Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667[1] – October 19, 1745) was an Anglo-Irish
satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for the Tories), poet and
cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin.
He is remembered for works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal
to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing
Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the
English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift originally published all of
his works under pseudonyms — such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B.
Drapier — or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire;
the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
Youth
Jonathan Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey's Court, Dublin, and was the second
child and only son of Jonathan Swift (a second cousin of John Dryden) and wife Abigail
Erick (or Herrick), paternal grandson of Thomas Swift and wife Elizabeth Dryden,
daughter of Nicholas Dryden (brother of Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Baronet) and wife
Mary Emyley. His father was Irish born and his mother was born in England. Swift
arrived seven months after his father's untimely death. Most of the facts of Swift's early
life are obscure, confused and sometimes contradictory. It is widely believed that his
mother returned to England when Jonathan was still very young, then leaving him to
be raised by his father's family. His uncle Godwin took primary responsibility for the
young Jonathan, sending him with one of his cousins to Kilkenny College (also
attended by the philosopher George Berkeley).
In 1682 he attended Dublin University (Trinity College, Dublin), receiving his B.A.
in 1686. Swift was studying for his Master's degree when political troubles in Ireland
surrounding the Glorious Revolution forced him to leave for England in 1688, where his
mother helped him get a position as secretary and personal assistant of Sir William
Temple at Moor Park, Farnham. Temple was an English diplomat who, having arranged
the Triple Alliance of 1668, retired from public service to his country estate to tend his
gardens and write his memoirs. Growing into confidence with his employer, Swift "was
often trusted with matters of great importance." Within three years of their
acquaintance, Temple had introduced his secretary to William III, and sent him to
London to urge the King to consent to a bill for triennial Parliaments.
When Swift took up his residence at Moor Park, he met Esther Johnson, then 8
years old, the fatherless daughter of one of the household servants. Swift acted as her
tutor and mentor, giving her the nickname "Stella" and the two maintained a close, but
ambiguous relationship for the rest of Esther's life.
Swift left Temple in 1690 for Ireland because of his health, but returned to Moor
Park the following year. The illness, fits of vertigo or giddiness — now known to be
Ménière's disease — would continue to plague Swift throughout his life. During this
second stay with Temple, Swift received his M.A. from Hertford College, Oxford
University in 1692. Then, apparently despairing of gaining a better position through
Temple's patronage, Swift left Moor Park to become an ordained priest in the
Established Church of Ireland and in 1694 he was appointed to the prebend of Kilroot
in the Diocese of Connor, with his parish located at Kilroot, near Carrickfergus in
County Antrim.
Swift appears to have been miserable in his new position, being isolated in a
small, remote community far from the centres of power and influence. While at Kilroot,
however, Swift may well have become romantically involved with Jane Waring. A letter
from him survives, offering to remain if she would marry him and promising to leave
and never return to Ireland if she refused. She presumably refused, because Swift left
his post and returned to England and Temple's service at Moor Park in 1696, and he
remained there until Temple's death. There he was employed in helping to prepare
Temple's memoirs and correspondence for publication. During this time Swift wrote
The Battle of the Books, a satire responding to critics of Temple's Essay upon Ancient
and Modern Learning (1690). Battle was however not published until 1704.
On January 27 1699 Temple died. Swift stayed on briefly in England to complete
the editing of Temple's memoirs, and perhaps in the hope that recognition of his work
might earn him a suitable position in England. However, Swift's work made enemies of
some of Temple's family and friends who objected to indiscretions included in the
memoirs. His next move was to approach King William directly, based on his imagined
connection through Temple and a belief that he had been promised a position. This
failed so miserably that he accepted the lesser post of secretary and chaplain to the
Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. However, when he reached
Ireland he found that the secretaryship had already been given to another. But he soon
obtained the living of Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan, and the prebend of Dunlavin in
St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
At Laracor, a mile or two from Trim, County Meath, and twenty miles (32 km)
from Dublin, Swift ministered to a congregation of about fifteen people, and had
abundant leisure for cultivating his garden, making a canal (after the Dutch fashion of
Moor Park), planting willows, and rebuilding the vicarage. As chaplain to Lord Berkeley,
he spent much of his time in Dublin and traveled to London frequently over the next ten
years. In 1701, Swift published, anonymously, a political pamphlet, A Discourse on the
Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome.
The writer
In February 1702, Swift received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Trinity
College, Dublin. That spring he traveled to England and returned to Ireland in October,
accompanied by Esther Johnson — now twenty years old — and his friend Rebecca
Dingley, another member of William Temple's household. There is a great mystery and
controversy over Swift's relationship with Esther Johnson nicknamed "Stella". Many
hold that they were secretly married in 1716. Although there has never been definite
proof of this, there is no doubt that she was dearer to him than anyone else and that
his feelings for her did not change throughout his life.
During his visits to England in these years Swift published A Tale of a Tub and
The Battle of the Books (1704) and began to gain a reputation as a writer. This led to
close, lifelong friendships with Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot,
forming the core of the Martinus Scriblerus Club(founded in 1713).
Swift became increasingly active politically in these years. From 1707 to 1709
and again in 1710, Swift was in London, unsuccessfully urging upon the Whig
administration of Lord Godolphin the claims of the Irish clergy to the First-Fruits and
Twentieths ("Queen Anne's Bounty"), which brought in about £2500 a year, already
granted to their brethren in England. He found the opposition Tory leadership more
sympathetic to his cause and Swift was recruited to support their cause as editor of the
Examiner when they came to power in 1710. In 1711, Swift published the political
pamphlet "The Conduct of the Allies," attacking the Whig government for its inability to
end the prolonged war with France. The incoming Tory government conducted secret
(and illegal) negotiations with France, resulting in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ending
the War of the Spanish Succession.
Swift was part of the inner circle of the Tory government, and often acted as
mediator between Henry St. John (Viscount Bolingbroke) the secretary of state for
foreign affairs (1710–15) and Robert Harley (Earl of Oxford) lord treasurer and prime
minister (1711–1714). Swift recorded his experiences and thoughts during this difficult
time in a long series of letters to Esther Johnson, later collected and published as The
Journal to Stella. The animosity between the two Tory leaders eventually led to the
dismissal of Harley in 1714. With the death of Queen Anne and ascension of George I
that year, the Whigs returned to power and the Tory leaders were tried for treason for
conducting secret negotiations with France.
Also during these years in London, Swift became acquainted with the
Vanhomrigh family and became involved with one of the daughters, Esther, yet another
fatherless young woman and an ambiguous relationship to confuse Swift's
biographers. Swift furnished Esther with the nickname "Vanessa" and she features as
one of the main characters in his poem Cadenus and Vanessa. The poem and their
correspondence suggests that Esther was infatuated with Swift, that he may have
reciprocated her affections, only to regret it and then try to break it off. Esther followed
Swift to Ireland in 1714, where there appears to have been a confrontation, possibly
involving Esther Johnson. Esther Vanhomrigh died in 1723 at the age of 35. Another
lady with whom he had a close but less intense relationship, was Anne Long, a toast of
the Kit-Cat Club.
Maturity
Before the fall of the Tory government, Swift hoped that his services would be
rewarded with a church appointment in England. However, Queen Anne appeared to
have taken a dislike to Swift and thwarted these efforts. The best position his friends
could secure for him was the Deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin. With the return of the
Whigs, Swift's best move was to leave England and he returned to Ireland in
disappointment, a virtual exile, to live "like a rat in a hole".
Once in Ireland, however, Swift began to turn his pamphleteering skills in support
of Irish causes, producing some of his most memorable works: Proposal for Universal
Use of Irish Manufacture (1720), Drapier's Letters (1724), and A Modest Proposal
(1729), earning him the status of an Irish patriot.
Also during these years, he began writing his masterpiece, Travels into Several
Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and
then a captain of several ships, better known as Gulliver's Travels. Much of the
material reflects his political experiences of the preceding decade. For instance, the
episode when the giant Gulliver puts out the Lilliputian palace fire by urinating on it can
be seen as a metaphor for the Tories' illegal peace treaty; having done a good thing in
an unfortunate manner. In 1726 he paid a long-deferred visit to London, taking with him
the manuscript of Gulliver's Travels. During his visit he stayed with his old friends,
Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot, and John Gay, who helped him arrange for the
anonymous publication of his book. First published in November 1726, it was an
immediate hit, with a total of three printings that year and another in early 1727.
French, German, and Dutch translations appeared in 1727 and pirated copies were
printed in Ireland.
Swift returned to England one more time in 1727 and stayed with Alexander
Pope once again. The visit was cut short when he received word that Esther Johnson
was dying and Swift rushed back home to be with her. On January 28, 1728, Esther
Johnson died, though he prayed at her bedside, even composing prayers for her
comfort. Swift could not bear to be present at the end, but on the night of her death he
began to write his The Death of Mrs. Johnson. He was too ill to attend the funeral at St.
Patrick's. Many years later, a lock of hair, assumed to be Esther Johnson's, was found
in his desk, wrapped in a paper bearing the words, "Only a woman's hair."
Death became a frequent feature in Swift's life from this point. In 1731 he wrote
Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, his own obituary published in 1739. In 1732, his good
friend and collaborator John Gay died. In 1735, John Arbuthnot, another friend from his
days in London, died. In 1738 Swift began to show signs of illness and in 1742 he
appears to have suffered a stroke, losing the ability to speak and realizing his worst
fears of becoming mentally disabled. ("I shall be like that tree," he once said, "I shall
die at the top.") In order to protect him from unscrupulous hangers on, who had begun
to prey on the great man, his closest companions had him declared of "unsound mind
and memory." In 1744, Alexander Pope died. Then, on October 19, 1745, Swift died.
After being laid out in public view for the people of Dublin to pay their last respects, he
was buried by Esther Johnson's side, in accordance with his wishes. The bulk of his
fortune was left to found a hospital for the mentally ill, originally known as St. Patrick’s
Hospital for Imbeciles, which opened in 1757, and which still exists as a psychiatric
hospital.

Major prose works

Swift's first major prose play, A Tale of a Tub, demonstrates many of the themes
and stylistic techniques he would employ in his later work. It is at once wildly playful
and funny while being pointed and harshly critical of its targets. In its main thread, the
Tale recounts the exploits of three sons, representing the main threads of Christianity,
who receive a bequest from their father of a coat each, with the added instructions to
make no alterations whatsoever. However, the sons soon find that their coats have
fallen out of current fashion and begin to look for loopholes in their father's will which
will allow them to make the needed alterations. As each finds his own means of getting
around their father's admonition, they struggle with each other for power and
dominance. Inserted into this story, in alternating chapters, Swift includes a series of
whimsical "digressions" on various subjects.
In 1690, Sir William Temple, Swift's patron, published An Essay upon Ancient
and Modern Learning a defense of classical writing (see Quarrel of the Ancients and
the Moderns) holding up the Epistles of Phalaris as an example. William Wotton
responded to Temple with Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694)
showing that the Epistles were a later forgery. A response by the supporters of the
Ancients was then made by Charles Boyle (later the 4th Earl of Orrery and father of
Swift's first biographer). A further retort on the Modern side came from Richard Bentley,
one of the pre-eminent scholars of the day, in his essay Dissertation upon the Epistles
of Phalaris (1699). However, the final words on the topic belong to Swift in his Battle of
the Books (1697, published 1704) in which he makes a humorous defense on behalf of
Temple and the cause of the Ancients.
In 1708, a cobbler named John Partridge published a popular almanac of
astrological predictions. Because Partridge falsely determined the deaths of several
church officials, Swift attacked Partridge in Predictions For The Ensuing Year by Isaac
Bickerstaff, a parody predicting that Partridge would die on March 29th. Swift followed
up with a pamphlet issued on March 30th claiming that Partridge had in fact died,
which was widely believed despite Partridge's statements to the contrary.
Drapier's Letters (1724) was a series of pamphlets against the monopoly granted
by the English government to William Wood to provide the Irish with copper coinage. It
was widely believed that Wood would need to flood Ireland with debased coinage in
order make a profit. In these "letters" Swift posed as a shop-keeper--a draper--in order
to criticize the plan. Swift's writing was so effective in undermining opinion in the
project that a reward was offered by the government to anyone disclosing the true
identity of the author. Though hardly a secret (on returning to Dublin after one of his
trips to England, Swift was greeted with a banner, "Welcome Home, Drapier") no one
turned Swift in. The government eventually resorted to hiring none other than Sir Isaac
Newton to certify the soundness of Wood's coinage to counter Swift's accusations. In
"Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" (1739) Swift recalled this as one of his best
achievements.
Gulliver's Travels, first published in 1726, is Swift's masterpiece. As with his other
writings, the Travels was published under a pseudonym, the fictional Lemuel Gulliver, a
ship's surgeon and later a sea captain. Some of the correspondence between printer
Benj. Motte and Gulliver's also-fictional cousin negotiating the book's publication has
survived. Though it has often been mistakenly thought of and published in bowdlerized
form as a children's book, it is a great and sophisticated satire of human nature based
on Swift's experience of his times. Gulliver's Travels is an anatomy of human nature, a
sardonic looking-glass, often criticized for its apparent misanthropy. It asks its readers
to refute it, to deny that it has not adequately characterized human nature and society.
Each of the four books--recounting four voyages to mostly-fictional exotic lands--has a
different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Critics hail the work as a
satiric reflection on the failings of Enlightenment modernism.

Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), officially "Travels into Several
Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon,
and then a Captain of several Ships", is a novel by Jonathan Swift that is both a
satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre. It is
Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature.

Plot summary
The book presents itself as a simple traveller's narrative with the disingenuous
title Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, its authorship assigned only to
"Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, then a captain of several ships". Different editions
contain different versions of the prefatory material which are basically the same as
forewords in modern books. The book proper then is divided into four parts, which are
as follows.
Part I: A Voyage To Lilliput May 4, 1699 — April 13, 1702
The book begins with a short preamble in which Gulliver, in the style of books of
the time, gives a brief outline of his life and history prior to his voyages. He enjoys
travelling. This turns out to be fortunate.
On his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck and awakes to
find himself a prisoner of a race of people one-twelfth the size of normal human beings
(6 inches/15cm tall), who are inhabitants of the neighbouring and rival countries of
Lilliput and Blefuscu. After giving assurances of his good behaviour he is given a
residence in Lilliput and becomes a favourite of the court. There follow Gulliver's
observations on the Court of Lilliput, which is intended to satirize the court of George I
(King of Great Britain at the time of the writing of the Travels). Gulliver assists the
Lilliputians to subdue their neighbours the Blefuscudians (by stealing their fleet).
However, he refuses to reduce the country to a province of Lilliput, displeasing the King
and the court. Gulliver is charged with treason and sentenced to be blinded. With the
assistance of a kind friend, Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, where he spots and retrieves
an abandoned boat and sails out to be rescued by a passing ship which takes him
back home. The feuding between the Lilliputians and the Blefuscudians is meant to
represent the feuding countries of England and France, but the reason for the war is
meant to satirize the feud between Catholics and Protestants, over issues that Swift
may have found trivial.
Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag June 20, 1702 — June 3, 1706
When the sea vessel Adventure is steered off course by storms and forced to go
in to land for want of fresh water, Gulliver is abandoned by his companions and found
by a farmer who is 80 feet (24 meters) tall (the scale of Lilliput is approximately 1:12; of
Brobdingnag 12:1). He brings Gulliver home and his daughter cares for Gulliver. The
farmer treats him as a curiosity and exhibits him for money. The word gets out and the
queen wants to see the show. She loves Gulliver and he is then bought by the Queen
of Brobdingnag and kept as a favorite at court. In between small adventures such as
fighting giant wasps and being carried to the roof by a monkey, he discusses the state
of Europe with the King, who is not impressed. On a trip to the seaside, his "traveling
box" is seized by a giant eagle which drops Gulliver and his box right into the sea
where he is picked up by some sailors, who return him to England.
Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib,
Luggnagg and JapanAugust 5, 1706 — April 16, 1710
Gulliver has pirates as a crew and they maroon him on a desolate rocky island,
near India. Fortunately he is rescued by the flying island of Laputa, a kingdom devoted
to the arts of music and mathematics but utterly unable to use these for practical ends.
The device described simply as The Engine is possibly the first literary description in
history of something resembling a computer. Laputa's method of throwing rocks at
rebellious surface cities also seems the first time that aerial bombardment was
conceived as a method of warfare. Gulliver is then taken to Balnibarbi to await a Dutch
trader who can take him on to Japan and from there to England. While there, he tours
the country as the guest of a low-ranking courtier and sees the ruin brought about by
blind pursuit of science without practical results in a satire on the Royal Society and its
experiments. He travels to a magician's dwelling and discusses history with the ghosts
of historical figures, the most obvious restatement of the "ancients versus moderns"
theme in the book. He also encounters the struldbrugs, unfortunates who are immortal
and very, very old. The trip is otherwise reasonably free of incident and Gulliver returns
home, determined to stay there for the rest of his days.
Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
September 7, 1710 – December 5, 1715
Despite his earlier intention of remaining at home, Gulliver returns to sea where
his crew was captured by Dutch and Japanese pirates in order to force them to also
become pirates. He is abandoned in a landing boat and comes first upon a race of
(apparently) hideous deformed creatures to which he conceives a violent antipathy.
Shortly thereafter he meets a horse and comes to understand that the horses (in their
language Houyhnhnm or "the perfection of nature") are the rulers and the deformed
creatures ("Yahoos") are human beings in their basest form. Gulliver becomes a
member of the horse's household, and comes to both admire and emulate the
Houyhnhnms and their lifestyle, rejecting humans as merely Yahoos endowed with
some semblance of reason which they only use to exacerbate and add to the vices
Nature gave them. However, an Assembly of the Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a
Yahoo with some semblance of reason, is a danger to their civilization and he is
expelled. He is then rescued, against his will, by a Portuguese ship that returns him to
his home in England. However, he is unable to reconcile himself to living among
Yahoos; he becomes a recluse, remaining in his house, largely avoiding his family, and
spending several hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables.

Composition and history

It is uncertain exactly when Swift started writing Gulliver's Travels, but some
sources suggest as early as 1713 when Swift, Gay, Pope, Arbuthnott and others
formed the Scriblerus Club, with the aim of satirising then-popular literary genres.
Swift, runs the theory, was charged with writing the memoirs of the club's imaginary
author, Martinus Scriblerus. It is known from Swift's correspondence that the
composition proper began in 1720 with the mirror-themed parts I and II written first,
Part IV next in 1723 and Part III written in 1724, but amendments were made even
while Swift was writing Drapier's Letters. By August 1725 the book was completed, and
as Gulliver's Travels was a transparently anti-Whig satire it is likely that Swift had the
manuscript copied so his handwriting could not be used as evidence if a prosecution
should arise (as had happened in the case of some of his Irish pamphlets). In March
1726 Swift travelled to London to have his work published; the manuscript was secretly
delivered to the publisher Benjamin Motte, who used five printing houses to speed
production and avoid piracy.[2] Motte, recognising a bestseller but fearing prosecution,
simply cut or altered the worst offending passages (such as the descriptions of the
court contests in Lilliput or the rebellion of Lindalino), added some material in defense
of Queen Anne to book II, and published it anyway. The first edition was released in
two volumes on October 26, 1726, priced 8s. 6d. The book was an instant sensation
and sold out its first run in less than a week.
Motte published Gulliver's Travels anonymously and, as was often the way with
fashionable works, several follow-ups (Memoirs of the Court of Lilliput), parodies (Two
Lilliputian Odes, The first on the Famous Engine With Which Captain Gulliver
extinguish'd the Palace Fire...) and "keys" (Gulliver Decipher'd and Lemuel Gulliver's
Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World Compendiously Methodiz'd, the
second by Edmund Curll who had similarly written a "key" to Swift's Tale of a Tub in
1705) were produced over the next few years. These were mostly printed anonymously
(or occasionally pseudonymously) and were quickly forgotten. Swift had nothing to do
with any of these and specifically disavowed them in Faulkner's edition of 1735.
However, Swift's friend Alexander Pope wrote a set of five Verses on Gulliver's Travels
which Swift liked so much that he added them to the second edition of the book,
though they are not nowadays generally included.

Major themes
Gulliver's Travels has been the recipient of several designations: from Menippean
satire to a children's story, from proto-Science Fiction to a forerunner of the modern
novel. Possibly one of the reasons for the book's classic status is that it can be seen as
many things to many different people. Broadly, the book has three themes:
*a satirical view of the state of European government, and of petty differences between
religions.

*an inquiry into whether men are inherently corrupt or whether they become corrupted.

*a restatement of the older "ancients v. moderns" controversy previously addressed by

Swift in The Battle of the Books.

In terms of storytelling and construction the parts follow a pattern:

← The causes of Gulliver's misadventures become more malignant as time goes

on - he is first shipwrecked, then abandoned, then attacked by strangers, then
attacked by his own crew.
← Gulliver's attitude hardens as the book progresses — he is genuinely
surprised by the viciousness and politicking of the Lilliputians but finds the behavior of
the Yahoos in the fourth part reflective of the behavior of people.

← Each part is the reverse of the preceding part — Gulliver is

big/small/sensible/ignorant, the countries are complex/simple/scientific/natural, forms
of Government are worse/better/worse/better than England's.

← Gulliver's view between parts contrasts with its other coinciding part —
Gulliver sees the tiny Lilliputians as being vicious and unscrupulous, and then the king
of Brobdingnag sees Europe in exactly the same light. Gulliver sees the Laputians as
unreasonable, and Gulliver's Houyhnhnm master sees humanity as equally so.

← No form of government is ideal — the simplistic Brobdingnagians enjoy public

executions and have streets infested with beggars, the honest and upright
Houyhnhnms who have no word for lying are happy to suppress the true nature of
Gulliver as a Yahoo and equally unconcerned about his reaction to being expelled.

← Specific individuals may be good even where the race is bad — Gulliver finds
a friend in each of his travels and, despite Gulliver's rejection of and horror toward all
Yahoos, is treated very well by the Portuguese captain, Don Pedro, who returns him to
England at the novel's end.

Of equal interest is the character of Gulliver himself — he progresses from a

cheery optimist at the start of the first part to the pompous misanthrope of the book's
conclusion and we may well have to filter our understanding of the work if we are to
believe the final misanthrope wrote the whole work. In this sense Gulliver's Travels is a
very modern and complex novel. There are subtle shifts throughout the book, such as
when Gulliver begins to see all humans, not just those in Houyhnhnm-land, as Yahoos.