Selections from the prose writings of Jonathan Swift

Preface

From the present selection it has seemed best to exclude ^ullivers Travels and the Journal to Stella, Gulliver proboly deserves to be read, as it usually is read, before any f the works included here, but it is already obtainable in lany forms. T\iQ Journal to Stella likewise should be read by every student of Swift, for the light it throws on Swift's character, of which it gives a more intimate idea than any of his other writings, and even for its style. But, not having been intended for publication, it lies outside Swift's formal prose, if not outside literature, and it can therefore oe excluded from this volume, which is limited in space and must first give an idea of Swift's ordinary prose. With these important exceptions the text aims at as fair a representation of Swift's wide range of subjects and style as space will permit. The introduction to Polite Conversation is selected, not only because it includes some of Swift's best irony, but because it is now accessible only in rare editions. All the selections, except the Tale oj a Tub, are printed entire.

In the introduction and notes, the aim is not to add anything to what is already known about Swift, but to gather into convenient form from sources available to every one such information as is necessary to an intelligent reading of

IV PREFACE.

the text. The reader will see at once the extent of my indebtedness to previous annotators and especially to Sir Henry Craik, to whom constant acknowledgments are due.

Ithaca, New York, August I, 1900.

Contents

PAGE

Introduction vii

Chronological Table xli

I. Swifts Work

In the ideal study of English Literature the chief thing, Matthew Arnold says, is ^^ to fix a certain series of works to serve as what the French, taking an expression from the builder's business, call points de repere — points which stand as so many fixed centres, and by returning to which we can always find our way again if we are embarrassed." Swift would be important in such a series. If Johnson s Lives of the Poets furnish (as Arnold thinks) an admirable point de repere in the second half of the eighteenth century, Swift's prose — the Battle of the Books, the Tale of a Tub, and Gullivers Travels — could be chosen with even more certainty as a fixed centre in the first half. The well-known writers of Queen Anne's time form a compact and homogeneous group. In ideas they had much in common, and, if Defoe be excepted, they were all personally, almost intimately, acquainted with each other. They, more than any other group of English literary men before or since, were engaged in doing the practical business and in confronting the actual problems of their day and generation. Of this group Swift is the leader, and Swift's prose — at least for the student of literary ideas and ten-

Vlll INTRODUCTION.

dencies — is the most important product. In the ideal study of literature Swift's prose would be the best introduction to the period ; and the writings of Defoe, Addison, Steele, even of Pope himself, could not unfairly be treated as so many '^ illustrative and representative works '* — ^best understood when referred to Swift as their natural centre.

A reader of the Tale of a Tub will see at once how wide a field Swift covers in his references and allusions, and how many passages — clear enough perhaps to Swift's contemporaries, but obscure to us — must be studied before the satire is seen in its full force. To read Swift intelligently one must read at the same time the history of the period — political, social, literary, and religious — and the more one studies the two in connection, the more one is struck by the fullness and closeness of Swift's representation of the life and thought of his time. If this makes Swift's writings somewhat difficult to the ordinary reader of the present day, it makes them correspondingly important for the student of the period. There is hardly a subject which was matter of interest and controversy at the beginning of the eighteenth century to which some contribution cannot be found in Swift's nineteen volumes ; while the most important subjects, the questions which were uppermost in politics, religion, and literature, are touched on again and again. In Swift's writings — one sees it more and more as one reads — there is nothing thrown away ; everything is written with practical aim and with seriousness of purpose; everything is vital. This is the reason, aside from his mere style, why Swift is valuable ; he is a great mind dealing with the greatest problems of his time in a masterly way, — in a way, too, that was not merely helpful to his

INl^RODUCTIOM, IX

own age, but is full of significance for the present day as well. The reader will see from the following sections of the introduction how directly all the pieces in the text bear on living issues ; and he should keep this practical aim of Swift's writings always in mind because it determines the spirit and style of everything that Swift wrote.

II. Swift A Satirist

It is impossible to overlook the fondness of the eighteenth century for satire and burlesque. The purpose in most literature of the time — poetry or prose — is not j primarily to amuse and instruct, but to make something contemptible or ridiculous. As Professor Beers says/ '^ there is a whole literature of mockery," — parodies, for example, like Buckingham's Rehearsal and Swift's Meditation upon a Broomstick ; mock-heroics like Mac Flecknoe and the Rape of the Lock and the Dispensary ; curious and self-conscious inversions like the Town Eclogues and the Newgate Pastoral. There is satire in every variety from the mild sermons of the Spectator to the savage and bitter attacks of Gulliver s Travels ; from the clumsy and ambiguous irony of Defoe's Shortest Way with Dissenters to the polished couplets of the Epistle to Arbuthnot and the Dunciad. All this satire is significant. It shows in what work the eighteenth-century writers were engaged. What they saw in life most clearly was its errors, abuses, and affectations, and these they were bent on reforming. Since ' they were not too much in earnest, and were inclined to

^ Engtish Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century^ p. 46.

X IN TROD UCTION,

see things humorously, the reforms were carried on by satire rather than by mere preaching or invective; but the serious aim of reforming and correcting was always present.

The settlement effected by the Revolution of 1688 brought in a long period of internal peace and left Englishmen free to turn their minds, which for two generations had been absorbed in religious and political controversy, to other concerns. Instead, however, of going on to entirely new ideas they began to go over old ideas again more calmly. The eighteenth century was, on the whole, intolerant of new ideas, as is shown by the harsh treatment of the deists, the contempt heaped upon discoverers in natural science, the adherence to established literary ideas and forms. The age — as has been often said — was not creative but critical. The men of the eighteenth century were bent on bringing knowledge and experience already acquired under review ; on rejecting what of this was worthless ; on applying reason and common sense to the remainder ; on reducing to rule, on classifying and renovating. Things which did not conform to accepted standards they applied themselves to changing; and accordingly we find satire directed against abuses and errors of every kind, not only in beliefs and ideas, but in morals and manners : against superstition and hypocrisy in religion ; against extremes in politics ; against literary extravagance and ineptitude ; against personal vanity and affectation ; against rough manners in the street and immorality in the theatres — and so on : the varieties are as numerous as the kinds of human error.

In literature this spirit is actively at work. Pope takes over the versification of Dryden and applies himself, at Walsh's advice, to correcting and perfecting it. Prose

INTROD UCTION, XI

style, which in the seventeenth-century writers had been irregular, unformed, uncertain, is practised by Swift, Defoe, and Addison, formed, reduced to exact usage, made for the first time a practical and effective means of communication. Criticism becomes a matter of fixed standards and principles. The fondness of the eighteenth-century writers for the classics is easily understood if we remember their fondness for rules and precedents. The classics gave them models in all the recognized kinds of writing ; and classical literary forms and classical criticism furnished standards by the application of which the merits of contemporary work could be ascertained and its claims to recognition adjusted. Pope's injunction is : *^ Hear how learn' d Greece her useful rules indites. When to repress and when indulge our flights ; ' ' ^ while Addison estimates Paradise Lost by inquiring if it follows Homer and Virgil and squares with Aristotle.^ The classicism of eighteenth-century literature, which is often considered its distinguishing characteristic, might be regarded as one manifestation of a broader spirit which is everywhere at work. The passion for forming and reforming is, to adopt the idea of Pope, the ** ruling passion" of the period.

In this matter Swift is truly representative. The eighteenth century is the age of satire, and Swift is the greatest English satirist. The reader will not be surprised to find all the selections in the present volume satirical. The Battle of the Books and the Tale of a Tub — Swift's first works except the Pindarics, which are obviously artificial and unindividual — are satirical ; so is almost every-

^ Essay on Criticism^ vv. 92, 93.

2 Addison's Essays on Milton^ eighteen in number, begin with No. 267 of the Spectator,

Xll INTROD UCTION,

thing else he wrote, including his last publication of importance, the Polite Conversation. In piece after piece there is the same attack, the same tone of banter, ridicule, and contempt, the same cool masterly style, the same manner, — cogent, insistent, domineering. Part of the interest of the Journal to Stella is that in it we escape from the tension of Swift's satirical writings. In writing to Stella, too. Swift is no longer ironical, and we find with relief that for once we can take him naturally. For irony is a characteristic of Swift's method ; as reformers and satirists often are, he is a master of irony. In page after page he is saying one thing and meaning another. He keeps up the irony through long works without flagging and without becoming inconsistent. He is so fond of indirect and inverted means of expression that the reader is almost never safe in taking his surface meaning. Under the rollicking story of the three brothers in the Tale of a Tub is the serious criticism of the three divisions of the church. Under the matter-of-fact narrative of Gulliver' s ravels^ apparently so simple and harmless that it has become a story for children — is the relentless attack on human errors and weaknesses. Under the light jesting manner of the Modest Proposal one sees, at second reading, that Swift is terribly and bitterly in earnest.

Two important peculiarities should be noticed about Swift's satire. First, it usually "tears down rather than builds up. Swift was naturally inclined to see errors and abuses more clearly than he saw the remedies for them. Perhaps even in this respect he is representative of his age, to which, as has been said, criticism was more congenial work than invention. That Swift is entirely without remedies is not true. In the Modest Proposal, for

INT ROD UCTION, XUl

example, he is careful to enumerate measures from which Ireland can expect relief. But in general — and this is one thing that makes his work so dispiriting — he is without any definite plan for improvement, and even without suggestion. He is full of the present evil. Carlyle, who has something of Swift's bitterness and cynicism, is much more fertile in ideas for improvement. Carlyle, even in i the most discouraging times, professes hope, while Swift's \ outlook is hopeless. Another thing which makes Swift's I work terrible is that, from pointing out petty objects of ridicule, and inveighing against human follies and weaknesses, he proceeds finally to an attack on human nature (and mankind itself. As long as he confines himself to showing remediable faults, even if he does not himself suggest the remedy, he is engaged in a useful work and is I within the limits of legitimate satire. The difficulty is ' that he carries his satire to a morbid and impossible I extreme. When he brings his indictment, not against particular human weaknesses, but against humanity, he ceases to be useful in improving mankind ; he takes away the power and desire for improvement ; he can only bring men to hopelessness and despair. , ^^I hate and detest that animal called man," he says,^ and *^upon this great foundation of misanthropy the whole building of my [Gullivei.r^ travels is erected." A spirit of this kind is less dangerous to society than to its possessor, and Swift wore out his own life in despair. Fortunately much of his work rests on a better foundation.

1 Swift to Pope, Sept. 29, 1725.

XIV IN TROD UCTION,

III. The Tale Of A Tub

The Tale of a Tub was published anonymously in 1704. It was written, however, six or seven years earlier, probably for the most part in the year 1697,^ and was the product of the period in which Swift lived with Sir William Temple at Moor Park. This period, which includes also his entrance into the church and his stay at Kilroot, was that of Swift's greatest mental activity. He was reading widely in literature, history, and thteology.^ '^The author, '* he says of himself in his Apology (1709), '* was then young, his invention at its height, and his reading fresh in his head." The Tale of a Tub was Swift's first contribution to religious controversy. And, though marked by his usual cynicism and disregard for conventionality, the contribution was direct, sincere, and impetuous, — the product of the young clergyman's first enthusiastic reading and thought on his chosen subject. The fulness and freshness of the Tale of a Tub give it

1 There is an incredible story, for which the authority is Deane Swift, that the Tale of a Tub was partly written as early as Swift's college days. See Craik's Life^ vol. i, p. 21. A note prefixed, '• The Bookseller to the Reader," written in 1704, gives 1697 as thej - '' composition. The* dedication to Prince Posterity is dated "|- 1.1- ber, 1697." The ''Author's Preface" is written in* 'this present month of August, 1697." References in the Tale itself to Dry den's Virgil^ to the war in Flanders, and to the mayoralty of Sir Humphrey Edwin, help to fix the date at 1697. Swift's Apology (1709) says: "The greatest part of that book was finished about thirteen years since, 1696, which is eight years before it was published."

2 See Swift's memorandum of books read at this time in Craik's Life^ vol. i, p. 72,

INTROD UCTION, XV

almost first place among Swift's works, and one who reads it can well understand in what spirit Swift, long afterwards, exclaimed as he turned its pages, ^^ Good God, what a genius I had when I wrote that book ! ' '

Though Swift was never strongly religious, and though he was at this time, like his patron Temple, a supporter of the whig party, which was tolerant in matters of religion, he had one principle in common with the tories ; he was an uncompromising supporter of the Established Church. As long as the succession to the throne remained unsettled religious questions had a political bearing, and the struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism wa^ still one of burning practical interest. Political privileges had been restored to the Catholics by James II. and might be rer.tored again as long as the crown and government were not securely Protestant, Countless pamphlets were still written and countless sermons preached against the Catholics.^ On the other side were the dissenters. They had joined with the papists against the Established Church in James the Second's time, but, unlike the papists, had continued after the Revolution to enjoy political privileges. They had extorted concessions from the whigs in return for political support and considered themselves the bulwark of the Protestant succession. In 1697, the year in which Swift wrote, a dissenter was chosen lord mayor of London, and even dared to go to a dissenters'

^ One of these sermons, written by Archbishop Sharp, strangely enough 'Hhe very prelate who succeeded a few years later in persuading Anne that, as the author of such a satire us the Tale^ Swift was not a proper person for a bishopric/' contains an allegory of three brothers and a will which is thought by Collins to have given Swift a suggestion for the Tale of a Tub. See Collins, Jonathan Swift, p. 47.

XVI INTROD UCTION,

meeting with the ensigns of his office. To support Protestantism and the Established Church, threatened thu by the Catholics on the one side and the dissenters on tl: other, the Tale of a Tub was primarily written. In the story of the three brothers, Peter, Martin, and Jack, Swift's object is to show the gradual corruption of the early church, the pride and superstition of the Church of Rome, the hypocrisy and cant of the dissenters, and the relative simplicity and purity of the Established Church.

But the Tale of a Tub contains a great deal more than this. The religious satire is included in the sections printed in the present volume ; but, after each of these sections, there are digressions (omitted here) which occupy more space than the main story. " The abuses in religion,'' Swift says in his Apology, **he proposed to set forth in the allegory of the coats and the three brothers, which was to make up the body of the discourse ; those in learning he chose to introduce by way of digressions;" and the digressions are by no means the least interesting part of the book. In these Swift satirizes generally the follies and shortcomings which he saw about him : the absurdity of the ambition of the Grub Street writers and other aspirants to literary fame, the incompetence and puerility of the critics, the affectation of the wits and coxcombs, the pedantry of the experimenters in natural philosophy. But in these digressions and in the Tale of a Tub, as a whole, it is not merely particular abuses or particular classes that are aimed at ; the force of the satire is deeper and broader than that and goes beyond matters of contemporary interest. The reader soon sees that Grub Street and Will's and Gresham College are only convenient examples of general faults which are the real objects

INTROD UCriON. XVll

of the satire, — faults which are not transitory, — vanity, pedantry, hypocrisy, and affectation. To this breadth and general significance of the book — so far as it is not a matter of mere style — the lasting fame of the Tale of a Tub is due. Swift is never so conscious of particular faults, so absorbed in contemporary affairs, as to lose the larger view. He has, with his insight, the same breadth land objectiveness, the same disengaged coolness and clearness, that one finds in Shakspere or Montaigne, — ^and the I quality is one of the marks of literary genius, i The satire of the Tale of a Tub shows the tendency noted above to go too far. Swift in his Apology professed I a sincere purpose, and there can be no doubt that the gen- , eral trend of the book is in support of the Established \ Church. But as usual he sees the shortcomings of the I other religious bodies rather than the merits of the Church ' of England, and Martin, with his purely negative virtues, I is made little less ridiculous than Peter and Jack. To Swift's clear — perhaps morbid — insight nothing seemed heroic, and Martin is far from turning out the hero he would have been in an ideal defence of the English church. It is not remarkable that the Tale of a Tub should have been thought by Swift's contemporaries to ridicule all religion and that it should have cost him a bishopric. In fact, though there is a buoyancy and freshness about the Tale which distinguishes it from Swift's later writings, the satire, especially in the digressions, has much of Swift's later cynicism and misanthropy. As Collins says : ^ ^*The satire rests on the same foundation as Gulliver s Travels — a deep-seated and intense conviction of the hollowness

^ Jonathan Swifts P- 44.

XVIU INTROD UCriON.

and nothingness of life, a profound contempt for all the objects to which the energies of man are usually directed, and for all that is supposed to constitute human eminence. '^ ^^ How fading and insipid," Swift exclaims in the digression on madness in the ninth section, ^' do all objects accost us that are not conveyed in the vehicle of delusion ! How shrunk is everything as it appears in the glass of nature ! ... In the proportion that credulity is a more peaceful possession of the mind than curiosity, so far preferable is that wisdom which converses about the surface, to that pretended philosophy which enters into the depth of things. ' ' Swift has already begun to take the hopeless view of the ^^ Voyage to the Houyhnhnms."

IV. The Battle Of The Books

The Battle of the Books was Swift's contribution to a now forgotten literary controversy, which was, however, carried on with a great deal of enthusiasm at the end of the seventeenth century, — the famous *^ quarrel of the ancients and moderns ;'* — i.e,, as to the relative merits of the ancient and modern learning.* For the origin of this controversy it would probably be necessary to go to the later Renaissance period in Italy, where the study of the ancient classics, followed by a vigorous contemporary literary production, made comparison of modern writers with their ancient models and discussion as to the relative merits of the two inevitable. The immediate discussion

* For a full discussion see H. Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des anciens et des modernes. For an account of the controversy in England see Jebb, Behtley (<« English Men of Letters "), chaps, iv, v.

INTRODUCTION, XIX

in which Swift took part, however, began in France, and to make Swift's satire clear it will be necessary to give a brief account of this. The brilliant achievements of the age of Louis XIV. in war, diplomacy, and letters led some complacent French writers to maintain that the literature of seventeenth-century France was the greatest the world had ever seen. Charles Perrault advanced this opinion in a poem, Le siecle de Louis le Grand, which was read before the French Academy in 1687, and elaborated it in four volumes oi Par alleles des anciens et des modernes (1688- 1697). Perrault claimed superiority over the ancients for various moderns, and among others **set Monsieur Boileau against Horace," — a position which Boileau himself at once repudiated, taking the side of the ancients in his Reflexions critiques sur Longin (1694). Meanwhile Fontenelle supported the moderns in a Digression sur les anciens et les modernes (1688).

The conflict was transferred to England by Swift's friend and patron, Sir William Temple. Temple's attention had been called to the discussion in France by some work of Fontenelle' s, apparently this Digression,^ and in 1690 he published, on the side of the ancients, dca Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning, a nicely written but not very sound argument to show that all learning was the product of eastern antiquity, that the ancients surpassed the moderns, not only in art and literature but in all branches of learning, and that whatever knowledge the moderns possessed they got from preying upon the ancients, — ^' out of the books in the universities." In fact he took seriously the same position which Swift afterwards

^ Temple, Works^ (^77^)f vol. iii, p. 431.

XX INTRODUCTION.

supported humorously in the Battle of the Books. Temple was a man of sufficient reputation to give the conflict importance in England, and his Essay was followed by many others on the same subject.^ The first of these was William Wotton's Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learjiing, published in 1694. Wotton, who, by mastering Latin, Greek, and Hebrew at the age of six, and getting his degree at Cambridge at the age of thirteen, had come to be known as a prodigy of learning, and had in fact all the pedantry Swift was so fond of ridiculing, treated the subject less entertainingly but more judicially and exhaustively than the polite Temple. He admitted the superiority of the ancients in *^ eloquence and poetry'^ and devoted himself to supporting the claims of modern science. To his success in disposing of Temple's arguments on this head Wotton owed his unenviable position in the Battle 0/ the Books,

^ A full bibliographical list of the writings constituting the discussion in England will be found in the preface to Bentley's JVorks, ed. Dyce, vol. i, p. xi. The following brief list, which includes some works not mentioned above, is given for convenience of reference :

1690. Sir W. Temple, Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning.

1694. W. Wotton, Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning.

1695. C. Boyle, Phalaridis Epistotce.

1697. W. Wotton, Reflections^ second edition, with R. Bentley's Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris^ etc. , appended.

1698. C. Boyle, Dr. Bentley's Dissertations Examined.

1699. R. Bentley, A Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris^ an expansion of the earlier work.

1 701. Sir W. Temple, A Defense of the Essay upon Ancient a7id Modern Learnings published posthumously by Swift.

1704. J. Swift, The Battle of the Books.

1705. W. Wotton, A Defense of the Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning,

INTROD UCTION, - XXl

Temple, in his JSssay, made one important slip which opened the way to effective reply on the part of the supporters of the moderns. He expressed himself as follows: '^ It may be further affirmed in favor of the ancients that the oldest books we have are still in their kind the best. The two most ancient that I know of in prose, among those we call profane authors, are ^sop's fables and Phalaris's epistles, both living near the same time, which was that of Cyrus and Pythagoras. As the first has been agreed by all ages since for the greatest master in his kind, and all others of that sort but imitations of his original ; so I think the epistles of Phalaris to have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius than any others I have seen, either ancient or modern.*^ The fables and epistles which Temple had chosen as shining examples of the superiority of the ancients were in fact, as his opponents soon showed, not written by ^sop and Phalaris at all, but were spurious works composed after the Christian era. This reference of Temple was the means of bringing two other important persons into the conflict — Boyle and Bentley. Temple's praise of Phalaris led the scholars of Christ Church, Oxford, a young and brilliant but rather superficial literary coterie, to undertake a new edition of the epistles, and the editing was done, nominally at least, by one of the most distinguished of their number, Charles Boyle, afterwards Earl of Orrery. Boyle's edition of the Epistles of Phalaris appeared in 1695. In his editing Boyle had borrowed for collation from the King's Library at St. James's a manuscript of the spurious letters, and this manuscript Bentley, librarian of St. James's, had demanded back before the work was complete. Boyle, to show his resent-

XXU INTROD UCTION,

ment for this act of Bentley's, spoke of it in his Latin preface to the Epistles as pro singulari humanitate sua, — i.e., in accordance with Bentley's somewhat peculiar ideas of courtesy. It may be noted by the way that, though Boyle probably meant in the first place by this phrase to charge Bentley merely with lack of courtesy, Bentley himself in replying to Boyle translated it with humorous literalness, *^out of his singular humanity/' Bentley's opponents took up the phrase and, finding in it some special fitness to the great scholar's bluntness and intolerance, used it as a sort of battle-cry. The reader will find in the Battle of the Books several sarcastic references to Bentley's *^ humanity."

Bentley, by far the greatest classical scholar of his day, entered the discussion at this point by appending to the second edition of Wotton's Reflections (1697) 2^ Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris, etc. In the introduction to this work Bentley replied to Boyle's charge in a light and entertaining vein, and then proceeded to show by a masterly argument the spuriousness of the so-called epistles of Phalaris and fables of ^sop. One more number in the controversial series must be mentioned. Early in 1698 Boyle published a rejoinder entitled Dr. Bentley s Dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris and • the Fables of JEsop Examined, This book left the merits of the dispute about where they were before, but to its composition were summoned all the resources and all the cleverness of Boyle's party, and, unlike Wotton's Reflections, it will still be found entertaining reading.

At this point the Battle of the Books was written. The controversy, as will be seen from the foregoing account, had left the general lines which it had followed in France