Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World

by Leo Damrosch

  8. Lawrence’s introduction to an undated Paintings of D. H. Lawrence, quoted by Maurice Johnson, “Dryden’s ‘Cousin Swift,’ PMLA 68 (1953): 1234; Lewis, “Addison,” 144.

  9. A Panegyric on the Dean, lines 205–16, Poems, 3:893.

  10. Ibid., lines 299–304, 3:896.

  11. Mary Jones, Holt Waters: A Tale, quoted by Doody, “Swift among the Women,” 85; Geoffrey Hill, “Jonathan Swift: The Poetry of Reaction,” in The World of Jonathan Swift, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968), 209.

  12. Rev. James Whitelaw in 1798, quoted by Fabricant, Swift’s Landscape, 26–28.

  13. An Examination of Certain Abuses, Corruptions, and Enormities in the City of Dublin, PW, 12:220.

  14. Lord Castle Durrow to Swift, Dec. 4, 1736, Corr., 4:368.

  15. Pope, The Rape of the Lock, 1.143–44; The Progress of Beauty, lines 13–20, 109–16, Poems, 1:227–29.

  16. A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed, lines 1–2, 11–12, 17–22, 29–30, Poems, 2:580, 583.

  17. Ibid., lines 42, 59–62, 2:582–83; Brean S. Hammond, “Corinna’s Dream,” Eighteenth Century: Dream and Interpretation 36 (1995): 106. I have drawn on this article at several points.

  18. Martial 9.37, discussed with other analogous works by N. W. Bawcutt, “‘News from Hide-Park’ and ‘A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed,’” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 23 (2000): 125–34; Remedia Amoris, line 344, in Ovid, trans. J. H. Mozley, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1929), 2:200.

  19. A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed, lines 67–70, 2:583. My reading of the poem is indebted to Louise Barnett, Swift’s Poetic Worlds (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1981), 175–76; and to Hammond, Jonathan Swift, 149–51.

  20. The Lady’s Dressing Room, lines 59–68, 109–18, Poems, 2:527, 529.

  21. D. H. Lawrence, introduction to Pansies, in Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Edward D. McDonald (London: Heinemann, 1936), 281–82.

  22. Rogers, 827.

  23. “The Reasons That Induced Dr. S. to Write a Poem Called ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room,’” in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Essays and Poems, ed. Robert Halsband (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 273–74. Swift’s poem was published in June 1732, and Lady Mary’s in February 1734. The two lines beginning “She answered short” appear in a manuscript draft but not in the published version. On the book-lined commode, see Isobel Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 566; and Robert Halsband, “New Anecdotes of Lady M.W. Montagu,” in Evidence in Literary Scholarship, ed. René Wellek and Alvaro Ribeiro (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 245.

  24. The Lady’s Dressing Room, lines 129–32, 141–44, 2:530. The connection with the Tale of a Tub is brought out by Nora Crow Jaffe, The Poet Swift (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1977), 112–13; the phrase “smell no evil” comes from Christine Rees, “Gay, Swift, and the Nymphs of Drury-Lane,” Essays in Criticism 23 (1973): 15.

  25. Strephon and Chloe, lines 175–78, 186–92, Poems, 2:589–90; Hill, “Jonathan Swift: The Poetry of Reaction,” 206.

  26. The Problem, lines 33–40, 47–48, Poems, 1:66. The description of the “handsomest man” is in Williams’s headnote to the poem, 65.

  27. Cassinus and Peter, lines 85–86, 77–78, Poems, 2:596; William Butler Yeats, Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop, lines 15–16; Sigmund Freud, The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious, trans. Joyce Crick (London: Penguin, 2002), section 3 (b), p. 93. Pollak notes the possible relevance of Freud in The Poetics of Sexual Myth, 162–63, 167.

  28. Phyllis Greenacre, Swift and Carroll: A Psychoanalytic Study of Two Lives (New York: International Universities Press, 1955), 108; Donald R. Roberts, “A Freudian View of Jonathan Swift,” Literature and Psychology 4 (1956): 10; Norman O. Brown, “The Excremental Vision,” in Life against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (New York: Vintage Books, 1959), 179–201.

  29. Thoughts on Various Subjects, 4:247; Strephon and Chloe, lines 233–34, 2:591.

  30. Felicity Rosslyn, “Deliberate Disenchantment: Swift and Pope on the Subject of Women,” Cambridge Quarterly 23 (1994): 296.

  31. Martha Whiteway to Swift, Dec. 2, 1735, Corr., 4:243.

  CHAPTER 30. WAITING FOR THE END

  1. An Epistle to a Lady, lines 175–80, Poems, 2:635. William Pulteney was a Tory collaborator of Bolingbroke’s, and “Caleb D’Anvers” was the pseudonym they used in their periodical, the Craftsman.

  2. The Day of Judgment, lines 17–22, Poems, 2:579; Swift to William Tisdall, Dec. 16, 1703, Corr., 1:148. Contemporary poems on the Last Judgment are surveyed by Real, Securing Swift, 239–79; see also Richard H. Rodino, “Varieties of Vexatious Experience in Swift and Others,” Papers on Language and Literature 18 (1982): 331–35.

  3. Swift to William Tisdall, Dec. 16, 1703, Corr., 1:148. The Mysterious Stranger, in Selected Shorter Writings of Mark Twain, ed. Walter Blair (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 388; Swift to Pope, Apr. 20, 1731, Corr., 3:382.

  4. The Place of the Damned, lines 7–14, Poems, 2:576.

  5. On the Words “Brother Protestants” and “Fellow Christians,” So Familiarly Used by the Advocates for the Repeal of the Test Act, lines 11–14, 25–28, Poems, 3:811–12. It is sometimes claimed that Swift resented Bettesworth’s support for a bill that would deprive the clergy of tithes on flax, but there is really no evidence for this; see Stephen Karian, Jonathan Swift in Print and Manuscript (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 226, n29.

  6. Sheridan, 377; Orrery, 424. Ehrenpreis is skeptical about the accuracy of some of Sheridan’s anecdotes, but Luis Gamez offers persuasive reasons for accepting this one, in “Richard Bettesworth’s Insult and ‘The Yahoo’s Overthrow,’” Swift Studies 12 (1997): 80–84.

  7. Swift to the Duke of Dorset, January 1734, Corr., 3:719.

  8. Sheridan, 378–79.

  9. Ehrenpreis, 3:771; the document and reply are in PW, 5:341–43.

  10. The Yahoo’s Overthrow; or, The Kevin Bail’s New Ballad [St. Patrick’s was in the parish of Kevin Bail], lines 41–45, 61–65, Poems, 3:816–17; Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, ed. Thomas Keymer (London: Penguin, 2005), book 6, ch. 9, p. 270.

  11. Karian, Jonathan Swift in Print and Manuscript, 89.

  12. The controversy is fully described by Landa, 135–50.

  13. Swift to Sheridan, June 15, 1735, Corr., 4:122; Mark 5:9.

  14. The Legion Club, lines 1–4, 49–52, 61–62, Poems, 3:829, 831.

  15. Ibid., lines 189–90, 153–58, 3:835–37.

  16. Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, lines 459–52, 2:571; W. H. Dilworth, The Life of Dr. Jonathan Swift (1758), in Critical Heritage, 171.

  17. Swift to Sheridan, May 15, May 22, 1736, Corr., 4:296, 302.

  18. Sheridan to Swift, June 2, 1736, Corr., 4:306; see Karian, Jonathan Swift in Print and Manuscript, 150–51.

  19. Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, line 477, 2:572; Swift to Lady Worsley, Nov. 4, 1732, Corr., 3:551; Edward Young, Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), in Eighteenth-Century English Literature, ed. Geoffrey Tillotson et al. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1969), 881. The lord lieutenant at the time was the second Duke of Wharton, son of Swift’s old adversary; on the 1720 date, see Corr., 2:336n.

  20. Letter from Faulkner to the Earl of Chesterfield, in John Nichols, A Supplement to Dr. Swift’s Works, 765.

  21. Swift to John Barber, Mar. 21, 1735; Swift to Thomas Beach, Apr. 12, 1735, Corr 4:62, 63n, 88.

  22. See Swift’s letter to William Pulteney, May 12, 1735, Corr., 4:108; and Karian, Jonathan Swift in Print and Manuscript, 30–43.

  23. Swift to Benjamin Motte, May 25, 1736, Corr., 4:304; Ehrenpreis, 3:790.

  24. John Wainwright to the second Earl of Oxford, June 24, 1738, quoted in Ehrenpreis, 3:866.

  25. Swift to Pope, Feb. 7, 1736, Corr., 4:259–60.

  26. Maynard Mack, Alexander Pope: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 666, 671
, 652ff. See also Ehrenpreis, 3:884–87, 898.

  27. Sheridan, 332.

  28. The History of the Second Solomon, 5:222; see Woolley, “Thomas Sheridan and Swift,” 97–98.

  29. Swift and Sheridan to Mrs. Whiteway, Nov. 8, 1735, Corr., 4:213.

  30. Sheridan, 332–33.

  31. Swift to Mrs. Whiteway, Nov. 18, 1735, Corr., 4:227–28; Sheridan, 333.

  32. Sheridan to Swift, June 23, 1736, Corr., 4:320; Ehrenpreis (3:870) mentions the break with Delany.

  33. Sheridan, 338; on Sheridan’s illness and medication, see Woolley, “Thomas Sheridan and Swift,” 99–100.

  34. Sheridan, 340.

  35. Swift to Orrery, Feb. 2, 1738; Corr., 4:494.

  36. See Maxwell B. Gold, “The Brennan Affidavit,” TLS, May 17, 1934, 360; and Deane Swift to Orrery, Nov. 19, 1742, Corr., 4:660–63.

  37. Deane Swift, 189 (page misnumbered by the printer; it ought to be 217). Sheridan (337) also tells this story, in somewhat different words, perhaps adapting it from Deane Swift’s account.

  38. Swift to Mrs. Whiteway, Nov. 28, 1735; Mrs. Whiteway to Swift, Dec. 2, 1735; Swift to Robert Lindsay, Jan. 22, 1736, Corr., 4:239, 243, 254–55.

  39. Swift to John Barber, Feb. 16, 1739, Corr., 4:560–61.

  40. Swift to Martha Whiteway, July 26, 1740, Corr., 4:627–28.

  41. Mrs. Whiteway to Orrery, Nov. 22, 1742, Corr., 4:664.

  42. Letter from Faulkner to the Earl of Chesterfield, in Nichols, A Supplement to Dr. Swift’s Works, 765; Henry Jones, The Bricklayer’s Poem (1745), quoted by Robert Mahony, Jonathan Swift: The Irish Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 7.

  43. The document is preserved among the Lyon papers, and reprinted in Ball, The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, 6:181–85.

  44. Delany, 103.

  45. Deane Swift to Orrery, Apr. 4, 1744, Corr., 4:670; 1 Corinthians 15:8–11. My comments are indebted to DePorte, “Swift, God and Power,” 94.

  46. Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes, lines 315–16.

  47. Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, lines 147–50, 2:558; William Monck Mason, The History and Antiquities of the Collegiate and Cathedral Church of St. Patrick (Dublin: W. Folds, 1820), 412; Sheridan, 244.

  48. Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, lines 169–76, 2:558–59. On the septum, see Wilson, “Swift’s Deafness, and His Last Illness,” 250.

  49. The story of the plaques is told by Johnston, 192, 200.

  50. Yeats, The Words upon the Window-Pane, 469.

  51. Juvenal Satire 1.79; Nahum 1:6; on vindicator, see Frank Boyle, Swift as Nemesis: Modernity and Its Satirist (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 5. See also Maurice Johnson, “Swift and ‘The Greatest Epitaph in History,’” PMLA 68 (1953): 814–27. The version of the epitaph in Swift’s will is in PW, 13:149.

  52. Mahony, Jonathan Swift: The Irish Identity, 12–13, 23. Roubiliac moved from Paris to London in 1730, after Swift’s last visit to England.

  53. Wilde, The Closing Years of Dean Swift’s Life, 53.

  54. Ibid., 56.

  55. Ibid., 121.

  56. Johnston, 199.

  57. Publishers Weekly, Aug. 25, 1969, as quoted in Swift Studies 3 (1988): 125.

  Illustration Credits

  1. Gulliver on Dollymount Strand: photograph by Jack MacManus, courtesy of The Irish Times.

  2. Godwin Swift’s house, Hoey’s Court: W. R. Wilde, The Closing Years of Dean Swift’s Life (Dublin: Hodges and Smith, 1849).

  3. Map of Swift’s first neighborhood: John Rocque, Exact Survey of the City and Suburbs of Dublin (1756), courtesy of Harvard University Map Collection.

  4. Kilkenny Castle: photograph by Leo Damrosch.

  5. The Dublin Custom House (now demolished) and Essex Bridge (now rebuilt as Grattan Bridge), Dublin: no. 4 of 6 views of Dublin, courtesy of National Gallery of Ireland.

  6. Map of Dublin showing Trinity College: John Rocque, Exact Survey of the City and Suburbs of Dublin (1756), courtesy of Harvard University Map Collection.

  7. Jonathan Swift, by Charles Jervas: courtesy of the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

  8. Holyhead in 1742: Holyhead Collegiate Church, by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck (1742), by permission of Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales.

  9. Map of Leicester in 1741: by Thomas Roberts, by permission of the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland.

  10. Sir William Temple in his youth: Thomas Peregrine Courtenay, Memoirs of the Life, Works, and Correspondence of Sir William Temple (London: Longman, Rees, 1836).

  11. Moor Park in Temple’s time: by Johannes Kip, reproduced by permission of Surrey History Centre.

  12. Moor Park today: photograph by Leo Damrosch.

  13. A page of Swift’s work as secretary to Sir William Temple: courtesy of Trinity College, Cambridge, Rothschild Collection 2258.

  14. “When I come to be old”: John Forster, The Life of Jonathan Swift (New York: Harper, 1876).

  15. King William III: engraving by Bernard Picart, after Adriaen van der Werff, from an extra-illustrated copy of James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, MS Hyde 76, courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  16. Queen Mary II: engraving by William Henry Worthington, after Sir Godfrey Kneller, from an extra-illustrated copy of James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, MS Hyde 76, courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  17. Map of the Irish Sea (detail): William Camden, Britannia (London, 1695), f Br 3615.90.10, courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  18. John Dryden: engraving after Sir Godfrey Kneller, from an extra-illustrated copy of The Letters of Samuel Johnson, MS Hyde 77, courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  19. Trim Castle: photograph by Leo Damrosch.

  20. Laracor Church: John Savage, Picturesque Ireland (New York: Thomas Kelly, 1884).

  21. Laracor Communion table, now in St. Patrick’s Cathedral: photograph by Leo Damrosch.

  22. Swift’s account book: courtesy of Trinity College, Cambridge, Rothschild Collection 2253.

  23. Lord Berkeley: Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant, Historical Characters of the Reign of Queen Anne (New York: Century, 1894).

  24. St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1695: Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, ed. Charles Harding Firth (London: Macmillan, 1914), vol. 6.

  25. Map of part of Middlesex County, 1695 (detail): William Camden, Britannia (London, 1695), f Br 3615.90.10, courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  26. Map of part of central London, 1720 (detail): John Stow, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, augmented by John Strype (London, 1720), 2:66, f Typ 705.20.810, courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  27. William Hogarth, The Second Stage of Cruelty: The Works of William Hogarth (London: E. T. Brain, 1841), *44W-1879, courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  28. Mackerel seller: Marcellus Laroon, The Cries of London Drawn after the Life (London, 1711), f HEW 13.9.9, courtesy of Harry Elkins Widener Collection, Harvard University.

  29. Frontispiece of A Tale of a Tub: A Tale of a Tub, 5th ed. (1710), *EC7 Sw551T 1710, courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  30. The preacher in his tub: A Tale of a Tub, 5th ed. (1710), *EC7 Sw551T 1710, courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  31. Bedlam: A Tale of a Tub, 5th ed. (1710), *EC7 Sw551T 1710, courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  32. Queen Anne: Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant, Historical Characters of the Reign of Queen Anne (New York: Century, 1894).

  33. Lord Somers: Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, ed. Charles Harding Firth (London: Macmillan, 1914), vol. 5.

  34. The Duke of Marlborough: Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant, Historical Characters of the Reign of Queen Anne (New York: Century, 1894).

  35. The Duchess of Marlborough: Mrs. M.O. W. Oliphant, Historical Characters
of the Reign of Queen Anne (New York: Century, 1894).

  36. Lord Godolphin: Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant, Historical Characters of the Reign of Queen Anne (New York: Century, 1894).

  37. Lord Halifax: Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant, Historical Characters of the Reign of Queen Anne (New York: Century, 1894).

  38. Daniel Defoe: Walter Wilson, Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel Defoe (London: Hurst, Chance, 1830).

  39. William Congreve: from an extra-illustrated copy of James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, MS Hyde 76, courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  40. Richard Steele: engraving by George Vertue, George A. Aitken, The Life of Richard Steele (London: Isbister, 1889).

  41. Joseph Addison: after a portrait by Godfrey Kneller, Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant, Historical Characters of the Reign of Queen Anne (New York: Century, 1894).

  42. Robert Harley, Lord Oxford: after a portrait by Godfrey Kneller, Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant, Historical Characters of the Reign of Queen Anne (New York: Century, 1894).

  43. Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke: The Works of Lord Bolingbroke (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1841).

  44. A page from the Journal to Stella: ©The British Library Board, MS. Add 4804, f65.

  45. Dr. John Arbuthnot: George A. Aitken, The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot (Oxford: Clarendon, 1892).

  46. Alexander Pope: The Works of Alexander Pope, ed. John Wilson Croker (London: John Murray, 1871), vol. 6.

  47. Matthew Prior as a plenipotentiary: Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, ed. Charles Harding Firth (London: Macmillan, 1914), vol. 6.

  48. St. Patrick’s Cathedral: William Monck Mason, The History and Antiquities of the Collegiate and Cathedral Church of St. Patrick (Dublin: W. Folds, 1820).

  49. St. Patrick’s choir stalls and altar: photograph by Leo Damrosch.

  50. Swift’s movable pulpit: photograph by Leo Damrosch.

  51. Map of the cathedral precincts (detail): John Rocque, Exact Survey of the City and Suburbs of Dublin (1756), courtesy of Harvard University Map Collection.