by Leo Damrosch
43. Gulliver’s Travels, book 3, ch. 5, pp. 180–82.
44. Forster, 53; Delany, 35.
45. Deane Swift, 42; T. G. Wilson, “Swift in Trinity,” Dublin Magazine 5 (1966): 20.
46. Ehrenpreis, 69.
47. Deane Swift, 372; Edward Lloyd, in A Description of the City of Dublin (1732), quoted by Patrick Fagan, The Second City: Portrait of Dublin, 1700–1760 (Dublin: Branar, 1986), 107.
48. George Faulkner, “Some Further Account,” in Faulkner’s 1763 Dublin edition of Swift’s Works, 11:330; Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, Collected from Conversation, ed. James M. Osborn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), 1:52.
49. Spence, Observations, 1:340–41.
50. Mentioned by Richard Holmes, Marlborough: Britain’s Greatest General (London: Harper, 2008), 13, 221–22.
51. Imitation of Horace’s Epistle 1.7.77–8; Epilogue at the Theatre Royal, lines 3–4; A Serious Poem upon William Wood, lines 27–28, Poems, 1:173, 275, 334. Swift’s pronunciation is studied by Jonathan Pritchard in “Swift’s Irish Rhymes,” Studies in Philology 104 (2007): 123–58.
52. Baldwin is quoted by Wilson, “Swift in Trinity,” 20; Lyon, 4; Delany, 175.
53. See Andrew Carpenter, “A Tale of a Tub as an Irish Text,” Swift Studies 20 (2005): 30–40; and George Mayhew, “Swift and the Tripos Tradition,” Philological Quarterly 45 (1966): 85–101.
54. Quoted in A Tale of a Tub, ed. A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nichol Smith (Oxford: Clarendon, 1958), 351. Recently discovered notes show that Dr. Lyon saw the original among Swift’s papers after his death: see A. C. Elias, “Swift’s Don Quixote, Dunkin’s Virgil Travesty, and Other New Intelligence: John Lyon’s ‘Materials for a Life of Dr. Swift,’ 1765,” Swift Studies 13 (1998): 87.
55. Scott, 11, repeating a story told to him by Godwin Swift’s grandson Theophilus Swift. Ehrenpreis (1:ix) dismisses the anecdote as an instance of “legendary Swiftiana.”
56. For example, Wilson, “Swift in Trinity,” 11.
57. Deane Swift, 54–55.
58. Swift to Deane Swift (senior), June 3, 1694, Corr., 1:120.
59. Swift to Thomas Staunton, Dec. 15, 1726, Corr., 3:65.
60. Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, lines 107–8, Poems, 2:556.
61. John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, line 10; Macaulay, 1:214.
62. Lady Harvey, quoted by Tim Harris, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 (London: Penguin, 2007), 239.
63. Macaulay, 1:584.
64. Ireland’s Lamentation (1689), quoted by Toby Barnard, Making the Grand Figure: Lives and Possessions in Ireland, 1641–1770 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 360. The first visit of a monarch in three hundred years is mentioned by Mark Kishlansky, A Monarchy Transformed: Britain, 1603–1714 (London: Penguin, 1997), 287.
65. Harris, Revolution, 449. The Gaelic quotation is taken from Holmes, Marlborough, 168; other details are from S. J. Connolly, Divided Kingdom: Ireland, 1630–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 188.
66. Quoted by W. MacNeile Dixon, Trinity College, Dublin (London: Robinson, 1902), 63, 65; the number of fellows who left is reported by Maxwell, A History of Trinity College, Dublin, 83.
67. Macaulay, 2:593.
68. Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
69. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Dissertation upon Parties (1733–34), in The Works of Lord Bolingbroke (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1841), 2:27.
70. Sheridan, 7–8.
CHAPTER 2. A PATRON AND TWO MYSTERIES
1. Laurence Eachard, An Exact Description of Ireland (London, 1691), 2.
2. www.irishferries.com.
3. Swift to Abigail Swift, Aug. 5, 1698, Corr., 1:135. Ehrenpreis identifies half a dozen visits to Leicester: 1:44, 1:107, 2:44, 2:112, 2:195, 2:338.
4. Orrery, 331.
5. Jack Simmons, Leicester Past and Present (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), 1:95; G. A. Chinnery, “Eighteenth-Century Leicester,” in The Growth of Leicester, ed. A. E. Brown (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1970), 48.
6. Swift to John Worrall, Jan. 18, 1729, Corr., 3:207–8.
7. Swift to John Winder, Jan. 13, 1699, Corr., 1:138.
8. Swift to Rev. John Kendall, Feb. 11, 1692, Corr., 1:104.
9. Family of Swift, 5:193.
10. Trevelyan, 1:93; G. K. Chesterton, The Rolling English Road.
11. Deane Swift, 99–100.
12. Orrery, 96; Henri Misson, M. Misson’s Memoirs and Observations in His Travels over England, Written Originally in French and Translated by Mr. Ozell (London, 1719), 332; Johnson, Life of Swift, 6; George Faulkner to the Earl of Chesterfield, in Nichols, A Supplement to Dr. Swift’s Works, 758–59.
13. See J. B. Owen, “Political Patronage in Eighteenth-Century England,” in The Triumph of Culture: Eighteenth-Century Perspectives, ed. Paul Fritz and David Williams (Toronto: Hakkert, 1972). Swift’s wages will be discussed below.
14. Spectator 469.
15. Quoted by Homer E. Woodbridge, Sir William Temple: The Man and His Work (New York: Modern Language Association, 1940), 106. The treaties were the short-lived Triple Alliance of 1668 between England, Holland, and Sweden, and the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678–79 that concluded a naval conflict with Holland.
16. Sir William Temple, Works (1814), 2:569.
17. Jane Dunn calls the marriage “one of the great love stories of the century” in Read My Heart: Dorothy Osborne and Sir William Temple, a Love Story in the Age of Revolution (London: Harper, 2008), xvii. Woolf included an essay on the Osborne letters in The Common Reader.
18. Quoted by G. C. Moore Smith, The Early Essays and Romances of Sir William Temple, Bt. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1930), 194, 11.
19. Béat de Muralt, quoted by Woodbridge, Sir William Temple, 232.
20. Alexander Pope, Windsor Forest, line 344; Temple, Upon the Gardens of Epicurus, in Five Miscellaneous Essays by Sir William Temple, ed. Samuel Holt Monk (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963), 25.
21. Josua Poole, The English Parnassus: A Help to English Poesie (1657), quoted by Herman J. Real, “A Taste of Composition Rare: The Tale’s Matter and Void,” in Reading Swift, 3:73 (I have abridged Poole’s long catalogue a bit).
22. Temple’s Memoirs, quoted by Samuel Holt Monk in his introduction to Five Miscellaneous Essays, xix; An Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning, in Five Miscellaneous Essays, 71.
23. Elias identifies several of them (124–25).
24. Ehrenpreis, 1:120, 3:1050; Carpenter, “A Tale of a Tub as an Irish Text,” 39.
25. William Makepeace Thackeray, The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, in Works (London: Smith, Elder, 1879), 389; Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Sir William Temple,” in The Works of Lord Macaulay (New York: Longmans, Green, 1897), 6:315.
26. Reported by Olivier de Corancez, Mémoires de J.-J. Rousseau, in Mémoires biographiques et littéraires, ed. Mathurin de Lescure (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1881), 278.
27. Delany, 100; Temple to William Godolphin, Jan. 22, 1666, quoted by Elias, 125.
28. Lady Giffard, “The Character of Sir W. Temple,” quoted by Thomas Peregrine Courtenay, Memoirs of the Life, Works, and Correspondence of Sir William Temple (London: Longman, 1836), 2:145; Temple, An Essay upon the Cure of the Gout by Moxa, in Works (1814), 3:270, 27; An Essay upon the Cure of the Gout by Moxa, in Works (1814), 3:270. Moxa, or mugwort, is a medicinal herb.
29. Elias (96) notes Swift’s absence of comment on Gilbert Burnet’s account of Temple’s conceit.
30. The “swans” anecdote is quoted by Craik, 1:32; James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (London: Faber and Faber, 1950), 177. Joyce is quoted by Mackie L. Jarrell, “Swiftiana in Finnegans Wake,” ELH 26 (1959): 284; Jarrell shows that highly specific allusions to Swift and his circle are pervasive in Finnegans Wake.
31. Swift to Thomas Swift, May 3, 1692, Corr., 1:110; Elias, 78.
32. Samuel
Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh, Apr. 22, 1752, in The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson, ed. Anna Laetitia Barbauld (London: Phillips, 1804), 6:173–74. Ehrenpreis, as usual, ignores this anecdote.
33. Journal, 1:9, 113 (Sept. 9, Dec. 5, 1710); Courtenay, Memoirs of the Life . . . of Sir William Temple, 2:132; Elias, 143–46; Lyon, 27 (adding “it is certain” that Swift’s relatives sent him money).
34. Journal, 1:230–31 (Apr. 3–4, 1711).
35. Directions to Servants, PW, 13:18. The relevance of this passage is noted by Sybil Le Brocquy, Swift’s Most Valuable Friend (Dublin: Dolmen, 1968), 36.
36. Sir William Temple to Sir Robert Southwell, May 29, 1690, Corr., 1:101. The letter was preserved in the Southwell papers.
37. Forster, 71.
38. Family of Swift, 5:193. Bruce Arnold reviews reasons why Swift might have been useful to Southwell in “Jonathan Swift: Some Current Biographical Problems,” in Reading Swift, 4:39–43, but in the same volume James Woolley dismisses the connection as unlikely: “Swift’s First Published Poem: Ode to the King,” 277–78.
39. PW, 1:xxxvii.
40. Forster, 116.
41. Gulliver’s Travels, book 1, ch. 6, p. 61. The Lilliputian system is drawn from Plato’s Republic and More’s Utopia.
42. Quoted by Courtenay, Memoirs of the Life . . . of Sir William Temple, 2:147–48.
43. Julia G. Longe, Martha, Lady Giffard: Her Life and Correspondence (London: George Allen, 1911), 197.
44. Journal, 1:183 (Feb. 8, 1711); see A. C. Elias Jr., “Stella’s Writing-Master,” Scriblerian 9, no. 2 (1977): 134–39; To Dr. Swift on His Birthday, November 30, 1721, line 2, Poems, 2:737.
45. On the Death of Mrs. Johnson, PW, 5:227. The evidence—or lack of it—for the alleged portraits is carefully reviewed by Henry Mangan in an appendix to the Journal, 2:687–703.
46. Swift to Stella, January 1698, Corr., 1:129.
47. On the Death of Mrs. Johnson, 5:231; Gulliver’s Travels, book 2, ch. 4, p. 114; see Margaret Anne Doody, “Swift and the Mess of Narrative,” in Locating Swift, ed. Aileen Douglas et al. (Dublin: Four Courts, 1998), 115.
48. Details from Ehrenpreis, 1:260; and Elias, 148–50. Temple’s will is printed by Courtenay, Memoirs of the Life . . . of Sir William Temple, 2:484–85.
49. Glendinning, 237; David P. French, “The Identity of C.M.P.G.N.S.T.N.S.,” in Jonathan Swift: Tercentenary Essays, ed. French (Tulsa: University of Tulsa Press, 1967), 1–9; Swift to Vanessa, June 8, 1714, Corr., 1:606. Since the Gentleman’s Magazine letter contains facts that were not yet public knowledge, its author must have had a personal connection with Moor Park in the 1690s, and must have lived on until 1757. This drastically narrows the range of possible candidates.
50. All quotations are from “Anecdotes of Dean Swift and Miss Johnson,” Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle, November 1757, 487–91; the letter is reprinted in full by Le Brocquy, Swift’s Most Valuable Friend, 12–20.
51. Bruce Arnold saw a note by Denis Johnston explaining the cum paganis satanas identification: “Jonathan Swift,” 4:44–47.
52. Ehrenpreis, 1:104.
53. Le Brocquy, Swift’s Most Valuable Friend, 23–27. In this section I draw also on Johnston, 94–96. Geree thought that Stella was the youngest sibling rather than the oldest, which suggests that he never met the other two.
54. Frederick A. Pottle, James Boswell: The Earlier Years, 1740–1769 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 98, 351–52; “a young diplomat’s” comment is quoted by Ehrenpreis, 1:120.
55. Review of Orrery, Monthly Review, November 1751, 416; Ehrenpreis, 1:120.
56. Letter by a diplomat named de Cros, working for the Duke of Holstein, quoted by T. G. Wilson, “Swift’s Personality,” in Jeffares, Fair Liberty Was All His Cry, 34.
57. Johnston, 113; he gives sources (82) showing that Lady Temple stayed mainly in London.
58. Orrery, 83, 332 (the anecdote about Jane is a handwritten note in the margin of his own biography of Swift).
59. Reminiscences Written by Mr. Horace Walpole in 1788, ed. Paget Toynbee (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924), 144, reporting the opinion of Alexander Pope and John Gay.
60. PW, 5:227; Le Brocquy offers this interpretation in Swift’s Most Valuable Friend, 25.
61. Orrery, 82. Temple’s will is printed by Courtenay, Memoirs of the Life . . . of Sir William Temple, 2:484–85.
62. Shane Leslie, The Script of Jonathan Swift (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935), 12 (noting that Stella misspells the word business in exactly the way Swift had complained of in the Journal to Stella).
63. “Anecdotes of Dean Swift and Miss Johnson,” 489. Elias (144) notes that Mose is mentioned in a 1697 Moor Park document.
64. Deane Swift, 35.
65. Downie, 342.
66. Johnston, ix, xi.
67. Lyon, 3.
68. Monthly Review, November 1751, 416.
69. The Black Book of King’s Inns, quoted by Johnston, 33; on Swift’s appointment as attorney, 50.
70. Ehrenpreis, 2:368n; Johnston, 45.
71. Family of Swift, 5:193; Temple to Sir Robert Southwell, May 29, 1690, Corr., 1:101; Deane Swift, 34.
72. Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, served as lord lieutenant of Ireland, the representative there of the Crown (Johnston, 203–8).
73. Bruce Arnold, “Those Who Seek to Obtain My Estate: Swift on Love and Envy,” Swift Studies 11 (1996), 42.
74. Johnston, 209–13.
75. This point is made by Le Brocquy, Swift’s Most Valuable Friend, 32–33.
CHAPTER 3. “LONG CHOOSING, AND BEGINNING LATE”
1. Sydney Smith, quoted by Hesketh Pearson, Lives of the Wits (London: Heinemann, 1962), 125; John Milton, Paradise Lost, IX:26.
2. Macaulay, 2:419.
3. Deane Swift, 108.
4. Julian Hoppit, A Land of Liberty? England, 1689–1727 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 34; Macaulay, 1:406; quoted by Wilson (quoting the king’s joke), “Swift in Trinity,” 22.
5. Swift to William Swift, Nov. 29, 1692, Corr., 1:116; Norman Sykes, Church and State in England in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), 149. Swift specified Canterbury and Westminster in the autobiographical Family of Swift, 5:195.
6. On the king’s offer to Swift: Deane Swift, 108, and Orrery, 81; Calhoun Winton, Captain Steele: The Early Career of Richard Steele (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964), 39.
7. Johnson, Life of Swift, 4.
8. Macaulay, 2:499.
9. Elizabeth Hamilton, The Backstairs Dragon: A Life of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969), 177.
10. Marginalia to Burnet’s History of His Own Times and to Macky’s Characters of the Court of Britain, PW, 5:285, 259.
11. Sermon, On Mutual Subjection, PW, 9:142–43; Orrery, 318, 424.
12. Family of Swift, 5:194; on the issues involved see Geoffrey Holmes, The Making of a Great Power: Late Stuart and Early Georgian Britain, 1660–1722 (London: Longman, 1993), 222–23.
13. See John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York: Knopf, 1989), 159.
14. Family of Swift, 5:193; letter to Henrietta Howard, Aug. 19, 1727, Corr., 3:120–21.
15. Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education, in The Educational Writings of John Locke, ed. James L. Axtell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), section 20, p. 130; the relevance of this passage to Swift is noted by Carol Houlihan Flynn, The Body in Swift and Defoe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 98. Scott, 1:23n; Johnson, Life of Swift, 4; Temple, Upon the Gardens of Epicurus, 35.
16. Journal, 1:338, 349 (Aug. 23, Sept. 1, 1711); Swift to Sheridan, July 1 and Aug. 12, 1727; Corr., 3:103, 115.
17. Temple, Of Health and Long Life, in Essays of Sir William Temple, ed. J. A. Nicklin (London: Blackie, 1910), 142.
18. Swift to Ford, Nov. 20, 1733, Corr., 3:707.
19. Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, lines 83–84
, 2:556. A full account of the disease’s effects in Swift’s life is given by Wanda J. Creaser, “‘The Most Mortifying Malady’: Jonathan Swift’s Dizzying World and Dublin’s Mentally Ill,” Swift Studies 19 (2004): 27–48. Even today, though its effects can be alleviated, it remains incurable: Alexander Thomas and Jeffrey Harris, “Current Epidemiology of Ménière’s Syndrome,” Otolaryngologic Clinics of North America 43, no. 5 (2010): 965–70.
20. Deane Swift, 272; Pilkington, 1:36. Deane Swift (100) mentions the medical advice against exercise.
21. PW, 1:xxxvii; Delany, 118–19; Johnson, Life of Swift, 55.
22. Glendinning, 226; Irvin Ehrenpreis, The Personality of Jonathan Swift (London: Methuen, 1958), 29.
23. Swift to Rev. John Kendall, Feb. 11, 1692, Corr., 1:104 (annotating this letter, Woolley conjectures that the “person of great honour” may have been Henry Viscount Sydney); Occasioned by Sir W——T——’s Late Illness and Recovery, lines 131–32, Poems, 1:55.
24. Swift to Thomas Swift, Dec. 6, 1693, Corr., 1:118.
25. Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century, rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 1982), 48.
26. Delany, 26.
27. Swift to Rev. Henry Clarke, Dec. 12, 1734, Corr., 4:23; on the Oxford M.A., see Downie, 43.
28. Elias explains these arrangements in detail (50–54).
29. Swift to Deane Swift, June 3, 1694, Corr., 1:120; on the requirement of the testimonial, see Landa, 6.
30. Swift to Temple, Oct. 6, 1694, Corr., 1:122; Nokes, 29; Elias, 50.
31. See Landa, 5–8.
32. Family of Swift, PW, 5:194.
33. Sheridan, 16; Craik, 1:59; Ehrenpreis, 1:148; Elias, 229.
34. Family of Swift, 5:194.
35. Landa, 9–10, makes the case for Ashe’s role.
36. Patrick Fitzgerald, “‘Black 97’: Reconsidering Scottish Migration to Ireland in the Seventeenth Century and the Scotch-Irish in America,” in Ulster and Scotland: History, Language, and Identity, ed. William Kelly and John R. Young (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004), 79.
37. Details from Ehrenpreis, 1:157–67; and from Charles McConnell, The History of the Parish of Kilroot (St. Colman’s Parish Church, 2003).
38. Landa, 12–14.
39. See Connolly, Divided Kingdom, 316.