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Jonathan Swift: the Critical Heritage the Critical Heritage Series JONATHAN SWIFT: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES General Editor: B.C.Southam The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on major figures in literature. Each volume presents the contemporary responses to a particular writer, enabling the student to follow the formation of critical attitudes to the writer’s work and its place within a literary tradition. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little published documentary material, such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in order to demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the writer’s death. JONATHAN SWIFT THE CRITICAL HERITAGE Edited by KATHLEEN WILLIAMS London and New York First Published in 1970 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE & 29 West 35th Street New York, NY10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Compilation, introduction, notes and index © 1970 Kathleen Williams All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data ISBN 0-415-13908-2 (Print Edition) ISBN 0-203-19695-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-19698-8 (Glassbook Format) General Editor’s Preface The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and near- contemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of literature. On one side we learn a great deal about the state of criticism at large and in particular about the development of critical attitudes towards a single writer; at the same time, through private comments in letters, journals or marginalia, we gain an insight upon the tastes and literary thought of individual readers of the period. Evidence of this kind helps us to understand the writer’s historical situation, the nature of his immediate reading-public, and his response to these pressures. The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage Series present a record of this early criticism. Clearly for many of the highly productive and lengthily reviewed nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers there exists an enormous body of material; and in these cases the volume editors have made a selection of the most important views, significant for their intrinsic critical worth or for their representative quality—perhaps even registering incomprehension! For earlier writers, notably pre-eighteenth century, the materials are much scarcer and the historical period has been extended, sometimes far beyond the writer’s lifetime, in order to show the inception and growth of critical views which were initially slow to appear. In each volume the documents are headed by an Introduction, discussing the material assembled and relating the early stages of the author’s reception to what we have come to identify as the critical tradition. The volumes will make available much material which would otherwise be difficult of access, and it is hoped that the modern reader will be thereby helped towards an informed understanding of the ways in which literature has been read and judged. B.C.S. v Contents INTRODUCTION page 1 NOTE ON THE TEXT 30 1 DR. WILLIAM KING on A Tale of a Tub 1704 31 2 FRANCIS ATTERBURY on A Tale of a Tub 1704 36 3 WILLIAM WOTTON on A Tale of a Tub 1705 37 4 RICHARD STEELE on A Project for the Advancement of Religion 1709 47 5 JOHN DENNIS on the Examiner 1712 48 6 The aim of A Tale of a Tub 1714 50 7 SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE on A Tale of a Tub 1716 52 8 A translator’s opinions of A Tale of a Tub 1721 54 9 A Swiss view of A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books 1721 59 10 The reception of Gulliver’s Travels 1726 61 11 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU on Gulliver’s Travels 1726 65 12 An anonymous opinion of Gulliver’s Travels 1726 66 13 WILLIAM WARBURTON on Swift and human nature 1727 71 14 VOLTAIRE on Swift 1727, 1734, 1756, 1767, 1777 73 15 ABBÉ DESFONTAINES and Gulliver’s Travels 1727, 1730, 1787 77 16 JONATHAN SMEDLEY on Gulliver’s Travels 1728 90 17 Swift as political dictator 1728 93 18 Anonymous criticisms of Houyhnhnmland 1735 95 19 GEORGE FAULKNER on Swift’s poetry 1735 100 20 THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH on Swift 1736 101 21 FRANÇOIS CARTAUD DE LA VILLATE on A Tale of a Tub 1736 102 22 SAMUEL RICHARDSON on Swift 1740, 1748, 1752, 1754 103 23 PARADIS DE MONCRIF on Gulliver’s Travels 1743 107 24 HENRY FIELDING on Swift 1745, 1751, 1752 109 25 DAVID HUME on Swift 1751, 1752, 1768 112 vii CONTENTS 26 LORD ORRERY on Swift 1752 115 27 PATRICK DELANY on Swift 1754 132 28 DEANE SWIFT on Gulliver’s Travels and on Swift as a poet 1755 139 29 JOHN HAWKES WORTH on Swift 1755 149 30 W.H.DILWORTH on Swift 1758 157 31 EDWARD YOUNG on Gulliver’s Travels 1759 178 32 GEORGE LORD LYTTELTON on Swift 1760 181 33 A French reissue of Gulliver’s Travels 1762 185 34 OLIVER GOLDSMITH on Swift 1764 186 35 RALPH GRIFFITHS on Swift’s ‘Cause’ 1765 187 36 HORACE WALPOLE and his circle on Swift 1771, 1780 189 37 LORD MONBODDO on Gulliver’s Travels 1776 192 38 JAMES BEATTIE on Gulliver’s Travels, A Tale of a Tub, and The Day of Judgment 1776, 1783 194 39 A French comment on A Modest Proposal 1777 199 40 DR. JOHNSON on Swift 1779, 1785, 1791 200 41 SAMUEL BADCOCK on Swift’s ‘true wit’ 1779 206 42 JAMES HARRIS on Gulliver’s Travels 1781 208 43 JOSEPH WARTON on Swift’s descriptions 1782 209 44 Swift’s characteristics as a writer 1782 210 45 HUGH BLAIR on Swift’s style 1783 211 46 THOMAS SHERIDAN on Swift 1784 226 47 Incidental comments on Gulliver’s Travels 1789 244 48 GEORGE-MONCK BERKELEY on Swift 1789 246 49 THOMAS OGLE on Swift and misanthropy 1790 249 50 Swift as satirist and poet 1790 251 51 WILLIAM GODWIN on Swift’s style 1797 255 52 JOHN NICHOLS on Swift 1801, 1828 257 53 ALEXANDER CHALMERS on Swift’s style and character 1803 260 54 Swiftiana 1804 262 55 JOHN AIKIN on Swift’s poetry 1804, 1820 264 56 RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT on the plausibility of Gulliver’s Travels 1805 272 57 NATHAN DRAKE on Swift 1805 273 58 JOHN DUNLOP on the background of Gulliver’s Travels 1814 281 59 SIR WALTER SCOTT on Swift 1814 283 viii CONTENTS 60 FRANCIS JEFFREY on Swift 1816 315 61 WILLIAM HAZLITT on Swift 1818 327 62 COLERIDGE on Swift 1818, 1825, 1830 331 63 WILLIAM MONCK MASON on Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal 1819 335 BIBLIOGRAPHY 342 INDEX 343 ix Introduction I A collection of predominantly eighteenth-century criticism of Swift cannot make a large book. Swift wrote before the art of the reviewer was much developed, and while only a few periodicals existed in England. Thus while Lord Orrery’s Remarks on the Life and Writing of Dr. Jonathan Swift (1752) was fairly extensively reviewed, Gulliver’s Travels and A Tale of a Tub were too early to receive much of that kind of automatic attention in the periodicals which is to be expected in later years, when novels and other books of general interest would naturally be described and discussed. Some formal reviews of the Travels, A Tale of a Tub, and the Miscellanies do exist, some in French periodicals; but for the most part they are disappointingly uncritical, often consisting almost entirely of descriptions of the action of the work considered or of lengthy quotations. Sometimes the reviewer may draw upon a predecessor, usually without acknowledgement (this is very frequent in all kinds of eighteenth-century comment on Swift, formal or informal, critical or biographical). For reasons of this kind, such reviews as that of Le Conte du Tonneau in Le Journal des Sçavans, Tôme XX, 1721, or that of Voyages du Capitaine Lemuel Gulliver en divers Pays éloigné, in Le Journal Littéraire, Des Années 1723–8, Tôme XII, second part, have not been included, though a brief quotation from the latter is given in this Introduction. Many passages of criticism are fragmentary, occurring in the course of material otherwise purely biographical, descriptive, or abusive, or sometimes in pieces not primarily concerned with Swift. On the other hand, there is more contemporary comment on Swift’s work than has been included in the present volume. The problem is that much contemporary comment is not criticism at all, but deliberate misinterpretation, modulating into personal attack on the writer. Swift’s writings did not, in his own time, have the status of literary works standing aloof from contemporary controversy; they were not solely works of art, amusement, or edification, like novels. They were seen as primarily political and partisan, and that in the almost unbelievably intense and frenetic eighteenth-century world of dedicated Whigs and 1 INTRODUCTION Tories. Never, perhaps, has there been a reading public more politically minded, and of course Swift himself contributed to this hectic atmosphere by the whole-heartedness of his own commitment to political causes. Thus, for example, John Oldmixon’s criticism of the Proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English Tongue (Reflections on Dr. Swift’s Letter to Harley, 1712) and Arthur Maynwaring’s1 comment on the same tract (The British Academy, 1712) are both Whig and anti-Tory documents, but they only enlarge upon a political element which is certainly present in the Proposal.
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