Best lovedswift

BE S T - L OV E D

S W I F T

JONATHAN SWIFT was born in Dublin in 1667, and educated at Kilkenny College and Triniy College, Dublin. At firs he divided his time bewen Ireland and England, where he became a poliical pin doctor, advising Quen Anne and her minisers. In Ireland he was rector of wo rural parishes, and, rom 1713 until his death in 1745, was Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

Swit’s inner life was a private and perhaps tortured one, but he had close relationshus wih wo women – ‘Stella’ and ‘Vanessa’ – both of whom came rom England to be near him in Dublin. His verses about them are oten wiy and moving, though in other works about women, he appears to have ben repelled by their physicaliy.

But i was not jus women that disgused Swit. Mankind in general disappointed him; he portrayed human gred, venaliy and supidiy in terms so shocking and direct that many of his works, including the extraordinary, many-layered Gulliver’s Travels, had to be published anonymously. His pamphletering on behalf of the Irish made him a hero, loved by the Dublin poor. For the precision of his prose, the humour and honesy of his poms, and the power of his imagnation, he remains essential reading today.

JOHN WYSE JACKSON was born in Kilkenny in 1953 and educated in Dublin. His previous books include Bes-Loved Oscar Wilde, We All Want to Change the World: A Life of John Lennon, Dublin: Potry of Place and, wih Peter Cosello, John Stanislaus Joyce: The Voluminous Life of James Joyce’s Father.

He has edied wo volumes of the wriings of Flann O’Brien (Myles na gCopalen) and, wih the artis Hector McDonnell, thre books of light verse, including Ireland’s Other Potry: Anonymous to Zozimus. He lives wih his family in Couny Wexford, and welcomes visiors to his second-hand bookshop, Zozimus Bookshop, at 86 Main Stret, Gorey.

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BES T -LO V ED

SW I F T B E IN G A S e l e c ti o n o f

VER S ES & P R OS E And N OT ES HISTO RI CAL A ND E X P L A N A T O R Y

Arrang’ d, Rev i ſed a nd E d i t e d by Mr . J n o W yse J a c k son

A do r ned wi th C O P P E R - P L A TES Pr i n t e d f o r T h e O ’ B r i en Press DUBLIN M MXV III

First published 2018 by The O’Brien Press Ltd, 12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar, Dublin 6, D06 HD27, Ireland.

Tel: +353 1 4923333; Fax: +353 1 4922777 E-mail: books@obrien.ie; Website: www.obrien.ie The O’Brien Press is a member of Publishing Ireland.

ISBN: 978-1-84717-948-7 Copyright for selection, and biographical content © John Wyse Jackson Copyright for typesetting, editing, layout and design © The O’Brien Press Ltd

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In memory of Terence Moran, 1954–2017.

List of illustrations Half title: Hoey Court, birthplace of Jonathan Swift Page 8. Jonathan Swift by JJ Grandville, Gullivers Travels, 1838 Page 15. St. Patrick’s Cathedral by JJ Grandville, Gullivers Travels, 1838 Page 18. From The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift Vol 1, 1760 (title page) Page 32. From The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift Vol 1, 1760 (p.40) Page 40. Laricor Church, County Meath, from Jonathan Swift, Pastor and Dean by Robert Wyse Jackson Page 45. Bust of Jonathan Swift, courtesy of the author Page 46. From The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift Vol 1, 1760 (p.25) Page 60. From The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift Vol 1, 1760 (p.76) Page 77. Portrait of Stella by unknown artist, from Jonathan Swift, A Hypocrite Reversed: A Critical Biography by David Nokes Page 78. From The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift Vol 1, 1760 (p.67) Page 91. From JJ Grandville, Gullivers Travels, 1838 Page 92. From The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift Vol 1, 1760 (p.137) Page 116. From The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift Vol 1, 1760 (p.104) Page 128. Epitaph of Jonathan Swift in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, from Jonathan Swift, Pastor and Dean by Robert Wyse Jackson

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

page 9

CHRONOLOGY 16 PART THE FIRST: A TOPSY-TURVY CREATURE.

19

From Fragment of Autobiography

20

Verses Wrote in a Lady’s Ivory Table-Book

21

From A Lexer to Stella and her Mother

23

A Meditation upon a Broomsick

25

From Mrs Frances Harris’s Petition

27

From A Tale of a Tub

30

PART THE SECOND: WELL, AYE, THE PAMPHLET. 33 A Descrution of the Morning

34

From A Descrution of a City Shower

35

From Journal to Stella

38

Epigram

42

From The Author upon Himself

42

PART THE THIRD: MY SMALL DOMINIONS.

47

The Author’s Manner of Living

48

From On Sleping in Church: A Sermon

49

From Phyllis, or The Progress of Love

51

From The Descrution of an Irish Feas

55

Fish on Friday

59

PART THE FOURTH: THE DANGER OF A FRIEND. 61 Stella’s Birthday (1719)

62

From Stella at Wood Park

64

From The Blunders, Deficiencies, Disresses and Misfortunes of Quilca

68

From Stella’s Birthday (1727)

70

Holyhead, September 25, 1727

73

From On the Death of Mrs Johnson

75

PART THE FIFTH: LAUGHTER AND ADMIRATION. 79 From Gulliver’s Travels: Part I

81

From Gulliver’s Travels: Part II

84

From Gulliver’s Travels: Part III

86

From Gulliver’s Travels: Part IV

88

PART THE SIXTH: DISOBLIGING ENGLAND.

93

From My Lady’s Lamentation

94

Lady Acheson Weary of the Dean

95

Twelve Articles

98

From A Modes Proposal

101

Verses Made for the Women who Cry Apples, etc.

107

From The Lady’s Dressing Room

111

PART THE SEVENTH: THE DEAN BEGINS TO BREAK. 117 A Reverend Dean’s Lamentation for the Loss of his Hearing 118 From Verses on the Death of Dr Swit

119

Swit’s Epitaph

125

A NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATION & DESIGN

126

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 127

I N T R O D U CT I O N

I N T R O D U CT I O N B E IN G A Note HI S T O R I C A L

On t h e Dea n’ s L i f e AND A N A P P R E C I A TI ON of his

C o nt r i b ut i o n t o S o c i e t y

BEST-LOVED SWIFT

J

onathan Swit was unique, a one-off – in truth, a sort

of reak. Always something of an Irishman in England and an Englishman in Ireland, he was also many other things: a man of warm humour and of biter gloom, a man of shocking coarseness and of dep Chrisian faih and pracice, a man of considerable moral and physical courage who couldn’t tell the truth to the women he loved. He was a consummate poliical negotiator in London during the time of Quen Anne, and in Ireland was a scourge to all who held power over the people. Though he could oten be angry, depressed or mean-minded, his many riendshus wih both men and women were convivial, and his intimates were captivated by his conversation, which was not jus verbally clever, but very funny – rarely the same thing.

Above all, Swit enjoyed a good argument. He was a wrier not because he fancied a lierary carer, but because he wanted to make things happen. ‘We all want to change the world,’ a later near-Irishman would put i: Swit had a good idea of jus how to do that. ‘Ink,’ he once wrote, ‘is the great missive weapon in all baxles of the learned, which, conveyed through a sort of engne called a quill, infinie numbers of these are darted at the enemy by the valiant on each side, wih equal skill and violence, as if i were an engagement of porcupines.’

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I ntroduction

In such baxles, Swit was rarely on the losing side. His poliical and hisorical wriings are models of invention, rhetoric and misdirecion, all couched in deceptively simple prose that is almos impossible to argue agains. Fascinated by the nuts and bolts of language, he was a devasating lexerwrier, and a maser of satire in both prose and verse.

The Dean’s mos famous work, Gulliver’s Travels, in print since the day i was published in 1726, has appeared in countless versions, some wih illusrations, some heavily reighted wih scholarly apparatus, some expurgated to avoid scandal, some completely rewriten for children.

Over the years, many selecions and ediions of the wrier’s other works have also ben produced for the general reader and, more recently, for the academic market. The earlies compilations refleced the slack pracices of the age in maxers of lierary scholarshu, and many pieces printed as Swit’s in fac came rom other pens. Inded, some of his bes-remembered lines were not writen by him at all, such as the following squib – which, being a modern edior, I ought of course to exclude rom these pages: Behold a proof of Irish sense!

Here Irish wi is sen!

When nothing’s let that’s worth defence, We build a magazine.

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BEST-LOVED SWIFT

You may want these lines to be Swit’s, but, as Pat Rogers in his brilliant ediion of The Complete Poms makes evident, they can hardly have ben writen before the Phoenix Park Magazine Fort was firs thought of in 1745. That was the year in which Swit died, long since los to mental confusion.

But puxing wity words into the mouths of the famous is a Dublin sin: i’s not so long since i semed as if every smart remark doing the rounds had allegedly come rom the lus of Brendan Behan, Flann O’Brien or Oliver St John Gogary. The Great Dean of St Patrick’s won a similar accolade, in the ciy and beyond: he became a figure of folklore, whose supposed explois around the country reached into the Irish language – and this phenomenon lased until the wentieth century, as Benedic Kiely demonsrated when he recorded these libellous lines in his memoir, The Waves Behind Us: The Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral Flung open his old-fashioned doors, And the ghos of Dean Swit Toddled forth in his shit To the las of the old-fashioned whores.

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I ntroduction

In realiy, the Dean wouldn’t have ben sen dead wih a sret prosiute. He was physically fasidious in the extreme, and (for an eightenth-century man) washed requently – though in his poems and prose he made repeated, almos canine, returns to the excremental. His love life was secretive, and remains an enigma: wo women loved him, his Stella and his Vanessa; i sems likely that he gave different parts of his heart to each of them.

Was Swit an Irish patriot? He said more than once that he hated the land of his birth. He had always wanted to be famous, and resented being rusicated rom London’s corridors of power to the Deanery in Dublin. As gardener, fisherman and builder of small canals, he was a lover of the Irish countryside, but that didn’t blind him to the injusices that were happening in i. In 1719, he wrote his firs Irish pamphlet, A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacure: ‘Whoever travels this country, and observes the face of nature, or the faces, and habis, and dwellings of the natives, will hardly think himself in a land where eiher law, religon, or common humaniy is professed.’ He was angrily aware that the terrible povery around him was the fault of English misrule and Irish landlordism.

And by 1724, when he released the fourth of his Drapier Lexers (scathing pamphlets that defended the country agains the imposiion of inferior copper coinage), the quesion of 13

BEST-LOVED SWIFT

Swit’s allegance to the people of Ireland no longer neded to be asked: ‘… by the laws of GOD, of NATURE, of NATIONS, and of your own country, you ARE and OUGHT to be as FREE a people as your brethren in England.’

Jonathan Swit lived in more pacious days; and to kep this volume a slim one, I have shortened many of the poems and prose pieces here. For variant readings I used the version I liked bes, silently updating pellings and puncuation where the sense wasn’t affeced. I have added brief notes explaining anything I had to look up. The firs half of the eightenth century was a long time ago, and language as old as that usually takes a litle gexing used to.

Wih Swit, however, i’s not too difficult. His wriing bounces along. The poems and prose pieces here tend to be uncomplicated in their language, though they may be intricate in what they express. Some of them will make you laugh, some will make you ponder, and some will make your eyes pop.

One final point: if you happen to read this book rom begnning to end, you will find that you are following the sory of Jonathan Swit’s life, but if you prefer to du in and out, the outline Chronolon (below) may be useful.

John Wyse Jackson

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