Modern judgemeuts SWIFT MODERN JUDGEMENTS General Editor: P. N. FURBANK Dickens A. E. Dyson Henry James Tony Tanner Milton Alan Rudrum Walter Scott D. D. Devlin Shelley R. B. Woodings Swift A. Norman Jeffares IN PREPARATION Matthew Arnold P. A. W. Collins Freud F. Cioffi Marvell M. Wilding, 0' Casey Ronald Ayling Pasternak Donald Davie and Angela Livingstone Pope Graham Martin Racine R. C. Knight Svvift MODERN JUDGEMENTS edited by A. NORMAN JEFFARES MACMILLAN EDUCATION Selection and editorial material © A. N. Jeffares 1968 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1968 ISBN 978-0-333-09115-9 ISBN 978-1-349-15273-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-15273-5 Published by MACMILLAN AND CO LTD Little Essex Street London wc2 and also at Bombay Calcutta and Madras Macmillan South Africa (Publishers) Pty Ltd Johannesburg The Macmillan Company of Australia Pty Ltd Melbourne The Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd Torotlto Contents Acknowledgements 7 General Editor's Preface 9 Introduction I I Chronology 26 BON AMY DOBREE The Jocose Dean 28 J. J. HOGAN Bicentenary ofJonathan Swift 1667-I745 47 IRVIN EHRENPREIS Swift on Liberty 59 LOUIS A. LANDA Swift's Economic Views and Mercan- ~m U J. w. JOHNSON Swift's Historical Outlook 96 F. R. LEA VIS The Irony of Swift 12I A. L. ROWSE Swift as Poet I35 HERBERT DAVIS Literary Satire in A Tale of a Tub I43 VIRGINIA WOOLF Swift's journal to Stella 162 w. B. EWALD, JR M. B., Drapier 170 GEORGE ORWELL Politics vs. Literature I92 MARJORIE NICOLSON and NORA M. MOHLER The Scientific Background of 'Voyage to Laputa' 2IO KATHLEEN M. WILLIAMS Gulliver's Voyage to the Houyhnhnms 247 w. E. YEOMANS The Houyhnhnm as Menippean Horse 258 Select Bibliography 267 Notes on Contributors 270 Index 275 Acknowledgements Professor Bonamy Dobree, 'The Jocose Dean' (Macmillan); J. J. Hogan, 'Bicentenary of Jonathan Swift 1667-1745', from Studies, XXXIV (1945) (The Editor); Irvin Ehrenpreis, 'Swift on Liberty', from the journal of the History of Ideas, XIII (The Editor); Louis A. Landa, 'Swift's Economic Views and Mercantilism', from the journal ofEnglish Literary History, x (Dec. 1943) (The Johns Hopkins Press); J. W. John­ son, 'Swift's Historical Oudook', from the journal of British Studies; F. R. Leavis, 'The Irony of Swift', from Determinations (Chatto & Windus Ltd); Dr. A. L. Rowse, 'Swift as Poet', from The English Spirit; Herbert Davis, 'Literary Satire in A Tale ofa Tub', from jonathan Swift (Oxford University Press Inc.); Virginia Woolf, 'Swift's journal to Stella', from The Second Common Reader (Mr Leonard Woolf, The Hogarth Press Ltd, Harcourt, Brace & World Inc.; © Harcourt, Brace & World Inc. 1932, renewed by Leonard Woolf 196o); W. B. Ewald, Jr, 'M. B., Drapier', from The Masks ofJonathan Swift (Basil Blackwell & Mott Ltd, Harvard University Press); George Orwell, 'Politics versus Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels', from Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays (Miss Sonia Brownell, Seeker & Warburg Ltd, Harcourt, Brace & World Inc.; © Sonia Brownell Orwell 1950); Marjorie Nicolson and Nora M. Mohler, 'The Scien­ tific Background of "Voyage to Laputa"' (Taylor & Francis Ltd); Kathleen M. Williams, 'Gulliver's Voyage to the Houyhnhnms', from the journal of English Literary History, xvm (1951) (The Johns Hopkins Press); 'The Houyhnhnm as Menippean Horse', from College English (March 1966) (Mr W. E. Yeomans and the National Council of Teachers of English). General Editor's Preface LITERARY criticism has only recently come of age as an academic discipline, and the intellectual activity that, a hundred years ago, went into theological discussion, now fmds its most natural outlet in the critical essay. Amid a good deal that is dull or silly or pretentious, every year now produces a crop of critical essays which are brilliant and profound not only as contributions to the understanding of a particular author, but as statements of an original way oflooking at literature and the world. Hence it often seems that the most useful undertaking for an academic publisher might be, not so much to commission new books of literary criticism or scholarship, as to make the best of what exists easily available. This at least is the purpose of the present series of anthologies, each of which is devoted to a single major writer. The guiding principle of selection is to assemble the best modern criticism- broadly speaking, that of the last twenty or thirty years-and to include historic and classic essays, however famous, only when they are still influential and represent the best statements of their particular point of view. It will, however, be one of the functions of each editor's Introduction to sketch in the earlier history of criticism in regard to the author concerned. Each volume will attempt to strike a balance between general essays and ones on specialised aspects, or particular works, of the writer in question. And though in many instances the bulk of the articles will come from British and American sources, certain of the volumes will draw heavily on material in other European languages- most ofit being translated for the first time. P. N. FURBANK Introduction THE first biographical comments on Swift's life were provided in the Memoirs ofMrs. Laetitia Pilkington {17 48-54); chatty and anecdotal, they were succeeded by Lord Orrery's Remarks on The Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift (1752). Orrery was a young man when he first knew Swift, who was then sixty-three; he did not present an accurate picture of him, and obscured a good deal of his narrative with some­ what selfconscious literary moralising. The Observations Upon Lord Orrery's Remarks On the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift (1754) were written by Dr Delany, a friend who had known Swift from his fiftieth year, and he corrected some of Lord Orrery's mistakes, but with too much deference and without sufficient chronological detail. A better life was produced by Deane Swift in An Essay Upon The Life, Writings and Character of Dr. Jonathan Swift (1755); although he made mistakes, he had known Swift and published thirty-nine letters of the Journal to Stella. John Hawkesworth's Life was prefixed to his edition of the Works (1755) and subsequent editions of this, and was a reason­ ably reliable piece of work - 'steady and uniform', as it has been described. There was an entry on Swift in the Biographia Britannica (1763), and Dr Johnson's Life of Swift was contained in the eighth volume of his Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets (1-v, 1779; v-x, 1781). Johnson wrote a casual, even at times condescending, Life, and was obviously unsympathetic to Swift­ 'not a man to be loved or envied' he remarked. Yet, though he failed to realise some of Swift's subtlety as an author, he did conclude his Life with the magnanimous remark that 'perhaps no author can easily be found that has borrowed so little, or that in all his excellence and all his defects has so well maintained his claim to be considered original'. Thomas Sheridan, a godson of Swift and the son of his friend the Rev. Thomas Sheridan, corrected some ofJohnson's mistakes and slights in The Life ofthe Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift (1784), which was also printed in volume 1 of his edition of the Works (1784). !2 INTRODUCTION Sir Walter Scott's Life ofthe Author (which formed part of his edition of the Works, 1814) included a great deal of information, some of it unverified: it probably set a tone for subsequent biographies because of this inclusiveness, for, almost inevitably, it contained paradoxical material. Yet Scott had the ability to grasp Swift's greatness. He thought that Swift was original and had no models in previous writings, that he was indifferent to literary fame and that he never attempted any style of composition in which, with the exception ofhistory, he did not reach a distinguished pitch of excellence. He regarded Swift as pre-eminent in the particular kind of poetry he wrote: he avoided the sublime and pathetic, but his satire and humour were displayed where wit was necessary; he could versify and rhyme superbly; his violent passion could create grandeur. When Francis Jeffrey reviewed Scott's edition of Swift's Works in the Edinburgh Review, XXVII (Sept. 1816) he recorded his view that the wits of Queen Anne's time had been eclipsed by his contemporaries; he thought that the earlier writers lacked power and fancy in poetry, that they had no depth or originality in philosophy. Jeffrey regarded Swift as a political apostate and was deeply suspicious ofhis sexual normality. In this attitude he was not alone. Throughout the nineteenth century Swift had his detractors. His scatology, against which Dr Johnson had inveighed, upset many critics (Macaulay described his mind in a review in the Edinburgh Review (Jan. 1833) as stored with images from the dunghill and lazar house). His poetry did not appeal to nineteenth­ century taste. Many critics viewed his relations with Stella and Vanessa with disapproval; many thought him irreligious; and many regarded him as a complete misanthropist, a libeller of human nature, especially in Gulliver's Travels. There were, however, some exceptions. Hazlitt, for instance, with his usual sanity, wrote well of Swift in his Lectures on the English Poets (r8r8). He was sympathetic to him, seeing that his wit (particularly in the prose works) was serious, saturnine and practical, and understanding that his trifling was a 'relaxation from the excessive earnestness of his mind. Indignatio facit versus.' He wrote with perception of Swift's imagination, indignation, and impatience; he thought that he viewed the infirmities of that great baby the world 'with the same scrutinizing glance and jealous irritability that a parent regards the failings of its offspring, but, as Rousseau has well observed, parents have not on this account been supposed to have more affection for other people's children than their own'.