JONATHAN SWIFT 1667-1745 Jonathan Swift, born in 1667, was the son of an English gentleman settled in Ireland; he began life as secretary to Sir William Temple (1689-1699). After that statesman's death he obtained some small preferment in Ireland; but in 1710 came back to England, and for some years supported Harley and Bolingbroke, the heads of the Tory party, by a series of political pamphlets. With the accession of George I, the Tory Ministry was irretrievably ruined, and Swift was compelled to return to Ireland, to the Deanery of St. Patrick, the only reward he had received for his services. The rest of his life was spent in what he regarded as banishment, and was further embittered by his unhappy relations with two ladies, Esther Johnson and Hester Vanhomrigh, the Stella and Vanessa of his journals and his verse. the former, whom he had first known in the house of Sir William Temple, in which she was brought up, he was united for many years in marriage, but the tie was never acknowledged during his lifetime, and was thus the cause of much suffering if also of much happiness to both. With the latter he formed a friendship of the most ardent kind, which the lady desired should lead to marriage, and she died broken-hearted on discovering the fact that he was already legally bound to another. Later in life, disease of the brain came on, and he died mad in 1745. Το There is no greater master of satire than Swift. He thought clearly, wrote a singularly pure English, and could make every sentence an epigram, without impairing the continuous flow of his argument. Two of his best-known works have an allegorical character. The "Tale of a Tub" is directed against religious sects, and was written with such license of illustration that Queen Anne would never permit the author to obtain the preferment he coveted in England. In Gulliver's Travels" the satire is rather against abuses of government and the pleasant vices of society. In the latter part of this, as in several of his minor pieces, he is at times very coarse. This fault grew upon him in later life, perhaps partly in connection with a diseased brain, and has caused his writings to be regarded with suspicion. Yet, judged by the standard of his better works, Swift is a moralist of high stamp. He attacked the sceptics of his day with scathing irony. He was the first man who had the heart to feel for the oppressed Irish peasantry, and the courage to denounce the injustice of English misrule. His "Drapier's Letters" form an epoch in constitutional history; and the peaceful struggle for Irish independence dates from them. The "Journal to Stella" has passages of infinite tenderness. There have been more faultless and purer-minded men than Swift; but few have seen more clearly where wrong lay, or have attacked it more fearlessly. The prose works of Swift are among the best specimens we possess of a thorough English style, as may be seen in the two essays selected. The essay "On Style" was contributed to "The Tatler." T ON STYLE HE following letter has laid before me many great and manifest evils in the world of letters, which I had over looked; but they open to me a very busy scene, and it will require no small care and application to amend errors which are become so universal. The affection of politeness is exposed in this epistle with a great deal of wit and discernment; so that whatever discourses I may fall into hereafter upon the subjects the writer treats of, I shall at present lay the matter before the world, without the least alteration from the words of my correspondent: 'TO ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, ESQuire-Sir: There are some abuses among us of great consequence, the reformation of which is properly your province; though, as far as I have been conversant in your papers, you have not yet considered them. These are the deplorable ignorance that for some years hath reigned among our English writers, the great depravity of our taste, and the continual corruption of our style. I say nothing here of those who handle particular sciences, divinity, law, physic, and the like; I mean the traders in history, politics, and the belles-lettres, together with those by whom books are not translated, but, as the common expressions are, done' out of French, Latin, or other language, and made English. I cannot but observe to you that until of late years a Grub-street book was always bound in sheepskin, with suitable print and paper, the price never above a shilling, and taken off wholly by common tradesmen or country pedlars; but now they appear in all sizes and shapes, and in all places. They are handed about from lapfuls in every coffee-house to persons of quality; are shown in Westminster-hall and the Court of Requests. You may see them gilt, and in royal paper of five or six hundred pages, and rated accordingly. I would engage to furnish you with a catalogue of English books, published within the compass of seven years past, which at the first hand would cost you £100, wherein you shall not be able to find ten lines together of common grammar or common sense. "These two evils, ignorance and want of taste, have produced a third; I mean the continual corruption of our English tongue, which, without some timely remedy, will suffer more by the false refinements of twenty years past than it hath been improved in the foregoing hundred. And this is what I design chiefly to enlarge upon, leaving the former evils to your animadversion. "But instead of giving you a list of the late refinements crept into our language, I here send you the copy of a letter I received, some time ago, from a most accomplished person in this way of writing; upon which I shall make some remarks. It is in these terms: 66 6 'SIR: I cou'd n't get the things you sent for all about town —I thot to ha come down myself, and then I'd h' brot 'um; but I ha'nt don't, and I believe I can't do 't, that's poss-Tom begins to gi'mself airs, because he 's going with the plenipo's— 'T is said the French king will bamboozl us agen, which causes many speculations. The Jacks and others of that kidney are very uppish and alert upon 't, as you may see by their phizz's— Will Hazard has got the hipps, having lost to the tune of five hundr'd pound, tho' he understands play very well, no body better. He has promis't me upon rep, to leave off play; but you know 't is a weakness he's too apt to give in to, tho' he has as much wit as any man, no body more. He has lain incog ever since-The mob's very quiet with us now-I believe you thot I banter'd you in my last, like a country put—I shan't leave town this month, etc.' "This letter is in every point an admirable pattern of the present polite way of writing; nor is it of less authority for being an epistle. You may gather every flower in it, with a thousand more of equal sweetness, from the books, pamphlets, and single papers offered us every day in the coffee-houses: and these are the beauties introduced to supply the want of wit, sense, humor, and learning, which formerly were looked upon as qualifications for a writer. If a man of wit, who died |