Swift's "Poems to Stella" / by Paul Michael Comeau

SWIFT'S POEES TO STELLA

by

Paul Micha5l Comeau

BOA, Simcn Frasfr University, 1974

A TBESIS SUBHITTED IN PftRTIAL FULFILLRENT OF

THE REQIJIREBEHTS FOR THE DEGBEE Of

PIASTER OF ABTS

in thz Department

of

English

@ PAUL BICHAEL COHEBU 1977

SIBOW FRASER UNIVERSITY

September, 7 977

All riqhts rsservsd, This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author, APPROVAL

NAME : Paul Michael COMEAU DEGREE: Master of Arts TITLE OF THESES: SWIFT'S POEMS TO STELLA

EXAMINING COMMITTEE : Chairman: Dr. Jared Curtis, Associate Professor ~f English, Simon Fraser University

Dr. Ann messenger, Associate Professor

, 1 Dr. Temp1 e Maynard, Assistant Professor

,- Dr. Mason Harris , Associate Professor

Dr. Philip Pinkus, Professor of English, U.B.C.

Date Approved: September 6, 1977 PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENSE

I hereby grant to Simon Fraser University the right to lend my thesis or dissertation (the title of which is shown below) to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.

Title of Thesis/Dissertation:

SWIFT'S POEMS TO STELLA

Author : (signature)

Paul Michael Comeau (name)

April 4, 1978 (date) iii

------ABSTXACT

This thesis atteapts to view Jonathan Swift's poems to Stelfa fro% a nsw perspwtiv?. Critics genaraiiy have zcknowledged these poems to be admirable compositions, but the ~ertdcrncyhas hen to analyze thew categorically as zither love poems or as testimonials to the efficacy of Christian virtue. The problem with both approaches is that, whereas they explore important individual aspects of the poems, swiftas overall artistic achievemsnt is not sufficiently reveal&, The purpose of this study, thsrefore, is to analyzz the poems to Stella in as much individual detail as possiblz so that the acni~v~msntof

2ach is recogniz~dclearly, vhifo the intagrity of the group is maintained. More specificalf y, this study wifl demonstrate what exactly these elevqn poems say about Swift and why they are among the best poems h2 wrote.

However, to gain even a superficial appreciation of Swift3s artistic achievewrit i~ the poems to StsPla, some familiarity with his viws or. language and postry is required. Accordicgfy, this study begins vith a review cf Swift% most important writings on lan~uageand pcetry, namely "'A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately

Entsr" into naly Ordars," "b Letter of Advice to a Young Poet," ------Polite Ccnversation, and Wn Poetry: A Rapsody." Some attontion is also given to classical a3d eighteenth-century theories about poetry and about the sublime, especially as they relate to Swift's own id~ason these subj~cts, Turning to the poems to Stella th;mselvss, Swiftts styl? and msthodofogy are analyzed in some datail, as is the nature cf his rslationship with Stella, as it is r~vealedin the gcurnql_&e_Ste1leir in pafticular lstters and in other short prose pieces, and of course in the Stella poems,

This detailed study of the poems to Stella revsals that, as metrical compositions, they ars technically precise and admirably contrived; fusth%rmore, as intimate poems to a #smos% valuable friend," they indirectly feveaf as much about Swift as they do about Stella. The poems reveal many of Swift's beliefs and even soEee of his hopes and •’tars as clearly as anything else he wrote. But, more than this, they illuminate a Lasting and powerful friendship, the stragth of which provides the emotional i~petusby which the plain, simple style of the powas is transformed into something more thau just '*proper words in proper places. ------BCKNOW LEDGEZENT

f wish to acknowledqe a sinczre dzbt of gratitude to

Professor Ann Wessenger, whose friendship, guidance, and support were of inestimable value to the cornplation of this uofk. &y thanks ase also due to Professor Teiaple aaynard and to Professor

Hason ~arzisfor their helpful coaments and criticisms, And finally, X owe special thanks to my parents for their unfailing sncourage%ent, ------For Judith,

...... whoss love and understanding ------have reallx ------made this ~ossible, ------Page

APPROVAL

ABSTiaACT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

DEDIC&TI€lN

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER Owe: Swift's Views on Poetry

CHAPTER TWO: Style and Eethodology 5n the Poems to St5lla 68

CRRPTER TNSEE: Sw if tqsBelationship with Stella and His Presene in the Poems to Stella 98

CRAPTER FOUR: Swift's Last Poam to Stella 139

BIBLLOGBBPHY Ever since Patrick Delany declared in his Observations-g~mn &orB-Qr~srrls-2~marks~o~-tB2~46fz-aed-~~~nf-2rt-deeazhna Svift,-l~~~that the poems to Stella are "the finest in their kind, 'he friendliest, the best imagind, and the most truly elegant that ever any language produced,fs7 critics have, with fi3w exceptions, respctaded similarly to thase poegls. For ~xa~gpfe, in 1805 Mathan Drake ranked them among those of Swift's verses Iqwhich are not only free from any thing which ought to revolt a corr9ct tastE, kut exhibit much elegance, urbanity, and ~$11- turned c0mpliment.~*2 And in 1966, one hundred and sixty yaars after Drake's appreciation, Maurics Johnson noted that Swift *s poems to Stella "contain his most gravely musical, most a•’fecxing phrasas,"3 an observation which he has subsequsntly rrsiterat 3d in an article entitled t*Swiftts Poetry Raconsidered, *' adding there that "it is not very surprising after all that

Swift's mst private and personal poeas are his most ur,ivarsal.t*4

Other critics have used different language to describe Jonathan Swift's poems to Esth5r Johnson but thair santiments ass generally the same: the poeBs are among Swift's iaost nsr-1 0 I-" \' t3 w rtmc iD t+ ct. P PJ aor(0 m ~-r

$24 CI, Ut * rt. G w(l[n CUYk" i4 3 $3 n tnoct 4wrt P 'a a. MO* P; - w iu rn ('iJ 3 a cl~ -a4 0 m ru ICSPb rf-il,wI wrn, cCr+Cf 0) r") a. * p. in 5 m a pl m 3 4 rt P Z P- r4. rl I m wogrn !I) GO* if; *n, C, Z tJ7 (I? 004 Y E3 tE)

c=+ *or 9 n it) (D P. I--' rctm rJI #'rimP* Ym* rt, LC 3' I-'. pls w C w rlr rt. fD 9 iD as a poet in particular. Little or no effort is made to adopt as a critical guideline the Aristotelian maxim expressed so competent1y by Alexander Pope in Bp E~sqy-on criticism:

Io evtry Work regard the WEitgr*~Egq, Since now can compass more than they Intend; And if the Means be just, tho CeqdgEr true, Applause, in spit2 cf faults, is due.7

And* through it all, the inconsistency betraesn the level of: praise accorded the poems to Stella by Delany, Draka, and evec Johnson himself and thr juc3grner.t that Swift's poetry is anti-poetic goes unna ticed.

Looking not only to Swift's intentions in his poetry but also to nurnzrous literary convanticns and precedents, Rob~~rtUphaus has capably disputed the anti-poe try theory in 3SSui.f tls Poetry: The ~akingof fleaning,N Hs demonstrates convinciagly how Svift

"ialters or reshapes postic conventions,~8and how, at the sania ti@@, hi3 c~nsistently'*aligns his verse with, rather than agaiust, tht traditional uses of poetry.*t9 The effect of this fine of argum~tton the poems to Stella is to place them sclidly within thp conventions of amatory vcrse. But even as Uphaus* brisf anafysFs of the st~llapoems further lagitimiz+s Swift's poetic vision in a general way, it fails to r~v~aleither the richness or the complexity of the posms themselves,

For example, or, the surface, the sarly posms to Stella appear to be on1y playful com~ositions,replete with clsver puns and dexterous simiies and aflusions. ~uta close reading of these early po2ms reveals an underlying tone of seriousness which is consistent with that fouqd in the later poems. The later poems, on the other Eand, are acre lpparently pgento mqrls aimed at fortifying arid consoling Stella, In the poems from 1719 through

1725, Stella's virtues ars enumerated and praised, In ths final two po~ms, and in "stall2*s ~irth-Day 1726/27" especially, those virtues must servc as htr psychoioyical and spiritual atainstays in the face of death. Furthermore, it becomes appilrant that all eleven poems were perhaps of more importanca to Swift than has yet been realized,

The purpose of this study, than, is to analyze the po91~sto

Stella as carefully as ~ossibleso that the achievement of each is recognized clearly, while th3 intsgrity of the group is waintair~ed. My specific oh jectives are to dzmonstrate ghat exactly these eleven paws say about Swift and why they are among the best poems h~ wrote, Ths best way to accomplish these objzctives is to shift the critical focus, which has traditionally been or, Stella, to Swift: his views on po2try, his style ar,d rtlethodology of writing in th2 poems, and his special fclationship with Stella, keeping In mind the while that these poems ars neither repses~ntatlvenor typical of the majority of his paems to or about women, For it seems to Be that the two

greatest obstacles in viewing the poems to Stella in a proper perspective are the critics* inclinations, whethar they are intent on characterizing the naturz of Swiftts love for Stella10 or on establishing a spfcific philosophical context far the poems, 11 to assume that Stella's wsifare is Swift's only coxern ic the poems

and to allow their readings of the poems to be colour%d by

speculations about Swift's aisogyny arising from his depiction of

various Daphnes, Chloes, and Corinnas,

On the contrar y, however, when S wiftls correspondence betseen

July 1726 ar,3 Cecernber '1727 is considered in conjunction with The

Stella poems, the misogyliy issuiz and the idea that Stelfa is the

only beneficiary of the poems are dispelled innadiatsly. In

letters to Johc Horrall and Jaaes Stopford, Swift lapsss i~to

uncharacterisfic paroxysms of emotional and mental dzspaif at the

though% of Stelfa8s i~pendingdeath, He emerges as the principal

sufferer in these letters while Stollags situation recedss into

the background. Turning to the poems, one finds that it is Swift

who manifestly needs help as much as Stella, Although he has

educated her in the uses of virtue, he is surprisingly lacking

in virtues like courage and patience himself; he is frequently either lamenting his failing hsafth in "unmanly strains" or

complaining of his declining poetical ability,

I am not sayifig that Swift is not writing according to the

' conventions of panegyric, that is, rninimizlny S+-elfa's faults an3

iaaximizing his own helpfessnass in order to portray h~robvious

aerits more emphatically. Ho surely is. And I am not saying that

he does sot experience Stella's distress as acutely as his own in

the poems. ghat I am suggesting is that critics have observed

Swift's presence i~ th6 poems to St~llatoo narrowly. These poems shmld h~ read within 3 context sf Christian doctrine or belief or, indeed, within what~v9.rother phiioscphical context illuminates them constructively, but they should also be rsad as Swiftrs very practical attempts to retain some sembhacce of value in his own life, a life that he must shortly learn to live without the h~lpof ttc one person who, ic his words, "was all that Fs

Valuabla.lllZ

This, 1 believe, is zhz underlying struggle in the later poems to Stella ~s~ecialiy.1 n preparing Stella to face death courageously and patiently, Swift is progariug himself to face llfo without her with equal courage and patience. Fie therefore

writes the po3~sfor her benefit but, just as importantly, he also writes them for the sans reason hs takes up his pen to begin

her biography on the night of her death: IYor this] own satisfaction.~?3 Thus, it is Swiftls great parsonaf nsea, a need that he expresses nowhere in his poetry but in these annual tributes to Stella, that initiates the intensity, the elegance, and the univ2ssality cf the poems. FOOTNOTES

Ynrk C London: Garland ~ublishing, Inc,, 19741, pw 103,

C Silfiams (New Pork: Barnes G Noble, Inc,, 1970f, p. 276,

Arbors Plichigan: The Gordian Press, Inc., l966), p. 45.

4 "Swift *S Poetry Reconsidered,+* in gqqf ishwriters of thg

Columbia University Press, 1977) , p. 245.

6 "Swift's Poetry Bec~nsidered,~p, 236, 7 ------The Poems of Alexander POJ~, a one volume edition of thr

TwFckscham tsxt, ed. John Butt (1963; rpt. London: Hethuen G

Company, Ztd*, 1965), p, 152, 11, 255-258,

10 dames E, Tyne, in his article entitled, "Suift and Stella:

11 John Irwin Fischer, in an unpublished paper presented at the HwLwA, Conference in New York, Dsc9mber 1976, entitled,

"Faith, Hope, and Charity in Swift's Poems to Stella," suggests that the Stella poeas should b~ read in a context of Christian doctrine and belief, 12 See Swift's fetter to the Reverend Thomas Sheridan of

September 2, 1727, in She_ Cpr~es~cndenceof i?~~-il.ghanSwAff, ed.

Harold Williams (1953; rpt, Oxford: Ths Clarendon Press, l965),

13 "On the ~eathof Mss, Jchnson," in Jonathan Svift;

There is nothing critically profound about the assertion thst

Jonathan Swift's prose and verse styles are clearly rsfated to his

ideas about la~guage, The obvious truth of ths statement almost

precludes its being aade, Hevfrtheless, a clear apprehsrsion of

this simple truism marks the first step in und2rstanding his

poetry. Samu~lJohnson was accurate in noting that Swift's

vezses are "for the lost part, what their author intended, The diction is correct, ths numbers are smoozh, and thz rhymes exact,

There sefdcm occurs a hard-lsboured expression, or a redundant epithet; all his verses . . . consist of *proper words in pfopsr places,ql*l Yet the basic simplicity of Swiftts versl style

deceived even Johxson into concludiag that "in the poetical works

' of Dr. Swift there is no2 much upon which *h+ critick can exercise

his powersOn2 A closer look at Swift3s views on language and

Poetry proves Jchnson right in his first observation but wrong in

his sscond. Far, ozce the deceptive simplicity of Swift's style

of writing is penetrated, the complexity of his thoughts and eaotions is revealed. At the expense of baing r~petitiousand possibly a hit long-

winded, I shall present what f take? to be Swift's key writings on language and poetry at scme length, in this chapter, for vary

specific xeasons. First, 1 %ant to dsmonstrate that poetry played

an important role in Swift's literary fife despite the fact that

the immanse success of his prose has relegated his poetry to a

secondary position in the eyes of nany critics. Second, it is

impzrative that his views on language and poetry be examin2d in

conjunction with each other in order for the interdependence of

these views tc be appreciated fully, in order: fox the subtleties

of his satires on falss modern poets, critics, and projectors to

be apprehended tocre easily. And third, it is itopssssihfa to

analyze the poems to Stella adequately without first gaiaicg some insight into how Snift thinks and works in his poetry.

Swift's vieas on the Ecglish lanyuags are express2d most

co~psehansivi;lyin four 3ssays: tie at lee, NO, 230 (1710), "A

Proposal for correcting, fmpr~vingand Ascertaining the English Tonguet"1712), Letter to a Young Genthitian, Lately Enterld

into Holy Orders" (17201, and &&it63 Coxvqrsati,on (77381 * ghg

T_a_ter assay ccnsists primarily of the observations of an

anonymous critic on the detericration of writt~nEnglish as !

? i BY sending his remarks to Isaac Bickerstaff of ZBe Tatier, the i 1 F anonymous critic hopes to expose and, if possible, to remedy "the deplorable Ignorance that for some Y aars hath reigned among our English Writers; the grelt Depravity of our Taste; and the continual. Corruption of our Style" {(fff), f I, 173-174). ~otivated by a genuine desire for reforms in the language, tha critic proceeds to enuraera'e tha must obvious abuses that have crtpt into written Engfish at an alarming rate:

The fisst Thing that strikes your Eye, is the ---Brepks at the End of almost every Sentence; of which T know not the Usr . . . . Thm you will observe the Abbreviations and Elisions, by which Consonants of most obdurate Sound are joined tcg~ther. . . , And this is still more visible Ifi the next Refinement, which corsisteth in pronouncing the first Syllable in a #ord that hath many, and dismissing the rest . , . . The third Refinement observeablt . , . consist~thin the Choice of certain Words invented by some ~rstzyg~llo~s, such as Bg&&gy, friimboazlg, Qugtry Pug, an d Kidney . . . (pp. 175-1761

Ths anonynous critic appends a bri& repudiation of cliches to this list of abuses be for^ concluding ~ithan sxhortation to all authors to develop a style of writing which embodies "+hat

Siaplicity which is the best and truest Ornament of ~ostThings in humsn Lifei* (p. 177) . Swift discusses the English language further in **A Proposal for Correcting, Iniproving and Ascertaining the English Tongue,"

Her2 he attacks those unthinking modern writers who multipfy the corrupticns in tho language in their pitiful struggles to remain fashionable. ghat distinguishes this proposal f ron The Tak18r assay, though, is the fact that hare the underlying assumption-- that the Engfish Sanguag~can and should be stabilized,

Perfected, ana thec fixed p2rmanectly--is stated outright, The need for such measures is implied naar the beginning of

-c---Tatl~ressay when the anonynous critic suggests that a man of wit, upon returning from tEe dead, would find coamunication with the presefit society of inen and women i~possibfe, But tha author of the '*Proposal*vargues openly that- if the English tongue *"were oncg rff ined to a certain Standard, parhaps there might be Nays found out, to fix it for ever , fHo, fV, 9),

As his proposal continues, it becomes evid~ntthat the proposer is an historian of sorts. Bs traces the abusss in vritten ~ngfishback in history to what he calls the fanatic times of the Restoration; he discovers the genssis of modern linguistic perversions in the moral and religious corruptions rasulting froa that time, However, whereas ths mot causes of linguistic abuses fie in the fanaticism of the past, the akusas thamselves derive from the enthusias~of the present,

According1y, the proposer blaaes false ~oi3ernref hnements in language on modern writers, especi3liy modern poets, vho cultivate the use sf monosyllabic and vowel-deficient words at the expeIise of correct grararnar an3 proper stylistics. These same writers compcund thdir guilt by prostituting themselves to ths current fashion of spelling words axactly as they are spoken,

"which beside the cbvious 1nconv.rltnience of ~tterLydestroying ous.

Ety~ology, would be a Thing we should never see an End

Qf" (p. 11). Others besides the poets must accspt responsibiffty f3r the

proliferation of false linguistic refiwaents, The entire countzy is quilty to a large extect because, as the proposer admits sadly,

Englishmen, as a people, are not very polite, In fact, %omen, who could make a positive contribution to society by returning a valuable measure cf politeness to conversation, have been unaccountably ignored,

Now, though 4: would by co ntsans give Ladies the Trouble of advising us in the ReEormatFcn of our Language; yet 1 cannot help thinking, that since they have been left out of a12 Meetings, except Parties at Plays, or where gorse Designs are carried oa, our Conv~rsationhath very much degenerated, (P* 13) unable to offer a final decision on who should be employed to

perf3ct and fix the language, the proposer concludes his essay

in the defense of thaso principles upon which the reform should

be basd, Politeness and simplicity, he decirles, must be the foundations of any linguistic reforms because only when politeness and simplicity afs reintroduced into the English

3. anguage will conversation be prof itable and enjoyable; only then will? books f'b~always valuablo . . . and not thrown

It is fair to say that Swift's writings on th2 English

language are cumulative if sometimes rep2titive in th~irsubject-

matter and effect, For example, Ths Tatler dssay catalogues the

various abuses ir, uritt-+n Zmglisfi, whereas the l'Pr~p~salyi

establishes the source of those abuses and, by singling out politeness and simplick+y, the directio~sthat linguistic reforms

should take, $'A Letter tc a Young Gentfernan, Latzly Fnter3d

into Aoly Orders," on the other hand, deals not with the effect

of written Language Upon a reader but with the ~ffectof spokea

language upon a listening audience; Boly Orders, as a vocation,

naturally demacds a high fevef of oratorical skill, but even SO,

the i~pactof what the cleric says can in nary instances ba

attributed directly to the style in vhich his seraon Is written,

The author of the fetter, who identifies himself as a person

of quality, defines style as "Proper Words in proper Plac~s*"IHi),

I IX, 65). with this definition in mind, he cautions the young man

to who& he is addressing his remarks against padding his sermons

L with unnecessary epithets and thread-bare phrases conduc5.v~only to nausea and boredom: #hen a Hanls Thoughts ar2 clear, tha properest Wtrds will gensrally offer themselvss first; and his own Judgment will direct him in what Order to place the@, so as they may bs best understosd. #here Hen err againsa this Bethod, it is usually on Purpcse, and to shes their Laarning, their Oratory, their Poflteness, or their Knowledge of the World, In short, that Simplicity, without which no human Performance can arrive to any great Perfection, is no where more eainently useful than this is. f~.50) The key to perfect oratory is si~pficityof styl~z, Affectation

counteracts simpficity and misguidzs human judgment, Pride begets

affectation which begets error or, as Swift phrases this genealogy I abbreviating, or reducing Pords of many Syllables lnto ona, by lopping off the rsstw (p. lOGf. And at another point he solemnly announces that spelling words as they are pronounced has polished his presect traatise i~aeasursably.Similar flights of folly are performed with aquaf dzxterity, for

Simon Wagstaff is a true modern enthusiast. In his own humble way hz desires ~othingmorc than tc be worshipped like a God as the heroes of antiquity wert, ttuporl the ~2ritof having civilized a fierce and barbarous Peoplew (p. 1 He therefor2 rspkests that people quote his name and drink his health at awry opportunity.

ahan considered as a group, then, ths aoove four essays ropfesent Swiftts vi~wson the Eaglish language expresssd both straightforwardly and ironically; he offtrs various other scattered thoughts @n the subject 2fsewhere in his writings, notably in The Battlg-g2 kha Bm&s and in Book Three of

Gull~~~g~~,Travefs,but his primary concerns remais th2 saas throughout, Brieff y, they are that writtan iinglish should be simplified, perf scted, and f ixsd, while spoken English should be rendersd more polite, In keeping with thz theme of simplLcity, these prescriptions arc themselvas uncomplicated and untechnicaf, a fact for which J, H. N2umann supplies a sensible reason,

Swift, he suggests, is not a professional finguFst in thes9 writings, but only a ccrncerned, practicing writar, His diagnoses should therefore be accepted for what they are: They are rathsr the opinioas of a person who approaches linguistic problems with fixed ideals of order and form, derived from the traditional attitud~towards the classical languages, aca who f s moved, above all, by a great desire to bring beauty 3.ad regularity to what he regards as the awkward and shifting f2atur4s of his native tongue. 4

Beumann further impries that Swift's views on languag* are not eccentric by eighteenth-century stacdards, howver conservative they rtiap appear to be now, In fact, Swift is ultimately more libaral in his ideas about spelling, for exaaple, than were may of his conteraporariss, At all tlmes, his ~3~nffu~ncewas orn the side ~f order ard traditicn, vith certain minimum allowacc&s for aodernity and change. "5

Suiftss determinsd adherecc? to the conv?ntiorAal rules of language structure--ha dsvkated from the rulss only Fa his most infarmal notes and letters--will be misunderstood if it is seen essentially as a stubborn and unbending reaction against current fashion by somgone who r.s jccted everything new as a inatter of course, Critics who apparently object to conv2ntionality on principle arg apt to depict the major writers of the sarlg eighteenth century as thoroughly arrogant conformists, more wilfinq to live i~ the past than to adapt themselves to the present. For Swift, and doubtless for many of his con tsmpora-fies, however, the ~aintenanceof traditional. spellings, pronunciations, and sentence structures represented artistic stability in a world in which. art was growinq as subject as clothing to rapid chang+s in fashion. Swift sincerely believed that to lose linguistic stability aeant to forfeit all saluable modern and cfassical writings to incomprehensibility. But cla rity of thought and si~plicity of styla meant still more to him than the continuation of literatura.

They want ijsanity83 in the broadest sense of the word, sowthing that any age so preoccupied with rsason and reasonableness must always fear to lose, It is therefore no accident that in two of his major works those characters who are associated with modern refinslaenis in language are adm men. The first instance appears appropriately in the digression on md2es.s in A-Ta& of A Tub.

Bear the end of the digression, thn author of the za& observes that many Bedfamites could find employment in the outside world, One poor soul who is "eternally talking, sputtsfiny, gaping, bawling, in a Sourd without Period or ArtLcfejt (HD, 1, 112), should undoubtedly be given a green bag and De sent to k'estminstsr Hall, Another inmate, who closely rese~blssa modern writer, is described t bus:

Behold a Fourth, in much and deep Conversation with himself, biting his Thumbs at proper Junctures; His countenance chequered with Business and Design . A Great Saver of Time, somewhat thick of Hearing, very short of Sight, but more of Memory. . . . A huge Idolator of &onosyllables and ~rocsastiaation;so ready to his Word to every Body, that he never &ggeg it. One that has forgot the coamon geanigq of Words, but an admirable ~etainefof the Zound. , , , !$hat a co~pleatSystem of Court-Skill is here described in every Branch of it, and all utterly lost with wrong Application, (P. 1721 Aod the author of the xq&g, uhc, if his own refinsd method of writlnq is any indication, has not the least notion of wrong or right application, is himself a resident of Usdlam,

The second hnstanca appeals in chapter five of Bonk Three of

modernizfnq of writing is of great interest to the Acad~my of

Lagado. Tha Academy has modernized ths urlting of books to such a degree that, wizh the help of a huge word naachine, 'Yhs most ignorant Persoc at a r~asonableCharge, and with a little bodily Labour, may write Books ia Philosophy, Poetry, Politics . . . without the least Assistance from Genius or Study') (BD, XI, 182-184) . By this process, several volumes of broken ssntnnces can be co~posedwith astounding speed to the great benefit of mankind. Spoken language antong the leamed and the wise, an the other hand, has been marvelously abolished altogether:

for, it is plain, that every word we speak is in swe Degree a Diminution of our Lungs by Corrosion; and consequently cmtributes to the shortning of our Lives, An Expedient was th3refore offered, that since words are only Nannas for 7%~qs, it would be more convenient for all Hen to carry about them, such ghTqq~ as wero necEssary to oxpress the particular Businsss they are to discourse on. (p. 185)

The disadvantages attendant upon carrying about enough objects to facilitate lengthy corversations are easily outwaigh~dfor the

Projectors by the prospects of a longer life and a universal language. The only difference between the projectors at Layado and the BeCla&ites appears to hs that the latttr are confined to an institution, fcr 311 of them repres;.nt ~odernenthusiasnt in one f cr@ or another, The author of ths gpdf would free m2ntal

patients in his over-zealous efforts to fi~uvalue in each person's life (hk subsequently becomes unable to distinguish between sanzty and insanity) , and the projectors in Lagado produce nonsense- b~oksin thair enthusias~To refine the art of writing. As a result, their projscts fail not because the objects of their rsforms require no reformation but becausa their pride and enthusiasm in boiag projectors misdisects their reforms, Given the importance of reason and sanity in a so- called '*Age of Reason,*' it becomes apparent that, Tor Swift, the adherence to conventional rules of languag~structure and tha cultivation of a clear, siirtpla style are not siapf y matters a•’ personal preferecce, Rather, these elements help to make the fine line between reason and madness a little broadsr, and the detection of bcth a little easier.

Swift*s ncsn-satiric observations 5.2 his short prose essays, togeth~rwith the direction his satire takes in A Tald A Tub,

---~-,,,,,~~~~~~~~IGulhiver's %'ravels and gg&li&g-~~mersatimi, aake his views on language quite clear. But the importance of those vieus ta the argument of this thesis lies in the extent to which they influence his views ort poetry.6 As may be enrpect.;;~, the sxtrtnt is grgat, and Swift's ideas abont what poetry should be and how it should be written are, in effect, ext~2nsionsof his viaws on language.

Questions about the nature sf poetry vare as much debated in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth c%nturias as thay have been

in subseque~ttim~s, hut sicce it is IB~intention here to

invsstigate Swift's views on poetry, I shall not try to summarize the entire critical atmosphers of his day. Hovsver, a brief glance at one or two conte~porarythsories of poetry is necessary

principally to determine just how typical of his day Swifers views were,

Tho essential doctrine of poetry, as eiqhteanth-century

theorists expressed it, was derived almost entirely from

four of the ~ristotleargues that

f9Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of thea lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitatiorl . . . Next there is ths instinct lor 'harmonys and rhythla. . . .117 He also says that Objects which in theaselves us visu with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as %he forms of $he r~ost ignoble animals and of dzad bodies. . . , Thus the reason uhy mEn enjoy seeing a likeness is that in contemplati3g it they find theres~lvss learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, 'Ah, that is he, * For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will. be due not to imitation as such, but to thl exncution, the colouring, or scms other caus%,8

From this proceeds tho dictum that poetry should instruct and

delight sincz *tlr3arriingW and *fpl?asure**are key words in the

abovs passage, ~ristotfi~scomments would probably have been enough to coavince Auguszan writers of poetry's dual purpose, but the fact that Roraca reiterated what ~ristotlesaid put the

question beyond doubt, Horace, in Ars Poeticg, expresses his

befief in po+tryss duai purpnse In the following way:

To teach--to please--comprise the poetrs views, 0s else at once to profit an9 awuse, Ic prec~ptbe concise, What thus is told The mind shall qrasp with ease, with firmnnss hold; ahdle ail thatts hsaped superfi~ousshocks the taste, Fro& memory~stabl+t fades, and ru~sto wasta.9

It is not surprising, then, that John ~ennis--one of the most

prolific critics on the subject of poetry in ths eighteenth century--~riting under the influence of ~ristntleand Horace, defined poetry in similar terns:

Pcetry thez is an Art, by which a Ptsst excit.os Passion {and for that very Cause entertains Sense) in order to satisfy and improve, to delight ana refora th~Rind, and so to make Mankind happisr and better: from which it appears that poetry has ~WOEnds, a subordinate, and a final one; the subordinate one is Pleasure, and the final one is 1nstruction. 10

Poets like Dryden, Pop+?, Johnson, and espzcialfy Swift upheld the

idsa that poetry should instruct and please, in tha-t order,

To arrive at a ore comprehensive ass@ssment of ths

eightemth-centurya s g2naral. theory of poetry, +h~treatise, "xi

was erron3ously attributed to Longinus, but if its authorship is debatabla,ll its impzct on eighteenth-century poetical theory is

not, ~lthoughPeri-gt&sl?us was probabf y circulated in eightesnth-century literary cifcles in the original Gseek or in translation of 1674 propell~dthe work to its greatest heights of popularity.12 The sublime ha$ always been of implicit concern to poetical theorists sirce Aristctle, but ths elements that comprise the sublime had never bsen as explicitly delinsgrgd-3s in Peri Hupsous. for example, ~ristotfe's argument that Tragedy is superior to Epic Poetry and particularly to Corned y--because Tragedy wfulfills its specific function better as an arttil3-- vagusfy intplies a gradation of each form's rslative sublimity.

Bad this is especially the case as regards Tragedy and Comedy because the typs of language suitable to each can be so different.

But Longinus is much mors definite than Afistotfe in his analpsis of the nature of the sublims. sublimity, h9 says,

consists in a certain exceflence and distinction in expression, and . . . it ia from this source alone that the greatssr, poets and nistorians have acquired their pre-emin9nce and won for themselvfs ac eternity of Eame, For the effect of elevated language is, not to persuade the hearers, but to entrance them , . . these sublime passages exert an hrrtsistible force and mastery and get th2 upper hand vith every hsar~r.I4

The five sources cf the sublime, he goes on to say, are the ability to form grand conceptions . . . the stimulus of powerful and inspired emotion . . . ths proper formation of the two types of figures, figures of thgught and figures of speech . . . the creation of a noble diction , . . the total effect resulting from dignity and slevation.15

Longinus spends a good deal of time expandinq on these fiv? sources and, in the process1 establishes the relationships of language in general and of figures of speech in particular to the sublime.

Besides the works of the classical uritsrs, SwiftSs views on poetry soem to have been influ~ncedmost sigaificantly by two contemporary wcrks: Boileauts art Poztiqgg (7673) and Sir

~illiamTemple's '#Of Po2try" (1690). Roil+au9s L'Byt Poetiqgg was much less popular than his translation of Lonqinus (167Q) but it was the former work that DryderA chose to translate into English in

1683. Since Swift psssfssed 3 1697 edition of &p$&quses Ouvres,

Tngg 1 G,ffi,,Ep2c,Sgtirt3 Postumg, it is possible that h2 was familiar with Li&rr Poekiqg~either in the original or at least in Drydenss translation.16 Tenpfe8s sssay was published a year after

Swift first arrivtd at Boor Park, and Swift's familiarity with Temple9s writings ~ustsurely have includad a knowledge of **Of

At the outset of LL&gg-go?tiggq {I: here use Drydenas translation), Boileau establishes the tons for his poent by cautioning poets against insincerely undertaking "thz Sacred Art of Rhy;ne,"l'l fie thus characterizes the writing of true poetry as a sacrod act, and ths remainder of his posm is based on this assumption. By implication, false or insincere poets are moral1y culpable and reprehensible.

As regards the composition of postry, Boileau advises,

What-etse you writs of Pl5asant or Sublime, Always let sence accompany your Rhyae: Falsely they seem sach other to oppose; Rhyme must be made with R?asonis Laws to close: And uhen to conquer her you lend your force, The Mind will Triumph in the Noble Course . . . . fll. 27-32) Poetry must combine sense and reason and the poet must ccnsaqusntly '*Chusa a just Stile; be Grava without constraint, / great sitbout pride, and lovely ~sithoutPaintf9 1 13-04 to accomplish this end, Were the poet's moral obligation to himsalf, to his audience, arid to his art is amphasized, as humility almost becomes the moral precondition for writing good poetry,

Humility plays a part in deteraining the kind of language appropriate -to poetry as well. Boileau implores poets to

Observe the Language well in all you Brita, Acd swerve not froa it your loftiest flight. The smoothest Verse, and the exactest Sence Displease us, if ill g3qrl~b give offence: A barb9sous Phrase no Reader can approve; Nor Bombast, Noise, or Affectation Love, Ir shorz, without pure Language, what you Brits, Can never yield us Profit, or Delight, [I 1, 155-162) He is concerned, like Aristotle and Horace, about poetry's ability to instruct and delight. Pure language assures the accomplishment of both objectiv~s, Nevertheless, at ths end of it all, Boifeau focuses on the integrity of the poet upon which everything else depends:

Let not your only bus*ness be to Write; Be Virtuous, Just, and in your friends delight, 'Tis not enough your Poems be adrsir'd; But strive your Conversation ba desirqd; Rritc for iamartal Fame; nor ever chuse Gold for the object of a gengrous Muse, I knsu a noble %it my, without Crime, Receiv5 a lawful Tribute for his Time: Yet I abhor those griters, who despise Their Rcnour; and afond their Profit prfzs . . . . {I 1, 975-986) William T~rnple'sassrsxment of th+ nature of poetry, cn the other hand, is considerably less emokional and lass moralistic than Boileauts. Temple refuses to "allov poetry to be more divine in its effects than in its causes, nor any operation produced by it to be Bore tha~purely xatural . . , ."18 Be does not disagree basically with Roileau on th? issue of po2ticaL composition, he simply centers his attention morz on the theory cf poetry than on the practical and ethical implica tions of that theory,

Temple argues that true poetry can incite fov2 or hate in the reader and, indeed, can change love into ha%e and hate into love. Poetry has such forca becaus;., "in it are assembled all the powers of eloquence, of music, and of pictures, which are allowed to make so stfong impressions upon human windsi1 {p. V6)s But, postry can only succeed if invention and wit are tempered with go~dsens? and soucd judgment:

Hithout the forces of wit, all poetry is flat and lanquishing, without the succours of judgmsnt , atis wild and extravagant. Ths true sit of poesy is that such contraries must mect to compose it; a genius, both penetrating and solid; in expression both delicacy acd force; and the frsme a~dfabric of a true poem must havz soaething both sublime acd just, a~azingand agreeable, There taust be a great agitation of mind tc invent, a groat calm to judge and correct . . . To work up this metal into exquisite figure, there must be employed the fire, the ha~mer, the chisel, and the file, (P. 180) Without danying the need for genius and imaginaion in a poetical composition, ~empleass3rts the importance of the poatgs technical skill. The fire of which he speaks represents imagination or inspiration, the hammer and the chisel indicate th~ actual labour of uriting, and the file suggests the polishing and refining required to perfect the poem,

Befors he concludes his rsmarks on th2 kature of poetical composition, Temple expvsses the opinion that conteaporary writers would do better tc translate ~fistotfeand 8oracs rathar than to try to improve upon them, "After all, the utmost that can be achieved, or I think pratznded by any rules in this art, is but to hinder soae man from being very ill poets, but not to taake any man a good one*$ (p, 183) . H~Smention of Aristotfe and Horace emphasizes the impact that these classical writers had on eighteenth-century pmtical theory and, consequently, provides a suitable entrance into a discussion of Swift" views on poetry;

Swift is as indebted to the classical writers for the basic precepts of poetical composition as his prsde~d~~~f~and his contemporaries were.

Swift never wrote lengthy treatises on the nature of poetry, on the rules of poetical composition, or on the cature of the subliws in poetry, but all of these concerns are effectively ddalt with in "on Poetry: fi Rapsdy,gy Sniftas last po&m on poe%ry as an art ana, in effect, his ays-gqetica, Recently, Robert Uphaus has called "On Poetry: A BapsodyH a poem Which is both a defense of

Swift*s use of pcetry and a critical estimate of the verse of atany 3f his contemporarias.~'l9 Uphaus has shown also that swift was indebted to Cryden's translation of Boileau's &:Art Eqgt&qgg and to Horace's &gg-$pgrjcp for sectiocs of vtOc Poetry."20 I concur with Uphaus In both instances; however, I would like to dsmonstrate that i80n Po+tryli is the culminatior? of Swift's earliar comments on poetsy, thereby directing attsntion to th+ particulars

G f his poetical views,

Critics generaily agrez that swiftls early poaws are mediocre at best, These uritings represent the young poet's first public dttempts at poetry while showing, simul.taneously, his reactions to the mediua within which he has chosen to #ark, Ris reactions are interesting because thay dspict an angry young poet, steadfast in his hatred of falsehood and vice, d+termined to combat both evils, and yet unco~fortahlewithin the confines of the heroic couplst, In f*To Br. Cocyrevets fl693), Swift lashes out at critics who, having no sense whatever of the art of poztry, nonetheless stand antirely ccmmitted to the rules of poetry: "These are the fords of the poetic schools, / Who preach the saucy pedantry of rulas,fi21 His frank cflaracterization of this type oE critic justifiss his anger:

Last year, a lad hence by his parents sent With other cattle to the city went; Where havicg cast his coat, and w~lfpursuid The methods most in fashion to be lewd, Return'd a finishqd spark this summer down, Stocksd with the freshest gibberish of the tcwn; X jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in the Babel of the pit; Formid by diseas9d conceptions, weak, and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child; Born b~tnesnwhoros an3 fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, as else between the acts: Nor uosder, if Ero~8 such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory kinds, Or crazy rules to make us wiks by rot2 Last just as long 3s ev'ry cuckov*s note: What bunglincj, rusty tools, sre us8d by fats! 'Twas in an evil hour to urge my hate, ~~,Bata~-ehase-lash-3us,t~4~aven~has-Lon~-d~c=~~G ------Shall on a day ------make sin and folly ------bleed . . . , fHW, I, 46-47, 11. 115-134)

Throughout his career {as a poet and prose writer) Swift never falters in his determination to "make sin and folly bleed.'i

SviEt *s tone becomas &ore embittered and despairing in flOccasioned by Sir bJil.Liam TaIaplels Late Illness and Hecovnry'* (1693) . Frustrated by society's tendency to transform genuina virzue into vice--to mistake his scorn of fools for the sin of pride--Swift defiantly upbrards his muse as a malignant goddess whose demands are not proportioned to her rewards:

Such were thy rules to be postically great, *tStmp not to inttri=st, flattery, or deceit; "Nor with birSd thoughts bz thy aevotion paid; "Learn to disdain their mercanary aid; "Be this thy sure defence, thy brazen wall, "Know no base action, at no guilt turc pale; "And since unhappy distance thus dsnies HT*expose thy soul, clad in this poor disguise; "Since thy few ill-pr~s~ntedgraces se2m ~VUbreed contempt where thou hast hopad e~teeia,~~ (RU, I, 55, 91. 137-146)

The young poet ranounces his muse's enchantment and visionary poser because of his disillusionm2nt: gland since thy essence on ray breath depends, / Thus with a puff the whsls delusion

As far as is known, Swift wrote no poltry for the next fiv~ yeazs; his next pblish.cld poem is **verseswrote nn a Lady's Ivory

Ta-ble-~ook" (1698). During the years between 1693 and 1698 his creative povers were employed elsewhere than on poetry. In May

1694, he left Moor Park and travelled to Ireiartd where he entered the Anglican ministry; he was granted a prebend at Lisburn udurirg March and April 1695 . . . and at the end of April read divine service at Lisburneit22 fr, Bay 1696, he returned to Boor Park where he compieted much of A Tale og A Tub bsforz the year ended.

TBf Bataln,~f,r$g,@oekn fol1~wedin 1697. It appears, thez, that between the writing of HOccasioned by sir idilliam Templeas Latz Ilkass and Recovery+' and rrVarses Wrote on a Lady's Ivory Table-

Book," Swift not only established himszff more securaly in the world financially but, more importantly, he came to terms with his poetical abilities. Certainly, by ths tima he writes '+Verses #rote on a Lady's Ivory Table-Bookw his poetical styfs has altered drastically, and he seidsa attempts the heroic couplet and style thersa fter,

GLimm~rFngsof Svift9s poetical views emerge in three satirical poeas on the architect turnsd playwright, John Vanbrugh.

Swift investigates the nature of both poetry and the sublime in zt humourous if suntfwhat superficial manner in the53 poems. BecausG he Is an architect and a poet, Vanbrugh is ?he ideal subject for the architectural metaphor used commnlp in th~early 3ighteenth cantury to describe the art of poztic composition, And in addltion to the happy coincidencz of Vanbrugh's occupations, Swift

Could depend for added huaour on the dual usage of ~lsublime,~ which was used to describe tall buildings as w++ll as noble sentimclnts. Togsther, these facts make Vanbrugh the perfect subject 3f a SGT~OS of satirss in which building moderr houses is juxkaposzd with writing modern poetry,

wVanbrug's House, 1703" begins tho series, The initial co~parfsonSwiSt sets up between ancient and modern poetry

3stablishes modern poetry an3 modere poets alike as impotent, In ancient times

A Song could draw a Stone of Beam, That now would cverload a Team, Lead them a Dance of many a aife, Then rear *em to a qoodly Pile . . . . (HW, 1, 79, 11. 3-6)

Hodern poetry, by contrast, can no longer build houses and, as for modern poets, "Not one of all the tunzfull Throng / Can hire a

Lodging for a SongH (11, 15-16). Swift continues to argus against the mderns, using i~agesfaniliar in the ancients/mdorns debate in tha process, He transforms the spider, the antagonist of the bee in g4e 3agtle of the Books, into a sifkworn and identifies it with modern poets in gen5ral and playwrights ifi particular, Like the worm--and the emphasis is deliberately on t8wormtt--the modern post "Cossumes it self to weave a Cellw (3. 321, T~LJmdern poet's salf-delusion is 5videnced by the fact that, once mare like the worm, "He flutters when he Thinks he ffys, / Then sheds about his Spsun, and dyas" {ll, 37-38),

The proof of the modern poet/worm analogy is VanbrugR himself: Van, (for *tis fit the Reader know it) 1s both a Herald 2nd a Poet; No wonder thec, if nicely skill'd In each Capacity to Build: As Herald, he can in a Day Xepair a House gone to decay; Or kg Wtchievments, Arms, Davics Erect 3 new one i3 a Trice; And Po~tsif they had their Due, By antiant Hight are Builders too. (11. 59-68)

Swift begins by ide~~tifyingVaabrugh as a herald and a poet, but lest tha reader take this announcement to i~dicatethe diversity of Van brughts exprr tise, the paranthetical remark ituplies that without being told, nobody would knov that he was either me,

Certainly, there is not much hope thai a fineaye "repaired" in a day or a new one thought up with equal speed will favourably advertis? his integrity cr creative skill as a herald or, for

Swift extqnds the implication cf Vanbrughis rspairlng of faaily lines [houses) to include his skill in archir;xture,23 as an architect. Nevertheless, having made the initial connection betwean poetry and heraldry/architectuse and having ideatified

Vanbrugh as a modern practitioner of these arts, Swift can now use the imagery associated with them int3rchangeably to discredit

"Bodern Rhymersw who "strive to blast / The Poetry of Ages pastw

This is Swift's primary objective in "Vanbrugvs House, 17036' and, consequently, the exact details about Tfanbrugh's play and house are of seccndary importancs an4 therefore relatively After hard Throws of many a Day Van was d?llvar*d of a Play, Which In due time brought forth a Housc . . . . {11* 73-75)

Similarly, the house is described as being ?$One Story high, one postern Door, / And one small Chambar on a PiosrqT (11, 77-78).

The relationship between the two is of an al~ostincsstuous aatura, which, besides calling the mo~alityof Vanbrughss efforts into qunstion, also renders both the play and the house ccrrupt.24

The; second Varibrugb poem, "Vanbrtlfg's House, 3706,t' is important to a discussi.cn of Swiftts views on poetry 0~1yinsofar as it reveals in greater depth the character of a false astist and a plagiarist, both of which Swift, justifiably or unjustifiably, believas Vanbfugh to be. But since it does not deaf directly with psetzy and poetic coaposition,

I shall not include it in rho present discussics.

Instead, I shall turn immediately to an analysis of Suifk's last

Vanbrugh poem, If Banbrug *s Housef1 (7 7Q8/9) . jlVanbrug*s House*' (1708/9) is actually a refined version of th2 1703 text, Swift herf preserves much of tha early text but places more emphasis on Vacbrugh the poet than h3 hail done formerly. Vankrugh methodically sets about to restore the art of poetry by writing a play, Jove consents to the idea and, anticipating an opportunity fcr some fun, suggests that Vanbrugh choose a suitable style on his own. Van decides to vr5te or, rather, to plaqiarize a Earc?: But well parceiving Cit was scarce, With Cucnicg that Defect supplies, Takes a French Play as 1 awf ul Priza Steals thence his Plot, and evlry Jokz , , . . {H@, 1, 107, 11, 56-59)

Swift's cpinioc of plagiarists is stated candidly in the w~pologyw for ~J!!&g-gf-gaggb, which appeared in 1710: 8iF know nothing aose contemptible ix a Writer than the Charscter of a Plagiaryw

Predictably, Vanbrugh deriv~sno ben~fitfrom plagiarism, either in terms of his play or in torms of his house,25 which results from the play and is constructed of "sxperianclt Bricks that knew their Trada, / (As being Bricks at Second Hand,)rr (11,

76-77), Rather, In accordance with what swift beliavas to b@

Vanbrugh's skill in both arts, the quality of the house rsflec-ts the quafity of the play: Panbrugh*~house/play 1s a hovel/kovel. When other modzrn poets floc'x: to see his palac9, they are surprised to find *tA Tbing resentbling a Goose Py" 11. IQO), %.sing Vanbrughs at heart themselves, however, they applaud Van's tf for's exceedingly, condeaning thetnselves further with each insne rarttark, Swift now reiterates his previous ccnclusion:

So Qy~~istsboast they have a pow*r From the d2ad Ashas of a Ffsw'r Some faint R~s%mblanceto producs, But not the Virtue, Taste or Juic~. So &p.&n Rimers wisely Hlasz TbAe Poetry of ~gespsst, Which after they have overthrown, They from its Ruins build th;ir own. (11, 127-134)

It is te~ptingto see the genesis of the satire cf Book Thrse of ------Gufliverls Travels in the raffrence to che~istsin thse final lines of the poem, Nevertheless, however valid this speculation may be, it re~ainstrue that hero, as in EuU.ivfrSs Tw&, the chemists primarily reprzsent godern enthusiasm in scienc~just as

Vanbrugh represents ~odernenthusiasm in poetry. Ban and his counterparts exhibit their pride and ignorance when they boast of powers they do not possess, They bscoree conspirators in immorality wh~nthey suppcrt each other in their delusriocs,

Vanbrughgs play and the poats who praise it so vociferously are, for Swift, manifestations of the dsgeneratinq moral fabric of his age.

Because he Is essentially concerned with reform in his satires, swift never lets slip an opportunity to expose immorality and foolishriess. Therefore-, he cannot, in conscience, allow Vdnbrugh to continue dishonouring poetry and misleading society.

Everything Vanbrugh is and everything he represents run contrary to Swift's idea of the naturs of true poetry, Yanbsugh's pride renders hi@ incapable of "aching virtue 40 othsrs through his poetry; indeed, his plays are so bad thas thsy n~ithsrinstruct nor delight, as far as Swift is concernsd, Furthermore,

Vanbrugh's plays are nct properly founded on classical rules, a fact which, to anticipate Suif tqsreasoning, identifies Valibrugh in son5 mnasure with the group of modern poets described in the **Ap~logy+~fcr the Ta&s as being "illitarate Scriblerx, prostitute in their Xeputations, vicious in thdir Lives . . (HD, I, 2); for when aodern poets ignore the ancient r~l~sof poetq, they are l?ft to their ow2 resources and, in this predicament, thay invariably confuse their abilities, make fools of thsftiselves, mislead oth~rs,and debase th2 art of poetry.

Roroovor, as Vanbrughts houss proves, a modern poem ar play, like a building, can never reach sublime heights if it is not constructed an a solid foundation,

A more comprehensive investigation into the nature of poetry and of the sublime, and a better representation of Swift's views on poetry, can be found in a Frose sssay antitfal "A Letter of

Advice to a Ycung Poet; together with 3 Proposal for the

Encouragement of Poetry in this Kingdomg* (1720). Although the moddl for this satire may hdve bean Sidntygs Qlfg&se of Poszgy, 26 its con tents are charscteristicall y Swrftian to the extsct that

Sidnzy's piece nsed not even be raftirrtd to, T~Gassay is a masterpiece of sustained irony by shich Sgift satirizes the state of poetry in Ireland, If tks advisorgs enthusiastic praise of the prescriptions for the composition of modern poetry are reversed, however, it is usually possible to discov2r Swiftas views on poetry fairly accurately.

Th9 author of the letter begins by stating that if ths youcg poet to whom he is addressing his ra~arksis inclined to be a good

Christian instead of a great wit, then he had bsttef abandan poetry, This muse ~f action, he continues, is dictated by the fact that modern poetry has happily *%%en altogether disengag'd froa the narrow ncti0r.s of Virtue and Piety" {ED, IX, 329).

Mevertheless, while a poet should not be raligious--religion threatsns poftic license--he should ba conversant in the scriptures:

for the scriptures are undoubtedly a Fund pf sit, acd a Subject f~c~ Wit, You may, accordi~g to the modern Practice, be witty upon them or ---out of them: WE^ to speak the Truth, but for them, 1 know not what our Play-~rightswould do for X~ages,Allusions, Si~ilitudes,Zxaaples, or even Language it self, (p. 330)

Thus far, if the proper reversals are performed, a poet should ba a good Christian, ~dditionalfy,modern poatry sfiould be consistent with virtue ar:d piety: it, shouid be a product of wit but. not of wit derived Erclm or aimad at the scriptures; it should bf? comprised of imag*.s, allusicns, similes, and examples but not of the sort which are lifted directly fron the Bible and serve caly to demean their source.

The author next expresses the belief that a good poet need not be a scholar, He defends this bslief by arguing, in ths

Banner of a true modern enthusiast, that +-he artist's Internal r2sources are superior to any external influences:

for ta speak my private Opinion, r am for evssy Manrs working upon his ow11 ~ilatefial:;, arid producing only what he can find within himssff, which is commoniy a better Stock than the ovner knows i+, to be. f think Plow+rs of Wit ought to spring, as those in z Garden do, from their own Boot and Stem, without I? orsign Assistancr. 1 would hav2 a #an8s git rather like a Fountaizi that fe~dsit self invisibly, than a River that is supply'd by sevkral Straams fro@abroad, (P. 333) This modern author is obvFousPy captivated by his own rhetoric, but his metaphors are as ill-chosen as they are overdone. The hammer, chisel, and fila to which Teapis likened the mechanical labours of poetical composition are discarded in favour of the suprsBacy of the poet" initial firz, or inspiration. For Swift, uncontrolled inspiratio~l[passion astride season, to use the atetaphsr of the day) cannot imitate reason or direct the reader toward virtue as poetry ought to do, This authoras flowers of wit, proceeding as thsy do from his own root and stem, afa both

2xtravaqant {they profess man's ability to create apart from God) and false (they ae~eanman by likening the process of his wit to the growth of flow~rsin a garden and, evsctually, to an inanimate fountain),27 In short, the poet who, like the 3uthor of the letter, writes extampore from his own fire, is more apt to be self-consumed than to bs yenuinsly czeativs.

Here Swift is relying hoavily on the reader's common sense to

recall that poetry must be the product of classicaf as well as modern learning, of thought as viall as fancy, and of rGasor, which

orders the parts into a natural, harmonious whofz.

The author's next pronouncement, that rhymes and siaifes are essertial to poetry, represants a drop of reason in an ocean of

madness. But reasGn is rapidly engulfed with the recommendation

that the best way to practise rhymes is to indulge continually in boyhood games like Crambo, a word game in which two

participants take turns rhyming words. Similes, on the other

hacd, car, be judged succnssfuf. to the degree to which. they '$bring

things to a likeness, which have not the least irnaqin3bfs

Co~formityic Eu'at~re~~{p. 336) , ~rovidingtney compf y with th? definition, a poet's simf les should

be "siz'd, and rang'd, and hung up in order in his Shop, ready for

all Custornars, and shapad to the Feet of all Verse , , (p.336).

The author is succ~ssfulaccording to his own definition because

thsre could be no less conformity than between the job of a post

and that of a shoemaker, Given Swift's high regard for poetry and

his low opinion of modern hacks, his position on this point is

clear, Whereas he would agree that rhyaes and similes are germane

to poetry? he would not agree with the authorSs ~ethodsof

supplying them; boyhood games will not perfect the art of rhymkcg, and similes must he dram in accordance with what is natur31 and just,

As his conf%dence in and enthusiasra for his topic increase, the author of the Istter takes it upon himself to transcribs rules

for the composition of poetry along with a range a•’topics ups?. which a poet may exercise his talent, Be lists the following

items as significant guidelines to be adhereu to: the poet must

#rite in runber and vsrs2; he must invoke th~muse; he nust

invariably head his verse with a Greek or Latin motto; he must

never write In a plain style; he must a2ar his pttcrest clothes nhen he writes; he should begin by writing lib~lsand lampoons

because they are more easily COIRPOS~~than panegyrics; he must sell his services to a political pasty. To attempt total

reversals hers would lead to statemsnts Bore f00lish than th2 asiginals, For sxample, if 3 poet 3id not write in shyme and

verse in Swift's day, hs was not usually consiaered to be a poet.

Similarly, whether or not a motto heads a po.11~makes as littl2

differsncs as the type of clothes the po2t wears;

both considerations can cast suspicion on the poet's motives

and ars therefore equally repugnant to Swift, ghat is north

noting, however, especial1 y with respect- to swift *s views on

language iz! glzneral, is the injuactiort not -to write in a plaist

style, To restate Swift's position in The Tatley essay, "1 should

be glad to see ycu the Instrument of introducing into our Style,

that Simplicity which is the best and truest OrnamePst of most things in human lifew (HB, 11, 451).

Mow all of this relates tc the sublime In poetry is of some interast even to a modern enthusiast like ths author of tho letter:

1 will do my Countrymen the justice to say, they have Written by the Eoragoing Rules with great exactcess, and so far as hardly to coma behind those of thsir profession in England, in perfection cf low Writing, The gqQAg2, icdeed, is not so comon with us, but ample amends is made for that want in tha great abucdanc~sf the &dg&gg@bg and Ama zlq, which appears in all our Cpmpgiiqoo~, (p* 349)

Here the author Is covertly equating the sublime with high writing and, b~causethe writin? done in Ireland is low writing, it is ~ot sublime, Yet, to equate the "admirablefl and the "amazing3* with

low writing and not with thg sublime Is a bit strang*; what could be mora admirable or amazing thac thz sublime?

Simple reversal do+s not work in this instance either. Swift is playing with the cannotations s-nd denotations of words. If a piece of writing is vcsthy of admiration, it is "a3mirablef"n a

positive sense. If, however, a piece of writing is horribly bail,

ano can ad~irethat something that bad was ever wrltten; it is

'%ddnirable'+ in a negative sense. Or t*adntirableH nay be simply

used straightforwardly as a satirical commsnt on a piece of bad writing; the impfiestion is negative here too but in a sliqhtly

differsnt my than in the pravlous instance. This same reasoning

holds true for ftanazing." For Swift, the sublime is both

'3admirabie" and *'amazicqN in a positivs sense--he uould and a caution to this assertFon which I shall. discuss later--but the profanation of poetry that would accompaay an adherence to the above rufns is not. Ironically, the author of the lettar is quits accurate in describing his style of writixg as "admirablen and

"amazingn but the sense in uhich it is so is not the positive sense he wishes to pcrtray; in Swift" day, "admirable'* and flamazing" had negative connotations suggesting a certain degree of mental confusion, Swift therefcra lets these wards stand on their own and thereby allows the author, whose snthusiasnt blinds him tc their perjorative ~eanings, to undermine his own position, Thus, the author is correct in recogrizing that not much nodern poetry is ultimtaiy sublime, although he is mistaken in assuaing that "our Cmnpositions*~supply the deficiency.

Swift's career as a poet was drawing to a close by about

1733. Intermittently throughout the preceding ten years he had complained about his increasing inability to write poetry. In

'To Stella on her Birth-dayf* (7722) hi; wzites,

You, every Year the Debt enlarge, I grow less equal1 to the Charge: Zn you, each Virtue brighter shines, But my Poetick Vein declinzs, (HW, 11, 739, 11, 7-10)

%hen he prepares to write a birthday tribute to her the following year, he bites his nails and scratches his head but no poem is immdiately forthcoming. On one level, these complaints are ironically, evEn playfully, intended since the verses in which they are expressed do not reveal a declining power, Honetheless, on another level, ~wfft9s complaints assume an appearancs of greater s~riousnfssth% more often they are rspeated, In

**Stella3s Birth-Day (1725) ,*I for example, he confides to Stella that hc now flzds prose an easier madium to work in than poetry:

As when a beautecus Nymph decays Ua say, she's past hw Dancing Days; So, Poets lcse their Feet by Tiete, And can no longer danca in Rhym2. Your Annual Bard had rathas chose Tu celebrate your Birth in Prose . . , . {HH, 11, 756, 11. 1-6)

And in 1732 he camposes these poignant lines after receiving a book from 3oyle and a silver standish from Defany as birthday gifts:

A Paper Book is sent by 13ql&s, TOG neatly guilt For me to soil, -----Delany sends a Silver Standish, When I LO more a Pen can brandish. Let both arau~dmy TomD be pfactd, As Trophies of a Muse deceas'd . , , , {HO, If, 611, 11, 1-51

Dwpits the irony of the situation, there is nothing humourous or pfayf ul about these 3.'in*S.

AZmost nobody of his day could aatch Swift in his capacity to perceive the irony of any particular situatioc, especially if the situaticn involved himself, This, plus the fact that the poeas to Stofla and the short posm conmemorating tha thaughtfuln~ssof his two friends are basically co~tlpositi-ots dealing with doestic mltters of a private nature, indicates that

Swift was conscious of and prepared for the tiiw when he wust abandon thz writing of poetry, It is perhaps not altogethlr fanciful, then, to view 8*An 'Epistle to A Lady, Who desired the

Author to nake Verses on Her, in the Hzroick Stile*' (1733) and

'Wn Poetry: A hapsodytq (1733) as the attempts of an aging poet:

(Swift was sixty-six) t3 SUE up his poetical. ability and his views on poetry respective1y,

"On Poetfy: A Rapsodyli is swift's ars po2tjka, as I suggested earlier. But it is a different kind of ars gjp~?tjcpas the spelling of the title itself indicates, The O.E, D. def inzs alternatqlp as wan ;pic p~aa,~~"a medley or confused mass of things or string of words,3t *?a written composition having no fixed for@ or plan," and **anexalted or exagg3ratedly enthusiastic expression of sentiment or feeling; an offusion

(e.y., a speech, letter, poem) marked by extravagance of idea and expression, but without connected thought or sound argument,*+ "A fiumber of parts joined together, without necessary depccdence or natural connection" is the only definition that Johnsu~gives to "rhapsody" in his dictionary, Although it would require excessive rationalization to aque that

Swift's poem parodies the epic form, the othar definitions fit

"On Poetry: A Raps~dy~~perfectly, Furthar, by leaving th+ "h?$ out of "rhapsody" he alerts the reader to the possibility that the poem will be a "rap" or knock against modern poetry, or perhaps something of a counterfeit nature, since "a rappH was a ql~pil~iou~,counterfeit ccin,@*28 By writing a rhapsody, then,

Swift allows h5mself tht scope to satirizs the undisciplin~d nature of modern poetry and the fraadom--since a rhapsody is disjoicted by definition--to insert comments on -the naturs of true poetry.

It is littil~g that the great satirist should su~marizehis theory of poetry in a satire that is simultaneously sl~pleand complex, playful and s~rious,in a woril, *vSwiftian,tB Th+ first verse parag~aph,for example, is as ssrious if not as sophisticated as Pope's Duncia4 in its condemnation of mod~rn poets as false nits and fools, Reiterating his constant thme,

Swift accuses those poets 05 p_r-id+ and pervlersenass, and he concludes his assault in lines comparable to &-3ssay_ori fipg in subject-matter, forcefulness, and polished rhymes: -Brutes ---- find out where their Talents lie: A Bear ~iffnot attmpt to fly: A foun&r3d nmse will oft debate, Be•’ore he tries a five-barrtd Ga?e: a Dog by Instinct turns aside, Vho sees the Ditch too deep and wide. But gqq we find the only Creature, Vho, fed by p&&y, fighSs with ggtgyg; Who, when &g loudly crias, epyga&, With Obstinacy fixes there; And, where his Gggiys fdast inclines, Absurdly bends his whole Designs, (HW, If, 540-6U1, 17. 13-24)

His point regarding the destructiveness of @an's pride is made forcefully as th~dcclrcsion of brute nature Roves fsoa bear, to horse, to dog, tc man, whose folly and pfide render him the lowest brute of all, This saEe pride seriously threatens true poetry since flour chilling climate hardly bears j A Sgg&q of Rays in

Fifty Ysars" f11, 7-8), Ths sad, desperate truth of the statemsnt

Cvershadows thc pun on rgchifling Cli~ate. Swift next asserts th3t so job requires more heavenly infiuance than that of being a poet, Nobody is less able to psosper or is less courted by socisky than he whom Phoebus **Rat;h blasted with poetick Pira" (1. 43) :

GQ~L~,G&sy, Country want you not; You cannot hibe, betray, or plot, for Poets, Law makes no ~rovisidn: The Xealthy have you in D+rision, *.o*.**.*.*..*.*.. Poor starvrfing Bard, how small thy Gains? How unproportion'd to thy Pains! 411, 47-50; 11, 59-60)

The mnaning here is dcuble-edged. On one level, these lines seam proudly and enthusiastialPy to applaud the plight of the modem poet by making him a martyr, On another leval, howzver, they present the poet's plight starkly and realistically* Swift's bitterness at not being rewarded in -proportion to his pains at various times ia his politic31 life has been amply detailed by critics over the years. But the importance of the above lines to the poea extends beyond considerations of personal bittsrness

Poets in general, whether they are good or had, are not supported by society, Unfortunately false poets do not scruple to employ flattery aaa bribery to sell themselves and their poetry; they seea to survive despite adversity. Tha true poet, conversely, believes that he has a serious obligation to himself, to society, and to his ark, Ha is therr;fore not only a good or a qfeat rhymer, hut a moral bi?i~gcompelled by his conscience to ernbrace virkue in his poetry and in his Life. Ffattery and bribery are as alien to the true poet as tk2y are to trut poetry, and saciety3s moral turpitud~is vftimately exposed when true poets are despised and subjected to the insquity of court preferment. In a rsal sense, the geoulno poet has been "blastedH or plague-s+ricken pcetlc fire because h~ has more difficulty surviving than his false counterpart. fcibber is made poet laureate, Sut Swift Is

denied the pest cf historiographer royal.) Thz exaggeration that characterizes Svift *s lines here thus isrnphasizes rather than obscures the truth. Just uhen it appears that rhapsody is not a part of Swift's

plan at all in **on Poetry,'* he interrupts tha narrative 50 introduce a simile which, on th+ surface, complies with the

pronouceaent of the author of 94A Letter of Advice to a Young Paetn

that similes should **bringthings to a likeness, which have no?

And here a similg comes Pat in: Tho* QAckens take a Month to fatten, T~EGuests in less than half an Hour ail1 Bore than half a Score devour. So, after tailing twenty Days, To earn a Stack of Pence and Praisz, Thy Labours, grown the Critickgs Prey, ATE swallcw'd o'er a Dish of Tea; Gone, to be never heard cf Bore, Gone, where the Chickens wmt bsfora. (11. 61-70)

To add to the confusion, not only is what appears to be s modern

criticism/excressent analogy abruptly ins;rted into the poem, but the reader's attenti.cn is deliberately and fathaz amateurishly

drawn to it by the fact that it is specifically called a si~ile. In actuality, Swift is affecdirrel y denoristra ting the false poat9s i~corfectuse of similes without lowering himself to thsir

Isvel of incompr; tence, The rhapsody form sui ficiently provides for the break in the narrative; Swift's genius does the rest. He has set up his ccxiposition in such a way that the "Poor Starv'ling

Bardtr (1, 59) is lineariy situated directly betwsen fionarchf s

Right" (1. 58) and +,ha critics as they are depicted in the simile,

The poet is dependa~ton the monarch for financial support or physical continuity and on the critics for psofessional support t>r artistic immortality, The ad jectivns y4poorffand nstar~*ling" acquire addsd poignancy because the ona arch and the critics alike are so obfivious to the bard tha+ his existence on both levels is threatened,

The simile Itself, apart from its linear situation in the poem, is a condeana%ion of bad modern critics and, by implicatlcn, bad modern poetry. suift likens the speed and indifference with which some critics devour poems to the spe5d and indifferencs with which guests devour chickens, the product of both acts being axcrement, The si~ilesugg~sts that such critics are morally reprehensibl~in thsir callousness. If what "hay are devouring is bad poetry then thero is no loss, ~ut:when they devour trus poetry, they are symbofically devcuring virtue and truth, a circumstance which aligns thea with the false wits, the fools, and the flatterers depicted in the opening paragraphs of the poem, And regardless of whether the literary works are essentially good or bad in themselv~s, the falsa critics reduco

then a11 to excrement.

with a loqic more apparent than actual, Swift shifts to a

discussion of how a young, inexperi+nced poez can learn to

distinguish between "The Poet's Vein, [and f Scribling TtchVt (3.

741, The answer, which ccaprises much of tht remainder of the

poem, is given by an "old experiencld Sianer,## whom I take to be

Swift. His first piece of advice echoes HoraceSs caution to the

post to @ark his abilities vol: before he begins writing:

Consult yourself, and if you find A powerful Impulse urge your fiind, Impartial judge within your Breast ghat Subject you can manage best . . . , (11, 77-80)

8hether the young poet chooses to write satires, panegyrics,

elegies, or prologues, he should be sure to rise parly, F~vake

the muse, asd then begin to write, The proc&ure for composition is as follous: Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, intorline; Be mindful, when Invention fails, Tc scratch your Head, and bite your Nails. (11, 87-90)

' This advice, though playfully exaggerated, recalls Sir Bill ialo

temple*^ idea that great mental agitation should accoBpany the

writing 05 poetry,

Already Swift's overall purpose in the poem is becornin clear, Thus far the word flrapsody" in ths title has been

largely a ploy. Except for th? introduction of the chicks~ siiiiiie, the carrativc hss not ban particularly rhapsodic. ~uz the word "rapsodyN has s+rvtd a usefnl purpose; it has created anticipatioc within the reader which forces him to judge each line according to whether it is logical and rlasonable or rhapsodical. The description of the narrator as an "old experienc'd SinnerTq produces a similar effect, Th3 read2r must question whether what follows in thc narrative is wise and moral or stupid arnU imaoral, The constant +ension that results froa the anticipation preveats the reader from ~entalrelaxation, thereay dramatizing Swift's conviction that reason must regain always alert in order to combat unreason adeyua tely, Certainly, the allusions to Horace and Tenple, though admittedly exaggerated 3s I have indicated, are neither stupid nor immoral. However, the same cannot be said of the narrator's subsequent advice oo the arc of transcribing a poem:

Your Poem finishsd, next your Care Is needful, to transcribe it fair, In mod~rnWiz aff printed Trash, is Sat off with num'rous Br3a&&--and qpg~Ass-- To Statesmen woutd you give a Wipe, You print i% i~ Wick'Tpgz, When Letters are in vulgar Shapes, 'Tis ten to one the Wit escapzs . , . , (11, 93-98)

Swift had expressed his abhorrence of breaks and dashes and the like '~refinrmrr,ts**in writtan laagusge frankly acd decisively in Ug-xa_ttgg essay twenty-one years aarlier, consequently, there is no doubt that, his advica here regarding thiz +,ranscription of a

Poem is ironically and perhaps even bitterly intended, The irony Lies ic his apparfnt approbation of ?*moderu Pitu and "printed

Trashf4+althouqh "TrashH reveals his actual feelings on the mstter, and thf- kitterness stems frsa the reality inherent in what he says: if a poem is xu be published and accepted, it must follow modem rules of composition and style?. Swift is disabusing ths young po$t of whatever illusions he may still have about being a successfuf poet. If hs is to survive and thrive, he must write according to modern rulzs, thereby producing bad poetry, ff he persnveres in nriticg gcad poetry, he might very well not survivs. And to compoun4 his dilemma, he is at the mercy of the coffee-house critics in either case,

The best way to learn the coffee-house criticst apirions of your poem, the narrator advises the young poet, is to "Be sure at ------Wi3.11s ths following Day, / Li+ snug, and bar what Criticks sap (11. 117-1 18) . ff the consensus of critical opinlon coadstiins your work, th2n "Sit still, and swallow down your Splt-tlP9 (1. 122).

Never admit to authcrship lest you be dubbed a fool, and never blame the critics fcr their criticisms bi?causi; "Csiticfrs have no partial Views, / Except they kncv whom they abuset* (1I. 137-332).

It is not surprising, then, that Swlftts hostility towards false critics is more procounced than his hatred of false poets,

&@causethe falss poet and his vile rhyws are soorr forgotten but the fazse critic endures. He governs the judgment of the town to such a degree that his itrtmorality quickly infects the town itself.

Paps expresses ths probl2m ic ApEsgay on_CrJ&ici~m, fTis hard to say, if greater Want of Skill Appear in grLt2nq or in gsggi~gF11; But, of the two, Less daxg'rous is th90ff?nce To tire our gg&igncs, than mis-lad our Sgp~p. Some few in ghat, but Numbers err in this, Ten Censurs wrong for one who #rites amiss . . . . 29 Bft~rhis irrs~icalassault on false critics, Suifk deftly

brwks with irony and turns to a straightforward presentaion of

poetic abuses; once again, the disjointed catur? of the rhapsody

allows hi^ to interrupt the satire at appropriate juctures, He advises the young poet to avoid

The trivial Turns, the borrow*d wit, The zjg&&.s that nothing fit;, The CppS which ev'ry Fool repeats, Town-Jests, and Cof fee-house Conceits; Descriptions tedious, Elat and dry, And intsoduc'd the Lor8 knows xhy , . . , (13, 151-156)

Despite the fact that what Swift says hare is sound advice, it is not: without its irony with respect to what precedes it in the

poem. Whereas the young poet and his sad plight have demanded

all of the r~ad3s~ssympathy, It turns out that he is not a good

poet after ail, his first two attempts at poetry having been

filled with the above errors,

The list of errors continues, with Swift providing examples

of some of them as he goes along. Ha illustfates false similes by

1 ikaning a cripplefs heel-piece and a bridge joining two moorlands

to eithets employed to fill gaping lines, These analogies are

clever enough, but, and this is Swift's point, they are

unsuitabla, A heel-pioce and a bridge both sarve useful purposes

and are cot, therefere, analogous to useless ;.pitfiets. And to the same purpose, geographers whc Iao%r unhabitable Downs / Place

Elephants for uant of Townsi$ (11. '179-18O), besides its axcesslventsss, is an exanpie of descriptions introduced into a poem "th~Lord Ir~cwswhy,"

Swift is cot throuqh yet, hou%ver, for tho reader, like the young poet, must be stripped elltirely of illusions. To this end,

Svift has the young poet fail in his third attempt at poetry even though he has presumably recognized and raformed his former faults. Swiftfs point is clear; the rules of poetry irr themselves are insufficient tc produce good pmtry, A po3t must have g~nius and judgmant, fieither of whrch the young poet ~OSSESSES. His only recourse is to seek party partronage or, alternately, to comprise elegies on dead and pacegyrics on living monarchs, Should these productions fail too, and the bottom of the barrel plainly have been ri.acheu, the young poet may #$Put on the Critick8s Brow, and sit / At @iiPs the puny Judge of Wit'* (71, 235-236). By inphicatio~,cof fe%-house critics are failed poets who, devoid of uit themselves, are puny judqes of it in others, Thf ensuing description of the failed poet turned critic qxposes false modern critics in aPf their deceitfufcess, @hen scornful silence can no longer hide his ignorance, the false critic is forced to learn the terms of art: Proceed co further in your Part, Befofe you learn the Terms of Art: (For you may easy be too far gone, In all our modsrn Criticks Jargon,) Then Talk with mora authentick Face, of ~gitigs,in g&gg and glace. Get Scrdps of &pracs from your Friends, Arid have them at your Fingers Ends, Learn &iF&oflegs Rules by Rotz, And a+, a11 Hazards boldly quote: Judicious Rygsy oft zevisw: Wise gemis, and profound gogsu. (11, 239-250)

**profounun is devastating, given what Swift says elsewher?,

critics in particulas and about the supremacy of the classical critics over moderr. critics in general. Rut ther.3 is sadness and

bitterness kerf as well, Witless czitics like Denris and Fymsr

epitomize the deplorable state of aodern criticism, and yet the

tru? post and the false poet alike are tragically at the msrcy of

just such imposters. 3% is 3.af-t to the render to aecide 22 which case the tsagGdy is greater,

Swift concludes the poem by discussing poetic faae and +,h?

su biims, He sarcas-ticafly wonders why it "Remains a nifficulty

still, / To purchase Falncl by writing ill*# (13. 367-3681, and why so few poets '#From f&%cm_opdown tra Howard's ti@?, / . . . have reach* d t he lo_g Su_bl,img?ir (1 I, 369-370) --nodern poets are

g2nr;rally istcompete~5enough to do so, For Swift, the integrity of any piece of uritinq is dir~ctlydependent upor? the author's integrity as a writer, which, in turn, is dirlctly dependent upon

his self-knowledge, Ra is aware of his own limitations as a post

compare3 to someone like Pope, for example: $'In ups, I cannot

read a Line, / But with a Siqh, I wish it mineH (*$Verseson th2 Death of Dr. SwJft,,ti HBJ. 11, 555, 1, 4 . Therefore, in $IAn Epfstfe to a Lady, Who desired the author to make Verses on Her,

in the Haroick Stile,*+ when Lady Bcheson begs Swift to . . . suspend a while, That same paultry ~qg~~~qq~Stile: DropJ for once, your constant Hul2, Turnihq all to iiidicule . . . . {Hs, If, 431, 11. 49-52)

and to itsing my Praisp in Strain sublimefr (1, 57) , he responils

playful1 y but sincerely:

To conclude this long Essay; Pardon, if 1 disobey: Nor, against @ynat *ral Vein, Treat you in HeroFck Strain. 1, as all the Parish knows, Hardly can be grave in Pross: Still to lash, and lashing Smile, Tll befits a lofty Stile. (11, 133-140)

swift is not denying the ef fec tivewss of Pope's denunciation of

phiqciad, both of which lash in the lofty style. He is simply acknuv2edging the fact that the fofty style is not his forte,

Boreover, because of his integrity, he aces not aspire to the

lofty style: '*I•’I can but fill my Nitch, / 1 attempt no higher

And there is another reascn why Swift avoids the high sublime

in his poetry, That reason is his abhorrence of deception, a virtually insvitable facet of the high sublime becaus~of the

exaggeration infierect Fn the elevat2d styl~. He explains to Lady

Acheson that writing i~ the heroic styls youid only deceive them

both. ~e weuld bs~, deceiving hims-.lf r+gartiin7 his ability in heroic verse, besides neglec-ti~ga very real talent in the hudibrastic node, and he would be deceiving her by feeding her pride: ''1 Shouid make a Figure scurvy, / Ana your Bead turn

Topsy-turvyw (31, 219-220). Swift had too strong a sense of his aoral obligation as a poet to do either. Be thqrefora concfndes

"An Epistle to a Ladyu with a metaphor designed to reinforce his point about his inability to achieve the high sublime and to justify his position as a poet in practical terms:

Have you seen a Rocket fly? You would swear it pierc" the Sky; It but reach'd the ~iddleAir, Bursting into Pieces there: Thousand Sparkles fafling down Light on many a Coxcomb's Crown. See, what Wifth the Sport cksates; Sindges Hair, but breaks no Patas. Thus, Shoufd 1 atte~ptto climb, Treat you in a stile subliae, Such a Rocket is ~y Huse, Shoutd 1 lofty Numbers chuse, E'er 1 reach'd Parnassqs Top I should burst, and bursting drop, Alf my would fall in Scraps, Give your Head some gentle Raps; Only iuake it smart a while: Then cou'd I forbear to smile, When 1 found the tingling Pain, Entring wars your frigid Brain Make you able upoc Sight, To decide of Wrong and Right? Talk with Sense, whateter you please on, Learn to relish Z'Ah and Reason. Thus we both should gain our Prize: 1 to lauyh, and you grow wise. (3 3. 249-274) Hence, swift knows that i.f he tries to write in "a Stile

suklime, tt his muse #if 1 burst before it reaches "Parnassus Top,

the high sublime, He accepts this self-avowed handicap with what

appears to be surprisinq equanimity, until it is revealed %ha% he

is labouring under nu hacdicap at all. He need not reach ths high

subfirae becausa, in achi.i?viag only half r;he height, his poetry

doss exactly what he wants it to do: it teaches and delights;

his audience benefits most from the teaching and he benefits most

from the delight, Pith this playful twist of the classical notion

cf poetry's dual purpose, Swift justifies his role as a satirist.

This is the t8nitchi' h~:spoke of filling earlier, the "nitchW that,

in terms of the early eighteenth centuryts conception of the Chain

cf Being, although he cannot rise above-he cannot reach the high

sublime, for exaapl2--he can nevertheless achievs perfection

within,

Thus, the playfulness of the rocket metaphor, though

typically Swiftian, is not simply or even primarily a camuflage

for Ssrift*s inability to write in the style of the high sublime,

To be sure, he has his cake and eats it too: self-knowledgs

prevents him from attempting the sublime style and in the process

arms hi^ with the truthfulness and the huaility to attain perfection within a style more suited to his capabilities;

howaver, even if he should attempt the high sublime, and fail to

reach it, his purpose would still be ssrved, It is abundantly clear, therefore, that Swift's distrust of aisvated dicticn, together with his awareness of: his limitations as a poet, led him to avoid the high sublime. But this circuastance doas not automatically preclude a high level of artistic achievement or i~pedethe expression of genuine and heartfelt emotion Ir: his poetry, Indeed, ths clear, simple style that Swift adopts in hts poetry generally is an integral part of his achievement in the poems to Stella particularly, Por besides being entirely appropriate to the celebration of truth and

Christian virtue that coaprises the framework of the Stella posms, Swift's octosyllabics enhance the playful tone of the early poems while they help to soften the pain and the sadness of the later ones. FOOTWOTES

CHAPTER ONE

1 The Lives of the En~lisfiPoets, in The &&s of same1

~,-~~~-&-~~~~Jchnson LL,B (London2 S, G R, B%tley, 38323. '9111, 48, 2 fbid,

3 T!e Rhetog&al aorfd of Ausnstss ,Humanis& (1965; rpt, toadon: O~fordUniversity Press, 1969), p. 7,

4 "Jonathan Swift and the Vocabulary of English," Bodern

5 J, H, Neuaann, "Jonathan Swift ard English Spelling," ------Studies in Philol~y, 41 jl944), 80. 6 It should be noted here that whereas Aristotle, Horace, and Dennis are concerned with imaginative literatur-. in general and

with poetry in particular in their tfeatises, when Svift writes

about poetry, he is dealing specifically with wverse,H

Honetheless, much of what Aristotle, Horace, and Dennis say

informs Swift as views on poetry, 7 g=>~tle~s~oetics, trans. 3. El. Butcher (1961; rpt, New

York: Bill and Wang, 1969) , pp, 55-56, 8 Ibid.

9 Horace's Art of Poetsx, trans, Houes, in zkg-qht of Poetryl

T&->&s~,%eatises of Hora_ci-Vi~gLLd a ed, albert S,

Cook (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1892), p. 25, 11. 514-519.

10 rke Grsu~dsof Criticim-La Poetry (17041 , in ZheCriticgl Works-- of John Dennis, ed, Edward Niles Hooker {Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1939) , I, 336, 11 Critics coctinus to associate Longinvs3 name uith P%ri -Hu~sou~, and for simple convenience I will do so throughout my thasis. 12 Boifeatnfs translation of Longinus is famous for its

inffusnce on the scriblerus Club; Pope, in conjunctim uith the

other meabers of the Club, wrote PerF Batbg, a satirical

fadition of ggri Huessus, during the period froia 3726- l727, See

Edna Steeves* introduction to her adition of Tbs-A&& of Sinkinq-2s ----Poetry (1952; rpt, We* York: Russell E Russell, 1968), esp~ciallyp. xxxv.

13

------me-----Aristotie*~ Poetics, p, 118, Middlesex, England: Penguin Boots, Ltd,, 19691, p, 100,

16 See Harold k'illiams, Dean Swift's Library (Caabridge: ~t the University Press, 1932), at-- the end (pp. 1-16 facsimile), for a catalogue of the books in Suift's possession at the time of his death.

--Dryden, --- ed. James Kingsley {Oxford: At the Ciarendon Press, 19581, I, 332. Aff subsequent references are from this edition and are presunted in the text by line numbsrs,

?kg&&, ed. Samuel Holt Monk (Ann Arbor: The University of

Michigan Press, 1963) , p, 175. All subsequent references are frore this edition and are przsented in the text by page numbers,

3 8 w5vift9s Poetry: The Making of Mea~inq,~g2qhhegrtb Century

,,,StudiesJ 5 (Sumer, 1972), 582,

2 1 The Poeinsof Joeathan Swift* ed, Harold Willia~s, 2nd ed.

(1937; rpt. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, l966), X, 46* 11. 101-102. Bencsforward f shall refer to individual poems in the text by catae, vofume, page, and line numbers. Ha refers to

Harold #iiliams, 22 lrvir Ehrerpreis, SwiZt: ~~f-fgg,-fg-pok+&s~ acd thff&gs (Ca~bridge: Harvard University 23 It is important to note here that neither Vanbrucjh9s competence as a playwright nor his expertise as an architect were as questionable as swift makes them out to be. As regards his popularity as a playwriqht, Bonamy Dobree in his introduction to

Volurt~e One of The Comclete gorks of Sir John Va~&ru~h,ed. Bonamy Dobr2e and Geoffrey @ebb (Bloomsbury: The Nonesuch Press, 1928) , quotes Spsnce*s observation that "Vanbrugh, vith Congreve and

Garth, was one of 'the three most honest-hearted and good men of the poetical mssbers of the Kit-cat Clubgt* (p. xi) and Noble's observation that *"Ma person over lived or died with so few enemies as sir John Vanbrugh owing to his pleasant wit and unaffected good humouriq fp. xi). And as regards his success as an architect, Geoffrey Yebb in his introductisn to Volume Four of ghg

Cemplatn-ggr&g,gf-Sir John Eanbruq& remarks that Vanbrugh, as an architect, was born too early, Webb explains the problem by gucting Sir Reginald Blomfield's words: Vanbruyh*s passiona at^ appreciation of the abstract qualities of architecture gives him a glace! by himself alaong the architects of a country in which the very existence of those qualities has almost ceased to bs recoynl~ed~~~(p, XI), tiebb

goes on to say that it was because of this appreciation for the

abstract that "while all oth~rsof his successors derided him,?'

Yanbrugh "drew forth tributes from such a succossion of men as

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Robert Adam, and Sir John Soaneft (p. xl),

In fairness to Swift's position in the Vaabrugh poem,

though, even Dobree cotes that "towards the end of the

[seventeenth] century he was becoming too busy to invgnt original playsw ard therefcre Vanburgh "contented hiaself with adaptations and tsanslatioas't fp, xxiii) . Moreover, the house that he built for hiwnlf on the ruins of Whitehall Palace was not a success,

TG quote Webb again, the Goose Pie, as the house came to be called

and as Swift refers to it in the 7708/9 version of j*Vanbrug*s

House,lT "~ay, it sefm to the writer, be ignor3d as evidsace of style. The nickname seems to have been extraordinarily apt, and the crenellations, the disproportionate height, and the scale of

the rustications do indeed suggsst what is known in the trade as a Raisad PieYg p xi. And if Swift needed further reasons for his attack, Var,brugfits doasstic conducf providsd it. He was always in debt and he apparently was not averse to poking fun

at the clergy, something that Swift always took personally when he was not doing it himself.

24 I have been unable to discover for certain whether or not

Vanbruqh actually built his house at Whitehall frcn the royalties

of his plays as swift implies here--in which case, poetry can ironically still build as it did in ancient tlmas, if only vicariously--but it seems to me that the innuendo is all that is important in the devebpment of Swift's thema in the poe~,

2 5 In a foctnote to the line in HVanbrug*s HousefT (1708/9) in which Swift accuses Vanburgh of plagiarism, Har~fdBilliams observes that nAZtho~ghVanbrughts twc best plays, Thf_Rstape and Th"o Provq&:d_Whf& were original, he borrowed largely and adapted from Boursault, Lt? Sage, Plofiert3, and Dancourtw {I, 107, n, 58) . Vanburgh was probably no worse than nuHiercus other playwrights ic this regard, but Swift had lit+,fe respect for such p3rsons. In fact, it was a matter 05 personal pride for Swift to have heen able to state in v-3rses on his own death that "To steal a Hint was nevrr know^, But what he writ was ail his ownH {HW, If, 565, 11, 317-318) . Por even though this line is ironically plagiarized frcm Denham, it is a typically Swiftian way of satirizing som5thlng by mi~ickingit. As regards the hint that Vanbrughts house at Whitehall was an architectural plagiarism of sorts--"why then, q&a-g&gys deserve q&a-Bfi~@*~ f 1. 72)--it is not clear whether Vanbrugh used the old stones of Nhbtehall Palace in his buifding or not, Bevertheless, the idea dees round out the satiric Zmpact of the poem. 26 Herbert ~avis,Stella: A Ge~tletfomanof the-Eiqht-agp&h

Q22tquy {New York: The Macmi.llan Company, 19421, p. 12. In his edition of Swift's prose works, Davks expresses doubt as to ths authenticity of the letter. He claims that it is uneven in tha final pages and too repetitive in many of its trivial phrasss to be swift's. see Vof. 9, pp. xxvi-xxvii. I include the letter here because I am not coxivinced by Davisg arqument. Harold

Williams accepts it as authentic in his revised edition of the poems in 1957, and Paul fussall, in his article, "Speaker and

Style in a Letter of Advice to a Young Poet [l72?), an4 the

Problem of Attribution, It ~gvlew-~f_E~hq~&g&-~t~di~s,10 (1959) , 63-

67, argues that "Although in the absence of external evidence we are left with the insecurity of conjecture, ue can imagine perhaps that somehow the manuscript left Swiftts hands before it was finished and found its way into print ~ithouthis permission" fp. 67). In any case, it sems Lo rae that the construction of the letter is so like Swift's other satires and the tone, diction, and imagery so Swiftian, that I believe the letter so be authentic,

points out that "the humanist believas that man is absnluteZy unique as a species. , . . The humanist scorns analogies between men and dogs, pven tficugh both salivate simifarly; between Den 3rd lower ani~als,even though both breed similarly; and betneen men and insects, even! though both tend to organize societies similarly,** See pp, 9-10. Note also that Sgift uses such analogies in his poetry to great advantage because of the helief i man's uniqueness. 2 8 See George P, tYIayhorss article, tgxage nr Raillery: Swiftts. ggistls a ,EaPx and qn ~og&yy: A Sa~sqPy,*~gg&&>on Library

QuartsrLy, ~3 (l96O), 178.

2 9 &a,Hssau,nn,Gs2ticis~.~ in T~~-~QB~S-Q&,B~~Z~B&=ZPG~S~a on? volume edition of tha Twickenham Pope, ed. John Butt (1963; rpt. London: Plrthuen & Company, Ltd., 1965), p. 144, 11. 7-6. CBAP'TE9 TWO

STYLE AND BETHODDLOGY IN THE POEMS TO STELLA

Perhaps the best way to begin a discussion of the poeBs to

Stella is to observe that it is impossible to analyze them as if thsy were a unified group, To begin uith, not all of the poems are birthday poems, a fact which necessarily implies a certain variety in subject-matter. Furthermore, the peens as a group do not display strict theaatic unity; the them Bast often extracted fro@ them is the importance of living a virtuous life, but this theas is only remotely insinuated in "To Stella on her Birth-day 1721/22$* and no-rrhere evident in "Stellass ~irth-DayH 11723) . And fiaally, the poems exhibit no unity of tone; the tone of "Qn

Stefla*s Birth-day 1718/39** is light and teasing, whereas that of

Y5tsllaSs Birth-Day 7726/27" is subdued and serious, Despite this seemingly hopeless diversity, however, there are elements in the poems to Stella which contribute to a certain internal consistency if not to a definite unity. Two of these elements are style and methodologg. In this chapter 1 propose to investigate Swift's style and methodology in writing the poems to Stella as a step towards apprehending the trus nature of his commitment to them. 69

Tt is through a clear percsp5icn of th? d2licats combination of style, methodology, and personal comaitment that ths special nature of the poems beyics to emerge. Swift's style of uritinq in the poems to Stella conforms to his definition of style in "A Letter to a Young Gentleman Lately

Entarid into Holy Ordi3rs": '*pzoper words in proFsr placs~.~' His rnfthodology (by methctdology I lgean the rhetorical techniques through which he variously invites, warns, and exhorts Stella to face the realities of life) is deceptivaly simple. Briefly, Swift presents his co~pfiments,warnings, anu exhostations directly, indirectly, or by Beans of both methods combined; neither method dominates in any one poeta and each depends to some degree for its effectiveness on suift8s ability to achieve a richness of stylistic variation within his own sefativzly confining definition of style, By distinguishing between style and methodology, though, I do not mean to ireply that they in fact operate independently of each other, or indeed that Swift saw them as separate, Rather, since sonle of the Foems to Stella are more clearly exhibitions of stylistic finesse than others, I look upon the distinctio~as a useful way of identifying specific qualities of composition that simuitaneously represent Swift's skill as a poet and the actual co~plexityof the poems. Swift's first exhibition of stylistic finesse in the poems to

Stella appears in the very first poem, Wn Stella's Birth-day 173t3/19,w and although it is r&itively shor-t, this poem also reveals something of his iaethod ef indir5ct teaching, It begins on a note of frankness that aight have offended scme women of his day who lacked Stellals self- knowledga, judgment, and wit:

Stella this Day is thirty four, (We won't dispute a Year or more) However Stella, be not troubled, Although thy Size and Years are doubled, Since first 1 saw Thee at Sixteen The brightest Virgin of the Green, So little is thy Form declin'd Hade up so largly in thy Mind. (BY, If, 721-722, 11. 1-81

Tha initial fact is unalterable. Stella has aged. It does not matter that Swift gives her age as thirty-four when she is actually thirty-eight-l A dispute about one or two years either way is possible as the parenthetical remrk of the second line indicates, but such a dispute would neither be sensible nor profitable because Stella herself knows the tsuth of the ~atter.

The fact that ti~ehas passed Is what she aust learn to accept in any case and, therefore, Swift "blon't disputeH the precise number of years.

John Pischer has recently argued that Swift knew Stellats exact age perfectly well and that the first line of the poea therefore "rec~sdshis refusal to 'count the clock that tells the ti&e,+**while at the same time it f*insists that, for Swift, eFen the verities of simple arithmetic are subject to sudden and surprisi~grevisions. "2 The liberties Swift takes with Stellaqs age, Flscher implies, are partially justified by the nature of thc~birthday posm itself in that "birthday poems--like every other form of birthday festivity--are by their very nature an act of reconciliation, gf He expf ains what he Beans by "reconciliation" ky obs+rving that such po5ms

mark, and thereby emphasize, th3t passage of time which leads us i;o the grave. Simultaneously, ho #ever, such poems @ark, and thereby emphasize, a particular day within the flux of time on which an individual and valuable life nas born, In eff~ct,th~n, all sensitively written birthday poems shi~merbetween an affirmaticn of human life and a recognition of its mortal limits. As a genre, howaver, birthday poems do avan more than this. For the final thrust of the birthday poem is te transcend the very paradox which it illuminat?~and to celebrate joyously all of human lif~,including even its insxorable movement towards dgath. 3

Pischer concludes from this that Swift's poetic manipulations in the posms to Stelfa must be seen as efforts to transcend the passing of tiae and not siiaply as entertainmants,

Whereas Pischer is likely correct in saying that Swift knew

Stella's actual age, hZs concf usion that Swift % ppastic manipulations are not simply entertainments is somewhat misleading. For this conclusion implicitly undervalues the important role that humour plays in the Stella poems; in these poems as in A Tale-of a Tub, in ~ttliiv~rjsTyqpds, or in **Verses or, the Death of Dr, Srdfl D.S,P,D, ," one of the resources Swift draws upon most frequently is his reader's sense of humour,

Clearly, f ischer *s solemn concern with manifestations of stoicism and Christian doctrine has caused him to underestimate dizng~rouslythe playful aspect of the poems, an aspect which,

in '*On Stellais Birth-day 1718/'39,31 is initiated conjointly by Swift's clever manipulations of style and his complex method of teaching Stalla indirectly Shrough co~pliments, vhich are alternately direct and indirect themselves,

Part of the huraous of Swift's outright mention of Stella's

age arises from the fact that the age he givas is inaccurate, Be

is engaging Stella in a jcke bY playfully iaiaicking the time-worn notion that a woman should never divulge her true age. The beauty of his joke is that it is entertaining on a superficial level

inasmuch as it pays li~-serviceto a silly social convention (he after all conceals her tsue age effectively) while at the same

tima it allows hint to protect her privacy, a courtesy %hat Swift

extanded to Stella even after her death.4 Thus, *o say that

Stella is thirty-four vhsn she is really thirty-eight is not so much an Sndication of Swift's refusal to #*count ths clock that

tells the tias," in the senss of his suggesting to Stella that tias is unimportant, as it is an exaaple of his indirect metho3

of teaching, a subtle and entertaining way of inviting Stella to

chink about and thereupon to accept the fact of her aging, For it is inconceivable that when confronted with her incorrect age

she would not immdiately think of, and thereby privately admit to, her correct age. In the second half of "On Stella's Birtn-day 7718/19," Swift

turns the seemingly uncomplimentary remarks about age and size in the first half of the pn?m to StA?Tlassadvantage, Hith her increased siza and pears has come a valuable commodity, an improved mindt"so little is thy foraa decfintd / Hade up so fargly in thy Mind." Bcrecver, if the Gods Here to split Stella into equal halves, each half would surpass any whole uoman in beauty and kiit:

Oh, would it please the Gods to split Thy Beauty, Size, and Years, and Wit, No Age could furnish out a Pair Of Nymphs so gracefull, Wise and fair With half the Lustre of Your Eyesj gith half thy Wit, thy Years and Size: And then before it grew too late, How should I beg of gentle fate, (That either Nyntph might have her Swain,) To split my Worship too in twain. (11. 9-18)

Tf stella were divided, Swift would vish his worship to be divided too, '+That either Nymph might have her Hith these fines, his control of style becomes apparent.

He has divided the poeB into two sgual parts by choosing Froper words and by putting them in appropriate places, The first nine lines, which comprise one complete sentence, are characterized by words and phrases which insinuate growth, reflecting the effect of time on Stella's agb and size: "doubledfl appears in line 4; "little , . . declinad" appears in fine 7; and Tglargly*"pppears in line 8. Just when the growth reaches a climax in terms of Stellais beauty, size, and wit, a split occurs. This is signalized in the final nine lines, another complete sentence, by words which imply division: "spfit*f itself appears at the adof line 9, the exact midpoint sf the poem, and agaln in line 18; "halfu appears in lines 13 and 14; and fgtuainsl appears in line 18 and concludes the poem. Stylistically, swift has ef fectivf ly split his worship, which is aftez all the poea, in twain. In addition to this genesaf demonstration of stylistic finesse, howevfr, there are two instances in the posm in which

Swift's very precise word choice is especially poignant, The first instance is the reference to the diminished lustre of

Stelfa" eyes, which would result from the splitting of her person, Even though no whole woman's eyes could boast half of the Halved lustre of Stella's eyes, the implication remains that the lustre of her eyes will soon be half of what it is now, As it turns out, "Half the Lustre of Your Eyesn is also an accurate ~easurementof the quality of Stella's eyesight outside the context of the poem as compared rnith whgn Swift firs5 met her.5 Hence, the compliment Swift offers in line 14 serves to remind Stelfa indirectly of the seality of her human condition, a reality which has already begun to overtake her,

The seco~dirstance in which Swift's precise word choice reminds Stella indirectly of her humanity is the reference to nymphs and swains, swift *s sc-caf led scatologicaf poens depicting various Daphces, Chloss, Corinnas, and Strephons reveal his distrust of the illusion of pastoral, As a result, his likening of Stella to a nymph and of himself to a swain must have been the clearest reminder to them both of the true nature of

their relationship: they were not pastoral lovers, Indeed,

the pastoral conve~tionof the beautiful nymph who remains physically unchanqed in the timeless pastoral setting is

exposed as fantasy by the rsalizations that Stella is larger and

clder, and that her eyesight is poorer than foriuerly,

If, as Fischer decides, in his first poem to Stella "S~ift achieves so~ethingof the status of that god whom, at its close,

he imagines to be able to create two young and beautiful nyntphs

out of Stella's multiplied years and bulky size,tq6 it is on that

level on which he and Stella are swain and nymph respectively, It is on the level of fantasy, a ievel which is both comic and

compPimentaxy at the same time, and not on the level of reality,

because Swift never sets out to deceive Stella, Be is, through

a series of playful exaggerations, inviting her to accept reality

on every level. And the greatest tribute to Stell3's wit,

judgment, and understanding is Swiftts implied trust, that she will not on1 y perceive but also acquiesct in whatever truth or

reality is revealed in each pcem ao matter how indirectly it is communicated, As James Tyne has pointed out, qfMowhere does her

poet have to spell things out fcr Stella, teluper his wit or his

huaour, or becom less subtle or less ironic than he is when dealing with his peers,"7

Buch has been said and written about Sw;ftls achievement in

the octosyllabic couplet, and clarence Kulischeck sums up the extent of %his achievement as well as anybody in a short but perceptive article, "swift's ~ctosyifabics and the fiudibrastic Tradition." Kulischeck is more interested in the diffsrences than in the similarities between the poetry of Butler and Swift and, consequently, he is able to bring Swiftrs uniqueness as a stylist into sharp focus, Taking *#Verseson the Death of Dr.

~wi.ft+*as representative of Swift's highest achievement in poetry, Kulischeck itemizes those special qua1 itiss that are presfznt in all of swift's best verses:

The poem is characterized by a consciously contrived spareness, Latinate words are infrequ~n t and monosylf abic words predominate impressf vel y ovrr polysyllabic, Although an effect of extreme simplicity amounting almost to casualness is thus achieved, the lines are actually fashioned with extreme precision. As in th+ customary practice of Pope and his fallovers with the long couplet, ahost af 1 the octosyllabic couplers here are closed and all tho lines are end-stopped, The caesura is delicat4y handled with discriminating varlatiofis of placement, . . . the syntax is made prosodically functional, serving as a device tc solidify the couplets internally and to link them together in verse paragraphs, 8

Unquestionably, Kulischeckss statement holds true for the Stella poems ge~erallyand for "On Stella *sBirth-day 1718/19" particularly, especially as regards the use and effect of monosylfabic wcrds and the handling of syntax, It is in part the very casualness of his styl~,together with ths conversational and friendly tone which results from it, that Swift ultimately depends upon here and in the other Stella poems Po render the realities of aqe and death less frightenir.g and therefor5 easier for Stella to accept.

~lthoughSuif t % overall style of writirg rsmains consistent throughout the poems to Stella inasmuch as hs never deviates from the octosyflablc couplet, he nneverthaiess raanages to achieve surprising variety of technique aitCin this style. For example, he can masterfully invite Stelfa to accept the reality of age in a complimentary and indirect way as he does in "On Stellaas

Birth-day 371 8/19,'' but he is equally capable of encouraging her to accept her earthly condition by Bore emphatic means,

Accordingly, when he wishes to be more sevsre in his msthodology, notably vhea he determines to confront her with her faults, he uses a direct approach. A case in point is his enumeration of har faults at the end of "To Stella, Who Collected and Transcribed

After showerfng Stefia with unqualified praise at the outset of +he poem, Swift resolves to t91nortLfy [her1 pride*' by exposing her "weaker sidew: Your Spirfts kindle to a Plane, &ov*d with the lightest Touch of Blams, Acd when a Friend in Kindness tries To sheu you where your Error lies, Conviction does but more incense; PerverseEess is your whol* Defence: Truth, Judgment, Wit, give Place to Spite, Regardless both of Wrong and Right. Your Virtues, all suspended, wait Till Time bath openqd Reason's Gate: And what is worse, pour Passion bends Its Force against your nearest friends . . , . ...***..*...*...***. You zhink this Turbule~iceof Dload from stagnating preserves the Flood; Bhich thus fernon", frq, by Degreas Exalts the Spirits, sinks she Laes. (Hw, If, 730, 11, 87-98; 71. 727-130)

TO direce her anger at her nearest friends is bad enough, but to cl3i&, or at least to think, rhat that anyss is justified becauss it k~epsher blood from stagnatirg, and thersby sxalts her spirits, is pure folly. And Swift's argument against such reasoning is that if anqer and spite are allowed to ferment too long, q4By Time subsiding, you may find / Nothing but Acid left

Similarly, +yen though Swift does not chastise Stella so stiffly in *sStella at Yood-Parkyt (17231, he playfully but bluntly exposes her pride there also in an unbecominj light, Bavir~gblern entsrtained regally at dood-Park for almost half a year, Stella has '$At last qrowri prouder than thcl D--Ii8 (Hi?, f I, 750, 1, 2 1). Consegueatly, it is a bleak day when she must eventually return home:

Buz now arrives the dismal Day: She nust return to Ormond Hey: The Coachman stopt, she hokt, and swore The Rascal had mistook the Boor: At coaing in ycu saw her sloop; The Entry brusht against her Hoop: Each Homent rising ir her Airs, She curst the narrow winding Stairs: Began a Thousand Faults to spy; The Ceiling hardly six Foot high; The smutty Vainscot full of Cracks, And half the Chairs with broken Backs: Her Quarter's out at &pQz+qy, She vows she will no longqs stay, In Lodgings, like a poor mizette* While there are Lodgings to be lett. (11. 45-60) Luxury has spoiled Stella, and she is no longer happy in her

former humble lodgings arid lifestyle, A brief fit of pride

causes her to ignore frugality and to indulge in fuxurious living

beyond her means, swift reports that this farce of yanteel

living continued for about a week, after which tima, her money

sxhausted, Stella *#fellinto her fornter Scent;. / Small Beer, a Herring, and the D--n8* {I 1. 7 3-72] . Before he concludes ths pea, Swift confesses that he has

been having fun at Stella*s expense, that he has exaggerated the

facts "a little*"I. 82). His purpose in exaggerating is purely

conciliatory, however, for in order to reconcile Stella to her

impoverished lot he offers new expression to the cliche that

The Virtue fits not in the Place: For though my Iiaillery were true, A Cottage is mod-Park with you, {11, 90-92)

Ostensibly, if the full i~plicationsof the poem are dram out,

Stella's value as a friend a~elioratesthe burden of poverty, and in this context poverty becomes more valuable than luxury, because, brhereas pride and affectation can only survive

comfortably amid wealth and platy, humility and simplicity can

adapt to any situation; when she was humble, Stella could

tolerate Ormond Key as well as Wood-Park, Purthsrtaorr-t, although

it is something that Swift states covertly only in later poems,

them is an underlyinq realization here %hat if one is not

committad to earthly poss~ssions, then one can taka leave 05

fife more easily. Swift's tech~iquscf teaching directly is not limited to the instances in which he is reminding Stella of the unhappy effects of pride, howeves dominant those instances appear to ba.

And sinply because his mzthod is direct doss not maan that stylistic precision is of lass importance than whec his aethod is indirect, If anything, proper word choice is more iaportafit with each passing year and with aach new poem, becausa, as it becomes apparect that Stelfass death grows yearly Bore im~inent, his arguments aust be made Bore convincing than ever, And yet, Swift is confronted with a dilemma hare, On the one hand, his octosyllabics are eainentfy suited to concise, logical argument, As Paul Fussell explains, tfthe texture of the octosyllabic couplet, regardless of who is writing in it, is likely to be lean and clean, spare and logical, a texture supremely appropriate to sarcasm or solid virile reasoningOe9

On the other hand, the problem arises that direct teaching of the sort just presented is not appropriate deathbed talk; corn•’ort and support axe Bcre in order than accusations, in such circumstancss, Swift *s solution is to attempt greater stylistic variety, and to this end he employs analogy as a Beans of teaching in two of the Einal three poems to Stelfa, The beauty of an analogy is that as a stylistic device, it can either be explicit or implicit, while it remains an essentially indirect method of teaching overall. Howevsr, to better undarstand the stylistic impact of Swift's use of analogy in the two laker Stella poems, a glance backward to his initial use of analogy in "To stelfa, Hho Collected and

Transcribed his Poemsq? (1720) is helpful, The poem begins with

As when a lofty Pile is rais'd, F4e nrva hear the Workaen praissd, Oho briny the Lims, or place the Stonss; But all adl~ire Jones; So if this Pile of scatter'd Rhymss Shculd be approvtd in After-times, If it both pleas*s and endures, The Eerit and the Praise are yours, {HH, 11, 727-728, 71. 1-8)

The first noticsable characteristic of the analogy is its "As when . . ." forin, a faailiar for@of the epic simile, However, any expectations of epic are immediately thwartsd by the simple style in which tho analogy is written, for instance, uhat2ver eprc connotations "lofty Pilev @my yvooks, they ass playfully undercut by the mundane reference to uorkmen who must

"bring the Liate, or place the Stones,fr In addition, the lofty pil-3 is paralleled with "this pile of scatterad Rhy~es*" Not only is Swift not claiming epic grandeur for his poeB, he is scarcely allowing it any enlightened plan or design at all.

This gensral trend towards ironic daprecation naturally reflects unfavousably on the spic evocations of "lofty

Pile.#: And it should be noted here that the overturning of any sense of epic whatever is Swift's way of rejecting the elemeats uhich are commonly associated with the conventional "high sublime. ** The trend ccntinues as the poem progresses:

Thou Stella, wert no longer youny, when first for the9 my Harp I strung: without one Hord of Cupid- darts, Of killing Eyes, or bleeding Hearts: Bith Friendship and Esteem possesst, f ne'er admittsd ~ovza Guest. (17, 9-14)

Already there is a recognition of the poet as a craftsman or workman, consciously choosing -the proper and rejecting the improper word. But the special impact of these lines derives from the fact that Swift is the poet. The exaggerated and often affected romance identified with epics and pastorals has never been part of his style; killing eyes and blaeding hearts bear no relation in fact to his feelings for Stella, As in "On Stella's

Birth-day 1718/19,t1 Stellass aga at the time the poems wzre bequn {**Thou Stgala, wert no longer young"), together with his alfegiancf to truth, account for Swift's abhorrence of professions of love in the ccurtly tradition,

Bhen coapared with the cliche descriptions of love implied in the ref~rencesto Cupid's darts, killing eyes, and bleeding hearts, friendship and esteem strike a nota of freshness, sincerity, and permanence, S tfl3.a * s friendship becomes emblematic of that sincerity and peraanence in the next stanza since "his

Pursuits are at an End, / Uhora Stella chuses for a Friend" (11.

23-24]

Partly to applaud the writs of Stella's friendship more emphaticaf ly ard partly to complete uhatever undercuttinq of the cou-ftly love an3 epic c~nventionsreraaics tc bi dons, Swift next posits the case cf a starving poet:

A Poet, starving in a Garret, Conning old Topicks like a Parrot, Invokes his Histress and his Huse, Acd stays at home for want of Shoes: Should but his Muse descending drop A Slice of Braad, and Mutton-Chop, Or kindly whsn his CreditVsout, Surprize him with a Pint of Stout, Or patch his broken Stocking Soals, Or send him in a Peck of Coals; Exalted in his mighty Mind He flies, and leavss the Stars behind, Counts all his Labours amply paid, Adores her for the timely Aid, f17, 25-38)

The starving poet's adorations of his muse result from the fact that she occasionally and arbitrarily drops in to supply hi@ with the meagre necessities of life, in sharp contrast to the genuine praise due to the selflessness of Stella3s frisndship. And whereas Swift is an original. craftsman in his pcetsy, the starving hack is perpetually "Conning old Topicks lika a Parrot,tf It is no wonder that the hack8s invocation of his muse is only soraetimes profitable; he lacks talent and she lacks interest in his situation,

ghat is still more crucial, though, is Swift's amphasis on the incongruity hetwsen the sntalf amount of assistance the hack receives from his muse and the excessive amount of praise and adoration he haaps upon h~r. The key word in line 38 is ltadores,tt Its axcessiveness under tha circu~stancesinakes it on2 with

"killing eyes** and $'bleeding hnarts," thorouqhly supporting 84

Swift's conviction that such phrases are silly anii affectad, a further derogatory comment on iha conv2ntional sublime, since these phrases are the very stuff of which tha conventional "high sublimen is made. ~dditionally, the excessiveness of vqadoresfl completes the ironic impact of "mighty Hind,'# since the man who grows deiirious over a pint of stout and a peck of coals shows little sign of a *%ightyfl mind,

Swift's exposure of the hack's feeble mind leads naturally into a consideration of truth in poetry:

True Poets can depress and raise; Are Lords of Infamy and Praise: They are not scurrilous in Satire, Nor will in Panegyrick flatter, Unjustly Poets we asperse; Truth shines the brighter, clad in Verse; and all the Fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is tru+, (31, 53-60)

Since he has already established himself as d craftsman and different frcm the hack, it fellows that swift must be one of the group called "True Poets." And bscause even ths trua poets* fictions "330 but insinuate what is truarrr lt foIllows that Swift9s compliments. to Stella, which are not fictions, are both warcanted and sixicere, As it transpires, swiftvs praises do not owe their truth "To Beauty, Dr2ss, or Paint, or Youth, / What Stoicks call

, . . on no Accide~tsdepend: Let fialice look with all her Ey$s, She dares not say the Poetlyes. (14, 80-82)

His praises are all the more closely aligned with truth because he has avoided affected phrases like v*@upid*sdarts," "killing

eyes, fl and "bleedicg hearts. " In this way, Swift undercuts the hack's poetical and moral

crsdihility by distinguishir,g him froa the true poet. But Swift

accomplishes more than this, He securzs for himself the

distinction cf bsir,q a true poet and subsequently inakes it

itapossible for acyone to disagre~wizh anything he says; anyone

who disagrees with him disagrees with truth, and such a person

is even worse thar, Halice who jldares aot say the Poet f yesI*'

Thus, the stage is set for the enumration of Stella's faults

that follows in the poem, and Stelfa is rendered powerless to

say he lies.

Swift accuses her of pride, anger, and spitafulnrss, At this

point it must b?; rernember~dthat he is writing in his capacity as

true po%t, which siqnifies that his accusaxions must be t~ue.

Moreover, he has cleverly set up his defenses in such a way that

if Stelfa objects to the accusations, then she is simultaneously calling a true poet a liar, exhibiting the very pride and anger

hs accuses her of, neutralizing his previous colfiplimencls to her virtuousness, and ultimately behaving worse than Malice.

Taking full advantage of the dilemma he places her in, Swift concludes the poFm with this challenge:

Say, Steffp, when you copy next, Will ycu keep strictly to the Text? Dare you let these Reproaches stand, And to your Failings szt your Hand? Or if these tin5s your Anger fire, Shall they io basa Flames expire? Whene*~rthey burn, if burn they must, They'll prove my Accusation just. (1 1. 137-144)

If Stella transcribes the poea accuratzly, then she is virtually admitting to thz validity of Swlft3s accusations by ~xposingher faults to the ~orld. On th4 other hand, if sha burns the poGm in the face og SviZtqs challenge, she is guilty of the pride, anger, and spitefulness of which she is accused. This rsferenc~to Stella3s transcription of the pomi is what tzltilaately links the opening analogy to the rest of the poem, the subject of transcription being mentioned nowhars but in the opsning and closi~glin3s, Dnce Swift's overall purpose--to mortify SZella*s pride--becomes evident, however, the relatedness of the analogy to the r~stof the poem as a whole emerges more clearly. Basically, the questio~of transcription provides the occasion and the framework for the poem, but it is not finally khe subject of the poem, The mortification of Stellats prZde is the subject, arid the analogy initiates the method by which that iaortification will be accomplistned, that is, the analogy's plain vocabulary undermines its epic forail. bv'ithaut repeating the various instances in the poem is which people or situations as-? consistently undermined or und+rcut,, it is enough to say that this is the methodology by which Swift sets up the wortification of Stella's pride, The presnntation of her faults undermines the possibility that his raises might be mistaken for testintony to her unqualified virtue. 87

But finally, Swift's ssttFng himself up as a true poet and his subsequent accusations against Stella should not be taken as egotistical snobbery cr as pure ~ntsrtainmenteither, for the simple reason that even though he dzlights in characterizing hiaself as a true poet, he is always aware of the moral obligations accompanyicq that distinction, He is obliged to reraind Stella of her faults, and if possible to bring hex to acknouledgo thzm not only because he assumed ths role of h2r terfiporal anil spiritual guide very early in their friendship, but also because, as her poet, he is obliged to teach her truth, It is in the dual capacity of poet and friend that he reminds hsr of her failings by listing them openly and that he brings her to acknowledge them by trapping her into transcribing the poem,

Transcription is the only sensible course for Stella to pursue and the only one Swift leaves open to her, at uorst she will be displaying faults which are universally human, and at best she will be laying claim to virtues which are sufficient at least to balance her faults, To admit to unflattering truth is @ever easy, but there is sow consolation in knowing that it is truth; and **To Stella, Who Collected and ~ranscribadhis Poemsw is not without consolation, Stella is still deserving of praise for transcribing the poem because in so doing sha is literally and sy&mlically setting her hand to her failings, which is all that

Swift demands of her, If his tone sounds a sit irnpesious towards the end of the pcem, it is because ha has too much ambition, too nach respect, and too much love for Stella to allow her to fall short of his hopes for hes, 10

In no other poem is Swift as hard on Stella as he is in "To

Stella, Who Collected aad Transcribad his Poa~s,~?albeit the fact that he can make such accusations frankly is high praise of

Stella's judgment acd wit, clearly, hz is not concerned with consoling her in this early poem, but the skill he develops in exploring and manipulating the stylistic possibilities of analogy serves him later when consolation becomes a necessity, Therefore, when he again employs analogy as a device in teaching, he does it

Bore gently; he does not, for sxample, offer Stella unqualified praise and then proceed bluntly to qualify it, This does not mean that Swift is less concerned with truth or with his obligations to

Stella in the later poems than he was previously, but it is almost as if he deteraines ta be more gentle with her as her health grows worse, Thus, he $+gins **StellaasBirth-Dayf* (1725) i n a subdued, corapassionate tone, with an analogy paralleling the uriting of poetry with dancing:

As when a beauteous Nymph decays We say, she's past her Daacing Days; So, Poets lose thelr feet by Time, Bad can nc longer dance in Rhyiw, {HW, XI, 756, 11. 1-4)

Swift is r.ot interested in feeding Sttlla's pride with sxaygerated compliments here. Ha observes frankly that both the nynaph and the poet are decaying, both have lost their feet by time. Furthermore, it Is clear from %hat follows that the nymph is Stella and the pcet, Swift, But whereas the imbalance of the opening analogy of "To Stella, Who Collected and Transcribed his

PoemsH was its message, the Beans by which Swift paradoxically offset Stellaas virtues with her vices, balance is what this analogy insists upon. For instance, the fact that the beauteous nymph is said to be npast her Dancing Days3* is balanced against the fact that the poet can no longer ?*dance in Rhymesw Siailarly, the application of the dance metaphor to both situatiocs asserts and strengthens the balance at the same time; thus, the nymph's condition can be seen to parallel. the poet's, to a degree,

And even though the epic evocations of the $*Aswhsn . . form of the analogy are not co~patibfewith the plainness of the diction in the reminder of the poem an3 tha pastoral evocations of "'beautiful Nymph" are not consistent wi?h the fact that she is decaying, the balance is not upset. Instead, the idsa of decay dorainates the analogy to such an 8xtant that a sense of sadness derives fro@an awareness of the incongruity,

This feeling of sadness at the thought of a beautiful nynaph decaying and at the thought of a poet losing his ability to write is accompanied by a sense of truthfulness as regards ths frankness of the presentation, ~imeis inescapable and decay, inevitable, but at feast the knowledge that one does not face the proc%ss in isolation hslps to mitigate the loss, Bore and wore in his later poems to Stella, therefore, Swift presents hiaself to her as a fellow-sufferer, ft is this relationship that the analogy Einafly highlights, and it is through ths balance, the sadnzss, the truthfulness, axid the cantaradexie insinuated io the analogy that the i~portantquestions posed in the second verse paragraph becum2 rhetorical:

No Poet evsr svketly sung, Unless he ware like Pho~bgs, young; Nos rvsr Mymph inspirld to Rhyae, Unless, like Venps, in her Prime, At Fifty six, if t5is be true, An 1 a Poet fit for you? Or at the Age of Forty three, Are you a Subject fit for as? (11. 19-26)

The fitness of the nymph for the poet, which has already been implied in the opening ariafogy, is fiere reiterated: Stella is inspiring this poem and he is writing, for all of his arguments to the contrary, qtsweetly,3a thus giving the lia to the myth that a poet must be **youngqiand a nymph, ifin her Prirae." fioreover, a simple couplet, which depicts the effect cf time on Steffa's eyesight and on Swift's wit strengthens the parallels:

Adieu bright Eit, and radiant eyes; You must bs grave, and I be wise. (17. 27-2B)

The God of wit and the poet have already been linked together as have Beauty4s Queen (Venus) and the nymph so that wit is masculine and beauty is feminine. It fcflows ther~fvrethat Snif t should be associated with wit and Stells with radian* eyes in the first lins of the couplet. And the state of snfftqs eyesight is later shown to be comparable Co Stella's with his own admission that

"My Eyes are somewhat dimmish qrown" (1, Y2). Having presented the facts plainly, houevar, Swift procseds to deny them in what is for Rim an uncharacteristic avoidance of reality:

But, Stg&&gsay, what evil Tongue Reports you are no longer young? That Time sits with his Scythe to mow Vherf erst sate Cupid with his Bow; That half your Locks are turnsd to Grey; I'll ne9er believe a Word they say, *Tis true, but let it not be known, Hy Eyes ars somewhat dimmish grown; For Bature, always in the Right, To your Decays adapts ay Sight, And Wrinkles ucdistinguish *d pass, For I'm asham'd to use a Glass; and till I see them with these Eyes, Whoever says you have them, lyes. 11 1, 35-48] upon closer examination, though, what appesr to be denials are not really denials after all, Once again, Swiftts intention is not to daceive Stella, but the state ~f her health at this juncture in

her prolonged illness sakes his job as poet and friend rorc

difficult, as will be shown later, Ha must teach, delight, and encourage her in as qentl~and yet as convincing a Banner as

possible. TO accomplish this, Swlft paradoxically ref uses to

actnovfedge St&lfars physical. decline, But this is all part of

the gaiae, since in refusing to admit that Stella has wrinkles

and grey hair, he attests to the fact of their existence,

noreover, his own sophistical reason for not believing in her

physical decay lies net in the fact that the wrinkles an4 the

grey hair do not exist but in the fact that he cannot see the@, ~hus, by aaaptinq his sight to Si-ella's decay, Mature secures the final balance in the posm and proves herself to be always in the right, in terms of making life {and death) bearable. There is yet a postscript to Swift's arqurnent, a final pi2ce of 2vidence supporting Nature's flawless wisdom:

No Length of Time caE make you quit Honour and Virtue, Sense and Wit, Thus you map still be young to me, While I can better hear than 222 . , . . [17, 49-52) f n contrast to what ht; said earlier about beauty and wit king confinea to youth, timets passing cannot make Stella quit honour,

virtue, sense, and wit. TAs solultion to this paradox is Bore

complex than a simple assertion that swift is contradicting

himself; and, in part, it lies in the rhetorical nature of tho

questions in the second verse. The thrust of the argument of the

second verse is that if beauty and wit ara con•’ined to youth,

then Swift is not a fit poet for Stella and sht is not a fit

subject for him, on the one hand, Stellais urinkles and grey hair, together with Swift's persistent complaints about his inability to dance in rhyme, support the suggestion that

beauty and wi-t are confiwd to youth. On the ather hand, hovever, the balance insinuated in the analogy, which

runs through the rest of the poem, impfias that Swift and Stella

fit for each other, and not just because their physical irrfirmiti~sare compasabl~, Hot surprisingly, the solution Pies

in a revaluation of "beauty," "wit," and even "youth," Tima has detracted from Stdlats physicdl beauty but it has

supplisd the loss nith a more profound beauty accruing from her

commitment to honour, virtue, sense, and wit--a beauty of the

mind. A similar diff~renceis implied between the inexperienced

wit of youth characterized by a quickn2ss of Fnvsntion and the

experienced wit of older years characterized by self -knowledge, In a vsry ssal sense, then, Stella can always remain young not

only because Swift can no longer see the signs of physical decay

but also because she still possesses beauty and wit, though of

different kind than formerly, swift *s earlier observation that **Our Fate ir, vain we wcufd oppose" is therefore true not only

because to combat time is impossible but also because to cotahat time is to fight against honour, virtue, sense, and wit, which are progressitre virtues not limited to a particular age.

Thus far, it is clear that in '*To Sttlla, Who Collect3d and

Transcribsd his Poemsft and in "Stellai s Birth-~ap~(1725) Swift

is playing with the expectations elicited by parafleliag certain

elements within specific analogies as well as the expectatioss

elicited by the form of the epic si~ifegenerafly, "A Receipt to

Restore Steliats Youthu (17 25) presents a slightly diff erer,t case;

the poem does not begin nith an amlogy in the usual "As when . . ." form but SwiftSs strategy in the poem is to compare Stella to a cow,

Yithout reproducing the poem in its ectirety, it is enough

to observe that Swift compares Stalla to a cow who has grown lean

for want of food over the winttr months: Vhy, S&g&La, should you knit your Brow, If 1 compare you to the Cow? *Tis just thk Case: For you have fasted So long till all your Flesh is wasted, And must against the warmr nays Be sent to QuL&cp down to graze; Vhert Mirth, and Exercise, and Air, Mill soon your Appatits repair. (HW, 11, 759, 17. 21-28)

During the last three yEars of har life in particular, Stellals health apparently fluctuated between poor and very poor. But althouqh the state of her health throughout 1725 was never encouraging, in narch of that yeas especially her inability to eat caused Swift some consternation. In a latter to Charles Ford dated Harch 1, Swift complains that rqwrs. Johnson is as usual, unless rather worse, for she eats now but a mouthfull a days

later Swift says, "Our Friend uith the weak Stomach eats loss than ever, and I am in pain about her . . ." fgo~~gpgndence,

His concern for Stella in the poem is therefore genuine enough, but his vision of her recovery is more hopeful thari realistic. For upon her regaining her appatite, he foresees a miracuf ous a1t~rati.o~taking place in her physical aspect:

The Nutriment sill from within Round all your Eoay plump your Skin; Will agitate the lazy Flood, And fill your Vekns with sprightly Blood: Mor flesh nor Blood w411 be the same, SGT ought of Stella, but the Name; For what was ever understood By human Kind, but Flesh and Blood? And if your Flosh and Blood be nen, You'll be no more your former 1F,~,u. . . . (11. 29-38) The light tone of the piece makes it clear tnat Swift" primary concerr bere is with ent~rtainme~t.He has already proven in

'*Stella's 3irth-Day8g (1725) that there is more rco *$hulaan Kindf' thar, flesh and blood, Afid if the irapossibility of the title does not alert the readsr to SwiSt's playful intent i~msdiately, the referenc~to Medea's kettle should, Swift knew perhaps better than anybody else that the only way that the health and vibrancy of youth could be restored would be through some impossible magic,

Having acknowledged Swiftas playful intent, however, it is fair to add that "A Receipt to Restore Stefla8s Youth8 is not without its serious sida. There is a definite correspondence b~tweenphysical health acd leental vofl-being, and if one is

"Meagre and lank with fasting grown{* (1. 71, one's spirits likely will be weakened propcrtionately. The "Receiptw is theref~re designed to provide Stella with psychologicai nutriment through eutsrtainraenk as weff as a r~cipefor: physical revitalization.

Presumably, only when the two are combined will Stella be able to

**keep Life and Soul togethers (I, 101 successfully.

It is significant that Swift's style anii aethodoiogy in the poems ro Stella are markedly different fro^ his style and methodology in the earlier Vanbrugh poems or in the later ?$On

Poetry: A Rapssdyt4 and "An Epistle to a Ladyig in that the Stella poems contain almost no satire; in Swift's eyss, Stella, unlike

Vanbrugh, was ceither a fool to be exposed nor a knave to be lashed, so naturally his style is much less acctlsatory and defamatcfy uher he is writing to her. As Kulischeck notes,

Although these occasional poems are saved from the usual banality of this genre by the elaborate play of wit, they are almost completely devoid of satiric colour, The couplets are riotable for their simplicity of diction, their perfectly true but act pedestiao rhymes, and their grace•’uf metrical patterns, 1 1

Hev%rtheiess, Swift would probably still have described his tactics in poems like "To Stella, Who Collected and Transcribed his Poentsv and "Stella at Wood-ParkT8 in the very tror4s of his epistle to Lady Acheson:

Thus, 1 find it by Experiment, scolding acves you less than Merriment. I Bay storm and rage in vain; It but stupifies your Brain. But, with Raillery to nettle, Set your Thoughts upon thair Bettle: Gives I~aginatlonScope, Hsver lets your Mind efops: Drives out Brangling, and Contention, Brings in Reason and fcvention, (HB, 11, 636-637, 11. 207-2761

The thing tc rememb~ris that whereas Swi.Ft refuses tc drop his +'constant Rule, / Turninq all. to Ridiculefq .111. 51-52) fox

Lady Acheson, he is often willing to drop his rule for Stella,

And whereas his colaplaint, "Fcr my Friends havo always thought /

Tenderness my greatest (11, 231-232) is ironic in that epistle, tenderness directs much of the methodology in the Stella poems. Whether ha is t3aching directly or indirectly, Swift is always confident of Steflals ability to read between the lines, to extract the tendern~ssfrom the waightiest teachings and the occasior,af ridicule from her poet. swift is not, as fisc'ner wrongly concludes, intant upon dissolving for Stelfa "the who12 world of hard facts and workable mattePq in order to substitute for it "a world in which anything is true vhich can fairly be seen to be tr~e,~'l2because iflusion is aluays its own reuard,

It is ths strength and the patience to accept with equanimity the harshest truths of her human condition that Swift hopes to awaken in Stella, and it is the consolation derived from knowing that she is not alone in her suffering that will uftiaataly supply her with that strecgth and patience, 7 See Harold Williams* edition of Swiftis poems, Vol. XI,

p. 721, for a bsi~fdiscussion of Swiftts inaccurate representaion of Stellats age, silfiams attributes the inaccuracy tc Swift's

faulty memory, hut I would suggest that SwZftts method of indirect

teaching adequately accounts for the misrepres~ntatioa, 2 From an unpublished paper presented at thd M .I,,&, Confer~nce

in New York, December 1976, entitled, "Faith, Nope, and Charity in

SwiftSs Poems to Stelfa," p, 16.

3 Ibid., p. 5.

4 ALthough Swift guarded Stellats privacy almost fanatically,

the fact re@airis that while she was virtually on her deathbed he

was preparing many of his poems to her for publication. It is one

of those strange Swiftian inconsistencies that nust be

acknowledged but that cancot, X think, be rsso2ved.

5 Throughout his journal to Stella, Swift refers to Stella's

poor eyesight. ~ypicalof such references is an entry in Letter EV 3at ?d Septembsr 23, 1710: '?Stella writqs 9ikz an g&ggp=: 1

am afraid it hurts your eyes; take cafe of khat pray, pray Hrs,

Stella3I (p. 28 of Barold Billiarns* edition of the Journal to ------Stella) and on2 in Lir3tt;r VI dated October 15, 1710: '$1 will write plainer if I can r%membes it; for S%lla must not spoil her

eyes, 3nd Dingi2y can't read my hand vsry wei.1" (p. 59).

6 "Faith, Hope, and Charity in swift's Poems to Stella,"

16s 7 "Swift and Stella: The Love Poems," Tennessee studies is ------Literatlt~s, 11 (1974), 39. 8 "Suift,*s Octcsylf abics and the Hudibrastic Tradition,17 T&

Journal of ~aggishand ~errnanicPBi3.0f 53 (79543, 346.

9 ...... Poetic Hetar and Poetic Form (Hew Pcrk: Random House, 19651, pt 138,

10 The crowning irony of Swift's extensive manipulations in

the poem is that Stella, without denying the validity of his

accusations, noither transcribed nor bur~edthe poem. See Harold

gilfiams* edition cf the poems, Vol, fX, p. 732, n. 140, ft is

interesting to speculate about Stella*s reaction to receiving

such a poem, and it would be satisfying to think that, living up

to Swift's earlief claims regarding her wit and humour, she

turned the tables on him by rafusing both of his alternatives,

and, in so uoing, psrhaps mortified his prldz a little, too. 11 "Swift *s Octosyllabics acd the ffu5ibrastlc Tradition,** pp.

12 "Faith, Hope, and charity In Swift's Poems to Stella," CHAPTER THREE

SBIPT'S RELATIONSHIP WITH STZLLA AMD HIS PRESENCE IN THE POEHS TO STELLA

Some years ago, Evelyn Hardy argued that Swift 's women, Ifif he was to love them, must flrst admit to being students and then becorn$ slaver;, extensions of himself, who offered no opposition. "1

Katherine B. Rogers went further So suggsst that J*Considered from a physical viswpcint, woman is either a mother or a mate; and

Swift shoved as much distastc for her in the first capacity as in the sr;~ond.~~2And more recently, Miriam A. Deford has used even stronggr language ir axpr~ssinghes belief that "24s women, Swift feared and Rated them; as fellow-beings he could have toward them an attitude much nearer to our own than to that common in his raascufins-dominant day. "3 f*Slavery,Is *+distaste, *Tiear," and

$'hatredH are emotive words which, when used haphazardly, leave in their wake a stigmatfsm which is difficult to eradicate.

Nouhcre is this mere evident than in the controversy that has growr, up arou~ilthe question of SwiEtls relationships with women. in.qeneral and his relationship with Esther Johnson in particular. gas Swift co~stitutionaliycapable of loving arxyo~?? Has he inclined towards marriage? Did he in fact marry Esther Johnson? These are some of the questions around which the contrcversy revolves, the gu@stions that have plagued Suiftcriticlsm in one fcrm or another for over two hundred years.

Doubtless, Herbert Davis hoped he had sufficiently discounted the relevance of such questions to an understanding of the poems to Stella and had thcreby laid to rest the marriage debate once and for all in 1942 vhec he began his Toronto lecture series thus:

Let me say at once that 1 have no secrets to reveal, no theory to put forward concerning the r+heicnShi~of Swift and Stella. 1 have not discovered any fresh manuscripts of his letters to her, or of hers to him, f cannot prove that they were or that they were not married; nor am f auch concerned or auch impressed by old or recent suggestiom that their parentage was more noble than honest,Y

Hone of the evidence Davis lacked has surfaced since the Toronto leczures, acd his refutation cf Denis Johnston's theories about why Swift could not marry Stelfa and about their questionable parentage5 renders another such refutation superfluous,

Wevertheless, despite Davis4 efforts to dissociate the poems to

Stella fro@ the aelodrama of the marriage question and to analyzs them critically, as independent literary artifacts, and despite

Irvin Bhrenpreisf decisive statement against the possibility of any clandestine union having taken place,S discussions of the poems continue to ecshroud the whole business with an aura of mystery. Thus, Sybil Le Brocguy, obviously caught up in the sentimental aspects of the mystery, hints that "Xt is reasonable to believe that Swift would not have persuaded Stella to leave Engla~ti, ucless hc had intended to marry her,"? and agaio that **The fact that Swift alaost cartainly intended to marry Stella, soon after he persuaded the Ladies to move to Dublin, is proof that @e then had no idea of his T2rn~la connection,"8 be Brocquy systematically revives all of ths issues that Davis played dcwn as hsr initial belief in Swift *s intention to marry Stella mysteriously transforms itself into a fact. And although he is forced to admit, on the basis of thcz evidence in her possession, that "R3ason as well as Charity deny this xuarriage, for: which Stella hoped so long,*)9 tha wistful tone of her final observation on Stella's disappointment doas not inspire confidence in her understanding of Stella*s relationship with Swift.

aithout adding to the confused mass of criticism of which Le

Brocquy9s book is singuiariy representative, L would say simply that, far me, the poems to Stella do not reveal the kn_y to Swift's inclination or disinclinaion to Barry. Indeed, it seems that critics arguing in favour of the marriage nearly always follow severse logic, that is, they begin with the cocclusion that Swift married Stella and then they try to offer as ~uchsvidence as possible to suppcrt their conclusion, which, by the way, is never abandoned for lack of proof. In the process, thz poems to Stella are ransacked for clues even though, in actuality, they do not reveal that a masriagt? took place any more than they record

Swiftqs fear, hatred, or enslavement of Stella. What the poems do reveal, I belfeve, is a relationship between two people based on mutual understanding, respect, devotion, and need, and in this chapter 1 shall. examine how the nature of that relationship informs Swift's presence in the poems.

fn her recent article dealing with 3fDeath and Daphnet' (1730). one of Swift's Market Hifi poems, Nora Crow Jaffe associates Lady

Acheson with Stella and Vanessa with reference to their respective relationships with Swift:

The theory that answers most questions for me is that Death is a stand-in for Swift himself and the poen is about the tutorial relationship he cultivated with Lady Acheson, which was similar to his relationships with Stella and Vanessa, The three wom9n were all younger than Swift, with progressively greater intervals between his age and theirs . . , . The tutor vied with the father in Swift as he strove to inculcate in all three women a love for valking or riding, a hatred for fops, an impeccable pronounciation in reading aloud and a comprehensive acquaintance with writers in philosophy, relgion, politics, and literature. 10 Jaffe goes on to suggest a parallel betwden Swift's reprimanding of Lady Acheson in Vhe Fevolution at Ivlark.?'t Hillfl (1730) and his chastising of Stella in "To Stella, Vho Coflected and Transcribed his Poemsw ('1720). for her, this apparently cements the parallels between the tuo woaen, Bowever, whereas there are interesting and zven striking simifarities among all of Swift's famous women friends teith regard to their respective backgrounds and physical. dimensions as ~hr~npreishas shonc, 11 thair external similarities have brought many critics dangerously close to lumping Stella, Vanassa, and now Lady Achason tcgst-her 3s if they also possessed cne personality, It is this kind of uncritical lumping together of personal characteristics that encourages ueak generalizations about Swift's love-life or about his supposed misogyny.

But, besides the fact that is inconceivable to ma that he thought of and traated all of his female friends identically, Swift left ample evidence to prove tha-t he regarded

Stella, Vanessa, and Lady Acheson as individuals, evidence that implies Stelf a's superiority over the others ic his own mind.

Probably his most straightforward appraisal of Stella's value as a woaan and as a friend is to be found in the brief biography he began writing on the night of her dtath. It begins with this general but manifsstly sincere statement: "This day, being

Sunday, January 28th, 1727-8, about eight o'clock at night, a servant brought Be a note, with an account of the death of the t~uest,~ost virtuous, and valuable friend, that I, or perhaps any other persos ever was blest withst ("On the Death of Hrs, Johnson,"

HD, V, 227). A feu days later he elaborates on her accomplishments as time and his health permit:

She was well versed in the Greak and Roman story, and was not unskilled ia that of Prance and England. She spoke French perfectly, but forgot auch of iS by neglect aatl sickness, She had read car2fully all the best books of travels, which serve to opsn acd enlarge the mind. She understood the Platonic and Epicurean philosophy, and judged very well of the defects of the latter. Sh2 nade very judicious abstracts of the best books she had read. She understood the nature of government, and could point out ail rhe errcrs of Hobbes, both in chat and re3.igicc. . . . She had a true tastc. of wit and good sens9, bsth in poetry and in prcse, and was a perfect good critic of style , . . , She preserved kr wit, judgment, and vivacity to the last, but often used to co~plainof her memory. {Fir), V, 227) Even Vanessa had not received such accolades froia Swift; her

idleness and iamodesty had been rather a soarce of embilrrassment

to him from the beginning of their friendship, as he indicates

in a letter to ~issAn~e Long dated November 18, 1711:

Z have a mighty Friendship for her: She had good Principles, and I have corrected all her Faults; but I cannot persuade her to read, tho she has an Understanding, Eemosy, and Tast, that would bear great I~provemectz but she is incorrigibly idle and Lazy: thinks the norid made for nothing but her perpetual Pleasure; and the Deity she ~ostadores is Horpheur. Her greatest Favourites at present are Ldy Ashburnham, her Dog, and my self , . . . She will bid her Sistslr go down stairs, before my face, for she has some private Busin+ss with the Doctor. In short thzre would never be an and of tellinq you the Hardships she puts on me . , , , IC~h~88~298*nce,f * 278) In many ways the difference between Stella and Vanessa uas

complste: Stella read as vigorously as her failing eyesight wculd

allow, vhereas Vanessa could hardly be prevailed upon to pick up a book; stella judged wsll cf the defects of Epicurean philosophy,

whereas Vanessa seems tc have been devoted to it. Swift's placing

of the dog before hi~selfic a list of Vanessa's current

fa~ouzit~sdemonstrates his annoyance with her, if not the true character cf her transgressions aqainst hi&. Adntittedl y, Swift urot;. of Stella's accontplishments in retrospect ic his m~~orialbiography of har, while suffering, presumably, under a31 of the emational stress one would experience directly upon fosinq oxis's "truest, most virtuous, and valuable friend," When he wrote the above letter to Bnnr Long, on the othsr hand, Vanessa was vGry much a living reminder to him of his failure to redirect h~rworldly sensibilities. But this does not Bean that his account of Stella's virtuss is less accurata or dependable for h~rbeing deceased,

Neither does it mean, as so~scritics imply, that he maintainad a special feeling for Stella because her pliability enads her his greatest tsaching triumph, Pliability usually presupposes one of two things: a willingness to be directed or an inability to resist being directed, and since swift had no use for slaves or fools, it is logical to conclude that Stella was of the first category, And from ghat is known of her character, she was indeed willing to be directed in areas relating to tha improvement of her mind, for example, but she also possess+d the ability to think and tc act for herself. This she exercised, as I have msntioned earlier, in refusing to transcribe "To

Stella, Briho Collected and Transcribed his POSIBS.~

It is to the poems to Stella that ons must ultimat2ly turn, however, to acquire a more detailed insight into Stella's individuality and the reciprocal nature of her relationship with

Swift. For if he celabrated her virtuousness in his prose, he was even more complirnsntary of it in his poetry; and it is interesting to observe that in the poetry as in the prose, Stella outshines Vanessa, In *'Swift and the Agreeall5 Young Lady, but

Extremely Lean," Jaffe draws a parallel b3tween Pallas' performance in "Cadenus and Vanessa" [I71 3) and Prometheus* activities in itTo Stella, Visiting me in my Sickness*$ (1720).

Pallas enaoss Yansssa with manly virtues in the former poem and Prometheus bastous on Stella "Th+

Fire that forms a manly Souln (HW, If, 726, 1. 88) in the latter,

Jaffe notes in passing that '$Swift is usually literal in accepting an old pedagogical ~sinciplewe all know w~li: students are there to be transformed l nto wizened little replicas of ourse1ves.l' 12

But in her haste to discover similarities between Lady Achssoa and

Stella and between Stella aud Vanesss, Jaffe misses an important detail. Pailas plays a role in "To Stella, Visiting me in my

Sicitness'~ustas she does in "Cadenus and Vanessa," but aafthough her role in each poem is not all that different, her underlying motivation is. The dissimilarity betwaea Pallasf motivatioa in "Cadenus and

Vanessa*' and in "To Stella, Visiting me ic my Sickness?' is subtls, kut it conetheless serves to indicatt the different astsea in which ~wiftheld his two friends and the special regard h% had for Stella. B little moro than a quarter of the way through

"Cadznus and Vanessa,*' Venus decsivss pallas into believing tha* the infant Vanessa is a boy and, since 'fHisdom's above suspecting Wilesi* (H'ii. 11, 692, 1. 198) . Pallas bestowes hsz various gifts on the baby:

Then sows within hur tender Hind Seeds long unknown to ~omankiad, For aianly Bosoms chiefly fit, The Seeds of Knowfedge, Judg~ent,Uit. Her Soul was suddenly endu'd With Justice, Truth and Fortitude; Hith Honour, whicn ao Breath can Stain . . . . (71, 202-208)

In the Stella poem, howevtzr, swift presents Stella initial1y as an infant, but as an infant already possessing a degree of wit which Vas more than for her Sex was fitw ffiW, XI, 723, 1, 2) and a degrer of beauty which "soon or Late, / Bight breed Confusion ir, the Stateu (11. 34. Consequently, Pallas, "In high Concern for human Kind, / Pixt Eonmy in her Infant Mindit

I 5.There is no deception on Venus' part here. ahat

Palfas would only give previously to a boy sh? qrants willingly to Stella. The difZer~ncebetween the two casss speaks highly in Stella's favour because it characteriz~sher as nore masculine and therefore more Swift's equal than Vanessa.

TLe reaiaind.fr of "To Stella, Visitirrg me in my Sickness*' is important insofar as it fixas Stelfa's value as a friend firtnly in her virtues and, more than this, it initiates an awareness of

Swift8s dependince on her as well. Having acknowledged Pallas* gift, Swift next proceeds to define +,ha qthonouru that St%ifa has been granted, which amounts to stripping the word of all of its fashionable cocna tations: But, fngt in Wranglings to engaqe Wlth such a stupid vicious Age,) If Honour I uould here define, It answers Faith in Things divine. As nattral Life the ~odywarms, Acd, Scholars teach, the Soul informs; So Honous: animates the Bhole, And is the Spirit of the Soal, (17. 7-14)

Trua honour is neither affected by the humours that szize the body

from time to time nor assessable according to the different

complexions thoso humours may eff2ct. It is neither expressed

in Vhe drunken Quarrels of a Rake" (3, 24) nor evidenced in

'sthe Payment of a Dsbt / He lose with Sharpers at Piquet*' {17*

27-28), Bather, as wSt~llatsfair Exampletq preaches,

In Points of Honour to be tryfd, All Passions must be laid aside: 8sk no Advice, but think alone, Suppose the Question not your own: How shall I act? is not the Case, Rut how would Brutus in my Place? In such a Cause uould CqQ bleed? &r,d how wo~ldSocra tes proceed? (44. 35-42)

Stellats example thus teaches the necessity of achieving a stance of impartiality in judging points of true honour. Such a stapce can best be achieved not by saeking the advice of friends,

who may raise objections to acting honourably purely out of self- interest, or by relying upon one's own ability to judge, which,

given human imperfection, cannot always be divorced from thoughts

of self-aggrandizeaent, but by emulating the exanples of past practitioners of true honour, whose reputation for honourable

behaviour fat least in Swif tian terms) is unimpeachable, In short, one must strive "Drive all. Objections from your Mind.

Elsa you relapse to Human Kind" 1,43-44). For if one relapses

Ambition, Avarice, and Lust, Arid factious Rage, arid Breach of Trust, Aod Flatt'ry tipt with nauseous Ffesr, And guilty Shame, and servile Fear, Envy, and Cruelty, and Pride, Hi11 in your tainted Heart preside. (11, 45-50)

An espousal of ambition, avarice, lust, and the other vices presented highlights the animalistic side of man's dual nature*

At the other extreme, however, Swift implies that an allegiance to true honour elevates man above the level of corninon huiziariity; if one concentrates dispassionately on the sxamples of the power of true moral heroism provided by Socrates, Brutus, or Cato, then he will not fefapse into being simply human. The necessity of looking tc the past for models for present dctions is determined by tha fact that man1 s post-fapsasiar, heart grows more tainted with time. As a Christian humanist, Swift believed man to be the victi~of an irremediably flawed nature,l3 a condition represented perfectly by the word "relapse," which indicates a process of repeated backsliding. But as a satirist, well staeped in the history and the 1 ieerature of classical antiquity, he responded to the relative order, prosperity, and what many augustans considered the moral intagrity of classical

Rome.14 This duality of belief is less paradoxical than it appt.ass because for Swift, as for his contemporaries, there was ao such thirrg as a perfect post-lapsarian aar, not even ia the classical past. Consequently, not sven ancieat Rome could teach perfection. Nevertheless, whereas the classical models were not perfect, they were still more exemplary than modern men and, therefore, were the best available wodels, Furtherntore, by following their examples one could at Least rise above the levsl of r3Ruraarr Kir,dn even if one could never attain perfection.

Stalla4s sense of true honour is such that it has already elevated her above the level cE corninon humanity, but Swift playfully contrives to elevate her still higher by punning on the meaning of h2r name:

Heroes and Beroins of old, By Honour only were enroll'd Among thelr Bsethren of the Skies, To which (though late) shall Stnlla rise, (11. 51-54)

"S%sPlaH means star, acd Swift dsaws upon the varicus literary associations that "stariqconjures up to endow Stella with a kind of epic immortality. Her rising Fnto the skies is appropriate since she has been designed as mankind's guiding light because of hsr honourable behaviour, ghat is still more cortlplimentary, though, Is the fact that these lines represent not a prayer but an assertion. They do not ask that Stefla s3~aynrise, they confidently predict that she "shallft rise.

The reasans for this csrtainty in Sniftts mind are cf~ar:

Tec thousand Oaths upon Becord, &re not so sacred as her ~ord: The World shall in its Atoms aid, E'er Stglkp can deceive a Frienii. By ti0floa;i~seated in her Breast, She still determines what is best: what Indignation in her Mind Against Ensf avers of Mankind! Base Kings and fiinisters of Stats, Eternal Objects of her Hate. (11. 55-64)

Even allcniag f@r a larye mszsurs of exaggeration for nnt+rtainm~ntpurposes, entlrtainment being ever-present in the poems to Stella, Stel lass virtuousness is impressive, Tor whether the oaths upon recur3 number one hundred or ten thousand, Stella is true to her word and will not deceive a frksnd, Additionally, it is fair to say that in her hatred of the enslavers of mankind,

+*BaseRings and Einisters of State,fl she has learned her lassons well, that she is thoroughly Swlftian, Swift provides an indirect clue to his oun notion of true honour, and a cluo to his choice of a classical figure like Brutus to represent it, in a letter to

Alexander Pope dated January 10, 1721:

Pt is true, the Romans had a custoi~of chusing a Dictator, during whose administration, the Power of other Magistrates was suspended; but this was done upon the greatest emrgencias; a gar mar their doors, or some civil Dissention, for Armies must be governed by arbitrary pouer, But when the Virtue of that Commonwealth gave place to luxury am3 ambition, this aery office of Dictator became perpetual in the persons of the Caesars and their Successors, th2 most icfamous tyrants that have any where? appeared ir! story, (ggyggspondence, If, 373) swift could tolerate dictatorial rule so long as ths intsgrity of the Commonwealth was pr-?sefved and so long as individuals* rights wem respected, but when benevolect dictatorship transformed itself into political tyranny, he lost all patienca. True honour acts vith couragF and decision to prevent or to overthrow such

tyranny, and since Stella knows the nature and the value of true

honour, she can appreciate, with Swift, the active guality of

true honour that Brutus symbolizes in the context of the poem.

But simply becaus~she shams Swift's political convictions does

not mean that she f s therefore a wizanad little replica of her

tutor, After all, it would be more remarkable if she was not

Swiftian, for no close, lasting relationship with Swift was ever founded on mutual incompatibility. And basidos,

the direction Stella's hatred takes is consistsnt symbolically

with the direction Brutust hatred took, so that her hatred

contributes to the theaatic uniey of the poem,

Thus far, Swift bas defined true honour alnost excfusively in

thsoretical terms: l'ft answers Faith in Things divine,lf and it "is the spirit of the Nevertheless, th.3 test of true honour comes, as it always has, in its practical appfication, Not

surprisingly, Swift's most recent observation of Stdla8s

honourable behaviour, in terms of the composition of the poem, coincides vith his present illness, throughout which she nurses

hi@ faithfully, Immediately one notices the incongruity betwsen

the domesticity of Stellaas efforts and the epic build-up that

Swift has given her in the preceding lines of th~pea, The lncongrulty is central to Swift's purposg in the poept, however,

f because it not only indicates the considerabfe gap that noriaally i exists between theoretical definitions and their practical application, but it alsa demonstrates the pervasive power and range of tzue hocour, Ostensibly, Swif tls intention is ts redefine honour, to align it with the d3ily interests of the common man, thereby ma king true honour univarsally accessib lo,

As Bay be expected cf one who is antireiy animated by true honour, then, Stella nthinks that Hature netsr designgd / Courage to Ran alone confin'd" I 5-66 Courage may be deemed a predominantly aasculine virtue, but Swift mkes it clear that womzn are capable of being courageous, For her part, Stllla has never learned to display affected fears, to scrt3am or to faict delicately at the least provocation. Horeovar, where they miqht expect to witness tho usual femle coquetry and trifling convarsation, *+HexHearars are amaz9d Eroa whence / Procesds that

Fund of Wit and Sensen (11, 39-80) in Stella *s converscition,

And it should be noted that, in Sviftfs eyes, Stella does not lose her womanliness by the acquisition sf aanly virtues, If anything, she beco~esa sore perfect uomn because shz represents a balance of all that is outvardfy and inwardly beautiful, Pram2theus, as it turns out, was no more blind in bestowing on her "The Fire that forms a manly Soulw 11,

88) than Palias was ir, endowing her with honour at the outset,

But dven this mnly Sire is incomplete in itseff and, consequently, Prometheus, "to compleat it evtry way, / He molded it uith Female Clayw (1 1. 89-90), Those who ~aintaina belief Swiftis misogyny should he inter2sted to see that, in Stel1aqs case at least, the masculine virtues find an excellent domlcila in "Female Clay.*$

Thus, courage combines with huaility , patiancs, and kindness as Stelfa tends Swi ft in his illness: How would Ingratitude delight? And, how would censure glut her Sp~ght? If P should gt2&&als Kindness hide IP. Silence, or forget with Pride, When on my sickly Couch f lay, Impatient both of Wight and Day, Lafaerntifig in unmacly Strains, Callad ev*ry Powvr to ease my Pains, Then Stellq ran to my Relief Vith chearful Pace, and inward Grizf; And, though by Heaven's severe Decree Sh6 suffers hourly more than me, Mo cruel Easter could requira From Slaves emp-loy*d for daily Birs What Stella by her Friendship uar~'d, Mith Vigour and Delight perf ormvd, My sinking Spirits now supplies With Cordials in her Rands, and Eyes. Wou, with a soft and silent Tread, Unheard she moves about my Bed, I see her taste each nauseous Draught, and so obligingly am caught: I bless the Hand from whencz they came, Nor dare distort my Face for shame. (31. 93-116)

There is a danger that the sentimentality of these lines can easily obscure Swift's craftsmanship. Stylistically, his unmanly lamentations serve to highlight Stella's courage, his fmpatience her patience, and his sinking spirits her cheerful face, ~ut he makes Stellaas honour more than just obsefvable by contrast, for it is felt in her hands, seen in her eyes, heard paradoxically in her silent tread, and somehow even tasted in the lgedicins that- she samples before administering it to his, fn short, Swift renders an abstract virtue tangibl? with the result that honour acquires a seosible quality and courage becomes an everyday r2ality.

This, in fact, is what Swift has been working up to, Virtues in general and honour and courage in particuiar have lost their meanings, the sense of their Smportancz having been pervzrted by the decadence of tnodern socie ty, The way to apprehend their true meanings is to consult the past, but ths only way to revive those virtues i~ the present is to apply the sense of their past meanings to everyday activities and events in the pressnt. For Swift, virtuousness is not so much a product of intelligence but rather a product of personal intngrity, It is the maintsnance of personal integrity in a vicious world that demands the courage of the classical heroes and heroines, and he M~Omeets the challenge is indzed heroic, Perhaps this is something of what Swift had in mird vhen he wrote ia Stolla*s biography that "With all the softness of ternp&r that b-ecatne a lady, shs ha4 the personal courage of a heros {HD, V, 229).

Interesting as it may be to speculate on %he point at which

Stoicism znds and Christian patience begins in Stella*s behaviour, I5 it seems to me that the real siqnificancs of those moments in the poems to Stella when Swift is especially dependent on her benevo2ence lies in their very personal. and self-r~velatory nature, Despite the fact that the closing lines of "To Stella, Visiting me in my sickrissstf are demonstrably Suiftian in their stylistic tightness and precision, they are uncharacteristic of

Swift in the sense that he is seldoa so hones* or so revealing about himself, Not only does h~ not assune an ironic mask on a litsrary level, but hs, dare not Even "distort f his) Pace for

on a physical. level; as artist arid man, 'ns saerns to be attempting coinplete honesty, Of course, the problem arises as to how playful swift is being fieze, Clearly, in the context of

%he poem he lacks Stella's courage and patieace and, therefore, he is less thafi her equal as regards the herois of moderation.

But it may be argued that the expression of his suffering is contrived or exaggerated to display her virtues nor2 advantageously.

There are two circumstances, however, which indicats that

Swift's expression of his suffering is neither contrived nor exaggerated, In the first place, thera is an underlying sanse of intimacy and candor in the poems to Stella that precludes outright lying. This sense is largely inhartnt in what D. Pa

Jefferson has identified as thq element of the personal, which he sees as representative of Swift#s "latlst and great~atperiod

He had had friends before, but now friendship btcmes a major theme in his poetry. He writes birthday poems for Stella during the later years of her life, and verse epistles to friends such as Ford, Delany, and Lady Acheson, associated with the personal is the didactic, swift becomes mse overtly the moralist, and the moral tone is idiosyccratic, the expsessioa of a foxmidabis character with settled, rather conservative attitudes diversified by an infinitely resourcetut wit, . , . His habitual austerity and drynass, but also his aura of immense distinction, give priceless value to all that is gxacious and ccm~limentaryin thase poems for friends. 16 obszrvations based on ovrsall impressigns, so that his remarks about Swiftas idiosyncratic tono and habitual drynsss are arguable in deqres, In addition, Jefferson fails to acknowledgs that the poems to Stella are as different from as they axe similar to the verse epistles to Ford, Delany, and Lady Acheson or that 5wift3s relationships with Stella acd Lady Acheson cannot really b? considered equivalent, Nonetheless, his point about the? parsonaf nature of the birthday poems to Stella is well taken. Not only ars thay personal, but it is their intensely personal nature that ultireatrlly separates them from the rsst of Swift3s poetry, The same tacit assumptions that Stella can understand and accept the truths presented in his various Psssons and perceive the tenderness that directs his teachings are evident in all of the poems to her. and in th~second place, there is littla or no exaggeration in Swift's presentation of the state of his health in any of the

Stella poems judging from the information in his cozrnspondence;,

For example, sn a letter he wrote to Charles Ford on April Qr

1720, a little more than two weeks after the birthday for which

'*To Stalfa, visiting rae in my Sickr:essH presuaably was conlpossd, he says that X am hardly a ?lonth fr2e from Deafness which continues ancthcr mcnth on me, and dejects me so, that I can not bear the thoughts of stirring out, or suffering any one to scle me, and this is the most mortal fwpedimenz to all thouqhts of travelling, and X would dy with Spleen to be in such a Condition in strange Places; so that P aust wait till 1 grow better, or sink under it if I a@ uorsa, YOU healthy Ptopls cannot judge of the sickly, Since I had your fast of bar, 10th I have not been able to write; and thrte Days ago hairlag invited severall Ge rtlemen to dinner, I #as so attacked with a fitt of Giddyness for 5 Hours, that f was forced to constitute a Grattan to be my Deputy and do ths Honours of the House while I lay miserable on my Bed, Your friendly Expostulations force me upon this old Woman's Talk, but I can bring all of my few Friends to nitnass that you have heard more of it, than ever I troubled them with, fCorr@syo~dence,If, 341-342)

This letter is valuable for several reasons, It verifies the axistence of the illness Swift depicts in '*To Stelfa, Visitinq me in my Sicknes~.~~Further, it docum+r,ts Swift's unwillingness to talk extensively of his poor health to any but his closest friends, And, what is pefhape most ilgportant, it reveals his fear of baing reduced to total dependency and to total helplassness by his ~aladies,

In order to combat this faaf of dependency and also, 1 believe, in order to deal einoticnally with the fact of his declining health, swift developed a special aethod of writing ahout himself to his close friends, a method consisting of self- disparange~ent. By making light of his own inadequacies, he couZd talk about his ill health or about his poetical inabilities while still keeping them zit am's length from himself. Therefore, in th3 above letter to Ford, Swift refers to th-? brief discussion of his icfirmities as ltold Boaan's Talk," which he inoulges in only to satisfy Pofd*s enquiries, ~imilarly,in his letter to

Alexander Pope of July 19, 1725, he ends a serious report of his present health with a touch of self -mockery:

I would have seen you many times if a Curszd Deafness did not Soase me every 2 or 3 Hor~ths, and then I am frighted to think what 1 should do in bccdon v~hilewy Friends are all either banished or attained or beggars, or retired. But 1 will venture all if f live and you must in that Case get me two or three Harridan Ladys that will be ccntent to nurse and talk loud to Be while 1 a@ deaf, Say nothing of my beiag elevec years older than when we parted . . . . (correng~qdence, 1x1, 79)

Not to beiabour the point, it is enough to say that Swift was acute1y aware of his declining health and his subsequent inability to urite, especially poetry. And it was characteristic of him to handle so i~portanta circu~stanceby paradoxically ~akinglight of it.17 It is this sams tendency toward ironic self-deprecation, first evident in siTo Stella, Visiting me in ay Sickness," that typifies the two poems ko Seefla in which he speaks not directly of Stella but of his own declining poetical abilities. Ths first poem dealing with this matter, and th2 ons I shall discuss hsrq, is "To Stella on her Birth-day 1721/22"; the second, "Stella's

Birth-Day" (17231, I shall not deaf with since it Is chiefly a more playEuP rendition of its predecessor,

"To Stella on her Birth-day 1721/22u expresses, in a mere twenty lines, Swift's difficulty in prsducinq yet another birthday po2m: While, Stella to your lasting Praise The Pluse her annqafl Tribute pays, Bhik I assgn my self a Task Which you exp~ct,but scorn to ask; If I pfrfcrw this Task with Pain Let me of partiall Eate complain; You, every Year the Debt enlarge, f grow less equal1 to the Chargs: In you, each Virtue brighter shines, But my Poetic Vein declines, My Earp will soon in vain be strung, And all Your Virtues left unsung: For, none amorg the upstart Race Of Poets dare assume my Place; Your worth will be to them unknown, They must hav~Stella's of their own; And thus, ay Stock of Wit decay'd; I dyiug leave the Debt unpayld, Unless D~lanyas nip Heir, ail1 answer for the whole Arrear, (HW, 11, 739-740, 11, 1-20)

Swift's pain is clearly not pri~asilyof the physical variety. He playfully ascribes much of his current difficulty to st el la*^ lack of consideration in not only expecting a birthday tribute but in yearly ~nlarginghis debt to her as well, all of which is quite apart from the inconvenienca put upon him by the fact that his poetic vein declines steadily as a matter of course. @hen combbned, these elements make the task of composition all but impossible, and as a reflection of this fact the resulting paea is correspondingly short and simple. Despite or perha~sbecause of its simplicity, "To Stella oza her Birth-day 1727J22" provides a deeper insight into Swift's relationship with Stalla and the aature of his pressnce in the stella poems, His explicit complims;nts ars 80% uncommon to judge of hsf true wcrth: l*Y~urWorth will bz to them unknown, /

They must have Stsllags of their own," But it is his implied sense of audience that is most enlightening to the pew. He is writing to and for St~lia,and he can write to her about subjects pertaining intimately to his art in as open and as playful or as serious a inannnr as hz employs when writing to a fellow- craftsman like Pope, confident the while that she can read his work with almost as much sy~pathyfor and understanding of art as

Pope. But what, I think, wss of still greater moment to Swift was the fact that although her comprehension of art was less than

Pope's, Stella could bring to her reading of his work a greater sympathy for and understanding of Svift the man than Pope ever could, This, I believe, was Stella's real value to Svift in his literary career, a large part of the debt that time and partial Fate, as he realizas in the poem, probably will not allow hi& to repay adequately.

Generally speakinu, Swift hated the thought of br;ing in deb%.

It is a much quoted fact that he was obsessed with money, a fact that ~sslieStephen has explained succinctly and perceptive1y in his book entitled, Swifr, He relates Swiftqs concern with financial matters to his fear of dependency:

He kept accounts down to halfpence, and rejoices at every ssving of a shilling. The passion was not tho vulgar dosire for wealth of the ordinary miser, It sprang frcm the conviction stored up in a11 his asgirations that money meant independace. . . , Gay was a duchess's Papdog: Swift, with all his troubles, at least was a free man, . . . He did cot love money for izs own sake. Re was even mag~ific~t~ti.3 his gansr~sity. He scorned to rec.?ive money for his writings; he abandoned the profit to his printers in compensation for the risks thq ran, or gave It to his friends. . . In fats years he lived on a third of his income, gave away a third, and saved the remaining third for his pasthuaous charity,--and posthtltnous charity which invofvss preszat saving is charity of the most unquestionable kind, His principle was that by reducing his expenditures to the lowest possible point, he secuzed his independence and could then make a generous use of the remainder,f8

In a letter tc nightl ley Chetuode, swift hi~selfgoes further to squate ths lack of money not just with dependency but with slavery: "For life is a trifle, and reputation is supplied by innocence, but the ruin of a aan8s fortune makes him a slave, which is inkinitely worse than loss of life or credit"

Knowledge of the importance that Swift attached to money gives *#ToStella on her Birth-day 1723/22j1 added poignancy because he speaks of his obligation to Stella in financial terms, punning

keautifuhly on the general meanings and on the specificaily monetary aeanings of words like "Charge,#* "Worth,fl "Debt," and

3*Arrear. UadoubtedPy, Stella would have pexceived the significance of what Swift is acknowledging by using thsse tarms,

He is acknowledginq the ~xistencebetween the^ of a bond, fourided on mutual uaderstanaing and mutual indebtedness, in th2 face of

which "life is a triflet1 because the debt out lass,^ life itself:

unpaysd, $9 As he uid with the concept of true honour, then, Swift expresses pcwerful feelings by giving substance to that which is intangible, while simuitaneousiy avoiding tha danger of sounding affected, overly sentimental, and generally insincerz,

In his hsadncte to the poam, Harold Williams mentions that

''To Stella on her Birth-day 1721/22" was the last poem that Stella copiea into her notebook, Rs also notes that "In Stella's copy the name 'Delary* is scrawled and blotted outtq {HI, 11, 739) . It would be nice to think that this repressnta Stella's acknowledgement 05 the bond and that it repras9nts he1 feeling that Swi•’tSsdebt was more xhan anpiy paid, gut whatever her actual emotions may have been when she fead the closing lines of the poem, her blotting eat of Delanyss name seems to indicate that, for her, Ddany could never replace Swift as her poet. And since her notebook Mas appare~tlymaintained for her personal. pleasure alone, the sincerity of Stallass action cannot be questioned,

Naturaify, exaatples of Swiftgs special relationship with

Stelfa are not liaited to those poe&s in which he portrays his physical illness or his creative incapabifitiss, albeit the intensity of such pozms serves to highlight their rslatinnship more clearly. Worwver, it would be wrong to assume that Swift dapend~dupon Stella purely for sympathy and nursing. Per if he was drawn to her because she could empathize with his agonies as only a fallow-sufferer could--as he told Ford, **You healthy People cannot judge of the sicklyn19--he was also drawn to her becaus3 she possessed a refined intell&cl and a sound judgment, both of which made her oginisns valuable to him.

As early as 1710, he insists that he is interested mainly in h~rreactions to his recent posns: Hy Shgwgg admired with YOU; why, the bishop of Clogher says, h9 has seen sonething of mine of the same sort, bettsr than the Shower. I suppose he neans The ~qyqiqq;but it is not half so good, I want your judgment of things, and cot your country's, How does !-ID like it? and do they taste it all? I&urnal,ta-%gUa, L 109)

And a bit further on in the Journal-$g SteUp he writes,

What you say of met is well enough; that sn enemy should like it, and a friend not; and that telling the author would make both change their o~inions, Why did no!: you tell Griffyth that you fancied there was something in it of my manner . . . . (2wrsaLte,Stell~. 1 7 27- 128)

Whatever the world at farg~Bay have known and thought of his work, Swift wanted his achievements to be clear to Stella.

Furthermore, his opinion of her judyaent reaained constant, so that he could #rite in Wn the Death of ass. Johnsone that "1 cannot call to mind that I ever once heard hamake a wrong judgment of persons, books, or affairsf3 (HI>, V, 228).

Since virtually none of Sviftts letters to Stelfa have survived except for thoss that conprisr the dourrraL to Stel1a,220 and since none of her lfttezs to him are extant, evidence concerning the nature of their relationship, outside of that provided by the Stqlla poems themselves, the bri2f biography, aad a couple or prayers, ~ustbe qiaaned by Sits and pieces froa Swiftts own letters or from those exchanged between his friends.

Of tha latter yroup, two letters in particular froa Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Belingbroke, to Charl+s ford fortunately have been praserved, Although there is no way of an outsider's knowing exact1y how much Stellafs friendship meant to Swift, Boiinybrokeqs estimate of her influeace on him is interesting at least,

Bolingbroke, out of favour nith the English qovernmeat and uriting from his self-imposed exile in Paris, observes somewhat philosophically that Every great genius borders upon folly. her dumitions embrace thosa of RGason on %very side; G the two frontiers are so alike, that he who pushes to the extremitys of one, wanders often into the oth~r,E seldoa finds his way back. for me, and those, who, like me, havs not strength enough to make such long excursions, we are not expossd to the same danger. we live in the meditarranean province, less fruitful, less beautiful, less sleqant than those which are more remote fro^ tne center, but it furnishes us gith every thing necessary, thanks be to Stella? 1 will neither pun nor quibble, but I a@ caxifident that we had lost the Dean if it had not been for her, if she had not f ixad his course, our poor friend would have uanderfd fro& one ideal world to another, and have forgot even the Species he is of. he had been att this very instant perhaps frzazing in Saturn, burning in Hercury, or stalking along with a load on his back, a bell under his chin, a plume on his head, and a fox tail at+ each ear, in that ccuntry which he discover'd not long ago, where Horses E mules are the reasonable Creatures, and men the Beasts of burden. Rut thanks to heave^ E Stella, that dang~ris over. since he lov~a woman he will not forget that he is a man.21 And in another letter to ford written an September 32, 1724 but not sent until October 10, Bolinqbroke reiterates his theme:

1 kncu not whether to be pleas*d or sorry that Stella has so many good quaflitys, the easy hours which shs procures to our friand are ,-Lkasons- for ths first; and his attachmznt to Ireland, which I believe owing to his attachment to h~r,is a Baason for the lattar, . . . the deans fancy is like that Devil uhich a certain Conjurer had raisid and which thr+atenld to carry him away, if he Left him a moment unemploy'd. When the Dean therefore has sung all Stella3s perfectlofis over in Sonnet, Ode, Pastoral etc,, his Devil having no aore employment will certainly run away with hi;ra.22

It seems unlikely that Swift would ever have forgotten that he was a man, his ill health being a constant reminder to him of his humanity, Nevertheless, Bolinqbroka's firm conviction that Stella1s virtues and influences ware instrtimen-tal in securing

Swift's sanity is significant for two rsasons: first, it i~plies

That SteZlass virtues wsre not apparent only to Swift; and second, it suggests that their relationship was not so subtle or so secretive as to be indistinguishable from a casual acquaintanceship, Whethar or not Bolingbroke *s asssasment of the nature of swift's relationship with Stalla Is correct,

It may be that **Every great genius borders upon follyrf as

Bolingbroke states, and certainly the question of insanity has been a red herring in Swift criticism for years,23 but to argue that Stellass value to Swift lay solely in her pres?rvation of his

mental faculties is surely to miss the principles upon uhich their relationship was foucaed, tha principles of mutual obligation and mutual need. The obligation on Swift's part is unequivocally expressed In #*TO stella, visitsng me in my

Sickness," in **ToStelfa on her Birth-day 1721/22,w in *sStella*s

Birth-Day" [l723), and in "To St21la 3723/24."

Stellars obligation to Suift is as unequivocally expressed in her birthday pQea to him cf Novembsr 30, 1'321:

STELLA to you, her tutor, owes That she has neqef resembled those; Nor was a burthen to mankind With half her course of years behind. You taught how I might youth proloaq By knowing what was right and uranq; How from my heart to briny supplies Of lustre to my fading eyss; How soon a beauteous mind repairs The loss of changed or fallinq hairs; How wit and virtue from within Send out a smoothness .o'er the skin: Your lectures cou'd my fancy fix, And I can please at thirty-six, .*.*....**..*..**.. Long be the day that gave you birth Sacred to friendship, wit, and mirth; Late dying may you cast a shred Of your rich mantle o'ar my head; To bear with dignity my sorrow, one day glonel then dis to-sorrow. {Hid, XI, 737-738, 91. 29-42; 13. 53-58)

Nowhere in these lines is there a hint of ths disappointment that LP B~ocquyimagines was Stella's when she realized that a marriage with Svift ccuid never materializ~. Beither is LO

Brocquyts befief that Stella nloved him passionately and desired to sarry himii24 suppor+ed in this, the only cleariy authoritative piece of Stellags writing that survivss,25 uriless one is willina to read far more izto the convontio~sof birthday poetry under which Stella is writinq tkaa is advisable, For in Stella's poeln to Swift as in his poems to her, the key word is *qfriend~hip,~*

And there is no evidence fro& her hand that she preferred marriage over friendship, a fact which perhaps suggzsts a need for independence that complements Swift's nezd for independence perfectly, Even in this, than, Stella" perceptiveness proved superior to Vanessals, because, whereas Vanessa misjudged

Swift's intentions entirely, Stella never deceived herself as to her tutor*s inclinations and designs,

Once her viatuousness, her willingness to learn and to be guliled, her perceptiveness, and her individuality have been established, it is not so difficult to understand how Stella could have bacome Swift's friend; he admired all of these qualities. Similarly, it Is not so difficult to detect from his works that she was his mcst valued fsrtiale fri9nd; the little language in the jqurnal $o-Stella, th5 lettsrs written to his friends not long before her death, the biography, and both ths existence and the contents of the birthday poems sttest to the fact, Swift can be as engaging in his letters to Vanassa as he is in the Jqurnal to S&gA&gbut one senses a Borz reserved tone in the formsr than in th3 latter, and he can b~ as self-disparaging when writing to Lady Achsson as ke is whqn writing to Stella but, again, his tone is auch freer when he is writing to Stella. The difference in tone hstw&en, say, IrWxi dpistle to a Ladyit and "To Stella, Visiting me in ny Sicknss~,~'It is true, is det2r~inedlargely by the dif ferant subject-matter in each. And yet, aveK this is significant because Swiftts choice of subject- matter and the tone in which he presents it is determined by his awarenass of his audience. Bhen writing to Lady Acheson, for example, he can comfortably assume a rcle of tutorial superiority, Armed with the dafensds inherent in th~role itself, he can then admit tc an inability to reach the high subli~e partly because he is able to talk of it as a blessing in disguise that more readily allows him to perform his professsd function as a poet and also partly because it is a perfectly obvious fact anyway, Thus, he is absolutely honsst with

Lady Ach.ason and preservss his stature and diqnit y as a man by keepinq strictly to those subjects that fall within the sell- defined range of his control in his dual role as teacher al;d pnet.

It would be uctrue to say that Swift relinguishes a91 of his def3nses when writing to Stella. Nevertheless, the fact that the range of subject-matter in the paFms to Stsfla includes intimate accounts of his ill health, his poor eyesight, and even his aversion to wearing eyeglasses,26 indicates that Swift felt less res+,sicted by his need for ct;.fenszs in St,ell.a*s presence. As a result, his presence in the poems becomes at once more personal and more free. He can speak freely to her of his afflictions, confident of her understanding of and her wiifinynoss to share in his tcrmcnts Fr. a number cf capacities. H3 can courit on her to

ke a friend, a nusse, a student, and a mother as the situation and his needs aemand. There is perhaps nothing 3xtraordinary about Stella's versatility; undoubtedly, many wontfin have done as much. But it 1s thz mark ot their special friendship that she docs this much for Swift. Only in ner presence can hs comfortably, unashamedly, becoms what his sickness aahs him, a helpless child. And although he playfully

makes light of his helplessnsss by assuming the pose of a child

who dares not distort his face, he does it, 1 think, with the

understanding that Stella will see behind the mask, that she will

sympathetically indulge him in even this slight gesture towards

preserving his pride and dignity, CHAPTEX THREE

Sw&& Stella, and Vanessa (London: The Bogarth Press, 1949),

2 "*My Female Friends*: The Misogyny of Jonathan Swift," Texas

3 "Swift and Stella: An Unsolved Bpstery Story," fip~~:n-&~g,

Tho Cgacrnilfan Company, 1942) , p, 3, 5 fbid., pp. 2-8,

Barnes and Noble, fnc., 1969), p, 17. 10 "Swift and the Agreeable Young Lady, but Extremely Lean," unpublished paper presented at the f3.L.B. Conference in Hew Ysrk,

Deceiaher 1976, pp, 2-3,

12 "Swift and the Agreeable Young Lady, but Extremely Lean,"

(1965; spt, Eo~don;Oxford University Press, 1969), pa 8. 14 Howard Weinbrot, in an article entitled, "History, Horace, and Augustus Caesar: Sons Implications for Eighteenth-Century

arguas that by the time Pope was writing his Roratian satires,

''the discrediting of Auqustus and Horace as e xe laplary political and satiric modaiscl (p, 410) was all but completed, and that therefors when we use the term i9Augustan" "to characterize any or all of the years between 1660 and 1800 we should be avare of that periodis anti-Augustan stancerr (p, 41Y) . Nevartheless, hovevsr trus this nay be, there remains a general sensa throughout Swift's

writings that the classical past was still Igorz admirable than the present, Hops, ar,d Charity in Swiftts Poents to Stella,'+ p. 8, which was

presented at the PI, L. A. Conference in Mew York, December 1976.

~ischerdecides that thsre are stoic elem-znts in the poems to

Stella but that the Christian matrix of thought enlightens his reading 0f the poems @or?.

16 "The Poetry of Aye,If in Focus: Swift, ed, C. J, Rawson

(London: Spherr Eooks Limited, 1971), p. 127.

17 This assertion, while genzrallp true, is not universally applicable, There are times in his corrasgondence when Svif t 's impatience gets the better of hint, so that he IS hardly abla to

tolarate his infirmities. See, for axample, his fzttzr to Pope of February 26, 1729-30, in which In? says, "Yet tuy Eyes hurt with reading by candle-light, so that 1 am forced to write and burn whatever comas into my haad, f f I sent, nty last fetter without a

Seal it is an honest pure blunder, of which I make fifty every day

and what encreases them, is my fsar of encreasing themfs

18 ----Suift 11882; rpt, Londoc and New York: The flacmilla~ Company, 1958) , pp. 141-142.

19 Swift's inclination to feel a special ciosencss to people

who- suffered physical. affficticns comparable to his owr, does not rest solely or this remark in his fetter to Ford, previously quoted ic my text as Cprresgondencg, If, 341, In ths jggyna&

&-g&g&&~, for example, he writes after a visit wizh Lady Kezry that '*She sends me bottles of her bitter, ana we are so fond of one anoth2r, because our ailments are tbe sane; dongt you know that, Hadam Stelfa?" (~ourngf-20 Stella, 1, 138) , 20 See Harcld HFLliansq note to a letter inscribzd to Stella

points out that this letter and perhaps the one ~ntitled,"Prince of Lilliput to Stella,1t 11 March 7725-27, are all that remzir? af swift's lttters to Stella with the enc&ption of the Journal.

2 1 This letter, dated December 25, 1723, is to be found in The

(Folcrof t: The Folcroft Press, Inc, , 1935) , p, 238, There is an Interesting epilogue to the story of this letter, however, for, by some mis%ak+, it was mailed nct to Ford but to Swift, Swift's rsaction was predictably prompt and defensive, Writing to Ford,

Be explains about receiving Bolingbroke*s P~tter: $*I was at a

Loss about oce of the Letters, at first, but after found it was to you, and that you are a Traytor into tha Bargain: else how should he knov any Thing of Stella of of Horses, . , . I would have him and you knou that 1 hate Yahoos of both Sexes, and that Stella and

fladam Villette are only tolerable at best, for want of Bouyhnhams"

fforresporidengg, 111, 4). Swift is justifiably ntiffed at Ford far concerns, that is, his ra1atlor:ship with Stella and an as yet unf inisbed and therefcss unpublished work. His deliberately ironic undr;?rcutticg of Stella * s value and his overemphasizing of his commitmerit tc the Houyhnhnms is a typically Swiftian way of telling people to mind their own business, Additionally, by suggesting that Stella i~ "only tolerable,t1 he is displaying his annoyancs cot at Stella but at Bolingbroke for invading his privacy and for discovering a dependency that Swift's pride would never permit him to admit to a man of Bolicgbroklgs stature*

chapter entitled nHadness ," Ehrenpreis records that Sawel Johnson traced Swif t8s mental decay back to 1736, that Sir Walter Scott dated it at 1740, and that aiddleton Hurray split the difference and adopted 1738 as the date. ERrenpreis argues convincingly that

**Bad msmory, poor eyesiqht, deafness, BIeniereqs Syndrome, orbital ceIful.itisfl (p, 1211 Here S trif tss physiofogicaP disorders in his last years and that **@hennearly seventy-five, he went into the scrt of decline that a brain lesion, associated with cerebral artsriosclerosis, can producefl p 122-3231 but that lvS#ift, from birth to death, was insane by no medical definitionfi (p. 125). attributed to Stella and that, of the thres, this birtday poem t*carries, perhaps, the hest authorityo (El#, II# 736).

26 I mention Swift 8s aversion to wearir~yeyeglasses because he introduces the sukject himself in two of the poems. In f*Steila's

Birth-Bayis (1725) he tells Stella how ha is i8asham'd to use a

Glassgt (RV, 11, 758, 1. 46) and in wStelials Birth-Day 1726/27iq

763, 1, 81, Further, in a latter inscribed jointly to Alexander

Pope and John Gay he writes, "1 have received a Box with the

Spectacles but by whose Care they were conveyed 1 know not 1 onefy desire that my Lord Bolingbroke may be assured the

Spectacles were for two old Cozens and not for aerq

~Corr~s~~~t3.erice,1x1, 173). Xt is characteris%ic of their special relationship that Swift can not only introduce this subject in Stelfats presence but also relate it to a quirk of pride in himelf. CHAPTER FOUR

SWIFT'S LAST PO%H TO STELLA

From his ~arliestdays as a poat, Swift believed the essence of a poet's obligation to himself and to society to he the representation and elaboration of truth, and the surest vehicle for conveying truth to be simple language devoid of cant expressions and cliches, a stance which 1 have alrsady discussed at soae length in Chapter One, And his adoption of the clean, spare style of the octosyllabic couplet is a result of these convic tions, Proreover, besides the fact that u~adorned rhetoric is eminently suited to Swift's satiric intent in the Vanbrugh poems ar,d in Bostry: A Bapsody,*t for exampla, it is llso consistent with the playfulness and the simplicity with which he presents his aoral vision in the early poems to Stella, a vision which is essentially derived from Christian doctrine,

For example, in YPo Stella, Visiting me in iny Sicftne~s,~

Stella's sense of true friendship, which is a~imatedby her sense true honour, is represented most convincingly in her ess~attially domzstic ministrations to Swift in his illness: Then S3zA.q ran to my ~efief Hith chearfuZ Face, 2nd inward Grief; And, though by Heavec's severe Decre~ She suffers hourly more than ms, No cruel Master could require From Slaves employ'd for daily ire What Stella by her ~riendshipuarmld, Bith Vigour a~dDelight perf ormSd. fly sinking Spirits now supplies With Ccrdials in her Hands, and Eyes. Mow, with a soft and silent Tread, Unheard she mov6s about my Bed. fbW, XI, 726-727, 11. 101-1121

Swift makes it clear that Stella's silance is expressive of the greatness 05 her mind; it is not the condition of silence that excites admiration but the idea inplied by that silence, the idea that Stella "suffers hourly" mors than Swift. Overmastering pain requires a combined and concerted effcrt of mind and will and Stella exercises both faculties impressively to subdue the intense pain arising from her own physical infirmities so that she can ref iev~Swiftts pain effectively.

The great importance that swift placed on true friendship is exemplifZed in a fetter to Alexander Pope, refgrred to earlier ic

text, in which he playfully co~plainsto Pops that "1 am frighted to think what I should do in London while my friends are all eithzr banished or attained or beggass, or retiredH

(C~rresmqde~ce,1x1, 79) , but his fear of being friendless in as large a place as London is genuine mough. And he expresses the importance he places on friendship more emphatically vhec he confesses to the Reverend James Stoprord his belief that

"violent friendship is much more lasting, afSd as much engaging, as violent love*' (Correspondgncg, f 11, 145) , But finally, it is the Christian aspect of Stella's friendship that impresses swift the most. It is her selfless Christiar charity that he commsmorates in the short prayer he composes for her on

November 5, 1727:

Accept and pardon our most earnest Prayers and Wishes for her longer Continuance . .. . that she may be still a Comfort to us, and tc all cthers who will want the Benefit of her Conversation, her Wdvice, her qood Offices, or her Charity, (HD, IX, 225)

One can go through the poems to Stella and aiscovar further examples of Svift's moral vision as exemplifn3d in Stella's friendship, couraqe, patience, and genoral virtuousness, Wnd in each instance, the lightness of the octosyllabic couplet helps either to ameliorate the harsh truths that Stellla must learn to accept as in l*StellassBirth-Day8* (1725) or to reinforce a sense of playfulness as in Wn Stella's Birth- day 1338/19.** But thz Stella poem in which Swift pushes the effect G•’the octosyllabic couplet to its limit is ",Stella's Birth-Day 1326/27," This poPm, Swift" last birthday tribute to Esther Jchnscn, has justifiably been celebrated as the most affecting of the birthday poems. In one way it represents the cufaination of the various themes of the preceding poems, a fact which is not at all surprising since Svift undoubtndly believed this birehda y %o be Stella's last. And in another way it is ac entirely new poem, for in it swift assumes a new role, the rc1e of prisst.

Before one can analyze *'Stella's Birth-i)ay l726/2P

adequately, thcugh, soml measure of understanding of the general state of Swift's mind in th3 months leading up to the poetll*s composition is helpful. In a letter to the Keverend John Worralf

postntarked "Twitenham, July. 15th 1726,*+ Sw~ftexpresses nis

d2sperats befief that "Hrs, J-- cannot hold out till my Return."

Ee goes or1 to inform @orall of Stella's intentions regarding

her last will and testament, but even as he focuses his reason

on this Legal rnatter he cannot restrain his emotions, In a state of severe mental and emotional agitation he tries to explain, among other things, ~hyhe cannot return to Ireland to watch Stella die:

Think how I am disposed while I write this, and forgive the Inconsistencies, I would riot for the Universe be present at Such a Tryai of seeing her depart. She will be among Friends that upon her own Account and great worth will tend her with all possible Care, where 1 should be a Trouble to her and the greatest Torment to my self. . . . 1 conjure you to burn this Lettr imaediatly without telling the Contents of it to any Pesson alive, Pray write to me every Heek, that I may know what Steps to take, For f am determind not to go to freld to find her just dead or dying--Mothing but Extremity could ~akeme so familiar with those terrib3.2 Words applyed to such a dear Frietld. Let her Know P have bought her a repeating gold Watch for her Ease in winter gights, f designed to have surprised h2r with it, but now I would have her know it, that she may see how @y Thoughts were always to make her easy--I am ok Opinioo that there is not a greater Folly than to contract too great acd intimate a Friendship, which nust always leave the Survivor miserable--On the back of Brartto~*s Mote there was writlC9n the Account of Ers. J--S Sickness. Pray in yr nsxt avoyd that mistaka and leave the kack side blank--Hhen you have read this Lett twice and retayn what I desirz, pray burn it . . . , (Corres;eond~ncgz_.f IT, 141-142)

And writing to the Reverend James stopford on July 20, 1725, Swift speaks again of his utter misery in the face of Stella8s hopeless conditior,:

For my past, as I value fife very little, so the pscr casual remains of it, aftsr such a loss, would bs a burden that 1 must heartily beg God Al~ightyto enable me to bear; and I think there is not a greater folly than that of entering intc too strict and particular a friendship, with the loss of which a wan must be absolutely mis~rabla. . . . Bi?sides, this osas a person of my own rearing and instructing, from childhood, who exc~lledin every good quality that can possibly accomplish a human creature. --They have hitherto writ rn+ deceiving letters, but Sr, Horrall has been so just and prudent as to tell tt\e the truth; wnich, however racking, is better than to be struck on the sudden,--Dear J~B,pardon me, I know not what 1 a@ saying; but believe ne that v~olent frie~dshipis much @ore Pasting, and as much eagaging, as violent love. (C~rresponrle~ce,f f I, 145)

ghat is most noteworthy about these fetters is the agitated state of mind swift is thrust into by thoughts of Stella's death,

Perhaps for the first time in his adult life words fail hi%: he would not, he tells Wosrall, attend at Stella's deathb~dfor the f'Universef*; th~t~rm which is more common to the expression, is apparently inadequate to express his d2tzrrnination on this point. HE both "conjurese and *;prays8*Worrafl to burn

+hc letter upon reading it f8uithout tafling the Contents of it to any Persoc alive." Ar,d throughout the lett~rhis thoughts are rambling as one idea leads startlingly into asother and unrslated fdka: the thought of returning to Ireland to witness Stellais death lsads him to ponder tho word

"dyicgi* as applied to "such 3 dear Friends; this lzads him to contemplate the folly of contracting **toogreat and intimate a

Friendship," which recalls him to meroton's note, ~hich finally returns him tc his original plea to WorrafP to bur2 the present letter, similarly, In his letter to Stopford, Svift pauses to apologize for mt having coramand o vex what his pen

IS writing,

1 a@ not suggesting that Swift's mental and emotional anxiety continued uninterrupted for the al~ostnine months bstween the writing of these letters and the composition of wStella*sBirth- Day 1726/27," Heither am f suggesiixrg that he was preoccupied

+xclusively with thoughts of S tellass hopeless condition for that entire length cf time, But the letters do indicate that Stella's impending death was a severe test of his spiritual fibre, In this liqht, "Stellaas Birth-Day 1726/2V represents more than just a final atte~pton Swiftts past to reconcile Stella to inevitable death; it repr~sentshis personal confrontation as a man with the power of what Edaund Burke was to call "this kinq of tsrrors.*fl

Swift begins this last birthday poem by assuming the role of priest in the first verse paragraph: This Day, what;%e the Fates decree, Shall still be kzpt with Joy by me: This Day thec, fez us not be told, That you are sick, and 1 grown old, Nor think on our approaching Ills, And talk of Spectacles and Pills; To morrow will be Tinte enough To hear such mortifying Stuff. Yet, sicce from Reason may be brought A better and more pleasing Thought, Rhich can in spits of ali Decays, Support a fen remai~ingDays: Fro@ not the gravest cf Divines, Accept for once some serious Lines, (Hg, 11, 763-764, 11, 1-94)

John Fischef has suggested that "attuned to the decorum of sacramental service by an intimate thirty-year friendship with

Dean Swift, Stella must have also recognized, in the request her

friend and yearly poet makes to appear to her in his clerical

robes, a preaable to what could only be a poetic *coamunion of the sick. "'2 Whether or not she would haw made the conaection this explicitly, Stella would certainly have realized that something about this last birthday poem to her

would be different, For in setting aside ~omentari3.ythoughts of sickness and age, of spectacles, pills, and other qfsuch mortifying

Stuff,** Swift also sets aside the playful tone that characterizes

the previous poems, Although he puns distinctly on the word

"mortifyingH as Fischer points out,3 he makes no further q~sturestowards playfulness aftsr: his entreaty to Stella to

nAccept for once some serious Lines,**

~utto attribute Swift's seriousness to "Stella*s rancor*# at *$thetumultuous surfacing of the much more trout31es0m~ relatlocship hk had long rnaintainsd with another woman, Esther

Van Womrigh,a'4 as fischer sees fit to do, is, 1 think, to miss the real ilnpostanlce of what i~ at stake as far as Swift is concerned in this poem, As his pupil, Stslla is the rspository of all of his teachings, and, coincidentally, the proof of their validity. However, if his teachings are now Iacapable of supporting her in her 13st extremity, then the beliefs upon which they are founded sutomaticalfy come into question.

Furthermore, what gust have been more unnerving to Swift, if his letters to Horrafl and Stopford are accurate indicators, was the fact that his religious precepts were unable to assuage his own grief and religious doubt.

His only recourse is to retreat into the realm of pure reason and hope through that process to revitalize Steliats and, by extension, his own faith in religious doctrine about death, It is in this perspective that Swift's assumption of the role of priest and his accompanying adoption of complete sesiousness must be viewed. Religious belief for most of the Augustans was a highfg ratioraf matter, since only through an exercise of the mind could present adversity ba perceived as future goad, could death be looked forward to as a happy occasion. Thus,

SwiftSs Oet;armination to observe Stellass birthday erith joy,

"whate'er the Fates decree, w is not so much refldctivs of qrim- facsa stoicism as it is indicativ~of the ponsr and effect of saason, which henceforth becomes one of the ma jos themes of the p03Ig.

In sound rftet~ricalfashion Swift next formulatss his q~neral argument in brief:

Althcugh we now can form no more Long Schemes of Life, as Eeretofora; Yet you, while Time is funning fast, Can look with Joy on what is past, (12. 15-18)

The elaboration follows and consists of a preliminary defense of virtue along fairly standard christian lines, If Heaven acd Hell are illusory, then would it not be too unbearable to suppose that virtue, traditionally acknovledged to bs its own reward, **And by all. Sages ucderstood / To be the chiaf of hunar, ~ood'q 111, 27-28), was ultimately ineffectual in ameliorating the effects of ''Grief,

Sickness, Poverty, and A~GP(1. 32]?

Swift's argument is constructed in such a way that Stella aust bslieve in the existenc~of "future Happir.sss and PainH 11,

19) and in the ability of virtue to deposit "Some lasting Pleasure in ths Bind?' (1, 30) as well: if she doubts the forrrter, she is laballed an Atheist, a prospect that no Christian on his or her deathbzd could endure; and If shs doubts the latter, she denies the waningfulness of a life spat in ths pursuit and refinemant of virtue, an equally difficult idea for a Christian to embrace,

Armed with this tactical advantage, S wif-t particufarizas his general thesis by referring directly to Stofla" past life: Say, Stellp, feel you co Contmt, ~eflectingon a Life well spent? Your skilful Hand empfoy'd to save ~espairingWretches from the Grave; Acd then supporting with your Store, Those whcm you draggqd froa Death b2fnrs: (So Provid~ncecr Eortals waits, Preserving what it first craatesf Your gen'rous Boldness to defend An innocent and absest Prisnd; That Courage which can make you just, To Merit humbled in the Dust: Ths Detestation you 2xpress For Vice in all its glitt9ring Dress: That Patience under torttring Pain, Rhere stubborn Stoicks would complain. (14. 35-50)

His purpose here is to reinvest Stella with tha confidence that her fife has been "wsll spent," His strategy is to recollsct her virtues, the sase virtues he celebrated in verse many times before, hoping thereby to restore to her thd sase of joy she felt in performing virtuous deeds as well as the sense of pleasure she experienced in having those accomplishments praised annually, Psr optimurn ef fee t in this venture, therefcro,

Swift skiLlfulPy arranges the list 05 virtues beginning wi*h generosity aad ending with courage and patienca, the two virtues she ne~dsmost at present,

However, such is the irapcrtance of his argument that Swift leaves nothing to chance. By inserting the parenthetical obs+rvatfon that H(So Providence on aortals waits, / Preserving what it first creates) ," he assures Stella that she has been the handmaid of a greater power, a power that will now preslrva her as sh.; has pr~serv~dothers, And should this fail, to convince her of the lasting value of virtuous action, the final lines of this stanza ccmmernorati~gigThat Patience undfsr tort'rinq Pain, / Where stubborn stoicks would complain," 3x2 calculated deliberately, I believe, to recall those times in the past %hen Swift himself benefitted from har patient care. Indeed, they appear to echo thes* lines from *'To Stella 1723/24#$ directly:

She tends me, like a humble slave; And, when indzcsntfy 1 rave, Hhen out my brutish passions brzak, With gall in rvtry word 1 speak, She, with soft speech, my anguish chears, Or melts my passions down with tears: Although 'tis easy to descry She warits asistance more than 1; Yat ssems to feel ~p pains alona, And is a Stoic in her own. {HW, 11, 754, 11, 9-18)

Thus, Swift offers implicitly proof of the efficacy of

Stella 9s virtuous life. Before concluding his oration Swift makes another appeal to Stella's reason, Once again, the argumFsnt is reminiscent of that of another Steffa poem, "A Receipt to Restore Stellais

Youth 1724/25,*$ except that here Stella is not likened to a cow: Does not the Body thrive and grow By food of twenty Years ago? And, had it not been still supply'd, It gttlst a Lhcusa~dTimes have dyyd. Ther,, who with Reason can rrtain-tain, That no Effects of Fcad remain? And, is not Virtue in Bankind The Nutri~entthat feeds the Bind? TJpheld by each good Action past, And still ccntinued by the last: Then, uho with Reason can pretend, That all Effects of Virtue end? I 55-66)

Just as material foodstuffs maintain the life of the physical body, so virtu$ has been designed as **TheNutriment that feeds the aindWqt The fact that a firm mind is Stelllais last reminaing resource, than, is no accident, given hsr virtuous past.

Woreover, the firmness of her mind implies two i~portantthings: first, that the Christian belief that man's need for spiritual nourishment takes precedence over his need for waterial •’004 is valid; and second, that Stella is unquestionably in the capabla hands of Proviaence,

All that remains to be accomplished is the summation, arid

Swift expends as much energy in convincing Stella here as in the previous lines of the poem:

Believe BE Stella, when you show That true Contempt for Things below, Nor prize your Life for othar Erids Than merely to oblige your Friends; Your former Actions claim their Part, And join to fortify your Heart. (11, 67-72)

But beLng able to contemplate her past with joy is only half of

Stella's battle, far the ability to look forward to the future is equally crucial now. Bith this In mind, Swift likens Yirtuo to Jmus, who becomes the emblem of the entire poem: for Virtue in her daily Race, Like anus, bears a double face; Looks back with Joy where shs has qons, And therefore goes with Courage on. she at your sickly Couch will waEt, And guide ycu to a better Stat$, (11. 73-78)

The compariscn is @ore than apt, it is inganious, In it,

Swift captures the quintessence of Christian faith, the brfief thzt for the virtuous man death signifies the admission "to a better stat^.^' The process by its very natur? is two directional, fcr ad aissicn into 'If utur~lfappi~ess~~ depends entirely upon a meritori~uspast, upon acts of charity in which Stella*s life has been rich. Thus, Virtue, by association with Janus, comas %o represent renewal, but renewal as

firsly root4 in the past as the new year is in the old, Virtuets advantag2 over Janus, however, is that she is engaged in a "daily Racea instead of an annual one and, consequently, her influence is

more reguiar and i~cornparahiyfresher than Janus*; this is further proof that **Provider,ce on Bortals waitstr because sinful man requirts constant revitalization. And finally, in the person of Virtue, Swift secures the services of a greater power than himself to do what he cannot bring hi~selfto do for the

"Universs," that is, to attend at Stalls's "sickly Couch."

For all, intents and purposes the poem is colttplete, every reasonable argument for Stelha to face death courageausly kaving been put forward, But Swift, "Like Janus, bears a double Face,*i

He cannot contentpla te Stella*s death vithout emotion; h9 cannot, in a spacialized siEnsti of tha word, be *'the gravest of I3ivinest* to the extent that he can forget his own loss, Therefore, after he entrdats Stella not to let her "Ills affect [her] mind {I.

811, he reiterates, in a personal aad emotional plza fcr pity for hisself, what he has been contending thr~uyhoutthe poem, that her fife has been wcrthwhile: Me, surely me, you ought to spare, Who gladly wculd your Suff * rings share; Or yiv~my Scrap of Life to you, And think it far beneath your Due; You, to whose Care so oft 1 owe, That Isin alive to tell you so. (71, 83-88) Surely the -1motiona1 forcs of these fines indicates that

Swift's rdiiiti~sshipwith Stella has not been one-sided, that she is not the only one in need of renewed faith and courage, Uhile

1 agrae with Fischer, ther,, that '#by offering hiinself to Stella as iir~ ob ject f~rher pity, he provided her both an occasion for and a model of that practical virtu2 which ha believed would

'guide [her] to a better state,Ug5 I would suggest that

Swift Is equally focusing his own thoughts on their special relationship, the greatest proof to himself of the validity of

the beliefs he has just expounded 50 Stella, She is still the exa~pleshe &as always been and if he can offer to "give? [his]

Scrap of Life to f it is because she has alraady dona as much for him.

Thus, it is the reciprocal nature of their friendship that

Swift finally highlights in 3)Stella*s Birth-Day 1726/278 in a

decided show of emotion that apparently runs contrary to the display of reason has preceded it. Furthermore, swift *s octosyllabic style. initiates a tension of its own, Tor th~ lightness or ths octosyllabic couplet appears to be at variance

with the sericusness of Swift's intent in the poem. Hawevor, the tension between style and subject-matter, like

that betw~enreascn and @motion, sorves swift's purpose admirably

because it mirrors a24 effects a delicate bala~cebetween the coaflicting feelings that comprise the poea; Sttlla must balance the pain of her present condition against ths krowledge that her eternal reward is Inminsnt, and Swift must discover a halaric; b2twean his profound sense of impending loss and tha happiness that he is bsu~dby reason to feel at her subsequert entry into a better state, It is ic this d~licatebalance between style and subject-matter and betwenn reason and emotion that a major part of Swift ts artistic achievemeat 1ies,

apart fro& its suitability to the overail subject-matter of

''S teflals Birth-Day 3726/27," though, Swift's siaple style is appropriate fox another rsassn. Summing up Samuel Johnson's views on elegy as a literary genre, Paul Fussell obscrves the fOllOw ing:

Thus elegy as a genre to Johnson, we g3ther, just because it focuses on an experience so central, so permanent and uniform in human na%ure, must be? stripped of all litsrary pretties, must be brought as close as possible to v3Naturen if it is to be tolerable at all.6

Aad analyzing Johnsonis elegy, J30nthe Death ot Dr. Levet,'" fussell remarks how

The image-system of ths poem aspires only to the simple and the universal . . . . The uapretectiousness of the stanza form, the imagery, and the rhetoric accord perfectly with the unpzetentiousness of Levet himself. Ail the elements of the poem ars enlisted ic a quiet, orderly saci-tal of Levetts virtues.7

Even though 'JSt%llalsBf rth-Day l726/2'P is not, st-.rictly speaking, an elegy, Stellass imminent death was uppermost ia

Swift's mind throughout its composition, Ris last poeB to Stella, ii-i.k+Johnsonis tribute to Levet, "aspires oniy to the simple and th+ universal," dad it is for this rsason, I believe, that critics have agreed generally that this, and thq other Stella poems are Swift's nlost affzcting pl' tce~, FOOTNOTES

CHAPTER FOUR

2 '*The Uses of Virtue: Swiftts Last Poem to Stella," in

----Essays ;n Honour of Esmond Linvorth PJarilla------? ed, Thomas Austin Kirby and Villiam John olive {Baton Rouge: Louisiana State

University Press, 1970), p, 202,

London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 291, Swift, Jonathan. The Correspopdgyce ,of Jonathan Swi-fZ* Ed= Harold Hilliaras, 5 vols, '1363; rpt. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1965. ----- Journg&,&g_g&te&a, Ed, Harold ~illiams, 2 vols, 1948; rpt. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1963,

----- a Thg-fegttfrs of Jonathan swift to Charla For&, Ed, David Nichof Smith. Folcroft: The Folcfof t Press, Inc., 1935, I ----- , rha,Egkems,~f,Jsnakhan Swigt, Edd Barold Williams. 3 vols. I 2nd ed., 3937; rpt, Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1956.

----- , rP9 Prose hf~rks,&-jgnathan~~wift. Ed. Herbert Davis. i 16 vols, 1939- 7959; rpt, Oxford: ~asllBlackwell, 1962-1968,

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Davis, Herbert, Stella; A Gentlewoman of the Eighteenth C~nturx. f ; New York: the Placmiflan Company, 1942. I Dsford, Miriam Alfar,. lgS%tift and Stella: An Unsolved flystery Story," ------Plodern Rqg, 11 [Pall, 19571, 400-406. Delany, Patrick, p&servatiegs_ u~pg,&og~-Q~g%y~s Rei~arksupon the tife and Writin=-of Dr, Jong,than Swiftlam, Vol, 12, New York G London: ~arlandpublishing, Inc,, 1974,

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