherwise Bickerstaff, that most learned man…’ (Latin).
12. Gadbury… the Revolution: Almanacs were published under royal charter by members of the Company of Stationers, often under the name of a deceased astrologer who continued to be the legally registered author. Poor Robin was a satirical almanac founded in c. 1662 by William Winstanley and continued by other hands well into the nineteenth century; Jonathan Dove flourished as an almanac-maker in the 1640s and 1650s; Vincent Wing published a popular almanac that was continued after his death by family members.
13. a new Set of Predictions: Probably a reference to ‘A Continuation of the Predictions for the Remaining Part of the Year 1708’, which also purported to be by ‘Isaac Bickerstaff’.
A Famous Prediction of Merlin, the British Wizard
First published 1709. Merlin, the soothsayer in the Arthurian legend, was a name used not only by Partridge but also in earlier almanac titles such as Rider’s British Merlin (1636–8). To further his spoof, Swift employs black-letter typography to give the appearance of a sixteenth-century translation. So successful was his parody that even Samuel Johnson was fooled into thinking it ‘authentic’. Explanatory notes were regularly used by members of the Scriblerus Club to satirize pedantry and false learning.
1. Johan Haukyns… 1530: A sixteenth-century printer, probably best known in England for completing the printing of a French grammar in London in 1530.
2. Yonge Symnele… Edward the Fourth: A pretender to the throne, Lambert Simnel (c. 1475–c. 1535) posed as Edward, Earl of Warwick, not as Richard, Duke of York, son of Edward IV; he was crowned as Edward VI (1487) before being defeated by Henry VII. James Francis Edward Stuart, the ‘Old Pretender’ (BD), briefly held the title of Prince of Wales until his father’s abdication in 1688. The prophecy that he will again ‘miscarry’ refers to his ill-fated attempt to regain the Scottish throne in 1708.
3. Norways Pryd, &c.: ‘Queen Anne. The Prophecy means, that she shou’d marry a second Time, and have Children that would live’ (note in F ’35). It was Anne’s failure to produce a surviving heir that ended the Stuart line. She was married to Prince George of Denmark, a country that was then united with Norway.
4. England is now… Britain: As a result of the Union of England and Scotland in 1707.
5. Geryon… again: Refers to the mythological three-headed winged monster; one of the Labours of Hercules was to bring Geryon’s cattle from Erytheia to Eurystheus, a task he performed by killing Geryon.
6. two Rivals for Spain… out of Spain: This prophecy is consistent with England’s support of the Habsburg Charles over the Bourbon Philip in their competing claims for the throne of Spain.
An Argument against Abolishing Christianity
First published 1711. Written in 1708 in support of the Test Act of 1673, which mandated the taking of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper according to Church of England practice as a prerequisite for holding public office, this ironic piece uses a persona combining aspects of a fashionable man about town and a free-thinker to expose what Swift saw as the dangers facing the Church—and society at large—from repeal of the Test, which the Whigs were then striving to bring about in Ireland. On the work’s simplest level, the ‘abolishing of Christianity’ is synonymous with ‘repeal of the Test Act’, although the tract’s network of ironies complicates this equation and reveals the central paradox of Swift’s stance as a proponent of ‘real’ Christianity—one based on genuine, hence uncoerced faith—who nevertheless feels the need to defend a set of external forms and requirements not wholly unlike what the speaker is advocating.
1. forbidden upon severe Penalties… Majority of Opinion the Voice of God: A reference to the 1708 law penalizing the popular pastime of wagering on the outcome of specific military engagements and the Union of England and Scotland… This idea was associated with the Whigs—though also invoked by the Drapier, who describes ‘the Voice of the Nation’ as ‘in some Manner, the Voice of God’ (Drapier’s Letter VII).
2. nominal and real Trinitarians: Theological controversies over the relationship of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, given new life in England after the Act of Toleration (1689) and the lapse of the Licensing Act (1695) allowed the publication of heterodox views on the subject. Swift held that ‘the whole Doctrine [of the Trinity] is short and plain, and in itself uncapable of any Controversy; since God himself hath pronounced the Fact, but wholly concealed the Manner’ (sermon, On the Trinity).
3. the Proposal of Horace… their Manners: See Horace, Epode 16.
4. nominal Christianity… Wealth and Power: That is, ‘occasional conformity’, or the practice of showing only token observance of the communion requirements of the Test Act in order to become eligible for public office; an Act against Occasional Conformity, which penalized public office-holders who attended Dissenting services, was passed in 1711… Some political writers at the time argued that England’s ability to prosper as a nation depended on its embrace of religious toleration, hence on its repeal of the Test Act.
5. Liberty of Conscience… Instance: In his sermon On the Testimony of Conscience, Swift defines ‘Liberty of Conscience’ as ‘no more than a Liberty of knowing our own Thoughts; which Liberty no one can take from us’—to be clearly distinguished from ‘endeavouring to propagate [one’s] Belief… and to overthrow the Faith which the Laws have already established’.
6. broke only for Blasphemy: A wry allusion to the Act for the Suppression of Blasphemy and Profaneness (1698), which imposed strict penalties on any individual who openly rejected the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity or questioned the divine authority of the Christian religion or the Bible.
7. Deorum offensa Diis curæ: ‘An offence against the gods is the gods’ concern’: Tacitus, Annals, 1.73. Swift quotes this phrase again in Some Thoughts on Free-Thinking in an obviously critical way, to suggest that such offences should be the concern of men as well.
8. Asgill, Tindall, Toland, Coward: Examples of deistic and heterodox thinkers (see BD).
9. An old dormant Statute or two… Execution: Laws (such as the Test Act and the Corporation Act of 1661) that mandated religious conformity for office-holders but that ceased being enforced after the Act of Toleration in 1689. Edmund Dudley (1462–1510), lawyer and politician, served as under-sheriff of London before he teamed up with Sir Richard Empson (1434– 1510) to act as financial agent for Henry VII. The two enriched the royal coffers by millions of pounds, partly by reviving obsolete statutes.
10. the wise Regulations of Henry the Eighth… Hospital: It was Henry’s practice to give properties seized from the Roman Catholic Church to laymen rather than to the Anglican Church. In his sermon Upon the Martyrdom of K. Charles I (preached at St Patrick’s on 30 January 1726), Swift accused Henry of having ‘robbed’ the Church; elsewhere he condemns ‘that Sacrilegious Tyrant Henry VIII’ for bestowing the right to tithes ‘on his ravenous favorites’.
11. Whether the Monument be in Danger: Refers to the memorial designed by Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723) to commemorate the Great Fire of London (1666), which blamed the disaster on the ‘Popish faction’.
12. Margarita… Valentini: The Italian singer Margarita l’Epine (d. 1746), the English soprano Catherine Tofts (c. 1680–1756) and the Italian counter-tenor Valentino Urbani, aka ‘Valentini’ (fl. 1705–15), regularly performed operas at the Queen’s Theatre in the Haymarket. It is not coincidental that Swift has the ‘Trimmers’, or compromisers, favour the castrato Valentini.
13. The Prasini and Veneti… the Blue and the Green: Refers to rival teams, distinguished by green and blue liveries, in the chariot races of the Roman circus and later the hippodrome at Constantinople, whose bitter antagonism culminated in civil war. Blue and green are also the colours of the knightly Orders of the Garter (England) and the Thistle (Scotland).
14. prohibited Silks… prohibited Wine: French goods officially off limits to the English because of the war but obtainable nonetheless through a vigorous smuggling trade between the two countries.
15. a Scheme for Comprehension… all Bodies may enter: Mocked by Swift in his tract The Presbyterians Plea of Merit (1733) via the image of disparate groups that ‘all meet and jumble together into a perfect Harmony’.
16. a starched squeezed Countenance… Mankind: Evokes the stereotyped image of the Puritan.
17. If the Quiet of a State… Flock: A similar image is used to describe the satiric strategy of A Tale of a Tub; its ‘Preface’ explains ‘That Sea-Men have a Custom when they meet a Whale, to fling him out an empty Tub, by way of Amusement, to divert him from laying violent Hands upon the Ship’ (i.e. of state).
18. another Securing Vote: Refers to the Act of Settlement (1701), which mandated a Protestant succession to the English throne ‘for the happiness of the nation, and the security of our religion’.
19. Jus Divinum of Episcopacy: The ‘divine right’ of the bishopric, presumably derived from the Apostles.
20. constant Practice of the Jesuits… amongst us: Swift often suggests that Catholics and Dissenters have much in common despite their professed antagonism; in A Tale of a Tub, the ‘Catholic’ Peter and the ‘Calvinist’ Jack are frequently mistaken for one another due to their ‘huge Personal Resemblance’.
21. the Popish Missionaries… continues: A misrepresentation of the positions of John Toland and Matthew Tindal (the ‘most learned and ingenious Author’). Both men embraced Catholicism at some point in their lives but both ultimately renounced the faith.
22. the Bank… One per Cent: The Bank of England was founded in 1694 as a shareholding association that floated large loans to the government for prosecuting the war against France; the East India Company was a joint-stock company established in 1600 under Royal Charter of Elizabeth I, which granted it a monopoly over trade with Asia. The growing political power of both is attacked in The Examiner, No. 37.
The Tatler, Number CCXXX
First published 1710. This contribution to The Tatler (1709–11), the popular periodical put out by Richard Steele, comically exposes what Swift saw as the corruptions of the English language in contemporary speech and writing, a subject he also dealt with in A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately entered into Holy Orders (1720), Polite Conversation, and other works. An inveterate foe of cant and jargon, associated with groups he was most critical of—in this case, courtiers and people of fashion—Swift consistently counselled simplicity of expression and attacked the use of newly minted, trendy words whose meaning could be understood neither by common people nor by future generations. Swift addresses his Tatler letter to his own famous persona, ‘Isaac Bickerstaff’, recently adopted by Steele.
1. Tom… Plenipo’s: Probably Thomas Harley (d. 1738), cousin of Robert Harley and a Secretary of the Treasury at the time this piece was composed. ‘Plenipo’s’ is a shortened form for plenipotentiaries.
2. the French King: Louis XIV, with whom England was then at war.
3. The Jacks… Phizz’s: Jacobites, or supporters of the exiled Stuarts. ‘Phizz’ is short for ‘physiognomy’, or facial expressions that reveal qualities of mind or character.
4. has got the Hipps: Is ‘hippish’, or low-spirited, with the implication of being somewhat hypochondriacal.
5. upon Rep: Upon reputation (i.e. ‘upon his honour’).
6. incog: Incognito.
7. a natural Tendency… Northern Languages: Swift believed in the shaping power of climate and geography on language; A Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue (1712) speaks of ‘harsh unharmonious Sounds, that none but a Northern Ear could endure’.
8. Mob and Banter: The term ‘mob’ (from the Latin ‘mobile vulgus’, ‘the movable or excitable crowd’) came into currency in the Restoration; ‘banter’ is described in A Tale of a Tub as a word ‘first borrowed from the Bullies in White-Fryars’, which ‘then fell among the Footmen, and at last retired to the Pedants’.
9. Index Expurgatorius… Syllables: An official list of passages to be deleted or reworded in published works otherwise deemed permissible to read, similar to the list drawn up by the Catholic Church for its adherents. This recommendation echoes proposals put forward in Correcting the English Tongue.
10. some of those Sermons… University: Cf. Swift’s A Letter to a Young Gentleman, which makes similar points.
11. Simplex munditiis: ‘Natural elegance’: Horace, Odes, 1.5.5.
12. Hooker… Parsons the Jesuit: Richard Hooker (c. 1554–1600) was best known for Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a monumental defence of the Anglican Church, considered a model of both religious polemics and English prose style. Robert Parsons (1546–1610) wrote a devotional work, A Christian Directorie, also published in a Protestant version.
13. Sir H. Wooton… Daniel the Historian: Sir Henry Wotton (1568–1639), poet, diplomat and connoisseur, produced a diverse body of writings published after his death as Reliquiae Wottonianae (1651). Sir Robert Naunton (1563–1635) authored Fragmenta Regalia: Observations on the Late Queen Elizabeth, Her Times and Favourites. Francis Osborne (1593–1659) was a miscellaneous writer known for his Advice to a Son and his Memoirs of the Reigns of Q. Elizabeth and King James I. Samuel Daniel (1563–1619), historian, dramatist and Poet Laureate, wrote The Collection of the Historie of England to the Death of Edward III, a major source for Swift’s ‘Abstract of the History of England’ (see Ehrenpreis, 2: 61).
The Examiner
First published 1710–11. The Examiner was a journal founded to defend the policies of the new Tory ministry headed by Robert Harley. Number 13 marks Swift’s debut as its editor and, for the next thirty-two issues, its sole author, following his estrangement from the Whig Party (see Introduction). Swift’s essays defended the recent change of ministry, lamented the influence of London’s newly emergent class of bankers and stockjobbers and attacked the entrenched military interests responsible for perpetuating the war against France for their own selfish ends. Copy-text: F ’46.
The Examiner, Number 13
1. Longa… rerum: ‘Long is the (tale of) injustice, long the wandering, but I will follow the high points of the story’: Virgil, Aeneid, 1.341–2.
2. the declining Party: The Whigs.
3. a General… his own Nomination: The Duke of Marlborough (BD), a war hero from several major victories on the Continent but a recurring target of Swift’s criticism and satire.
4. to break the Settlement… the Pretender: To negate the Act of Settlement (1701), designed to ensure that the English Crown would remain in Protestant hands, by recalling the Catholic James Stuart to the throne.
5. as unknown as their Original: That is, as obscure as their birth— a reflection on the humble origins of many who in recent years had risen to great wealth and status in the military and financial spheres, including Marlborough himself, who was the son of an impoverished squire.
6. two Verses in Lucan: From Pharsalia, 1.181–2.
7. run up as high as the Revolution: That is, go as far back as the Glorious Revolution (G).
8. Divine-Right, Passive-Obedience, and Non-Resistance: Doctrines associated with Tories and Jacobites; in Examiner, No. 33, Swift criticizes the Whigs’ misuse of these terms and denies that the Tories subscribe either to the Divine Right of Kingship or to an absolute ‘Passive Obedience’ to a monarch’s commands.
9. A Practice as old… Security: Recounted by Plutarch in his Life of Eumenes; an analogy was the large loans obtained by William III to carry on his wars against James II and Louis XIV.
10. the Four-Shilling Aid… Kingdom: Refers to the sum of ‘four shillings in the pound’ that was first exacted from the English populace by William III in 1693 to help fund his military campaigns in Europe.
11. if our Fathers… Years past: Cf. The Conduct of the Allies (1711): ‘It will, no doubt, be a mighty Comfort to our Grandchildren, when they see a few Rags hang up in Westminster-Hall, which cost an hundred Millions, whereof they are paying the Arrears, and boasting, as Beggars do, that their Grandfathers were Rich and Great.’
12. until her Enemies… refuse them: Refers to the Whigs’ rejection of Louis XIV’s peace offers in late 1708, at which time he agreed to all of the forty articles put forward by the Allies except one deliberately included to undermine the negotiations (in effect, to declare war on his own grandson). The clear message here is that the Tory administration will respond very differently to such peace overtures.
13. Audiet… Juventus: ‘The youth, few in number because of their parents’ fault (in carrying out destructive civil war), will hear of battles’: Horace, Odes, 1.2.23–4.
The Examiner, Number 14
While on one level a satire aimed specifically at exposing the duplicity of the Whigs, in particular the Earl of Wharton (BD), this essay, also known as ‘The Art of Political Lying’, has the kind of broad application that enables each new generation of readers to find in it a striking relevance to their own time. Swift also uses the mock-genealogy in A Tale of a Tub (with regard to Modern Critics) and in Examiner, No. 32, to describe the birth of ‘Faction’.
1. E quibus… susurri: ‘Some of these fill their idle ears with talk, and others spread what they have heard elsewhere; while the size of the story grows, and each new teller adds something to what he has heard. Here is Credulity; here is thoughtless Error, unfounded Joy and confused Fears; here sudden Sedition and Whisperings from a dubious source’: Ovid, Metamorphoses, 12.56–61. The passage is describing the House of Rumour.
2. VICEROY of a great Western Province… Pit: Echoes Milton’s portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost (1667) and evokes Wharton, ‘Viceroy’ (Lord-Lieutenant) of Britain’s ‘Western Province’, Ireland.
3. Fame: Rumour; portrayed by Virgil, in Book 4 of The Aeneid, as a monster with an eye below each feather, a tongue and mouth for each eye and twice as many ears.
4. a prevailing Party for almost twenty Years: The Whigs.
5. Flower-de-Luce’s… in their Hands: Emblems of Roman Catholicism, especially of France, are here counterposed against representations of England. The ‘fleur-de-lis’ was the royal arms of France; the ‘Triple Crowns’ refers to the papal tiaras; ‘Chains’ suggests the tyranny and absolutism of Catholic nations and evokes the Inquisition; ‘wooden Shoes’ were equated with French sabots, seen to typify the miserable state of the French peasants. The contrasting ‘Ensigns of Liberty’ points to England as a Protestant nation with a limited monarchy, symbolized by the mythological Britannia holding a horn of plenty.
6. Art of the Second Sight… seeing Spirits: The ‘inner light’ and prophetic vision claimed by the Scottish Presbyterians—the ‘Hipocritical Saints’ of Swift’s Memoirs of Captain Creichton (1731).
7. those Legions hovering… at Elections: Evokes the picture of Satan’s ‘Legions’ roused from their slumber and filling the air with their grotesque density in Paradise Lost (Book 1). It is not coincidental that these lies hover around ‘Exchange-Alley’—the centre for the commercial and banking interests in London.
8. a certain Great Man… Affairs: Refers to Wharton. In his Short Character of Wharton (1711), Swift claims that dissembling and lying are ‘the two Talents he most practiseth, and most valueth himself upon’.
9. when he invokes God… believes in neither: According to the Short Character, Wharton is ‘an Atheist in Religion’; he attends prayers for form’s sake but ‘will talk Bawdy and Blasphemy at the Chapel Door’.
10. destroy our Constitution both in Church and State: A possible consequence, as Swift saw it, of the Whigs’ attempts to repeal the Test Act and thereby undermine the Established Church (in Ireland in particular) and increase the political power of the Dissenters, a group not known for their love of monarchical government. Wharton strongly supported such a repeal during his tenure as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.
11. by powerful Motives from the City: Implies that bribery and influence-peddling on the part of the commercial and financial interests have corrupted the election process.
The Examiner, Number 20
1. Pugnacem… minorem: ‘They would know a fighter (to be) less than a wise man’: Ovid, Metamorphoses, 13.354.
2. William Rufus… those Days: William Rufus (1056–1100) succeeded his father, William the Conqueror, as William II in 1087 and spent most of his reign in conflict with his elder brother, Robert, Duke of Normandy, while also fighting to suppress rebellions at home and launching military campaigns in France.
3. as Machiavel informs us: Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), Florentine statesman best known for his authorship of The Prince, a discourse on the most effective methods of exercising and retaining power; his later treatise, On the Art of War, laid the foundations of modern military tactics. His support of a citizen’s militia to replace the mercenary-army system would have struck a sympathetic chord in Swift.
4. That no private Man… so great: Refers to Marlborough; in The Conduct of the Allies, Swift warns that ‘a General during Pleasure, might have grown into a General for Life, and a General for Life into a King’.
5. Paulus Æmilius, or Scipio himself: Two great Roman military leaders. The former (228–160 BCE) was created consul and honoured in triumph for his victories after leading the army that destroyed Macedonia; Scipio Africanus (236–?183 BCE) helped establish Rome as a great Mediterranean power by first defeating the armies of Carthage in Spain and, later, defeating Hannibal in Africa.
6. Cæsar… Roman Liberty: In A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions… in Athens and Rome (1701), Swift holds Caesar up as an example of ‘the Tyranny of a single Person’ and claims he contributed to ‘the Ruin of the Roman Freedome and Greatness’. The ‘certain General’ who constitutes a modern parallel with Caesar is Marlborough.
7. petere more majorum: ‘To seek (it) according to the custom of their ancestors’ (Latin).
8. the great Rebellion… a Trial: The English Civil Wars that began in 1642… The trial before a select group of Parliamentarians that culminated in the execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649.
9. erected a Military Government… by Major-Generals: Refers to the establishment in 1655 of fully fledged military rule in England under the office of a ‘Protector’ (Oliver Cromwell) and governed by a new Constitution that divided England into eleven areas, each headed by a Major-General possessing extensive powers.
10. to drink Damnation… Queen herself: Swift recounts in JS how several officers were forced to leave the army ‘for drinking Destruction to the present ministry, and dressing up a hat on a stick, and calling it Harley; then drinking a glass with one hand, and discharging a pistol with the other at the maukin…’
11. short Passage to Harwich: The most direct route between England and its ally, Holland.
12. a Dialogue in Lucian: Lucian, Dialogues of the Dead, 10. The words Swift attributes to Charon are actually uttered by Hermes to the shade Lampichus, Dictator of Gela.
Journal to Stella
Letters I and XLI–LXV first published 1766; Letters II–XL, 1768. Extracts from the earlier letters appeared in Deane Swift’s Essay upon the Life, Writings, and Character of Dr. Jonathan Swift, in 1755. Written between September 1710 and June 1713, while Swift was in England representing the Church of Ireland, this series of sixty-five letters, which are addressed to Esther Johnson (and, secondarily, her companion Rebecca Dingley), offers a rich source of material about both the political and literary worlds of London during the reign of Queen Anne. As a member of several groups formed by the leading wits of the period, and as confidant of the most powerful men in the Tory ministry (especially the Treasurer, Robert Harley, later Earl of Oxford, and the Secretary of State, Henry St John, later Viscount Bolingbroke), Swift was an active participant in both these worlds and a wry, often perceptive—but inevitably partial and occasionally misleading—commentator on the London scene. These letters also have a significant personal dimension, especially apparent in those instances in which they adopt an intimate, playful tone towards Johnson (addressed as ‘MD’, or ‘My Dear’) and communicate through a private, invented language that Swift refers to in Letter XLIII as ‘ourri-char Gangridge’ (‘our little Language’). Swift himself never used the title Journal to Stella, which was an interpolation by his subsequent editors. Copy-text for the following two Letters: DS ’68.
Letter V
1. Presto… absence: ‘Presto’ is the name Deane Swift used for Swift, based on the JS entry which recounts: ‘The [Bolognese] duchess of Shrewsbury asked [St. John] was not that Dr. Dr. and she could not say my name in English, but said Dr. Presto, which is Italian for Swift.’
2. the Tatler that I writ… a pure one: Refers to The Tatler, No. CCXXX, dealing with the corruptions in language.
3. Your Manley’s brother… Tories of Ireland: The Tory loyalist John Manley, just named Surveyor General, is trying to prevent his Whig brother Isaac’s dismissal as Postmaster General in Ireland. Party politics likewise threaten Sir Thomas Frankland’s post as joint Postmaster General in England (see BD).
4. my lampoon… on a certain great person: ‘The Virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician’s Rod’, a scurrilous satire on Sidney Godolphin (BD).
5. sir John Stanley… Mr. Pratt: In other words, Swift will seek Stanley’s help in soliciting support from Henry Hyde (via the assistance of Hyde’s wife) on behalf of his friend, John Pratt (see BD).
6. late attorney-general: James Montagu (BD); he had just resigned his post.
7. the cartons of Raphael… his house and park, and improvements: Raphael’s famous ‘cartoons’, based on representations of Christ and his apostles, were made for tapestries in the Sistine Chapel at Pope Leo X’s behest and bought by King Charles I in 1630; during Swift’s visit they were being displayed in the King’s Gallery at Hampton Court… Halifax (BD) was Ranger of Bushy Park, where he pursued various building and landscaping projects.
8. you go dine… Dublin: ‘When this letter was written there were no turnpike roads in Ireland’ (DS note).
9. your sister… modest sort of girl: Anne Johnson (b. 1683), Esther’s younger sister, who since her marriage in 1700 was no longer living with the Temple family at Sheen.
10. this Mr. Dyet… such a man: Richard Dyot had been acquitted of a felony charge for the actions described by Swift on the ground that his crime was a breach of trust, but he was later retried on a charge of high misdemeanour.
11. Stella can’t read: A reference to the chronic weakness of Johnson’s eyes.
12. Joe will have his money… am in no fear of succeeding: Refers to the government award bestowed on Swift’s friend, Joseph Beaumont (BD); when the promised money failed to materialize, Swift actively lobbied on his friend’s behalf… In the eighteenth century, when the word ‘fear’ was conjugated negatively, a following negative was often illogically omitted, so that the resulting statement seems to signify the opposite of what is intended (OED).
13. Don’t lose your money… sirrahs: By gambling; Johnson often played cards at Isaac Manley’s house.
14. another Tatler: Probably Tatler, No. 238, which contained Swift’s poem ‘A Description of a City Shower’; in the JS entry for 17 October, Swift remarked, ‘They say ’tis the best thing I ever writ, and I think so too.’
15. the giver’s bread, &c.: Williams conjectures that Swift actually wrote, ‘the givar’s dead’, with ‘givars’ standing for ‘Devil’s’ in the little language; the phrase would then mean ‘a long time hence’ or ‘never’.
16. A Colt, a Stanhope, &c.: Sir Henry Dutton Colt, MP for Westminster, and General James Stanhope (BD) were Whigs soon to be defeated by High Church candidates in the Tory landslide of October 1710.
17. the dean, the bishop, or Mrs. Walls: John Stearne; probably William Moreton, Bishop of Meath; the wife of the Revd Thomas Walls (all in BD).
18. go out twice upon Manilio… your loss: References to the card game of ‘ombre’ (G).
19. my powers… the queen: The commission Swift received from the Irish bishops, authorizing him to work on their behalf to obtain remission of the ‘First Fruits’ (G). The ‘memorial’ referred to was the document petitioning the government to remit the ‘First Fruits’ to the Irish clergy.
20. to bring me over: That is, to the side of the Tories.
21. send Steele a Tatler… very low of late: See n. 14, above. Steele’s dejection was no doubt related to the impending loss of his position as Gazetteer due to his partisan Whig polemics and satire. A JS entry one week later succinctly notes, ‘Well, there’s an end of that: [Steele] is turned out of his place.’
22. the you know what… the church: ‘These words seem to refer to the apprehension the ministry were under, that Swift would take part with their enemies, and therefore it was that Harley would do every thing to bring him over’ (DS note). Williams, however, thinks the ‘you know what’ refers to A Tale of a Tub.
23. not fond… as I used to be: No doubt because St James’s Coffee-House was a noted Whig resort; letters addressed to Swift were held for him there in a glass frame at the bar when he first came to London.
24. the archbishop: Archbishop William King of Dublin (BD).
25. I’ve reckoned them: ‘Seventy-three lines in folio upon one page, and in a very small hand’ (DS note).
Letter XVII
1. the Park: St James’s Park (G).
2. the memorial about Bernage… count upon it: Refers to the ensign’s commission that Swift was helping Lt. (later Captain) Moses Bernage, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, procure.
3. my head… grow worse: Refers to one of the recurring manifestations of Swift’s Ménière’s disease (G).
4. We dined (says you)… Hold your tongue, &c.: Johnson is describing a scene at the home of John Stearne, Dean of St Patrick’s (the ‘dean’ referred to later), which revolves around ombre-playing (G).
5. colonel Fielding… first step to it: Probably a reference to Edmund Fielding (d. 1741), the father of the novelist Henry Fielding, who fought under Marlborough and was at this time colonel of a regiment of foot.
6. Mrs. Vanhomrigh: Hester Vanhomrigh (d. 1714), widow of a Dutch merchant who had successfully established himself in Dublin as commissary-general to the army in Ireland. She was now living with her daughters, Mary and Esther (‘Vanessa’), in Bury Street, St James’s—‘but five doors off’ from Swift.
7. two lady Bettys… a fine woman: Lady Elizabeth Butler (d. 1750), daughter of the 2nd Duke of Ormonde and a friend of the Vanhomrighs; and Lady Elizabeth Germain (1680–1769), daughter of the 2nd Earl of Berkeley and a lifelong friend and correspondent of Swift’s.
8. the new Tatler… epicure: William Harrison (BD) became (the short-lived) editor of The Tatler on 13 January 1711, two weeks after Steele discontinued it. James Eckershall was Second Clerk of the Queen’s Privy Kitchen and Gentleman Usher to Queen Anne.
9. busy with poor Mrs. Walls… I must prate, &c.: Describes the birth of Mrs Walls’ son after a difficult delivery; Swift was the reluctant godfather. ‘Stoite’ was the wife of Alderman John Stoyte (BD); ‘Mrs. Catherine’ was Catherine Lloyd, her unmarried sister. Johnson sometimes stayed at the Stoytes’ residence in Donnybrook, near Dublin, where the four of them often played cards together.
10. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse… they sell mightily: Despite his profession of ignorance about this volume, Swift actively assisted in its publication by drawing up a list of works (twelve prose pieces and thirteen poems) for the printer, Benjamin Tooke (BD), to include; e.g. ‘A Description of a City Shower’, ‘The Virtues of Sid Hamet’, The Bickerstaff Papers, An Argument against Abolishing Christianity and ‘A Meditation upon a Broom-Stick’.
11. Patrick… Leap-year: Refers to Swift’s Irish servant, Patrick, often described in JS as a drunk and a blunderer. The mention of his almanac points to the popularity of this type of publication among the lower classes—one of the factors motivating Swift’s satiric attack on the genre in The Bickerstaff Papers.
12. The duchess and [she]… with the duke: The ‘duchess’ refers to Lady Mary Somerset, second wife of the Duke of Ormonde. Swift is saying that Lady Mary and Lady Betty Butler (Ormonde’s daughter) will not accompany the Duke when he returns to Ireland in the summer for his second stint as Lord-Lieutenant.
13. Sterne’s business: The reference is to Johnson’s Irish friend, Enoch Stearne (BD), whose ‘business’ with the Treasury apparently came to nothing.
14. lord keeper: Sir Simon Harcourt (BD).
15. violent Tories on the other: That is, the October Club, a group of Country politicians dedicated (in Swift’s words) to ‘drive things on to extreams against the Whigs, to call the old ministry to account, and get off five or six heads’, whereas ‘the ministry is for gentler measures’; cf. Some Advice to the October Club (1712).
16. to play the same game… against them: That is, exert power by gaining the ear and trust of the Queen.
17. I will walk like camomile: Probably related to a proverb originating in the sixteenth century, ‘The more the camomile is trodden on, the faster it grows’ (ODEP)—the sense being that the more Swift walks, the healthier and more robust he becomes. The herb camomile has long been noted for its medicinal qualities.
18. your new lodgings… less than ever: Johnson and Dingley recently moved to more upscale lodgings opposite St Mary’s church in Stafford Street. Swift was critical of this move on financial grounds.
19. all our friendship is over: Though Swift overstates the case, a distinct coolness had developed between him and Addison (BD), caused by Addison’s perceived ingratitude for the assistance Swift rendered Addison’s Whig friends, and exacerbated by what Swift elsewhere terms ‘a Curse of Party’.
20. one Richardson… religion: Refers to John Richardson (1664–1747), a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. Swift took a dim view of both the man and his project, complaining he felt ‘plagued’ by Richardson.
21. He gave me… dpionufnad: That is, Harley gave Swift ‘A bank note for fifty pounds’ (DS note). The coded words are deciphered by using alternate letters only (with ‘bill’ read for ‘note’). The note, intended as recognition for his work on The Examiner, obviously offended Swift.
22. Mrs. Edgworth… last Monday se’nnight: Refers to the departure for Ireland of the widow of Ambrose Edgeworth, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Irish Regiment of Foot. Mrs Edgeworth was entrusted by Swift with conveying chocolate and palsy water for Johnson, and Brazil tobacco for Dingley.
23. I do read the Examiners… as you judge: ‘Even to his beloved Stella [Swift] had not acknowledged himself, at this time, to be the author of the Examiner’ (DS note).
24. I do not think… his avarice has ruined us: Recent Examiner essays had charged the Duke of Marlborough with this vice. In No. 29, Swift declared that ‘excessive Avarice in a General, is, I think, the greatest Defect he can be liable to, next to those of Courage and Conduct, and may be attended with the most ruinous Consequences, as it was in Crassus; who to that Vice alone owed the Destruction of himself and his Army.’
25. that squinting, blinking Frenchman: ‘Presumably a relation of Mrs. De Caudres’ (Williams note). De Caudres was Johnson’s landlady in her new lodgings.
26. your chancellor… his chaplain: Sir Constantine Phipps and Joseph Trapp (BD).
27. your aukward SSs … always SSS: ‘Print cannot do justice to whims of this kind, as they depend wholly upon the aukward shape of the letters’ (DS note).
28. writing in our language… just now: The so-called ‘little language’ invented by Swift. His identification of it with speaking links it to other forms of oral expression that inform many of his works.
29. In your account… twelvemonth: Swift’s account books began the financial year on 1 November.
30. zoo must… Dood mollow: ‘The meaning of this pretty language is; “And you must cry There, and Here, and Here again. Must you imitate Presto, pray? Yes, and so you shall. And so there’s for your letter. Good morrow” ’ (DS note). Williams suggests that there may be some inaccuracies in Deane Swift’s transcript.
31. That desperate French villain… the archbishop: Harley was stabbed with a penknife by Antoine, Abbé de Bourlie (b. 1658), aka the Marquis de Guiscard, a French émigré who had been granted a government pension by the Whig ministry after taking refuge in England. When the pension was later reduced by Harley, Guiscard entered into traitorous correspondence with France for monetary gain. He attacked Harley during his examination for high treason before a Committee of Council in St John’s office and was himself fatally wounded by Council members. The ‘archbishop’ to whom Swift gave an account of the incident was William King (BD).
32. the surgeon sat up with him: Paul Buissière (d. 1739), a French Huguenot émigré who had gained a reputation in England for his surgical skills; he also wrote anatomical pieces for the Royal Society.
33. about Mr. Clements… place: Swift had been asked to help Robert Clements (BD) retain his post as Teller of the Irish Exchequer despite the recent political changes in England.
34. As for Bernage… an end: Swift is exasperated that Bernage went behind his back and secretly paid for an army commission. Henry Desaulnais (‘Disney’) was a French Huguenot soldier and friend of St John’s.
35. lele [i.e. there] like Presto: The explanation in brackets is Deane Swift’s.
36. Gog and Magog: See Revelation 20: 8. Also, in British legend, the sole survivors of a monstrous brood, imprisoned and forced into service as porters at the royal palace, on the site of the Guildhall; wickerwork models of them were carried in the annual Lord Mayor’s Show (Brewer/Evans).
A Hue and Cry after Dismal
First published 1712. This piece came out as a cheaply produced ‘penny paper’ on a single half-sheet. Calling it a ‘Grubstreet paper’, Swift rushed it into print before the Stamp Act, which levied a half-penny tax on half-sheets, took effect on 1 August. The piece was written some weeks after Louis XIV agreed to let the British occupy Dunkirk and demolish the French fortifications in the port, a concession the Whigs strove to render suspect. ‘Dismal’, or the Earl of Nottingham (BD), is singled out as a satiric target because of his apostasy in throwing his weight behind the Whigs’ war policy. Another, slightly enlarged version of the piece appeared under the title ‘Dunkirk to be Let, Or, A Town Ready Furnish’d; with A Hue-and-Cry after Dismal’. Copy-text: London broadside of 1712.
1. it is better… stand out: Apperson cites Camden’s Remains (1605) as the earliest example of this proverb; cf. ‘The devil himself will rather chuse to play/At paltry small game, than sit out, they say’ (1759).
2. Collonell K–le–gr–w: Henry Killigrew, a lieutenant-colonel of the Dragoons (Williams).
3. Mr. Squash… his Man: Plays upon ‘quashee’ (or ‘quashie’), a generic name for a Negro (especially a black servant); from the Ashanti or Fanti name ‘Kwasi’.
4. Stobb… sight: Despite Davis’s substitution of ‘hobb’, the word is likelier ‘stob’, a pun on both a stump (as of an amputated leg) and a post or gibbet, evoking the disasters of war and proper punishment for Dismal.
5. nor Savoyard neither: Swift may be playing here on the faintly comic association of Savoy natives with itinerant musicians who travel accompanied by monkeys and hurdy-gurdies (OED).
Swift to the Earl of Oxford
First published 1755. This letter, written from Letcombe Bassett in Berkshire, was addressed to Oxford on 3 July 1714, less than a month before the Lord Treasurer’s fall from power. Its highly formal, even ceremonial tone befits a communication intended as a farewell to Oxford in his official capacity and a bowing out of the public arena by Swift. Replying to the letter on 27 July, the day of his dismissal by the Queen from office, Oxford invited Swift to visit him at his country seat in Herefordshire; but Queen Anne’s death on 1 August scuttled these plans and prompted Swift to return to Ireland. Copy-text: BL autograph copy.
1. in your publick capacity… never once: In Some Free Thoughts upon the Present State of Affairs (completed two days before), Swift portrays Oxford as ‘a great Minister’ who ‘abound[s] in Secrets, and Reserves, even towards those with whom he ought to act in the greatest Confidence and Concert’.
2. though you and somebody… make you: An allusion to the failure of both Oxford and Queen Anne to help Swift obtain the post of Historiographer Royal, which went instead to the antiquary Thomas Madox.
A Modest Defence of Punning
First published 1957. Although dated 8 November 1716, this piece remained unpublished in Swift’s lifetime because (Davis speculates) Swift learned that the paper it was answering, ‘God’s Revenge against Punning’, had been written by Pope. More than just a defence of punning, the essay is itself an extended series of puns that wittily exemplify how they operate. It reveals the playful side of Swift’s relationship to language: a side we see also in the ‘little language’ of JS. Pierpont Morgan autograph copy (MA 457).
1. Punica mala leges: A parodic echo of Virgil’s ‘Punica regna vides’ (‘You see Punic realms’) in Aeneid, 1.338, which plays on the sound of these words to tempt the reader to (mis)translate the phrase as ‘you will read bad puns’. In his jeu d’esprit ‘The Dying Speech of TOM ASHE’, Swift observes, ‘I hear my friends design to publish a collection of my puns… therefore the world must read the bad as well as the good. Virgil has long foretold it: Punica mala leges.’ The term Punica mala also means ‘pomegranates’, which can perhaps be seen as the classical equivalent of the ‘bad apple’ that brought about Man’s Fall in Eden (as in the myth of Persephone).
2. bellum Punicum… malum Punicum: A joking combination of the Latin for ‘Punic War’ and the Latin for ‘pomegranate’. The Punic Wars were fought between Rome and Carthage in the third and second centuries BCE.
3. The Word Pun… Sword: A mock-etymology. Ironically, OED notes that ‘pun was prob[ably] one of the clipped words… which came into fashionable slang at or after the Restoration’— hence precisely the type of word Swift attacks in The Tatler, No. CCXXX as a ‘Disgrace of our Language’.
4. Smock Simony: Cf. OED example from 1705: ‘Great Kindred, Smock-Simony, and Whores, have advanc’d many a Sot to the Holy-Chair’; for ‘smock’, see G.
5. : ‘To learn by hearsay or enquiry’ (Greek).
6. our Author, J. Baker Knight… Chevalier de Fond Sec: This passage refers to Charles Ford (BD), whose aversion to puns was well known. Swift’s nickname for Ford was ‘Don Carlos’, hence the references to ‘a Spaniard’. Also note the words ‘Quarter’, synonymous with ‘fourth’, homonym of ‘forth’, an early form of ‘ford’; and ‘Fond Sec’, French for ‘dry bottom’, a shallow place, or ‘ford’, for crossing a body of water.
7. Jews were put to their Trumps: That is, Jews were put to their last expedient; also punning on ‘Jews’ trump’, another term (used mainly in Scotland and Northern Ireland) for a Jews’ harp.
8. Poor Robin… a Few-nest place indeed: Robin is Robert Grattan (BD). The pun on ‘funest’ spoofs its repeated use (‘these funest disasters’, ‘funest effects of the war’) in ‘God’s Revenge against Punning’.
9. Whetstonism… Whistonism: The state of being a great liar, a meaning derived from the former custom of hanging a whetstone around a liar’s neck, juxtaposed alongside the ideas of the heterodox thinker, William Whiston (BD).
10. the Visitation… best Card at Comet: Whiston’s name was associated with comets; he prophesied the destruction of the world at the appearance of a comet on 13 October 1736, mocked in ‘A True and Faithful Narrative’ (often falsely attributed to Swift); also playing on ‘comet’ as the name of an old card game.
11. Ignorance of some Copyer… Occasion: A punning reference to the claim of Richard Bentley (BD) that passages in Paradise Lost had been incorrectly transcribed by Milton’s amanuensis.
12. Reprobat, sed non re probat: ‘He condemns him, but doesn’t prove it by the matter’ (Latin).
13. He Claps… Corona Veneris: A reference to John Baron Hervey (1665–1751), made Earl of Bristol (‘Bristow stones’) in 1714; the passage contains punning play on the signs and consequences of venereal disease. According to the Bodleian copy of ‘God’s Revenge against Punning’, the three noblemen referred to in this and the following paragraphs are Lord Hervey, Lord Stanhope and Lord Warwick (see Davis 4: 299). What all three have in common are close Whig associations: Hervey and Stanhope (BD) were rewarded with titles for their zealous support of the House of Hanover, and Edward Henry Rich, 7th Earl of Warwick (1697–1721), was the stepson of Addison and a member of a Whig literary group.
14. the Box and Dice… Ninepence: A play on the several meanings of ‘box’ as a container for dice, a coffin, and a slang term for female genitalia. The repeated references to gaming throughout this paragraph are meant to evoke associations with Stanhope, who was known as a heavy gambler.
15. Var vecûm… aere natus: ‘Born in the land of mutton-heads [lit., castrated sheep] and in a dense air’: Juvenal, Satire X, 50.
16. The grave antient Collonell: Identified in the Bodleian copy as ‘Col. Frowd’—presumably the same person called ‘Colonel Proud’ and judged to be ‘very ill company’ in Letter VIII of JS. Lt.-Col. William Frowde was the uncle of Philip Frowde, an Oxford classmate and friend of Addison’s, and a writer of plays and poems.
17. Thomas Pickle: Probably a play on Thomas Tickell (BD).
18. Muley Hamet… in his Mold: ‘Muley Hamet’ is the supposed Arabic author of Don Quixote, Cid Hamet Benengeli (‘Muley’ being a variant of the Mohammedan title ‘mullah’); Swift earlier used the name to satirize Godolphin in ‘The Virtues of Sid Hamet’. ‘[B]udge ill’ is a punning allusion to Eustace Budgell (BD). Daniel Button was the founder and proprietor of Button’s Coffee-house in Covent Garden, which became a well-known gathering place for Whig literary figures.
19. His Majesty’s Liberality… give us: Refers to George I’s gift of books to Cambridge University for its firm loyalty to the Protestant succession. The doctrine of ‘indefeasibility’, associated with Jacobites and nonjurors, held that royal titles were strictly hereditary, hence not subject to nullification.
20. A Devonshire Man of Wit: John Gay (BD). The final paragraph is a punning account of Gay’s fall from a horse some months before; the only ‘injury’ was to his elegant snuffbox.
Sermon, On False Witness
First published 1762. This sermon is one of only twelve by Swift that have survived (eleven if we exclude one of uncertain attribution). Although he lamented to a friend that when in the pulpit ‘he could never rise higher than preaching pamphlets’, his sermons hold considerable interest, demonstrating Swift’s sense of the inextricable links between the pulpit and the world beyond it, hence the close relationship between his pastoral and his civic responsibilities. This sermon, probably written early in the reign of George I, denounces the atmosphere of political repression and intimidation against Tories and suspected Jacobites which Swift found upon his return to Ireland in 1714. Copy-text: H ’62.
1. False Witnesses… Cruelty: Psalm 27: 12.
2. Jezabel… stoned to death: 1 Kings 21: 10–13. Swift named his Deanery garden ‘Naboth’s Vineyard’.
3. So the two false witnesses… I will raise it up: Matthew 26: 60–61 and John 2: 18–19.
4. The false witnesses said… the law: Acts 6: 11–13.
5. They daily mistake… do me evil: Psalm 56: 5. A few years later Swift’s friend Thomas Sheridan was to see his clerical career destroyed by just such an informer; see Swift’s letter to Sheridan (11 Sept. 1725).
6. wise as serpents… innocent as doves: Matthew 10: 16.
7. Submit yourselves… supreme, &c.: 1 Peter 2: 13.
8. the powers… ordained of God: Romans 13: 1.
A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately entered into Holy Orders
First published 1720. This piece offers a unique insight into Swift’s views about pulpit practices in his day, presumably shedding light on his own methods of preaching. Emphasizing simplicity of expression, it conceives of an audience of common people who would be alienated by sermons filled with excessive erudition, wit-play and abstruse theological questions. More broadly, the Letter is important for its reflections on language and style; for its promotion of a comprehensive model of both literary and social decorum. Moreover, its rejection of a dogmatic, narrow-minded form of Christian apologetics hostile to heathen thinkers reflects the more liberal and humanistic side of Swift’s views on religion and philosophy.
1. barbarous Terms… peculiar to the Nation: See n. 7 to Tatler, No. CCXXX.
2. Lord Falkland… Divines: Lucius Cary (?1610–43), 2nd Viscount Falkland, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, was an eminent scholar who supported episcopacy but rejected the bishops’ claim to divine right and all forms of religious absolutism, urging that the clergy be subject to the control of the civil magistrate.
3. Professors in most Arts… Arts: In Book IV of GT, Swift ascribes to lawyers ‘a peculiar Cant and Jargon of their own, that no other Mortal can understand, and wherein all their Laws are written’.
4. The two great Orators… Part: Demosthenes (384–322 BCE) and Marcus Tullius Cicero, or Tully (106–43 BCE), brilliant orators admired by Swift especially for their forceful denunciations of corrupt public figures. Swift’s attack on Wharton in Examiner, No. 17 is modelled on Cicero’s indictment of Verres.
5. these Northern Climates… next Meal: Expresses Swift’s belief (perhaps derived from Temple) in the influence of climate on character and temperament—hence the coldness of the Anglo-Saxon make-up.
6. that divine Precept… Socrates: In Book 1 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates, in a debate on justice, gets Polemarchus to admit that ‘the injuring of another [even an enemy] can be in no case just’.
7. by shewing the Advantages… World: This point is the core of Swift’s sermon, Upon the Excellency of Christianity, which (as one might expect) presents a less favourable view of ancient philosophy. Yet even there Swift maintains that the heathen philosophers ‘were as wise and as good as it was possible for them under such disadvantages, and would have probably been infinitely more with such aids as we enjoy’.
8. those Fathers… Learning: Swift may be thinking here of Tertullian (c. 150–222), a particularly zealous defender of Christianity who combined a non-classical form of Latin with an obscure style to denounce philosophers and direct personal, ad hominem attacks on Aristotle and Plato. Other possibilities include the Christian apologetics of Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215) and Origen (c. 182–c. 254).
9. as St. Austin excellently observes: St Augustine (354–430), Bishop of Hippo, the greatest of the Church Fathers; best known for his Confessions, and for The City of God, which offers a cosmic interpretation of history rooted in the struggle between good (the City of God) and evil (the Earthly City).
10. Pilgrim’s Progress… Ideas: The spiritual allegory by John Bunyan (1628–88), written in the Puritan ‘plain style’, is being recommended over tracts dealing with overly abstract or pedantic matters.
11. against the Advice of St. Paul… Studies: Upon the Excellency of Christianity notes that St Paul ‘seems very much to despise’ Epicurean philosophy, a materialist theory of the universe which posits that both the universe and individual bodies are composed of atoms; see also Acts 17: 18.
12. Mysteries of the Christian Religion… Nature: Swift’s sermon On the Trinity likewise argues that ‘our Religion abounds in Mysteries’ since ‘God thought fit to communicate some Things to us in Part, and leave some Part a Mystery’. This question assumed a special urgency after the publication of John Toland’s Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), which claimed that religious mysteries were invented by the clergy to impose upon the ignorance of their followers.
13. impatient to be out of Play: Anxious at being unemployed or out of office.
14. old fundamental Custom… Slander: A protest against the Septennial Act of 1716, which lengthened the normal interval between elections from three to seven years, making the offices more vulnerable to bribery and corruption. Swift advocates annual Parliaments in A Letter from Dr. Swift to Mr. Pope.
15. Mr. Hobbes’s Saying… Religion: In the ‘Epistle Dedicatory to the Earl of Newcastle’ of Hobbes’s Humane Nature (1650).
Swift to Charles Ford
First published 1935. Swift’s letters to his close friend Ford (BD)— fifty-one of which survive—interweave public with private concerns and offer an insight into his feelings about a range of subjects. This letter of 4 April 1720, along with presenting a vivid picture of Swift’s physical sufferings due to Ménière’s disease, expresses his increasingly vocal anti-colonialist posture, intensified here by passage a week earlier of the Declaratory Act, which ‘bound’ Ireland even further to British rule. The letter is also significant for its references to a seemingly buoyant world of financial speculation (the ‘South-Sea Mystery’ referred to below) that would soon come crashing down in the Bubble. Copy-text: Rothschild autograph copy.
1. our Mississipi Friend: Bolingbroke (BD), at the time living in exile in France and about to purchase a retreat with profits from his speculation in the Mississippi Company: a financial conglomerate founded by the Scotsman John Law, which assumed France’s public debt and issued money based on its monopoly of French foreign trade. Enormously successful in its initial stages, it inspired similar speculation in England.
2. the Quarrell against Convocations… assemble: The formal assembly of Anglican clergy, or Convocation, was prorogued indefinitely in May 1717, after a highly controversial sermon delivered by Bishop Benjamin Hoadly made them fear a Tory backlash; it met only once more during the century.
3. united on their Conditions… ashamed of: An allusion to the defiant stance of the Scottish Parliament before agreeing to the Union with England in 1707.
4. so universall a Discontent… to succeed: This whole passage refers to the reactions to and consequences of the Declaratory Act (G).
5. watched for his Ears… Inch of them: In the seventeenth century, under Archbishop William Laud, Puritans often had their ears cut off for publishing nonconformist pamphlets—a fate Swift thinks appropriate for the notoriously unscrupulous publisher Edmund Curll (BD).
6. an honest humersom Gentleman… mine: Either Thomas Sheridan (BD) or Swift’s genial Dublin companion Dr Richard Helsham (c. 1683–1738), with whom he exchanged riddles and puns.
7. one about Precedence of Doctors… others: The Right of Precedence between Phisicians and Civilians Enquir’d into, published in Dublin and reprinted in London in 1720; falsely attributed to Swift (Williams).
8. Ld Harley and Ldy Harriette… Friend L— and the rest: Edward Harley (BD) and his wife, the former Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles; Erasmus Lewis (BD).
A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture
First published 1720. Carefully timed to appear in print shortly before the celebrations marking the sixtieth birthday of George I (28 May) and calculated to exploit the nationalist sentiment fuelled by the Declaratory Act passed weeks earlier, which asserted Britain’s ‘full power’ to make laws ‘bind[ing] the kingdom and people of Ireland’, the ‘Proposal’ was Swift’s first published tract devoted exclusively to Irish affairs. Calling for an economic boycott of English goods to counter a series of restrictive trade laws—particularly the Woollen Act of 1699, which prevented the exportation of Irish manufactures to other countries and limited its export of raw wool to England— the tract provoked a government prosecution against its printer by Chief Justice William Whitshed. Copy-text: first printing of 1720, collated with F ’35.
1. the Landlords are every where… Sheep: A survey of what Swift deemed the major abuses of land management in Ireland, particularly the power of large landowners and their ‘middlemen’ to dictate the terms of the soil’s usage by small tenant farmers, and the conversion of tillage into pasture lands, fuelled both by the instability of land tenure and by England’s strict regulation of Irish trade. In a later tract, Swift castigates ‘that abominable Race of Graziers… ready to engross great Quantities of Land’, pointing to the bitter irony that ‘the more Sheep we have, the fewer human Creatures are left to wear the Wool, or eat the Flesh’. The maxim that ‘People are the Riches of a Country’ was a basic tenet of mercantilist theory that Swift declared inapplicable to Ireland due to its ‘want of employment’ (Maxims Controlled in Ireland).
2. our beneficial Traffick of Wool… to Market: The restrictions England placed on Irish trade fuelled a clandestine trade in wool with France; an anonymous Irish pamphlet of 1721 claimed that ‘our fraudulent trade in wool is the best branch of our commerce’.
3. Barnstable: Barnstaple, a seaport in Devonshire; a major market for imported Irish wool.
4. those great Refinements… State of the Nation: Refers to Parliament’s preoccupation over the preceding months with proposed legislation (ultimately withdrawn) to extend the political and civil rights of Dissenters, and with the Annesley Case, a conflict between the British and the Irish House of Lords over who had appellate and final jurisdiction in Irish cases, resolved in England’s favor via the Declaratory Act.
5. Nemine Contradicente: No one contradicting; without a dissenting vote (Latin).
6. Lexicon of Female Fopperies… the Nation: Like many male writers, Swift often blamed women for Ireland’s ruinous dependency on expensive goods from abroad. Yet he also held responsible ‘the young fops who admire them’ (A Proposal to the Ladies of Ireland); and he blamed both sexes equally for the ‘pernicious Folly’ of harbouring extravagant tastes in clothing in his sermon Causes of the Wretched Condition of Ireland.
7. make burying in Woollen… a Law: Nine years later, mourners at the funeral of William Conolly (BD) wore scarves of Irish linen to make just such a statement.
8. the late Archbishop of Tuam… Nor am I even yet for lessening the Number of those Exceptions: John Vesey (BD)… In F ’35 this inflammatory statement is replaced by the following far less provocative statement: ‘I must confess, that as to the former [the People of England], I should not be sorry if they would stay at home; and for the latter [their Coals], I hope, in a little Time we shall have no Occasion for them.’
9. Non tanti… ostrum: ‘A mitre is not worth so much, nor the purple robes of a judge’ (Latin).
10. engaging not to play the Knave… Goodness: A recurring complaint of Swift’s, appearing also in A Modest Proposal; see also his sermon, Doing Good, and Drapier’s Letter VII.
11. the present Archbishop of Dublin… born among us: William King, whose ‘Labours for the Publick Weal’ are extolled in a verse that Swift wrote during this period. The phrase ‘under the rose’ is usually expressed today in Latin, sub rosa (meaning ‘secretly or in strictest confidence’).
12. The Fable in Ovid… to this purpose: Ovid, Metamorphoses, 6.1–145.
13. The Scripture tells us… wise Man mad: Ecclesiastes 7: 7.
14. a Person… from Ireland: Arthur Annesley, 5th Earl of Anglesey (BD), whose ‘great Estate’ was Camolin Park in Co. Wexford. Anglesey fell out with Swift over this passage.
15. Mostyn and White-haven: British ports; Mostyn is located on the northeast coast of Wales, in Flintshire; Whitehaven, in Cumberland, is described in Defoe’s Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6) as ‘the most eminent port in England for shipping off coals, except Newcastle and Sunderland, and even beyond the last’.
16. grievous Burthen of Exchange… Complaint: The effects of Ireland’s lack of a fixed and stable exchange rate with England, exacerbated by Ireland’s inability to mint its own currency or use British sterling, which made it dependent on foreign coins often having a different value in the two countries. Periodically, by decree from London, the English guinea was fixed at a set value in Ireland; but the resulting appreciation or depreciation of the Irish currency created opportunities for exploitation by those who could move freely between the two countries and work the exchange rate to their own advantage. See n. 18 to A Short View of the State of Ireland.
17. Ballad upon Cotter… Government: James Cotter, member of a well-to-do Catholic family from Cork and an alleged Jacobite, was hanged for rape in 1720; he became the subject of numerous popular ballads.
18. a Law to bind Men… Matter: Swift’s first major use of the Lockean notion that men cannot be bound by laws without their consent; see Drapier’s Letter IV. ‘In foro Conscientiæ’ means, ‘in the forum of conscience’ (Latin). Robert Sanderson (1587– 1663), Bishop of Lincoln, was a prolific writer on matters of theology about whom Charles I is said to have declared, ‘I carry my ears to hear other preachers, but I carry my conscience to hear Dr. Sanderson’. Francisco Suarez (1548–1617), a Spanish Jesuit and political philosopher, criticized the Theory of Divine Right in his Defensio Fidei (1613), which anticipated Locke’s idea of the original equality of all men and the individual as owner of his own freedom.
19. Corrector of a Hedge-Press… after him: Thought to refer to Martin Bladen (1680–1746), soldier, politician and steadfast supporter of Walpole, who produced a popular translation of Cæsar’s Commentaries (1712), dedicated to the Duke of Marlborough. ‘Little-Britain’ was a street in London known for its cheap clothing stalls and for second-hand bookshops patronized by Swift.
20. Author of a Play… Class: William Luckyn, 1st Viscount Grimston (BD). The praise here is ironic.
21. my L—d W——… a dispensing Power in the Queen: Lord Wharton (BD)… The power claimed by the Crown to override statutes, which was condemned when invoked by James II but later embraced when applied to statutes enacted by the Irish Parliament.
22. Colonies of Out-casts in America: Colonies like Virginia had become the destination points for convicted criminals, transported to America as indentured servants in lieu of being hanged or imprisoned.
23. the Vassals in Germany and Poland: An especially charged allusion given that George I was German.
24. a Thing they call a Bank… this Town: Refers to the proposal in 1720 to establish a National Bank of Ireland, which was defeated by the Irish Parliament despite having received royal approval. Swift’s opposition to it reflects his general hostility to the new credit economy and to any deviation from a strict gold and silver standard; see Examiner, No. 13 and The Drapier’s Letters.
25. Hemp, and Caps, and Bells: The rope used for hanging criminals, and the insignia of the fool or jester.
A Letter from Dr. Swift to Mr. Pope
First published 1741. Although dated ‘Jan. 10, 1721’, it is uncertain whether this piece was actually begun on that date or on 10 January of the following year. In either case, it is likely that Swift wrote the letter over a period of months. It was never sent to its addressee, no doubt because it was intended more as a general statement of Swift’s political beliefs than as a private epistle. While asserting the basic orthodoxy of Swift’s views, the ‘Letter’ also underscores the precariousness of his position in Irish society due to ideas deemed suspect by those in power. It articulates, with a particular urgency and clarity, themes common to Swift’s writings at the time: the widespread persecution of alleged Jacobites and Tories, the corruption of the judicial system, the prevalence of government informers, and the perils of being a writer in an age of surveillance and censorship. Here again a major symbol for this corruption is Chief Justice Whitshed (BD). Copy-text: F ’46.
1. gentlemen of the Long-robe… those in Furs: Lawyers and judges.
2. ten weeks before the Queen’s death… visit: Queen Anne died on 1 August 1714, following the collapse of the Tory ministry due to the ‘incurable breach’ between Harley and Bolingbroke.
3. writ a Discourse… in safe hands: Some Free Thoughts upon the Present State of Affairs (not published until 1741). The ‘great Minister now abroad’ is Bolingbroke, who had fled to France following his impeachment in 1715.
4. some Memorials… disdained to accept it: This is the work published posthumously as The History of the Four Last Years of the Queen (1758), which Swift initially hoped to complete and publish by the spring of 1713 but which fell victim to internal political dissension. The cited ‘employment’ was the post of Historiographer Royal, which fell vacant in 1713 upon the death of Sir Thomas Rhymer. Swift’s comment that he ‘disdained to accept’ the post is misleading—he was never offered it. The person without ‘steddiness or sincerity’ was the Duke of Shrewsbury (BD), Lord Chamberlain at the time.
5. a discourse… from England: This is A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture.
6. a person in great office here… law: The three figures referred to in this passage are: Lord Chancellor Midleton, Chief Justice Whitshed and the printer Edward Waters (all in BD).
7. the Duke of G—ft–n… noli prosequi: For the Duke of Grafton, see BD. The Latin phrase, correctly nolle prosequi (‘to be unwilling to pursue’), signifies a formal stop to further legal proceedings; it was obtained in August 1721 through the intercession of Swift’s old acquaintance (and Grafton’s stepfather) Sir Thomas Hanmer.
8. how ill a taste… introduced: Things Swift blamed for the degenerate state of wit and morals in contemporary society. ‘South-sea’ refers both to the Company (G) and to the ‘Bubble’ of 1720; by ‘Party’ is meant the extreme partisanship growing out of the conflict between Whigs and Tories. Swift’s dim view of (imported) opera is expressed in Intelligencer, No. III; he was also critical of masquerades (G).
9. a Dedication upon Dedications… read: A piece purportedly written by ‘a Sparkish Pamphleteer of Button’s Coffee-House’ (a noted Whig gathering place) and maliciously attributed to Swift.
10. in favour of Mr. Addison… a remembrancer: The writers named here (BD) were all Whigs who had benefited from Swift’s patronage and friendship with Oxford when he was working for the Tory ministry.
11. Non obtusa… urbe: A note in F ’46 contains the following translation of this passage from Virgil’s Aeneid (1.567–68) by Swift’s friend, William Dunkin: ‘Our Hearts are not so cold, nor flames the Fire/Of Sol so different from the Race of Tyre.’
12. tanquam in equo Trojano: ‘As if in the Trojan horse’: Cicero, Philippics, 2.13.
13. Cromwell’s Soldiers… principles: Refers to the widespread takeover of Catholic-owned lands by Protestants allied to the Puritan leader, Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), after his Irish campaign (1649–50).
14. a Revolution-principle… by us: Swift’s defence here of the Glorious Revolution (G) attests to his political orthodoxy, but he clearly departs from the Whigs’ uncritical adulation of it. The ‘very bad effects’ include the increased power of Low Church adherents and the growth of a professional military class.
15. Standing Armies… Interest: The King of Brobdingnag is ‘amazed to hear [Gulliver] talk of a mercenary standing Army in the Midst of Peace, and among a free People’ (GT, Book IV); see also Examiner, No. 20. The ‘artificial Necessities’ recall the Whigs’ pretexts for continuing the War of the Spanish Succession.
16. if Parliaments met once a year: By the time of this writing the interval between parliamentary elections had been extended to seven years; see n. 14 to A Letter to a Young Gentleman.
17. the possessors of the soil… kingdom: A ‘maxim’ rendered somewhat ironic by Swift’s growing perception of the greed and corruptness of the landed interest in Ireland; see Use of Irish Manufacture, n. 1.
18. suspending any Law… see it repeated: Refers to the six-month suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act (1679) in response to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715.
19. whole Tribe of Informers… plague mankind: The chief target of Swift’s sermon On False Witness.
Swift to Esther Vanhomrigh
First published 1766. This letter, dated 5 July 1721, is one of just over two dozen extant letters from Swift to Vanhomrigh, whom he first met, probably in late 1707, while the two were living in London, and who later followed him to Dublin, settling in nearby Celbridge. Their initial relationship was playful and flirtatious, possibly sexual, and continued after their removal to Ireland, but Vanhomrigh’s increasingly passionate feelings and emotional demands alienated Swift, causing embarrassment and recriminations. Swift responded by adopting a range of tones and attitudes. This letter combines avuncular concern with a form of gallantry designed to cool rather than encourage Vanhomrigh’s ardour. Copy-text: BL autograph copy.
1. the Disposition I found you in… better: Refers to Vanhomrigh’s bereavement following the death of her sister, Mary (Swift’s ‘Molkin’), in February.
2. Cad—… Imaginations: ‘Cad —’ is short for ‘Cadenus’, the name Swift uses in his poem Cadenus and Vanessa (1713), which portrays ‘Vanessa’ as a romantic who, having become enamoured of Cadenus, ‘fancies Musick in his Tongue,/Nor further looks, but thinks him young’ (Swift was in his mid-forties at the time).
3. your Law Affairs: An allusion to the complications surrounding her father’s estate, which resulted in a lengthy lawsuit against its executor in Ireland about which Vanhomrigh often solicited Swift’s advice.
4. an Irish Stage-Coach: ‘It was probably of most primitive construction. The allusion is the earliest which I know to the use in Ireland of a public conveyance by a man of Swift’s rank’ (note by Ball).
5. deep employd… Concern: Swift was writing this letter from Gaulstown House, Co. Meath, the country seat of Baron Robert Rochfort; his poem ‘The Journal’ offers a lively account of his ‘employments’ there.
6. mais soyez assureè… par votre amie que vous: ‘But be assured that there has never been anyone in the world so loved, honoured, esteemed, [and] adored by your friend as you’ (French). Swift’s feminine ‘amie’ should actually be ‘ami’.
7. I drank no Coffee… judge: It has been speculated that the many references to ‘coffee-drinking’ in Swift’s letters to Vanhomrigh have a sexual connotation. Late in their friendship he observed, ‘The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it.’
The Last Speech and Dying Words of Ebenezor Elliston
First published 1722. Written on the occasion of the execution of one Ebenezor Elliston on 2 May 1722, this broadside parodies the confession and repentance speeches of criminals about to be hanged, and sold on the day of execution. According to an introductory note in F ’35, ‘About the time that this Speech was written, the Town [Dublin] was much pestered with Street-Robbers; who, in a barbarous Manner would seize on Gentlemen, and take them into remote Corners, and after they had robbed them, would leave them bound and gagged. It is remarkable, that this Speech had so good an Effect, that there have been very few Robberies of that kind committed since.’ Swift was fascinated by the public and popular rituals connected with crime and punishment, relishing the satiric possibilities they offered; see An Account of the Execution of William Wood and Intelligencer, No. III; also his poems ‘Clever Tom Clinch going to be hanged’ (1726) and ‘The Yahoo’s Overthrow’ (1734).
1. wonderfully came to Life… Way: Swift may be thinking here of a hoax he and some friends perpetrated on the eve of All Fools’ Day, 1713, following the execution of one Richard Noble, in which they circulated a story that Noble ‘was but half-hanged, and was brought to life by His Friends…’ (Davis, 4: 259–60).
2. betray one another… well paid: Refers to the group of professional informers known as ‘thief-takers’, the most famous of whom was Jonathan Wild. In John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, the character Peachum, loosely modelled on Wild, claims that ‘like great statesmen, we encourage those who betray their friends’.
3. go snacks: Share and share alike.
The Drapier’s Letters
First published 1724. Swift wrote The Drapier’s Letters (seven in all) as a contribution to the widespread resistance in Ireland to the patent obtained by the Englishman William Wood, in the summer of 1722, for the minting of Irish half-pence, to the value of £100,800 over a period of fourteen years. Though intended as a solution to a serious problem—the shortage of specie in Ireland—Wood’s patent immediately provoked opposition because of the excessive amount of coinage it authorized, the absence of safeguards to ensure the coin’s value, the belief that Wood obtained the patent through government corruption and the growing anger at England’s treatment of Ireland as a colony of inferiors. While the resistance to the half-pence was already well under way when Swift started writing this series of pamphlets in February 1724, The Drapier’s Letters rapidly became a focal point and lightning rod for the controversy, with the humble tradesman ‘M. B. Drapier’ (possibly for ‘Marcus Brutus’) fomenting popular resistance while provoking the wrath of the authorities. The eventual defeat of the patent ensured Swift’s status as ‘Hibernian Patriot’. Copy-text: F ’35 but with title from John Harding’s first printing (1724).
Letter I. To the Shop-keepers, Tradesmen, Farmers, and Common-People of Ireland
1. ordered the Printer… lowest Rate: Swift himself bore the printer’s costs in order to keep the price of the pamphlet low—it was sold in quantities of three dozen for two shillings. Two thousand copies were distributed throughout Ireland in March 1724.
2. A little Book… FOUND HIM GUILTY: Refers to Swift’s A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture; the ‘Poor Printer’ was Edward Waters (BD).
3. having been many Years… did not succeed: Since Tudor times, the minting of coins for Ireland was handled via patents granted to private individuals in England, often for a handsome consideration. Such a patent was granted by Charles II in 1680 and wound up in the hands of one Colonel Roger Moore, who flooded Ireland with copper half-pence, causing their devaluation. His application for renewal of the patent was denied in 1705, and no further coinage for Ireland was struck until Wood obtained the patent in 1722.
4. did not oblige any one… unless they pleased: The patent explicitly stated that Wood’s half-pence was ‘to pass and be received as current money by such as shall be willing to receive the same’.
5. of such Base Metal… real Value: Repudiates Sir Isaac Newton’s favorable assessment of the half-pence, as Comptroller of the Mint. In Letter III, the Drapier says he personally witnessed the weighing of ‘a large Quantity’ of the half-pence, ‘which were of four different Kinds, three of them considerably under Weight’.
6. where to give Money… FAIR STORY: Refers to Wood’s payment of £10,000 to George I’s mistress, the Duchess of Kendal (Duchess of Munster in the Irish peerage), to acquire the patent given her by the King.
7. The KING was deceived in his Grant… all Reigns: A concept in English common law based on the presumption that the king can do no wrong, so if bad decisions are made it is his agents who are to blame.
8. several smart Votes… together: ‘Humble Addresses’ to the King were made by both Houses of the Irish Parliament, accusing Wood of ‘Fraud and Deceit’ and petitioning the Crown for relief from his patent’s ‘Fatal Effects’. Wood responded with arrogant and accusatory statements in several London newspapers.
9. Bere: ‘A sort of Barley in Ireland’ (note in F ’35).
10. in his House for Stowage: Refers to the grand Palladian mansion, Castletown, in Celbridge, Co. Kildare, that the Italian architect, Alessandro Galilei, designed for William Conolly (BD).
11. the Brass Money in King James’s Time: The base coinage that James II struck to pay his troops during his Irish campaign; known as ‘gun-money’ because much of it was made from melted-down cannons.
12. run all into Sheep… as are necessary: The growing practice of using agricultural land to pasture sheep instead of to cultivate crops was repeatedly condemned by Swift; see n. 1 to Use of Irish Manufacture.
13. Pebble-stones… Coin: Perhaps a glance at the American colonies, where items such as tobacco and shells were used as currency; a decade earlier, North Carolina had declared seventeen kinds of items legal tender.
14. A Famous Law-Book called the Mirrour of Justice: A compilation of common-law cases by Andrew Horne, Chamberlain of London during the reign of Edward I (1272–1307).
15. as my Lord Coke says… Parliament: Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634) was a noted jurist who defended the common law and the rights of individuals against abuses of the royal prerogative. Part II of his four-part compendium Institutes of the Laws of England (1628–42) is the source of Swift’s quotations here.
16. gives the King all Mines… other Metals: A pointed reference to Wood’s extensive holdings in copper and iron mines throughout England.
17. Davis’s Reports… Tyrone’s Rebellion: A collection of legal writings by Sir John Davies (1569–1626), Attorney General for Ireland, published in 1615… An insurrection begun in 1594 against English rule in Ireland, led by Hugh O’Neill, 3rd Earl of Tyrone, in alliance with Philip III of Spain; the Hiberno-Spanish forces were defeated at the climactic battle at Kinsale (1601).
18. the accursed Thing… forbidden to touch: Joshua 6: 18.
19. a Man who told the King… Experiment: An example of the proverbial cruelty of the Sicilian tyrant Phalaris (c. 570–c. 554 BCE), who roasted his enemies in a brazen bull and inflicted the same punishment on the Athenian who first presented the bull to him; appears as an Ancient in The Battel of the Books.
Letter IV. To the Whole People of Ireland
This Letter was published on 22 October to coincide with the arrival in Ireland of the new Lord-Lieutenant, John Carteret. Broadening the issue of Wood’s half-pence into a highly provocative challenge to British rule in Ireland, the Letter was deemed seditious, prompting a government prosecution against Swift’s printer, John Harding, and the offer of a £300 reward for the discovery of its author—neither of which offensive against the Drapier proved successful. Reportedly the common people united behind Swift with the cry, ‘Shall Jonathan die, who hath wrought this great salvation in Israel? God forbid: as the Lord liveth, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground…’ (1 Samuel 14: 45).
1. Having already written… at an End: In addition to To the Shop-Keepers, Swift wrote A Letter to Mr. Harding, the Printer, published in early August, and Some Observations upon a Paper, addressed ‘To the Nobility and Gentry of the Kingdom of Ireland’, which appeared in print a month later.
2. in the Phrase of the Report, legal and obligatory: The official report issued by the Committee of the English Privy Council on 6 August 1724, which dismissed the complaints made about Wood’s patent.
3. When Esau came fainting… a Mess of Pottage: Genesis 25: 29–34.
4. that Word Prerogative is: The nature and scope of royal power, or ‘prerogative’, was a hotly contested issue in the late seventeenth century, the Tories affirming strong support for the prerogative while the Whigs embraced parliamentary privilege. Despite Swift’s Tory leanings, the Drapier’s stance is more compatible with a Whig view of limited monarchy, as espoused in Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1690).
5. sending base Money hither… Exchange: This action was precipitated by the need to pay the army during Tyrone’s Rebellion (see n. 17 to Drapier’s Letter I).
6. Opinion of the great Lord Bacon… Prerogative: Refers to the belief espoused by Francis Bacon (1561–1626), statesman and essayist, that nature and political policy are governed by a parallel set of rules.
7. by a new Summons… after his arrival: Parliament was not in fact reconvened until almost a year later, by which time Wood’s patent had been surrendered.
8. well known to whose Share they must fall: That is, to Englishmen; hence the native-born Anglo-Irish cannot be bought off with promises of career advancement.
9. All considerable Offices for Life… by Inheritance: Lucrative sinecures in Ireland, perpetuated through the right of succession to a vacated office or at the discretion of the Crown. The passage seems to be conflating George Dodington, who had died four years earlier, with his nephew George Bubb (later Dodington), who inherited his uncle’s rich Irish estates. For the figures mentioned here, see BD.
10. Mr. Addison… Use: Refers to the relatively minor post given Addison when he came to Ireland as secretary to Lord-Lieutenant Wharton (1709); Bermingham’s Tower was where the records were kept in Dublin Castle.
11. a Favourite Secretary… Master of the Revels: ‘Mr. Hopkins, Secretary to the Duke of Grafton’ (note in F ’35). The ‘Master of the Revels’ was a person appointed to organize entertainments in the Royal Household or the Inns of Court.
12. This I speak… receiving: Cf. Swift’s more extended tribute in A Vindication of Lord Carteret (1730).
13. seasonable Report of some Invasion… Danger: Reports of a Jacobite invasion were regularly derided by Swift as ‘chimerical’, ‘formed and spread by the Race of small Politicians, in order to do a seasonable Jobb’ (The Presbyterians Plea of Merit). ‘Acts against Popery’, cited earlier, were first passed in 1695.
14. The Gentleman… lately made Primate: Hugh Boulter (BD).
15. a Statute made here… England: This Act, passed in 1541, changed Henry’s title from ‘Lord’ to ‘King’ of Ireland. This paragraph repudiates the Declaratory Act (G), adapting arguments made by Molyneux.
16. my Countrymen… Preston: That is, soldiers from Ireland were among the loyalist troops led by General Carpenter that defeated the Jacobite forces in the town of Preston, thus ending the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion.
17. I would venture… King of Ireland: This assertion was the primary cause of the government’s censure of the Letter as ‘a Wicked and Malicious Pamphlet’ tending ‘to promote Sedition among the People’.
18. done by the same Person… ram them down our Throats: Refers to Prime Minister Walpole’s reported threat against the Irish.
19. a Pamphlet… printed in London: The pamphlet was entitled, ‘Some Farther Account of the Original Disputes in Ireland, about Farthings and Half-pence. In a Discourse with a Quaker of Dublin’.
20. a sort of Savage Irish… as they do: A common characterization by English (and Anglo-Irish) writers since the twelfth century, invoked to justify England’s ‘civilizing’ project in Ireland.
21. the same Infamous Coleby… Under-Clerk: Drapier’s Letter III identifies Coleby as a testifier on Wood’s behalf before the Privy Council in London and observes that although he was officially acquitted of the charge of robbing the Treasury in Ireland, ‘yet every Person in the Court believed him to be guilty’.
22. the True English People of Ireland… whenever they are asked: An attempt to refute the prevalent rumours that an Irish ‘papist’ plot was behind the anti-Wood agitation. Molyneux indicated that ‘the People of Ireland’ for whom he was speaking were to be understood as English and Protestant.
23. in another News-Letter… Fire-Balls: The threat that the Irish would be made to swallow the half-pence was reported in The Dublin Intelligencer and The Flying Post of 12 October 1724.
24. a Great Man: A derisive term regularly applied to Walpole in Opposition satire.
25. Fifty thousand Operators… reasonable: An insinuation that the army would have to be called out to force Wood’s half-pence on the Irish, which underscores the image of the Irish as an enslaved people.
26. as Remote from Thunder as we are from Jupiter: ‘Procul à Jove, procul à fulmine’ (note in F ’35). An oft-cited Latin adage suggesting that those closest to the seats of power are subject to the greatest miseries.
A full and true Account of… the Execution of William Wood, Esquire, and Hard-ware-man
First published 1724. This broadside was written to celebrate an act of popular resistance to Wood’s half-pence: the hanging in effigy of William Wood by a Dublin mob in September 1724. Like the event itself, the broadside combines various elements of street theatre and protest, including charivari—a demotic ritual marked by a serenade of ‘rough music’ with kettles and pans—to express opposition to Wood’s half-pence in a highly comical but politically pointed format. In its inclusion of a broad range of professions, trades and social ranks, this piece concretely enacts what The Drapier’s Letters polemically assert: that all elements in Irish society are united as ‘one man’ against Wood’s coinage scheme.
1. his Brother-in-law’s House here in Dublin: The residence of John Molyneux, a Dublin tradesman, to whom Wood addressed several self-incriminating letters in 1723.
2. P—l—t Man: Member of Parliament.
3. cut a Caper three Story high: Dance or leap in a frolicsome way; also playing on the phrase ‘to cut a caper on nothing’, meaning ‘to be hanged’.
4. sit in his Skirts: Insult him or seek occasion for quarrel.
5. pink his Doublet: Pierce; hit; ‘pepper’; ‘dress’; plays upon the idea of ornamenting a piece of material by cutting holes or letters in it, or of puncturing the skin as an adornment.
6. make his A— make Buttons: ‘Buttons’ denoted the dung of sheep or other animals; the idea of excreting ‘buttons’ came to signify ‘being in great terror’ (see the 1702 example in OED); akin to the US slang, to ‘shit bricks’. Perhaps also punning on the word ‘button’ as a type of anything of very small value (OED).
7. make him set up his Pipes: Make him desist from acting or speaking; make him ‘shut up’.
8. rub him down: Can mean either to search a prisoner or—especially appropriate for an ‘ostler’—to clean a horse; also punningly refers to the act of smoothing or grinding down (as a piece of wood).
9. kick him to Half-Crowns: Dun him for money; also punning on ‘kick’ as a term for a sixpence.
10. have a Rubber with him: Both play the deciding game (as in a set of bowls) and quarrel with him.
11. water his Plants: Urinate.
12. pull in his Horns: Repress his spirits; lower his pretensions.
13. nor asking him Pardon: It was customary for hangmen to ask the pardon of capital offenders whom they were about to execute, and for the latter to give them money as a sign that such pardon was granted.
14. His dying SPEECH… did not deny it: See Swift’s parody of this genre in The Last Speech and Dying Words of Ebenezor Elliston.
Swift to Thomas Sheridan
First published 1745. In this letter of 11 Sept. 1725, Swift is responding to the news that Sheridan (BD), having obtained the church living of Rincurran (Co. Cork) from Lord Carteret, unwittingly sabotaged his hopes for career preferment by preaching a sermon on 1 August, the anniversary of the accession of George I, on the text, ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof’, which was interpreted as a Jacobite aspersion by a zealous Whig in the audience, Richard Tighe, who reported the incident to government officials. Copy-text: F ’46.
1. you are too young… the Nature of Man: Sheridan was thirty-eight at the time (twenty years Swift’s junior).
2. quoad magis & minus: ‘More or less’ (Latin).
3. as Don Quixote said to Sancho… hanged: See Cervantes, Don Quixote, Pt. I, Bk. III, sect. xi.
4. my Description of Yahooes more resembling: Refers to Part IV of GT. Since the work had not yet been published, this comment suggests that Sheridan might have read some of it in manuscript.
5. cum uxore neque leni neque commoda: ‘With a wife neither gentle nor suitable’ (Latin). Swift’s highly critical view of Mrs Sheridan appears in a number of his letters and in A Character of Dr. Sheridan (1738).
6. change the Apostle’s Expression… whatever State, &c.: Refers to St Paul’s statement, ‘for I have learned, in whatever state I am, in this to be content’; see Philippians 4: 11.
7. si mihi credis: ‘If you trust me’ (Latin).
8. You say nothing… but generals: One result of Sheridan’s indiscretion was that he was removed from the official list of Carteret’s chaplains; but Swift doubted Carteret was responsible for such a ‘mean’ action.
9. the Castle… Balaguer: Dublin Castle, seat of the viceregal court. To ‘keep fast’ is to become firmly attached to. Balaguer was notes to p. 189 ‘Private Secretary to his Excellency the Lord Carteret, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland’ (note in F ’46).
Swift to Alexander Pope
First published 1741. This is one of the best-known of Swift’s letters because of its references (both direct and indirect) to Gulliver’s Travels, which include remarks about his satiric aim as well as his views on human nature. The letter, dated 29 Sept. 1725, was written during the final days of Swift’s extended stay at Quilca, Thomas Sheridan’s residence in Co. Cavan, as he was putting the final touches on the manuscript of GT. Copy-text: F ’46, collated with later editions that restore passages (based on a Harleian transcript) originally omitted by Pope; these restored passages are indicated by brackets.
1. He treated you… I recommended him: James Stopford (BD) had stopped in London on the first leg of his Continental travels, armed with a letter of introduction from Swift which he was supposed to (but never did) present to Pope at Twickenham. A similar situation had occurred earlier with Carteret.
2. those dominions where I govern: The Liberty of St Patrick’s, a five-acre area surrounding the cathedral, under Swift’s jurisdiction; part of a larger area known collectively as ‘the Liberties’, which included two other ecclesiastical ‘liberties’ (those of Christ church and St Sepulchre’s) as well as several ‘liberties’ under the aegis of the Earl of Meath. All of these were exempt from city jurisdiction. According to Letitia Pilkington’s Memoirs (1748– 54), Swift termed himself ‘absolute monarch in the Liberties, and King of the Mob’.
3. when a Printer… ears: Swift is recalling the earlier fate of his printers, Waters and Harding, imprisoned by the authorities for printing his tracts. In the event, the English publisher of GT, Benjamin Motte, made various emendations to Swift’s manuscript in order to avoid any risk to his own ears. See n. 5 to Swift’s letter to Charles Ford (4 April 1720)
4. to vex the world, rather than divert it: Swift is responding here to Pope’s previously expressed hope that ‘two or three of us may yet be gather’d together… to divert ourselves, and the world too if it pleases’.
5. I would be the most indefatigable writer… without reading: That is, it would be obvious that Swift was an indefatigable writer even if Pope didn’t actually read his work.
6. done with Translations… time: Pope had written to Swift: ‘I mean no more Translations, but something domestic, fit for my own country, and for my own time.’ The first three volumes of his translation of the Odyssey had appeared in the preceding April, with the remaining two slated to appear one year later. He had earlier published a translation of the Iliad (1715–20).
7. Animale rationale… rationis capax: ‘[Man as] a rational animal… [Man as] an animal capable of reason’ (Latin).
8. not in Timon’s manner: Refers to the fifth-century BCE Greek misanthrope Timon, the subject of a famous dialogue by Lucian (c. 120–c. 180 CE) and of Shakespeare’s play, Timon of Athens (c. 1607).
9. other hands… drudgery: William Broome (1689–1745) and Elijah Fenton (1683–1730), who assisted Pope with the Homeric translations.
10. your great atchievements… Ars Poetica: Refers to Pope’s ambitious landscaping projects in Twickenham, which included a famous grotto connecting his five-acre garden alongside the Thames and his residence across the road. Ars Poetica, ‘The Art of Poetry’, aka ‘To the Pisos’, is an epistle by Horace, invoked here for its association with ut pictura poesis (the parallel between the visual and verbal arts).
11. The Lady whom you describe… never hear me: Refers to Henrietta Howard, later Countess of Suffolk (BD), and her offer to help Swift via her Court connections.
12. Dr. Arbuthnot’s illness: Pope had written that Arbuthnot ‘is at this time ill of a very dangerous distemper, an imposthume in the bowels’; he survived this attack and lived for another decade.
13. a passage in Bede… year: Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 3.3, by the Venerable Bede (c. 673–735).
14. although not a Catholick… as ever I knew: Glances at the fact that Pope himself was Catholic.
15. our friend Gay… a Lord Lieutenant: One of numerous references throughout Swift’s writings to John Gay’s difficulties in obtaining suitable preferment at Court. The Lord-Lieutenant is John Carteret (BD).
16. Philips… and others: Refers to the verses that Ambrose Philips wrote to Lord Carteret’s daughter, Georgiana, which began, ‘Little charm of placid mien,/Miniature of beauty’s queen,/Numbering years, a scanty nine,/Stealing hearts without design…’; famously parodied by Henry Carey in ‘Namby Pamby’.
17. I have an ill name… subscribe it: Swift’s reluctance to sign his name to the letter was based on earlier confiscations of his mail by the postal authorities, which he often complained of to correspondents.
Holyhead Journal, 1727
First published 1882. Written in September 1727 in Holyhead, a port town in Anglesey, Wales, from which boats regularly crossed the Irish Sea, this journal records Swift’s deep ambivalence about Ireland, as well as his mounting frustrations while impatiently awaiting passage to Dublin, where his ‘dearest friend’ Esther Johnson lay gravely ill (she would be dead in four months). Swift had been in the London area visiting Pope during the preceding months. Copy-text: Forster autograph copy.
1. notice to posterity… now in being: A rather ironic ‘notice’ given Swift’s well-known penchant for satirizing individuals by name; a similar claim is made by Swift’s eulogizer in Verses on the Death of Dr Swift (written 1731).
2. heaven forgive Mr. Pope… Satyrs: Elsewhere Swift complains of his friend’s opposite tendency toward obscurity and vagueness, urging that he replace his asterisks in The Dunciad with ‘some real names of real Dunces’. Ducklane and Grub Street were areas in London associated with bookselling and hack writing.
3. Hook’s Tomb… Inscription: The Hooks family oversaw the government of the Castle of Conwy in the seventeenth century; an epitaph in the town’s church confirms the almost-unbelievable prolificness of William Hooks and his son Nicholas, as recorded here. ‘Nota bene’ is Latin for ‘Note well’.
4. A.Bp Williams Life… [Hospes… celeberrimus]: John Williams (1582–1650), Archbishop of York and a native of Conwy; during the English Civil War he initially held Conwy for the King but later switched sides. The Latin inscription reads: ‘Visitor, read and reread what you would not expect in this obscure chapel. Here lies the most renowned of all leaders.’
5. Wat Owen Tudor’s Tomb at Penmany: Owen Tudor (c. 1400–61) was an Anglesey landowner executed by the Yorkists during the War of the Roses and buried near the Welsh Tudors’ ancestral home in Penmynydd; he was the grandfather of Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII in 1485.
6. Watt’s Horse… limp after us: Watt (also spelled ‘Wat’) was the name of Swift’s servant.
7. Marechall Tallard… garden: Camille, comte de Tallard (1652–1728) was a French general captured by Marlborough at the Battle of Blenheim (1704); he lived as a pampered prisoner in Nottingham until 1712.
8. my giddyness… my hearing continues: Suffering greatly from his Ménière’s disease during the preceding weeks, Swift wrote to Sheridan on 12 August that ‘I am now Deafer than ever you knew me.’
9. would ramp on my shoulders: Can mean either to climb over carelessly or to trample in triumph—perhaps both are implied here.
10. Forsan et haec olim: ‘Perhaps to remember this will one day aid you’ (Latin).
11. scum [?]: Swift’s handwriting is hard to read here, though the word looks less like Davis’s ‘sour’ than ‘scum’, which here would signify a film or layer of floating matter on the surface of the wine.
12. I did not like… his Plays: A glance at the reputed lewdness of the plays of Wycherley (BD), which would have made references to them highly unsuitable for a sermon. A further irony (unremarked here) is that the deliverer of the sermon is Bolingbroke, known for his deistic views.
13. monstrous mountain… town: Holyhead Mountain is the highest point in Anglesey. Ptolemy was a second-century CE astronomer and geographer from Alexandria; in his time Wales was under Roman control.
14. too much of the Longitude… deceived himself: The Longitude Act of 1714 offered a huge bounty to anyone who discovered a method for determining the longitude, encouraging a slew of crackpot ‘solutions’. The projector who ‘cut his own throat’ was Swift’s Irish friend Joseph Beaumont (BD); the ‘cheat’ may be referring to William Whiston (see BD, and A Modest Defence of Punning, n. 10).
15. a Slave in Ireld: In ‘Holyhead. Sept. 25, 1727’ Swift asserts that he would rather ‘go in freedom to [his] grave’ in Wales ‘Than Rule yon Isle and be a Slave’; and he opens his poem ‘Ireland’ with the line, ‘Remove me from this land of slaves’. Both poems were written in Holyhead at the same time as the Journal.
16. The Yatcht… together: Refers to the government packet, or ‘yacht’, used primarily to transport the Lord-Lieutenant and his entourage between Ireland and England.
17. T—: Turd.
On the Death of Mrs. Johnson, [Stella]
First published 1765. Esther Johnson, Swift’s intimate friend for over a quarter-century, died in her lodgings near the Deanery on 28 January 1728, at the age of forty-seven. In prayers composed during her final illness several months earlier, Swift anticipated the great loss her death would mean for him: ‘pity us the mournful Friends of thy distressed Servant, who sink under the Weight of her present Condition, and the Fear of losing the most valuable of our Friends’. In earlier years Swift had recorded his friendship with Johnson in works such as JS and a series of birthday verses to her. Copy-text: DS ’65.
1. Her father… her birth: Edward Johnson, a merchant and steward to William Temple, is thought to have died in Holland at a young age. As ‘a younger brother of a good [English] family’, he bears similarities to Swift’s own father as described in Swift’s fragment, ‘The Family of Swift’. Esther Johnson’s mother, Bridget (d. 1745), served for many years as waiting-woman to Temple’s sister, Lady Giffard.
2. I knew her… her life: Swift first met Johnson in 1689, upon his arrival at Moor Park in Surrey to work for Temple; she was actually eight, not six, at the time.
3. another lady of more advanced years: Temple’s cousin, Rebecca Dingley (BD).
4. the death of a person… some dependance: Temple, who died on 27 January 1699.
5. to draw what money… funds: Johnson’s ‘fortune’ included a lease of lands in Co. Wicklow, Ireland, worth £1,000, bequeathed to her by Temple. Once she settled in Dublin, Swift added £50 a year to her support.
6. in the year 170– : Probably in the summer of 1701.
7. For some years past… despaired of: Johnson’s failing health was in evidence for at least eight years prior to her death. Swift’s poem ‘To Stella, Visiting me in my Sickness’ (1720) extols Johnson’s selflessness in devoting herself to his needs ‘though by Heaven’s severe Decree/She suffers hourly more than me’.
8. Bon Mots: ‘Bons mots’, literally ‘good words’ (French); witticisms. Bons Mots de Stella was first published in 1745.
9. Platonic and Epicurean philosophy… defects of the latter: The materialist philosophy of Epicurus (c. 341–270 BCE) posits the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain as life’s principal goals and assumes the gods’ indifference (hence irrelevance) to human affairs.
10. all the errors of Hobbes… religion: The materialist philosophy and absolutist political beliefs of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), author of Leviathan (1651), which argues for submission to a centralized authority, and De Cive (1642), which advocates the subordination of the Church to state power.
11. Dr. Stephens’s Hospital: Richard Steevens (1653–1710), a wealthy Dublin physician, bequeathed his fortune to building a hospital, completed in 1733, of which Swift was an early governor. Johnson’s will directed that her fortune be used to provide the stipend for a chaplain for Steevens’ Hospital after the death of her immediate heirs, her mother and sister.
A Short View of the State of Ireland
First published 1728. A devastating exposé of Ireland’s wretched conditions, this tract (as Ferguson suggests) may have been intended as a direct response to John Browne’s ‘Seasonable Remarks on Trade’, published several weeks earlier, which presented Ireland as a flourishing country capable of enriching England through its own wealth. The pamphlet fell victim to censorship in England when part of it was reprinted in the 20 April issue of the Opposition newspaper, Mist’s Weekly Journal.
1. I am not provoked… whole Island: A statement to be read mainly for rhetorical effect since Swift, as Dean of St Patrick’s, enjoyed an income dependent upon rents obtained from the leasing of pp. 96–111.
2. by being governed… not a free People: An idea derived from Locke’s Second Treatise of Government; see A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture and Drapier’s Letter IV.
3. where the People… civilized Nations: Refers to England’s refusal to allow Ireland to coin its own money and invokes the memory of the Wood’s half-pence affair four years earlier; see The Drapier’s Letters.
4. A Disposition… without: See Swift’s extended argument for this position in Use of Irish Manufacture.
5. denied the Liberty… executed: The Woollen Act of 1699 (see Use of Irish Manufacture) and the Navigation Acts (1663; 1671) mandated that European goods be imported into the colonies only via English vessels sailing from English ports, and that goods from the colonies be sent only to English ports.
6. its true uncontroverted Name: That is, slavery.
7. Whitshed’s Ghost… perjuring himself to betray both: Whitshed (BD) had died about seven months earlier. His judicial tyranny and corruption are recounted at length in A Letter from Dr. Swift to Mr. Pope. The Latin motto ‘Libertas & natale Solum’, which means ‘Liberty and my native country’, was also mocked by Swift in verse: ‘Libertas & natale Solum;/Fine Words; I wonder where you stole ‘um’ (‘Whitshed’s Motto on his Coach’).
8. forced to pay… our Properties: Because the Declaratory Act declared the British Parliament to be the court of last resort for all Irish cases, thus forcing Irishmen to ‘travel five Hundred Miles by Sea and Land, to another Kingdom, for Justice’, incurring great expense to decide their claims (Drapier’s Letter VII).
9. the Fancy of Grazing… depopulating the Country: See n. 1 to Use of Irish Manufacture.
10. the Misfortune… Consideration: Part of Swift’s ongoing attack on Irish posts being given to Englishmen.
11. the Inns of Court… both Universities: The centres of legal training in London; attendance at them was required of all those planning to practise law in Ireland. The ‘Universities’ are Oxford and Cambridge.
12. a Sort of Silk Plad… Indian: That is, Irish poplin, so highly regarded that when Swift sent a piece of it to Henrietta Howard it was quickly appropriated by the Princess of Wales. Swift observed that ‘our Workmen here are grown so expert, that in this kind of Stuff they are said to excel that which comes from the Indies’.
13. the Thorn at Glassenbury… Midst of Winter: Legend has it that Joseph of Arimathea fixed his staff in the ground at Glastonbury in Somerset (in south-west England) on Christmas Day, and it blossomed into a plant that reappears every year on the same day. Both Joseph of Arimathea and Glastonbury are closely associated with Arthurian legend and the quest for the Holy Grail.
14. the worthy Commissioners… from England: The Commissioners of the Revenue (G).
15. Lapland, or Ysland: Apt emblems of remoteness and isolation. Lapland was a vast area of nomadic peoples that included portions of Norway, Sweden and Finland. Iceland was then under the Crown of Denmark and ruled by a private trade monopoly in Copenhagen that prohibited all foreign trade.
16. Nostrâ miserià magna es: ‘By our misery you are great’: Cicero, Letters to Atticus, 2.19.3.
17. The Rise of our Rents… Beggars: Similarly, Swift portrays Lord Allen as ‘draw[ing] his daily Food,/From his Tenants vital Blood’ (‘Traulus, The Second Part’); also see A Modest Proposal.
18. sent away all our Silver… observed: The habitual undervaluation of silver coins in Ireland encouraged bankers (and others) to convey large amounts of silver out of the country and into England, where they could exchange them for gold coins that would turn them a profit back in Ireland. Also, the exchange rate into shillings being different in Ireland and England, it was more profitable for businessmen in Ireland to deal in cash than credit, prompting them to demand hard currency for their goods, which was then often transported to England. See Use of Irish Manufacture, n. 16 and Woolley’s headnote to Short View of Ireland.
19. YE are Idle… Bricks without Straw: Exodus 5: 17.
20. an Hospital… Raiment: Swift may have in mind here the Dublin Workhouse and Foundling Hospital (founded in 1702 and reconstituted solely as the latter in 1729), an institution of which he was a governor.
21. a Man-pleaser: A term resonating with scriptural contempt; see Ephesians 6: 5–7 and Galatians 1: 10.
The Intelligencer
First published 1728. A short-lived weekly periodical started by Swift and Thomas Sheridan in May 1728, The Intelligencer (i.e. ‘newsgatherer’ or ‘spy’) aimed ‘to Inform, or Divert, or Correct, or Vex the Town’ as well as to publicize ‘every distinguished Action, either of Justice, Prudence, Generosity, Charity, Friendship, or publick Spirit, which comes well attested’ to the editors (No. 1). Along with the two essays printed here, Swift’s contributions to the periodical included a view of the bleak prospects facing gifted and independent-minded clergymen (Nos. V and VII) and an account of the dire economic situation in the north of Ireland (No. XIX).
The Intelligencer, Number III
In this essay, Swift offers a witty and spirited defence of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, the sensation of the 1728 theatrical season which he himself helped to inspire with his idea of a ‘Newgate Pastoral’. The play draws a parallel betwen high and low society, equating politicians with highwaymen to satirize the ministry of Sir Robert Walpole (BD). Countering criticisms of the play’s immorality in glamorizing a life of crime, Swift’s essay provides a justification for satire reminiscent of the ‘Apology’ to A Tale of a Tub, and may itself be viewed as a contribution to the Opposition campaign against Walpole.
1. Ipse… unam: ‘He will go through all the roles, one man representing a multitude of characters’: Manilius, Astronomica, 5. 481.
2. Humour… agreeable Species of it: In ‘To Mr. Delany’ (1718) Swift distinguishes between humour, as a natural gift, and wit, as a cultivated skill rooted in ‘Invention’.
3. but I differ from him… Rabelais, Cervantes, and many others: Swift is disagreeing with a passage in Temple’s essay ‘Of Poetry’ (1690) which claims that the English have excelled ‘by Force of a Vein Natural perhaps to our Country, and which with us is called Humour’. ‘Le Theatre Italien’ is Evaristo Gherardi’s 6-volume anthology of scenes based on the commedia dell’arte tradition, published in Paris in 1700. François Rabelais (d. 1553) was a French Renaissance humanist best known for his comic masterpiece, Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–42), which uses the bawdy adventures of the titular two giants to satirize abuses in religion and learning. He was an important influence on Swift’s bodily and scatological satire. Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) was the author of Don Quixote, an immensely popular work from its initial Spanish publication in 1604, and an important influence on eighteenth-century English satire.
4. the very Owners… possess: Cf. Thoughts on Various Subjects (1735): ‘It is in Men as in Soils, where sometimes there is a Vein of Gold, which the Owner knows not of.’
5. By what Disposition of the Mind… Juvenal: Temple argued that the English form of stage humour could be explained by factors of soil and climate as well as ‘the Ease of our Government, and the Liberty of Professing Opinions’ (Of Poetry). The distinction between the mild-mannered, amiable Horace and the more vitriolic, ‘lashing’ Juvenal was a common one at the time; see Dryden’s Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (1693).
6. although some Things… Satyr: Cf. the ‘Apology’: ‘Religion they tell us ought not to be ridiculed, and they tell us Truth, yet surely the Corruptions in it may; for we are taught by the tritest Maxim in the World, that Religion being the best of Things, its Corruptions are likely to be the worst.’
7. to mend the World… highly commendable: Swift announced that GT ‘will wonderfully mend the World’ in a letter to Charles Ford (14 Aug. 1725), upon completing the final draft.
8. after Fourteen Years… a great Minister: Refers to Gay’s thwarted efforts to gain suitable preferment at Court. Queen Caroline’s humiliating offer to him of the post of Gentleman-Usher to the infant Princess Louisa was derided by Swift in his poem, ‘To Mr Gay’. The ‘great Minister’ is Walpole.
9. no more to be suspected… Cæsar’s Wife: Refers to a proverb based on Caesar’s having divorced Pompeia for the mere suspicion of being involved in an accusation against P. Clodius. The saying originated in Plutarch’s Life of Julius Caesar (Apperson, ODEP).
10. even in his Fables… Courtiers: In ‘The Courtier and Proteus’ (1727), the rejected courtier declares that ‘All courtiers are of reptile race’ and demonstrate a Protean ability to ‘Practise the frauds of ev’ry shape’. Prince William, younger son of King George II, had been made Duke of Cumberland a year earlier, at the age of four.
11. even Ministers of State… have made: It was widely reported that Walpole himself attended the play’s first performance in London. Its Dublin run, according to Swift, was seen by the Lord-Lieutenant ‘often’.
12. a Court-Chaplain in ENGLAND … so prostitute a Divine: ‘Dr. Herring, Chaplain to the Society at Lincoln’s Inn’ (note in F ’35); Thomas Herring (1693–1757), later Archbishop of Canterbury.
13. Imperium in Imperio… Houses: The Latin term signifies a government, power or sovereignty operating within a larger government, power or sovereignty—in this case, the band of highwaymen who form their own society (while mirroring the larger one) in The Beggar’s Opera.
14. that unnatural Taste… Italian Nonsense: A recurring object of attack, focused especially on the opera introduced on the London stage c. 1700. In Pope’s Dunciad, a ‘Harlot form’ with ‘mincing step’ is glossed as representing the ‘genius of the Italian Opera; its affected airs, [and] its effeminate sounds’.
15. an unnatural Vice… perfect Italians: Refers to the raids on ‘molly houses’ in 1707, which resulted in the prosecution of a large group of alleged sodomites; another such crackdown occurred in 1726. Cf. the reference to ‘a large Pederastick School’ with ‘Italian Masters’ in the Preface to A Tale of a Tub.
The Intelligencer, Number IX
In this essay, known in its own day as both ‘The Foolish Methods of Education among the Nobility’ and ‘An Essay on Modern Education’, Swift offers a forceful rebuttal to John Locke’s highly influential treatise, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)—especially its privileging of private tutors over a public-school education and its emphasis on the creation of a ‘gentleman’ rather than a man of virtue and learning.
1. Postulatum… Scandalum Magnatum: Postulate or proposition (Latin)… ‘Slander of magnates’ (medieval Latin); malicious speech concerning public figures, which constituted grounds for prosecution under a series of English libel laws dating back to the thirteenth century.
2. New-men, with few Exceptions: Those elevated to the peerage in recent years, viewed variously by Swift depending on the occasion. He strongly supported Queen Anne’s creation of twelve new peers in 1711, which gave the Tories a majority in the House of Lords and paved the way for the Peace of Utrecht.
3. the grand Rebellion: The English Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century.
4. the Marquis of Ormond, and the Earl of Southampton: James Butler (1610–88), 1st Duke of Ormond, Commander-in-Chief under Charles I and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and Thomas Wriothesley (1608–1667), 4th Earl of Southampton, adviser to Charles I and Lord High Treasurer under Charles II.
5. those fanatick Times… that dissolute Reign: The period of Puritan rule in England, followed by the Restoration of the monarchy. In A Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue, Swift laments ‘that Licentiousness which entered with the Restoration; and [which] from infecting our Religion and Morals, fell to corrupt our Language’.
6. Ashley-Cooper: Locke’s patron, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (1621–83); he was a leader of the radical Whig faction that supported the Duke of Monmouth as Charles II’s successor.
7. Under King William… Secretaries of State: The individuals named here were chosen to make a point about their social and educational backgrounds, and/or to highlight their status as younger sons, who had to study for a profession because the law of primogeniture designated the eldest son as the sole heir of his father’s estate. See BD (under ‘Clarendon’ for ‘Hyde’; ‘Halifax’ for ‘Montagu’; ‘Marlborough’ for ‘Churchil’) and Woolley, 124–26.
8. as my Lord Bacon chargeth… the Means: See Bacon’s essay ‘Of Empire’ (1597).
9. The current Opinion prevails… the whole Duty of a Gentleman: Swift’s summary of Locke’s main arguments. The latter phrase is a mocking swipe at Locke’s emphasis on ‘good breeding’ and ‘a gentleman’s calling’ as the primary aims of education; it is also a play on the title, The Whole Duty of Man (1658), a popular manual of moral instruction attributed to Richard Allestree.
10. those Worthies of the Army… Diversions: After the Glorious Revolution military styles became models of emulation for civilian society; e.g. a ‘campaign-coat’ originally worn by soldiers became fashionable city attire. A popular wig was called a ‘Ramillie’ after the Battle of Ramillies (1706).
11. D—n me, Doctor… D—n me, &c.: Echoes the absurd dinner conversation of the Captain in Swift’s poem ‘The Grand Question Debated’: ‘ “A Scholard, when just from his College broke loose,/Can hardly tell how to cry Bo to a Goose;/Your Noveds, and Blutraks, and Omurs and Stuff,/By God they don’t signify this Pinch of Snuff./To give a young Gentleman right Education,/The Army’s the only good School in the Nation.” ’ For Swift’s disdain of military jargon, see Tatler, No. CCXXX.
12. White’s Chocolate-House… Nobility: White’s was a notorious venue for high-stakes gambling on St James’s Street.
13. Le Sac… I taught: ‘The Author’s Friends have heard him tell this Passage as from the Earl himself ’ (note in F ’35). ‘Le Sac’ is probably a misprint for the popular French dancing-master ‘Isaac’ (c. 1640–1720), though Woolley notes a Mr Le Sac (or L’Sac) recorded as a theatre dancer in 1701 and 1710.
14. His chief Solace… Bosom-Friend: A direct rebuttal of Locke’s claim that it is public schooling that will result in a gentleman’s son’s idling away his time playing games with his social inferiors.
15. one young Lord in this Town… negligent: ‘The Author is supposed to mean the Lord Viscount Montcassell, of Ireland’ (note in F ’35). Swift no doubt chose Edward Davys, 3rd Viscount Mountcashel (1711–36), as a model because he had been an exemplary pupil of his friend Thomas Sheridan.
16. Stockings with Silver Clocks: An embroidered article of clothing deemed a sign of high fashion—or, to critics, of affectation and foppery. Spectator, No. 319 shows ‘Will Sprightly’ congratulating himself as a leader of fashion because he ‘made a fair push for the Silver-clocked Stocking’.
17. my own Observation in one of those Universities: Largely limited to several weeks in the summer of 1692, when Swift took his MA degree at Hart Hall, Oxford University.
18. that Money answereth all Things: See Ecclesiastes 10: 19.
A Modest Proposal
First published 1729. Arguably the most famous and frequently cited satire in the English language, A Modest Proposal was written both as a response to Ireland’s worsening economic conditions, which included a serious famine caused by crop failure during the preceding two years, and as a parody of the many irrelevant and ill-informed ‘proposals’ then in circulation about how to solve the problem—here put in the mouth of a ‘projector’ whose abstract statistical calculations satirically evoke those of Sir William Petty (1623–87), author of the Political Anatomy of Ireland (pub. 1691). Ironically subverting the racially stereotyped depiction of the native Irish as cannibals, perpetuated in English histories from the twelfth century onwards, Swift portrays a world in which the Irish are the devoured rather than the devourers, cannibalism (a recurring trope for the practices of landlords throughout Swift’s works) functioning here as a comprehensive metaphor for the systematic ‘consumption’ of the powerless by the powerful, the poor by the wealthy—though aided by the complicity of the Irish themselves in their own victimization.
1. It is a melancholly Object… for an Alms: Swift’s sermon Causes of the Wretched Condition of Ireland opens with a similarly worded picture of the impoverished state of Dublin (‘this great Town’).
2. to fight for the Pretender… Barbadoes: Irish emigrants included both Catholics recruited to fight in Europe for James Stuart (BD) and Protestants lured to the Americas by economic hardship at home and false promises of riches abroad. Elsewhere Swift bitterly noted that ‘Men in the extremest Degree of Misery and Want, will naturally fly to the first Appearance of Relief, let it be ever so vain or visionary’.
3. that horrid Practice… inhuman Breast: Infanticide was a growing social problem during this period; one of the stated aims of the Dublin Workhouse and Foundling Hospital, founded at the beginning of the eighteenth century, was to prevent the ‘Exposure, death, and actual murder of illegitimate children’.
4. Number of Souls in Ireland… one Million and a half: Arthur Dobbs, Surveyor-General of Ireland, suggested a figure of 2 million in 1730. Later historians have tended to view both figures as being on the low side.
5. a principal Gentleman… Cavan: No doubt a tongue-in-cheek reference to Thomas Sheridan (BD).
6. a Fricasie, or Ragout: Dishes of haute cuisine, stigmatized by association with France. In ‘A Panegyrick on the Dean’ (1730), Swift writes that Gluttony ‘sent her Priests in Wooden Shoes/From haughty Gaul to make Ragous./Instead of wholesome Bread and Cheese,/To dress their Soupes and Fricassyes’.
7. we are told by a grave Author… Season: See François Rabelais, Pantagruel, Book V, ch. xix.
8. Butchers we may be assured… Pigs: An ironic glance at the fact that the majority of butchers in Dublin—such as those of the Ormonde Market in the Liberties—were Catholic. That the militantly Protestant ‘Liberty Boys’ were known on occasion to hang their Catholic nemeses, the ‘Ormonde Boys’, on their own meat-hooks adds to the immediacy of the cannibalistic trope of this work.
9. the famous Salmanaazor: George Psalmanazar (?1679–1763), a Frenchman claiming to be a native Formosan, who published a spurious Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa in 1704.
10. lessen the Number of Papists… Curate: This view that Irish Catholics were the Protestants’ ‘most dangerous Enemies’ was unequivocally rejected by Swift, who described them as having been ‘put out of all visible Possibility of hurting us’ (sermon, On Brotherly Love). The ‘good Protestants’ were the Presbyterians who emigrated to America to avoid having to pay tithes to support the Established Church.
11. liable to Distress… Money a Thing unknown: Subject to forfeiture for payment of outstanding debts… The scarcity of money was due to the unfavourable exchange rate between England and Ireland and the latter’s inability to mint its own money; see n. 18 to A Short View of the State of Ireland.
12. other Expedients: Proposals that Swift himself had often seriously urged before, to little or no avail.
13. the Inhabitants of TOPINAMBOO: The Tupinamba, a tribe of Indians indigenous to coastal Brazil; made known by Jean de Léry’s popular History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil (1578), which described their ritual cannibalism but presented an ambiguous picture of their supposedly barbaric nature.
14. like the Jews… City was taken: Refers to the Jews’ failure to unite in their own defence during Emperor Titus’ siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, which resulted in the destruction of the Temple.
15. putting a Spirit of Honesty… to it: A frequent complaint by Swift; see A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture, n. 10.
16. this Kind of Commodity… without it: Perhaps a sly glance at England’s use of Irish salt beef to feed its navy.