by Leo Damrosch
47. Pope, Mary Gulliver to Captain Lemuel Gulliver, lines 105–6, p. 279.
48. Swift to Pope, Sept. 29, 1725, Corr., 2:606–7.
49. R. S. Crane, “The Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos, and the History of Ideas,” first published in 1962, reprinted in Crane’s The Idea of the Humanities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 2:261–82.
50. Rawson, Gulliver and the Gentle Reader, 31.
51. Gulliver’s Travels, book 4, ch. 12, p. 296; Wesley, The Doctrine of Original Sin, 512.
52. Gulliver’s Travels, book 4, ch. 12, p. 296; Swift to Ford, Jan. 19, 1724, Corr., 2:487.
CHAPTER 25. GULLIVER IN ENGLAND
1. Poems, 2:401, 405. Sheridan said the first was written at Chester; Scott printed the second, reproducing the report of Rev. Richard Graves. (Without explanation, Davis gives the date as “17—.”)
2. Real, Securing Swift, 92–94.
3. Family of Swift, 5:188; Deane Swift, appendix, p. 9.
4. See Corr., 3:11n.
5. Swift to Tickell, July 7, 1726, Corr., 2:649.
6. Swift to Sheridan, July 8, 1726, Corr., 2:651.
7. Pope to Swift, Nov. 16, 1726, Corr., 3:52.
8. Swift to Benjamin Motte, Aug. 8, 1726; Motte to Swift, Aug. 11, 1726, Corr., 3:9–10, 12. Ehrenpreis (3:493–508) gives a full account of the publication of Gulliver’s Travels.
9. Swift to Pope, Feb. 7, 1736, Corr., 4:259.
10. Pope to the Earl of Stratford, Oct. 5, 1725, in The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, 2:328; Maynard Mack, The Garden and the City: Retirement and Politics in the Later Poetry of Pope (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 233.
11. Pope, imitation of Horace Satire 2.1.123–28.
12. Swift to Pope, Sept. 20, 1723, Corr., 2:469.
13. Pope, Essay on Man, 4.390; Swift to Pope, July 16, 1728, Corr., 3:190.
14. Dickinson, Bolingbroke, 241.
15. Johnson, Life of Gay, in Lives 2:268.
16. John Gay, Poetry and Prose, ed. Vinton A. Dearing (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), 2:377–78.
17. Swift to Pope, Aug. 30, 1716, Corr., 2:178; Spence, Observations, 1:57, 107; John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, 3.16.
18. Scott, 295; Pope to Swift, Jan. 6, 1734, Corr., 3:716–17.
19. Verses on the Death of Dr Swift, lines 47–52, 2:555; Pope, An Essay on Criticism, lines 525, 625, 215, 297.
20. Scott, 453; E. J. Trelawney, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (Boston, Ticknor and Fields, 1858), 37.
21. Swift, To Doctor Delany, lines 65–66, 2:502; On Poetry: A Rapsody, lines 87–90; Poems, 2:643.
22. The Dunciad, appendix to the 1729 edition, 201n.
23. On Poetry: A Rapsody, lines 61–70, 167–74, 2:642, 645–46.
24. Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, Jan. 13, 1780, in The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Mrs. Paget Toynbee (Oxford: Clarendon, 1904), 11:102; Johnson, Life of Pope, in Lives, 3:212.
25. Swift to Pope, Sept. 20, 1723, Corr., 2:469–70.
26. Canon Francis Stratford, quoted by Ehrenpreis, 3:518; Dr. Swift to Mr. Pope, While He Was Writing the Dunciad, lines 1–8, Poems, 2:405.
27. Dr. Swift to Mr. Pope, While He Was Writing the Dunciad, lines 9–16, 2:406.
28. Pope to the Earl of Oxford, Aug. 15, 1727, The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, 2:443; Swift to Pope, Aug. 4, 1726; Pope to Swift, Aug. 17, 1726, Corr., 3:5, 16.
29. Letter from Lady Orrery to her husband, in Orrery, 404, 67; Johnson, Life of Pope, 200 (quoting a famous line by Edward Young).
30. Spence, Observations, 1:54–55.
31. Sheridan, 451.
32. Gay to Swift, Nov. 9, 1728; Swift to Gay, Nov. 20, 1729, Nov. 10, 1730, Corr., 3:264–65, 269, 334; Mack, The Garden and the City, 256.
33. A Libel on Doctor Delany and a Certain Great Lord, lines 71–72, 81–82), 2:482. The whole story, too complicated to trace here, is surveyed by James McLaverty, “The Failure of the Swift-Pope Miscellanies (1727–32) and The Life and Genuine Character of Doctor Swift,” in Reading Swift, 5:131–48.
34. Swift to Pope, Oct. 12, 1727, Corr., 3:131; Swift’s will, PW, 13:154.
CHAPTER 26. DISILLUSIONMENT AND LOSS
1. Quoted by Scott, 297.
2. Swift to the Earl of Peterborough, Apr. 28, 1726, Corr., 2:642; see Ferguson, 140–41, and Ehrenpreis, 3:484–85.
3. Corr., 3:29–30 (written on a blank sheet of a letter from Arbuthnot); see Louis A. Landa, “Swift’s Deanery Income,” in Essays in Eighteenth-Century Literature, 109. He had an additional ₤200 a year from Laracor.
4. Swift to Lady Betty Germaine, Jan. 8, 1733, Corr., 3:574. My account of this period is much indebted to James Woolley, “Friends and Enemies in Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 8 (1979): 205–32.
5. Pope, On a Certain Lady at Court, lines 1–4.
6. Arbuthnot to Swift, Sept. 20, 1726, Corr., 3:28.
7. A pair of supplementary couplets to Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, written in the margin of some copies of Faulkner’s Dublin edition (Poems, 2:566n.).
8. “Lemuel Gulliver” to Mrs. Howard, Nov. 28, 1726, Corr., 3:59.
9. Bolingbroke to Swift, June 17, 1727, Corr., 3:96. James Woolley says, “It is likely that Bolingbroke was relaying a message from Mrs. Howard” (“Friends and Enemies,” 229n); Swift to Lady Betty Germaine, Jan. 8, 1733, Corr., 3:576.
10. A Pastoral Dialogue between Richmond Lodge and Marble Hill, Poems, 2:409–10.
11. Ibid., lines 13–18; Psalm 146:3.
12. Pope to Swift, Oct. 9, 1729, Corr., 3:258; Character of Mrs. Howard, PW, 5:213–14.
13. Character of Mrs. Howard, 5:214–15.
14. Lady Suffolk is quoted by John Wilson Croker in Letters to and from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, and Her Second Husband, the Hon. George Berkeley, from 1712 to 1767 (London: J. Murray, 1824), 1:xliii; the full text is printed on xxxviii–xliv. (A comment by David Woolley (Corr., 3:99n) implies that the two versions differ substantially, but that is not the case.) Pope to Swift, Oct. 9, 1729, Corr., 3:258.
15. Tracy Borman, Henrietta Howard: King’s Mistress, Queen’s Servant (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007), 152–65; Plumb, 2:163, 175.
16. The Countess of Suffolk to Swift, Sept. 25, 1731; Swift to the Countess of Suffolk, Oct. 26, 1731, Corr., 3:434, 438.
17. Directions for a Birthday Song, lines 209–10, 217–20, 225–36, Poems, 2:467.
18. Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, lines 170–88, 2:559–60.
19. William King to Swift, Jan. 23, 1739, Corr., 4:557.
20. Poems, 2:557n.
21. Swift to Worrall, July 15, 1726, Corr., 2:656.
22. Swift to James Stopford, Oct. 15, 1726; Swift to Sheridan, Aug. 29, 1727, Corr., 3:33, 122.
23. Swift to Sheridan, Sept. 2, 1727, Corr., 3:123–24.
24. Holyhead Journal, PW, 5:203.
25. Ibid., 5:204–7.
26. Holyhead, Sept. 25, 1727, Poems, 2:420.
27. On Dreams, lines 5–6, Poems, 2:363; Holyhead Journal, 5:205–6.
28. My interpretation is indebted to DePorte, “Night Thoughts in Swift,” 658–59. See also DePorte’s “Swift, God, and Power,” in Fox and Tooley, Walking Naboth’s Vineyard, 92.
29. Swift to Worrall, Sept. 12, 1717, Corr., 3:126.
30. Le Brocquy, Swift’s Most Valuable Friend, 10.
31. To Dr. Swift on His Birthday, November 30, 1721, lines 53–58, 2:738.
32. A Receipt to Restore Stella’s Youth, lines 7–8, Poems, 2:759.
33. Stella’s Birthday, March 13, 1727, lines 1–4, 13–14, 35–36, 83–88, Poems, 2:763–66.
34. Prayers for a Person during Her Sickness, PW, 9:254; Ehrenpreis, 3:546.
35. Swift to Mrs. Moore, Dec. 7, 1727, Corr., 3:145–46.
36. On the Death of Mrs. Johnson, 5:227.
37. Sheridan, 311–12.
38. Orrery, 332–33; the Laracor lady quoted by R. Wyse Jackson, Swift and His Circle (Dublin: Talbot, 1945), 32.
; 39. On the Death of Mrs. Johnson, 5:229; Lyon, 19.
40. Stella’s will is reprinted in full by Wilde, The Closing Years of Dean Swift’s Life, 97–100.
41. Lyon, 48.
42. Scott, 223n (he says the envelope was in the possession of “Dr. Tuke of St. Stephen’s Green”); Stephen, Swift, 139.
43. Orrery, 333.
CHAPTER 27. FRUSTRATED PATRIOT
1. Sheridan, 235; Carteret to Swift, Mar. 24, 1733, Mar. 24, 1737, Corr., 3:608, 4:406.
2. Letter from George Faulkner to the Earl of Chesterfield, in Nichols, A Supplement to Dr. Swift’s Works, 763.
3. Swift to Sheridan, June 15, 1735, Corr., 4:123.
4. Sheridan, 368–69.
5. These tales are surveyed by Jarrell, “‘Jack and the Dane.’”
6. Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, lines 391–98, 2:568.
7. Swift to Rev. James Stopford, Nov. 26, 1725, Corr., 2:619–20; William Butler Yeats, “The Tables of the Law,” in Mythologies (New York: Collier, 1959), 301 (the speaker is a recurrent character in Yeats’s writings, Owen Aherne).
8. Swift to Charles Wogan, Aug. 2, 1732, Corr., 3:514–15.
9. Delany, 102; Psalm 37:1 (also Proverbs 34:19).
10. The Substance of What Was Said by the Dean of St. Patrick’s, PW, 12:147–48. On bonfires and tavern signs, see Probyn, “Jonathan Swift at the Sign of the Drapier,” 3:226; and Jarrell, “‘Jack and the Dane,’” 314.
11. Swift to the Corporation of Cork, Aug. 15, 1737, Corr., 4:468; The Last Will and Testament of Jonathan Swift, PW, 13:155.
12. Swift to Pope, July 8, 1733, Corr., 3:663.
13. Lecky, A History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, 1:205–7.
14. Lord Egmont, quoted by Ehrenpreis, 2:771.
15. Craik, 2:177; Doing Good, PW, 9:234; Sheridan, 234.
16. Delany, 7, 133.
17. Orrery, 425; Lyon (146) remembered the name as Stumpa-Nympha.
18. The Last Will and Testament of Jonathan Swift, 13:150; Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, lines 479–82, 2:572; The Legacy of Swift: A Bi-Centenary Record of St. Patrick’s Hospital, Dublin (Dublin: Colm O Lochlainn, 1948), xii. See also Creaser, “‘The Most Mortifying Malady.’”
19. Swift to Bolingbroke and Pope, Apr. 5, 1729, Corr., 3:230.
20. Swift to Pope, June 12, 1732, Corr., 3:489; King to Edward Southwell, Apr. 23, 1728, quoted by Ehrenpreis, 3:571. The historical context is reviewed in two articles by James Kelly: “Jonathan Swift and the Irish Economy in the 1720s,” Eighteenth-Century Ireland 6 (1991): 7–36, and “Harvests and Hardships,” 65–105.
21. A Modest Proposal, PW, 12:109; subsequent quotations are from 110–18; Swift to Dean Brandreth, June 30, 1732, Corr., 3:493. George Wittkowsky describes several Modest Proposals by earlier writers: “Swift’s Modest Proposal: The Biography of an Early Georgian Pamphlet,” Journal of the History of Ideas 4 (1943): 88.
22. A Proposal for Giving Badges to Beggars, PW, 13:135.
23. See James Kelly, “Infanticide in Eighteenth-Century Ireland,” Irish Economic and Social History 19 (1992): 5–25.
24. Edmund Wilson, “Karl Marx: Poet of Commodities,” New Republic, Jan. 8, 1940, 46.
25. Swift to Pope, Oct. 31, 1729, Corr., 3:263; An Answer to a Paper Called a Memorial, PW, 12:23, quoting Proverbs 1:20–26 (condensed by Swift).
26. Ann Cline Kelly, Jonathan Swift and Popular Culture, 185.
27. T. S. Eliot, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry, ed. Ronald Schuchard (London: Faber and Faber, 1993), 219.
28. Francis Grant to Swift, Mar. 14, 1734; Swift to Grant, Mar. 23, 1734; Swift to the Countess of Suffolk, Oct. 26, 1731, Corr., 3:727, 730, 437.
29. A Proposal for Giving Badges to Beggars, 13:138.
30. The Duty of Mutual Subjection, PW, 9:144; Account Books, 3, 13, 104, 156. See Louis A. Landa, “Jonathan Swift and Charity,” in Essays in Eighteenth-Century Literature, 49–62.
31. A Proposal for Giving Badges to Beggars, 13:135, 139.
32. Nokes, 400; Delany, 6.
33. Connolly, “Swift and Protestant Ireland,” 43, 46.
34. Dublin Journal, Nov. 26, 1737, quoted in PW, 13:xl. The Dublin Journal was edited by Swift’s publisher, George Faulkner.
35. Quoted in PW, 13:xl.
CHAPTER 28. SWIFT AMONG THE WOMEN
1. Swift to Bolingbroke, Mar. 21, 1730, Corr., 3:294–95.
2. Sheridan to Swift, May 26, 1735; Sheridan to Swift, Dec. 25, 1734; Swift to Sheridan, Jan. 3, 1735, Corr., 4:115, 31, 33. I have been gratefully reliant on David Woolley’s unraveling of the verbal conundrums.
3. Scott, 288.
4. Note on a blank page bound at the beginning of Lyon’s annotated copy of Hawkesworth’s Life.
5. Gay to Swift, Nov. 16, 1732; Pope and Arbuthnot to Swift, Dec. 5, 1732, Corr., 3:560–62, 563n.
6. Pope, Epitaph on Mr. Gay; Gay, My Own Epitaph.
7. Swift to Pope, Mar. 23, 1733; Swift to Orrery, Aug. 12, 1733, Corr., 3:617, 680–81.
8. Boswell, Life of Johnson, 4:29, under 1780 (diplomatically, Boswell didn’t give Orrery’s name, but other sources confirm it); Monck-Berkeley, Literary Relics, xvi; note by Lyon in the University of Pennsylvania version of his annotated copy of Hawkesworth: Elias, “Swift’s Don Quixote, Dunkin’s Virgil Travesty, and Other New Intelligence,” 75.
9. Orrery, 168; Sheridan, introduction, unnumbered page; Cadenus and Vanessa, lines 758–61, 2:710 and textual note (which I follow in giving “flattery” rather than “vanity”).
10. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Commonplace Book, quoted in Montagu’s Complete Letters, ed. Robert Halsband (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), 3:56n.
11. Letter to a Young Lady on Her Marriage, 9:90, 89.
12. Samuel Richardson, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (London: Chapman and Hall, 1902), 4:294. Details of the Staunton-Rochfort marriage, and information about the two families, are given by George P. Mayhew in Rage or Raillery: The Swift Manuscripts at the Huntington Library (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1967), 37–57.
13. Of the Education of Ladies, PW, 4:225–28; Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ed. Carol H. Poston (New York: Norton, 1975), ch. 2, p. 19.
14. Swift to Pope, Feb. 6, 1730, Corr., 3:279; preface by Swift to The Poetry of Mary Barber, ed. Bernard Tucker (Lewiston, Maine: Edwin Mellen, 1992), 40. The Barber affair is explored by Barnett, Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women, 87–92; see also Margaret Anne Doody, “Swift among the Women,” Yearbook of English Studies 18 (1988): 68–92.
15. Frances Arabella Kelly to Swift, Feb. 2, May 4, 1733, Corr., 3:586, 643.
16. The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, 1st ser. (London: Richard Bentley, 1861), 1:396.
17. Ibid., 1:24, 29.
18. Swift to Mary Pendarves, Oct. 7, 1734, Corr., 4:3–4.
19. Swift to Mary Pendarves, Jan. 29, 1736; Mary Pendarves to Swift, May 16, 1735, Corr., 4:258, 109.
20. Frances Burney, Memoirs of Dr. Burney (London, 1832), 3:169.
21. The full conversation is in Pilkington, 1:28–31.
22. Hints towards an Essay on Conversation, 4:91.
23. Barnett, Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women, 85.
24. Joyce, Finnegans Wake, 144; see Jarrell, “Swiftiana in Finnegans Wake,” 283; Swift to John Barber, Mar. 9, 1738, Corr., 4:501–2.
25. Swift to Rebecca Dingley, Aug. 29, 1733, Corr., 3:688. The Christmas gifts are mentioned in a note from Swift on Dec. 28, 1734, Corr., 4:33.
26. Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, lines 79–94, 225–42, 2:556, 562.
27. Journal, 1:119 (Dec. 12, 1710).
28. The Grand Question Debated, lines 153–60, 171–74, Poems, 3:872–73. Peter J. Schakel brings out the significance of all of the poems written at Market Hill—not just the ones collected in Poems under that title—in “Swift’s Voices: Innovation and Complication in the Poems Written at Market Hill,” in Reading Swift, 4:310–25.
29. My Lady’s Lame
ntation and Complaint against the Dean, lines 67–72, 137–42, Poems, 3:853, 855; Ehrenpreis, 3:604.
30. Lady Acheson Weary of the Dean, lines 37–44, Poems, 3:861.
31. Faulkner, quoted in Poems, 3:890n; Swift to Pope, Feb. 13, 1729; Swift to Sheridan, Sept. 18, 1728, Corr., 3:209, 3:194.
32. An Excellent New Panegyric on Skinnibonia, lines 31–40, 43–50. The poem is printed in full, with interesting commentary by James Woolley, in “Swift’s ‘Skinnibonia’: A New Poem from Lady Acheson’s Manuscript,” in Reading Swift, 5:309–42. The poem was transcribed by Lady Acheson, with a few corrections in Swift’s handwriting.
33. Death and Daphne, lines 57–58, 61–62, 93–96, Poems, 3:904–5.
34. Nora Crow Jaffe, “Swift and the ‘Agreeable Young Lady, but Extremely Lean,’” in Contemporary Studies of Swift’s Poetry, ed. John Irwin Fischer and Donald C. Mell (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1981), 149–57. (More recently, Nora Crow Jaffe has published under the name Nora Crow, as cited earlier.)
35. Orrery, 168.
36. The Dean’s Reasons for Not Building at Drapier’s Hill, lines 69–72, 85–94, Poems, 3:901.
37. My Lady’s Lamentation, lines 159–60, 165–72, Poems, 3:856; The Dean’s Reasons for Not Building at Drapier’s Hill, lines 15–18, 3:856, 899.
38. Swift to Charles Ford, Dec. 9, 1732, Corr., 3:566.
CHAPTER 29. THE DISGUSTING POEMS
1. Johnson, Life of Swift, 62–63.
2. Ehrenpreis, The Personality of Jonathan Swift. 39. An often-cited defense of Swift as moralist is Donald Greene, “On Swift’s ‘Scatological’ Poems,” in Vieth, Essential Articles for the Study of Swift’s Poetry, 223.
3. Lyon, 33.
4. Cadenus and Vanessa, lines 160–63, 2:691; Deane Swift, 264.
5. “Upon His Drinking a Bowl,” in The Complete Poems of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, 53.
6. Tobias Smollett, Humphry Clinker, ed. Angus Ross (London: Penguin, 1967), 313.
7. A Modest Defence of a Late Poem by an Unknown Author, Called “The Lady’s Dressing Room” (translating Horace, Epistola ad Pisones, lines 179–88), PW, 5:339, appendix C. Herbert Davis relegates this essay to an appendix because of uncertainty that Swift wrote it. Faulkner, however, who enjoyed Swift’s full confidence, identified it as “by D——n S——t.”