dictionaries C.O.D. Webster's combined

Full text   Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)

Bibliographic details

VOLUME I

PREFACE

Swift, as the Introduction to these volumes shows, was at little pains to ensure the publication of an authoritative collection of his writings, whether in prose or in verse. Two miscellany gatherings, 1711 and 1727-32, and six volumes of a Dublin edition of his Works received some measure of editorial attention from him. But at his death a large proportion of his verse lay scattered in manuscripts, in broadsides, and in pamphlets. These stray leaves were gradually brought together by successive editors, combined with many conjectural attributions which have little or no claim to be regarded as Swift's. Scarcely any effort at an arrangement of the poems was made by early editors, Faulkner, Deane Swift, Sheridan, and John Nichols. Sir Walter Scott, in his editions of Swift's Works, 1814 and 1824, attempted a partial grouping by subject-matter; but the poems were distributed through several volumes, the arrangement was imperfectly executed, the text was little considered, and many questionable pieces, together with poems by other hands, were indiscriminately included. Little has since been done; and the need for a new edition of Swift's poems requires no emphasis or argument.

In this edition I have attempted to determine, as nearly as may be, the exact date of composition of each poem. In each section, grouped by subject-matter, the poems are arranged in chronological sequence, following the date of composition, not that of first publication. Poems written by others, which it was necessary to print for an understanding of Swift's reply, appear in smaller type. In two sections, 'Riddles' and 'Trifles', in which Swift's share could not be clearly determined, this differentiation by type has not been observed.

A large part of the time spent in the preparation of this edition has been devoted to bibliographical scrutiny and textual collation. Nearly every poem has its separate bibliography, and a list of editions collated, together with autographs and early transcripts, whenever these are preserved, is given at the head of each poem. I have printed the text from manuscript, from a first edition, or from an authoritative early text. In only one instance, 'Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift' (see p. 551), have I printed a recension.

The introductory notes to each poem, or group of poems, discuss the date, the occasion, the bibliography, and the text. They have, in effect, together with the footnotes, a biographical design and purpose.

I have many acknowledgements to make for the helpful interest of older friends, and I recognize gratefully the kindness of the new friends my work has brought me.

The courtesy of Dr. F. Elrington Ball is a happy memory. He was ever ready to answer questions. His death, in 1928, deprived me of his unrivalled knowledge of Anglo-Ireland. But my chief debt for encouragement, advice, and active help, is due to Professor D. Nichol Smith, whom I have consulted throughout the progress of this work. He has, furthermore, read the proofs, contributed valuable suggestions, and saved me from oversights and mistakes. It would be difficult to assess the sum of my obligation to him.

I have received many courtesies from owners of manuscripts, rare books, and annotated volumes, who have afforded me access to their collections and the use of manuscripts in their possession. I am gratefully indebted to the Duke of Bedford, the Duke of Portland, the Marquis of Bath, Lord Mount Temple, Major-General Sir W. J. Maxwell-Scott, Major Evelyn Shirley of Lough Fea, co. Monaghan, Mrs. Baker, Malahow, Naul, co. Dublin, Mrs. W. G. Panter, the Rev. John Longe, the Rev. J. J. Antrobus, Mr. T. J. Wise, Mr. Cecil Harmsworth, and Mr. Seumas O'Sullivan. Mr. Victor Rothschild has

[Page vii]
always been ready to place his fine collection of manuscripts and printed pieces fully at my disposal. Mr. Shane Leslie has been generous with his help, and obtained entries for me to private libraries. Among those who have drawn my attention to manuscripts, or furnished me with rotographs, are Professor G. C. Moore Smith, Professor Herbert Davis, Professor George Sherburn, Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, Mr. Arthur Pforzheimer, Dr. Francis S. Bourke, and Mr. Francis Needham. I cannot sufficiently thank Dr. Robin Flower for the assistance he has often given me in the examination of manuscripts and rotographs, and for the helpfulness of his opinion on questions of handwriting. I am particularly under an obligation to Mr. M. B. Gold for examining the Orrery Papers in the library of Harvard College, and for sending me rotographs.

My thanks are due to the Very Rev. D. F. R. Wilson, Dean of St. Patrick's, the Very Rev. W. J. Askins, Dean of Kilmore, the Rev. H. C. Armour, Professor Edward Bensly, Mrs. Arundell Esdaile, Mr. I. A. Williams, and Mr. Séamus Ó Casaide for answers readily given to questions addressed to them. For help, none the less valuable because difficult to define, I am most grateful to Mr. John Hayward and to Dr. T. Percy Kirkpatrick.

Messrs. Bernard Quaritch, Ltd., Messrs. P. J. and A. E. Dobell (and especially I thank Mr. Percy Dobell), Messrs. Pickering and Chatto, and Mr. M. J. Mac-Manus have kindly allowed me to examine volumes which have passed through their hands, and given me information about other books.

I have been received with unfailing courtesy and helpfulness in many libraries. In Dublin Mr. J. Hanna, Assistant Librarian at Trinity College, Dr. Best of the National Library of Ireland, Mr. Newport B. White of Archbishop Marsh's Library, the staff of the Royal Irish Academy, and Mr. Fennelly, custodian of the Gilbert Collection, belonging to the City of Dublin, have been generous of their time and knowledge. I thank, in general,

[Page viii]
the staff of the British Museum, the Bodleian Library, the University Library, Cambridge, the National Library of Scotland, the Public Record Office, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Goldsmiths' Library, and the John Rylands Library, Manchester.

I acknowledge the generosity of the trustees of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, in supplying me with photographs of manuscripts in that library, and for kind permission accorded me to make full use of them in this work. Captain Haselden and Mr. H. C. Schulz, Curator and Assistant Curator of manuscripts in the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California, have been at much pains to supply me with information and rotographs; and I have the permission of Dr. Max Farrand, Director of Research, to make use of the information thus obtained. The authorities of Harvard College have generously allowed me the use of rotographs from the Orrery Papers.

I am obliged to the publishers, Messrs. G. Bell & Sons, for allowing me to quote extensively from Dr. Elrington Ball's edition of Swift's Correspondence.

I am indebted to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press and their staff for their careful attention to a work which has not been without problems and difficulties while it was passing through the press.

H. W.

ASPENDEN,

HERTFORDSHIRE,

February 1937.

INTRODUCTION

(i)

As a prose-writer Swift won the immediate recognition of his contemporaries. Even the pedantic Orrery praised the 'masterly conciseness', which he regarded as unequalled by any writer; and Delany, for once, echoed his lordship's words. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} A few have cavilled at what they considered the bareness of Swift's prose, its want of decorative epithets or graceful turns of phrase; but the passage of time has served to establish his fame securely. The judgement of Dr. Johnson stands: 'He studied purity ... and whoever depends on his authority may generally conclude himself safe.' ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]}

The ideal Swift consciously pursued in the writing of prose he followed in his verse. The very conciseness, clarity, and directness which lend to his prose a deceptive simplicity, seemingly so easy to imitate and so impossible to attain in practice, fetter him as a poet and confine his range. The scepticism of enthusiasms, pretentions, and cant which underlies his counsel in the Letter of Advice to a Young Poet, in his 'Directions for a Birth-Day Song', and in his rhapsody 'On Poetry' confined a natural genius within self-imposed barriers. His poetic vesture was too small for him. In Swift's verse, as in his life, we are conscious of a frustration. In prose he was free. Although there are poems 'which are as dreadful and as easy as though one of the major prophets had written vers de société', ^{[Footnote 3: 1Kb]} he had something to give to English poetry that he never wholly gave.

The unhappiness of Swift's life was in no small part chargeable against himself; and he added to it the misfortune of falling short of his friends, Pope, Prior, and Gay, in the poetic content of his work. But even at the worst, and when toiling under unnatural conditions, there is an occasional illumination which bids us remeber what manner of man he was.

If this be Cowley, it is Cowley with a sombre power. But when Swift recognized the futility of unnatural pindarics, and turned, after a pause in which he seems hardly to have written verse at all, to a style more natural, he allowed the pendulum to swing too far, and fell into an opposite error. In a poem half-earnest, half-satire, he represents Apollo as appointing him vicegerent in Ireland, and bidding other poets to follow his example in rejecting similes and picturesque figures of speech.

These and the like phrases litter the 'beaten Paths' of poetry, the old stock-in-trade of those who make a business of it, for it is they only who deserve the name of poet. 'I do not call him a Poet that writes for his Diversion, any more than that Gentleman a Fidler, who amuses himself with a Violin.' ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} And Swift was not a poet by profession. He was constantly turning verses as a common part of his everyday life, so much so that no part of his writing is as complete an autobiography, and no part of his writing so calls for annotation. No part of his writing, furthermore, has been so neglected and mishandled by editors. Nearly two hundred years ago Deane Swift described the arrangement of the Dean's poetical writings as a 'heap of confusion'; ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} and little has since been done to improve matters. Sir Walter Scott loosely sorted the growing heap into smaller heaps; but Dr. Elrington Ball's essay on Swift's Verse was the first informed attempt to bring order where none had been.

The poems of Jonathan Swift have been undeservedly overshadowed. The perfection of his prose, the satirical and imaginative genius of A Tale of a Tub, Gulliver's Travels, and Polite Conversation, the incisive mastery of his political pamphlets have screened off his pages of verse. Nevertheless it must be recognized that his standing was within the circle of the Augustan poets; and in prose his range was far beyond their compass. In verse Pope was his superior.
In Pope, I cannot read a Line,
But with a Sigh, I wish it mine. ^{[Footnote 3: 1Kb]} Gay and Prior had a more lyrical gift. Swift's genius lay in the succession of Samuel Butler. Hudibras he knew by heart. But Butler's stream ran in a narrow channel through a monotonous country. His antipathies and sympathies were limited by a confined experience and limited responsiveness. Swift's powers of mind were far greater

[Page xvi]
than Butler's; his experience of life was more complex; he knew more intimately the extremes of joy and pain, love and hate. The content of his verse shows a diversity Butler's lacks; his variations of theme and metre are frequent. Cadenus and Vanessa may want the porcelain elegance of The Rape of the Lock, but it is a definite achievement of sustained artifice and fancy. The metrical accomplishment and vigour of On Poetry: A Rapsody, which moved the admiration of contemporaries, are not less apparent to-day. No verse satire in English, or in any language, pierces, wounds, and scarifies like that of Swift. There was no warding off the thrust, whether the attack was personal, directed at Nottingham, Richard Tighe, Lord Allen, or Bettesworth, or general, against the ministry and parliamentary measures. And here there is all the wide range from a squib or lampoon of a few lines to lengthy and polished pieces like the Libel on Dr. Delany, or Epistle to Mr. Gay, or the typical social satire of The Journal of a Modern Lady, or, finally, the uncontrolled outburst of The Legion Club. Again, there is the everyday friendliness of his familiar verse, the addresses to Stella, to the Rochforts, Achesons, Sheridan, Delany, and other Irish friends, and the great Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, which are also of this order, if with a difference. And, yet again, is not Mrs. Harris's Petition one of the best of all colloquial pieces? Add to these the nonsense poems and frolics in rhyme, and we have not exhausted a variety which rarely falters or fails.

Swift's verse has been shabbily treated by his editors. Perhaps readers and critics may plead this neglect in excuse for theirs. Much of his verse is not readily, or completely, intelligible until ordered chronologically and annotated. If this be an admission that the chief interest of Swift's verse lies elsewhere than in poetic content, it is unnecessary to plead the contrary. Poetry is there, and the instinct to poetry, though trammelled and impeded. Further, the events of Swift's life, his character, his standing with his fellows, and his place in history can only be adequately

[Page xvii]
interpreted if his verse is closely read and understood. Swift, like Marlborough, is not easily explicable. Each was an enigma to his contemporaries; and each has left to succeeding generations unsolved problems of life and character. If a better text and clearer arrangement of Swift's poems can serve to bring us a fuller knowledge of the author, the editor of these volumes will have been repaid for his long task. Lacunae there may be, and unavoidably; mistakes there must be; but, at the least, the attempt has been made to edit Swift's poetical writings by a standard they merited.

(ii)

The editor of Swift's verse is, from beginning to end, beset by the constant problem of determining the canon. The apocrypha spring like weeds choking the good seed. Omitting riddles and epigrams from separate enumeration, not less than one hundred and fifty attributions and suppositious pieces may be counted, over against two hundred and fifty genuine poems. During Swift's life, and after, any witty, grotesque, or indecent piece, of Irish origin and uncertain parentage, was ascribed to the great Dean of St. Patrick's, as if by a standing affiliation order. It is to the credit of Swift's earliest editors, Faulkner in Dublin, Hawkesworth, Deane Swift, and Sheridan in England, that they admitted comparatively few of the doubtful poems. Unfortunately, before Faulkner published his edition of the Works in 1735, the Swift and Pope Miscellanies of 1727-32, for which Pope was responsible as editor, included, without indication of authorship, pieces both in prose and verse written by others, as indeed their joint preface particularly informs the reader. These Miscellanies, reprinted from time to time, and extended, became the façade of all the London editions of the Works, until Sheridan, in 1784, removed to his seventeenth volume those pieces for which Swift was not directly or wholly responsible.

In Bathurst's small octavo edition of the Miscellanies, 1742, an attempt was made to assign to Arbuthnot and Gay their parts. In the fourth volume, which contains the verse, fifty-four pieces out of a total of one hundred are marked with an asterisk, explained in a note---'Whatever are not mark'd with a Star, are Dr. Swift's.' This may, presumably, be taken also to mean that no piece marked with a star is Swift's. Many of those so marked are attributable to Pope.

This arrangement of the Miscellanies led to confusion and misunderstanding. Charles Ford admonished Swift that a careful edition of his Works was 'become absolutely necessary, since that jumble with Pope, etc., in three volumes', which put him 'in a rage' whenever he met with them. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} The first move in this direction came from Dublin with the publication of Faulkner's edition of the Works in four volumes, dated 1735. Although this edition aroused protests from Motte, the London bookseller, and adverse criticism from successive London editors, Hawkesworth, Sheridan, and even Nichols, the Dublin volumes, rather than Hawkesworth's 1755 volumes, merit the description of the 'earliest regular edition'. ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]}

Only two collections of Swift's writings issued before 1735 were authoritative, or recognized by him, the Miscellanies in Prose and Verse printed for John Morphew in 1711, and the Miscellanies in four volumes, 1727-32. The remaining pieces, scattered in pamphlet and broadsheet form, had been partially 'scraped up' by Curll and other publishers, together with 'trash' which Swift disowned. ^{[Footnote 3: 1Kb]} These unauthorized publications, together with the haphazard 1727-32 Miscellanies, became a source of confusion from which editors failed to escape.

(iii)

As early as 1708 Swift began to draw up a list of occasional pieces suitable for publication in a miscellany volume. This was during a residence in London extending from 1707 to 1709. The list, written on the back of a letter directed to him in October, 1708, ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} contained, in addition to prose, nine verse pieces. The projected miscellany is referred to in Swift's correspondence, and in the Journal to Stella. ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} From these references it appears that originally there was some thought of a preface by Steele; and that, although the volume finally appeared with Morphew's imprint, Benjamin Tooke was earlier busied with it. The book was published at the end of February, 1711. ^{[Footnote 3: 1Kb]} It contained the nine verse pieces proposed by Swift in 1708, and four others, or five if we count the verse portion of 'Merlin's Prophecy'. They are (1) 'Verses Wrote in a Lady's Ivory Table Book'; (2) 'Mrs. Harris's Petition'; (3) the ballad 'To the Tune of the Cutpurse'; (4) 'Vanbrug's House'; (5) 'The Description of a Salamander'; (6) 'Baucis and Philemon'; (7) 'To Mrs. Biddy Floyd'; (8) 'The History of Vanbrug's House'; (9) 'Elegy on Patrige'; (10) 'Apollo Outwitted'; (11) 'A Description of the Morning'; (12) 'A Description of a City Shower'; (13) 'Sid Hamet'. Five of these, (1), (3), (4), (5), and, apparently, (10), ^{[Footnote 4: 1Kb]} were here printed for the first time. A second edition of these Miscellanies, dated 1713, was published by Morphew early in 1714. ^{[Footnote 5: 1Kb]}

(iv)

Fifteen years passed before Swift was again moved to collect his scattered writings. His brief span of power and fame during the last four years of Queen Anne was over, and he had endured twelve years of separation from his English friends. In the summer of 1726 he visited England again; and during that visit he and Pope concerted a joint miscellany. After his return to Dublin we find him writing to Pope: 'I am mustering, as I told you, all the little things in verse that I think may be safely printed, but I give you despotic power to tear as many as you please.' ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} In February of the following year Pope was able to report, but it would seem prematurely, 'Our Miscellany is now quite printed'; ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} for the first two volumes did not appear till the latter part of June, ^{[Footnote 3: 1Kb]} and his accompanying remarks give a completely erroneous description of the set as it was finally published. He speaks of 'this joint volume, in which methinks we look like friends side by side'. In the first volume, consisting wholly of prose, the only piece by Pope is the preface, jointly signed by Swift and himself. In the second volume, also prose, one piece only can be wholly assigned to Pope, with some further share in a series of pieces in which Arbuthnot, Gay, and Fortescue, as well as Swift, were represented. ^{[Footnote 4: 1Kb]} And, further, Pope's statement that 'The third volume consists of verses' is evidence only of his intention at the time, for this volume, called 'The Last', did not appear till March, 1728, ^{[Footnote 5: 1Kb]} and contained, as well as verse, Pope's Art of Sinking in Poetry occupying over ninety pages. The truth is that Pope was not, as his letters might suggest, an equal partner in the venture. His contribution to the three volumes was far less than Swift's; he enjoyed any advantages to be derived from publication; and he reserved material for future use.

The delay in the publication of the third (so-called 'Last') volume may also be attributed to Pope. Courthope suggests that, 'though ready', it was kept back 'in anticipation of the appearance of the "Dunciad"'. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} But the volume was certainly not ready, and, although delayed till March of the following year, it then appeared more than two months before the Dunciad. ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} Pope evidently found himself with insufficient copy to fill out a third volume, unless, and for this he seems to have been unprepared, he drew upon his own resources. He fell back on Swift, who was during 1727 again in England, and for a visit extending from April to September, over six months. In July Swift, then at Twickenham, wrote to Sheridan for a copy of the verses addressed to Stella on her collecting his poems, as these, although he did not propose to print them entire, were wanted to enlarge the miscellany. ^{[Footnote 3: 1Kb]} Pope, however, succeeded in obtaining much more additional copy. The particular poem was printed in full, and six other Stella pieces also appeared, including even the verses written for her birthday 1726-7. 'It might excite surprise at any time', writes Dr. Ball, 'that Swift could have borne the publication of these verses, but especially so when he believed her to be dying and was writing to Sheridan in an agony of affliction. The only explanation seems to be that Swift had delivered himself in his infatuation for Pope completely into his hands. Pope is recorded to have said that he wished the verses to Stella had never been written, but none the less he had the power to prevent their inclusion in the Miscellanies and did not use it.' ^{[Footnote 4: 1Kb]} It may be questioned, however, whether Pope is accurately reported; and Dr. Ball's suggestion that Swift was a puppet in his hands cannot be entertained. We, at least, have good reason to be thankful that the Stella verses were included in the Miscellanies.

The volume, as finally published, contained as Swift's contribution the thirteen verse pieces included in the Miscellanies of 1711, 'Cadenus and Vanessa', the Stella poems, the imitation of Horace addressed to Oxford in 1713, the imitation of Hoc erat, 'The South-Sea', 'New-gate's Garland' (if by Swift), 'Prometheus', 'Corinna', 'The Quidnuncki's' (if by Swift), 'Phyllis: Or the Progress of Love', 'The Progress of Poetry', 'The Progress of Beauty', 'Pethox the Great', 'Epilogue to a Play for the Benefit of the Weavers', the 'Epitaph on a Miser' (Demar), and 'On Dreams'. Swift was evidently prepared to make even further contributions; ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} but apparently these came too late to the printer's hand. In the result the 'Last' volume bears all the marks of editorial and printing indecision. It falls into three sections, each with a separate register and pagination: (1) 'The Art of Sinking in Poetry'; (2) 'Cadenus and Vanessa'; (3) miscellaneous verses by Swift, Pope, and others.

(v)

Miscellanies. The Last Volume was published a few weeks after Stella's death on the 28th of January, 1727-8. New-formed friendships with the Achesons and Leslies, and long summer visits to Market Hill, 1728-29-30, served to fill Swift's time and occupy his mind in the first years of bereavement. From the autumn of 1730 to the fateful decay of his mental powers he became more and more of a recluse, immured in the large and bare deanery house. But these six years, 1731-6, saw the composition of several of his greatest poems. If the number declined, and more rapidly towards the end, in wit, in power of invective, and in versification, there was, in the major pieces, gain rather than loss, until the terrible 'Legion Club' (1736) finished the tale of his greater poems.

In these latter years his Irish friends, including even Sheridan and Delany, became less to him; and several of

[Page xxiii]
his English friends were removed. Congreve died on 19 January, 1729; Gay died on 4 December, 1732; and the news of Arbuthnot's death, 27 February, 1735, struck him to the heart. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} As he withdrew himself from social life his poems began to owe less to the passing occasion, and to become more general in character. Furthermore, in these years three important groups of collected poems saw the light. The story of their publication, severally associated with the names of Pope, Pilkington, and Faulkner, is, in each instance, complicated by some uncertainty and mystery. The three groups are:

The story of Pilkington's connexion with the pieces named under (2) can best be followed in the introductory notes to each poem; but (1) and (3) call for fuller discussion.

(vi)

Three volumes of the Swift and Pope Miscellanies, distinguished as 'First', 'Second', and 'Last', had been published in 1727-8. During the summer of 1732 Pope projected a further volume and applied to Swift for copy. On 12 June Swift wrote in reply to a letter of Pope's which has been lost, naming those issues of The Intelligencer ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} written by him, and giving a list of pieces in prose and verse composed 'since I left you'. ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} The verse pieces enumerated by him are 'a Libel on Dr. Delany and Lord Carteret, a Letter to Dr. Delany on the Libels writ against him, the Barrack (a stolen copy), the Lady's Journal, the Lady's Dressing-room (a stolen copy), [and] the [Place] of the Damned (a stolen copy). ... Besides these there are five or six, perhaps more, papers of verses writ in the North, but perfect family things, two or three of which may be tolerable, the rest but indifferent, and the humour only local, and some that would give offence to the times'. It is evident that several letters relating to the publication of this volume have been lost; but Pope, it is clear, was too much concerned with the commercial side of the transaction, and paid too little regard to Swift's feelings in the matter. He intended originally to issue the volume through Lawton Gilliver, his new publisher, but deferred so far to Motte, on account of his previous association with Swift, that the two names were joined on the imprint. The volume was published at the beginning of October, 1732. ^{[Footnote 3: 1Kb]} A month later, on 4 November, Swift wrote to tell Motte that 'two copies of the last Miscellany' had just reached him. He was annoyed to find that Pope had taken his own course in selecting the verse, with the result that 'almost six-sevenths of the whole verse part in the book' was his, and chosen with insufficient regard for the list he

[Page xxv]
had sent Pope in June. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} He was particularly aggrieved that the 'Libel on Delany', which he considered the best thing he had written, was omitted. Much the greater part of the volume consisted of prose, followed by one hundred pages of verse, paged separately, containing the following pieces by Swift: (1) 'The Journal of a Modern Lady'; (2) 'The Country Life'; (3) 'On Cutting down the Old Thorn at Market-Hill'; (4) 'A Pastoral Dialogue'; (5) 'Mary the Cook-Maid's Letter to Dr. Sheridan'; (6) 'A Dialogue between Mad Mullinix and Timothy'; (7) 'Epigram On seeing a worthy Prelate go out of Church'; (8) 'Dr. Sw---to Mr. P---e, While he was writing the Dunciad'; (9) 'A Soldier and a Scholar'; (10) 'To Doctor D---1---y on the Libels Writ against him'. There were, in addition, three short poems and a few epigrams not by Swift.

Furthermore, in the prose section of the volume Pope had printed several pieces disowned by Swift; and it is hardly to be wondered at that Swift found difficulty in reconciling himself to such negligent and inconsiderate editorial practices. On 9 December he wrote again to Motte to express his dissatisfaction, complaining, though hardly with justification, that his part in the verses was 'very uncorrect'. He went on to say he had reason to believe certain Dublin 'printers will collect all they think to be mine, and print them by subscription, which I will neither encourage nor oppose'. ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} This was the first hint of Faulkner's edition of the Works, a project which soon began to take more definite shape.

(vii)

Meanwhile, as Pope's volume was in course of preparation, Matthew Pilkington, a young Irish clergyman, was, with Swift's recognition, negotiating the publication of a rival volume. This transaction was distinct from the publication through Pilkington, in 1733-4, of the pieces

[Page xxvi]
conveyed to him by Mrs. Barber. Once again, for want of all the papers and correspondence, the affair is not wholly clear.

As noted above, on 12 June, 1732, Swift sent to Pope a list of pieces suitable for the miscellany volume in preparation. A month later ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} he wrote to Motte, in answer to a letter which has not been preserved, but which evidently related to Pope's desire to relegate Motte to a secondary position. In this letter Swift affirms categorically that (a) he wished Motte alone to issue anything published with his consent when alive, or with the consent of his executors after his death; (b) he intended to entrust any posthumous pieces to Pope with a recommendation that Motte alone should be employed in their publication; (c) he hoped also that anything he acknowledged and approved during his life should be published by Motte 'by themselves', provided it turned to his advantage; (d) Motte was authorized to emphasize these points to Pope.

Within a week of this letter, however, on 22 July, Swift executed a surprising document assigning 'all manner of right' in his 'scattered papers, in prose and verse, for three or four years last past' to Matthew Pilkington. ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} Following upon this assignment Pilkington wrote to Bowyer on 17 August to say that the Dean was reading over 'two or three of those papers' to see if any revision was necessary. He inquired whether Bowyer possessed copies of 'The Journal of a Dublin Lady, The Ballad on the English Dean, and Rochford's Journal, because you shall have the copies sent to you and the property effectually secured'. He added: 'The Dean says

[Page xxvii]
he thinks the assignment as full as it is possible for him to write; but that he will comply with any alterations we think proper.' This was sufficiently comprehensive and definite. On the 28th of the same month he informed Bowyer that the parcel of pamphlets with the Dean's corrections had been dispatched, and promised shortly to forward 'another pamphlet at least, and a new assignment from the Dean'. He also reported that Swift had 'received a letter from Mr. Pope and Mr. Motte; but neither have been of the least disadvantage to my request'. He added: 'I desire that you will insist upon your right by the assignment I formerly sent; and let Mr. Motte shew you anything under the Dean's hand which will invalidate it!' He appended to this letter a list of 'some of' the pieces in prose and verse which Bowyer was entitled to print. The verse pieces were: (1) 'The Barrack'; (2) 'An Ode to Ireland from Horace'; (3) 'A Libel on Dr. Delany and Ld. Carteret'; (4) 'To Dr. Delany on the Libels against him'; (5) 'O'Rourk'; (6) 'The Dressing-room'; (7) 'The Journal at Rochford's'; (8) 'The Thorn'; (9) 'Poem on the English Dean'; (10) 'Journal of a Dublin Lady'; and any pieces from The Intelligencer which were by Swift. It will be seen that this list misses only one piece, 'The Place of the Damn'd', of those Swift named to Pope in his letter of 12 June, 1732. On the other hand, (2), (3), (5), (6), and (9) were not included in the volume edited by Pope.

By this time Pope had become aware of what was going on. He adopted a characteristic method of conveying a reproach. On 28 August, 1732, the Duchess of Queensberry and Gay wrote a joint letter to Swift, in the course of which Gay quoted a paragraph from a letter of Pope's containing the complaint that 'Motte and another idle fellow, I find, have been writing to the Dean to get him to give them some copyright, which surely he will not be so indiscreet as to do, when he knows my design, and has done these two months and more'. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} He suggested,

[Page xxviii]
further, that the Dean was acting unadvisedly in committing his affairs to 'mercenaries'. Gay also added a line of caution. To this letter Swift made no response till 3 October; and, unfortunately, that part of his reply in which he promised 'two or three full answers' to Pope's complaint has not been preserved. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} It seems evident, however, that he was in no mood of conciliation. Two days later Pilkington conveyed his right, under Swift's assignment of 22 June, to William Bowyer, thus empowering him to make what use he would of the Dean's scattered writings. It was then, however, too late to proceed. Miscellanies. The Third Volume had just been published by Motte and Gilliver.

All the facts are not before us, and the correspondence between Swift and Pope, relating to the publication of the 1732 volume of Miscellanies, has been, for the most part, destroyed; but so far as these tortuous transactions can be followed, they reflect no credit on either Pope or Swift. Pope's chief interest seems to have been a display of editorial activity at little personal sacrifice. He cut down to narrow limits his own contribution to the forthcoming volume, at the same time playing off Gilliver against Motte to draw the best fee he could from the publisher, or publishers. Motte, aggrieved at the attempt to pass him over, must have written to Swift insinuating, probably, that Pope was negotiating with little regard to the Dean's interest. Swift's letter of 15 July ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} was a reply to Motte's complaint; and thereupon, also, to forestall Pope's volume, he commissioned Pilkington to treat with Bowyer. By this secret transaction he hoped, no doubt, to checkmate Pope, pleading ignorance if necessary, bestow a kindness on his protégé the young Irish clergyman, and regain control over the publication of his writings. As it proved, nothing came of the scheme. Pilkington's and Bowyer's methods were too dilatory; whereas they should have made the utmost speed to publish their volume first.

(viii)

To George Faulkner, ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} the Dublin bookseller and printer, belongs the credit of first realizing that the time had come for a standard edition of the Dean's works. The plan took shape in his mind towards the end of 1732, or the beginning of 1733. In a letter dated 16 February, 1732-3, commending Faulkner to Lord Oxford, Swift referred to the Dublin printer's project as 'a work that very much discontents me', although he admitted that he would rather have it fall into his hands 'than any other's on this side'. ^{[Footnote 3: 1Kb]} The hint of a Dublin edition reached Pope, and possibly aroused a fear that he would be deprived of writings which might be used in a further volume of Miscellanies. On 1 May, 1733, Swift wrote to say that a printer in Dublin intended to publish 'my works, as he called them, in four volumes by subscription', despite his own expressed disfavour and preference for a London edition. 'Much of this discourse passed,' he continues, 'and he goes on with the matter, wherein I determined not to intermeddle.' ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} Swift may have regarded Faulkner's proceedings with qualified approval; he would probably have preferred a London edition; but he certainly exaggerated the degree of his indifference.

Faulkner went forward but slowly. In August, 1734, Oxford inquired why publication had been so long delayed. ^{[Footnote 4: 1Kb]} Swift artlessly explained that he was not interested, that, indeed the whole affair was a 'great vexation' to him, that Faulkner was dependent upon others for copy, and that delays had arisen through his ordering 'certain things to be struck out after they were printed'. ^{[Footnote 5: 1Kb]} More than six months later Lord Carteret had not received the copies for which he had subscribed. ^{[Footnote 6: 1Kb]} The four volumes were, however, issued about this time. During 1733 and 1734 Faulkner made a practice of appending to his various

[Page xxx]
publications a lengthy advertisement ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} of his intention to publish in four volumes 'all the Works that are generally allowed to have been written' by Swift. Subscriptions were invited and delivery promised upon dates which proved to be continuously movable, as were also the dates given for the closing of the subscription lists. In January, 1735, however, the complete set was at last published, ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} and attracted an unexpected notoriety, for in the Dublin Gazette of 15-19 April Faulkner advertised a reward for the detection of persons who had stolen copies from his warehouse to hawk them in the streets.

After publication Swift continued to pretend a displeasure with Faulkner. Writing to William Pulteney, 12 May, 1735, he repeated his earlier observations upon 'some volumes of what are called my Works', protesting that the printer 'consulted some friends, who were readier to direct him than I desired they should'. ^{[Footnote 3: 1Kb]} He affirmed categorically to Motte that, 'Mr. Faulkner in printing those volumes did what I much disliked, and yet what was not in my power to hinder, and all my friends pressed him to print them, and gave him what manuscript copies they had occasionally gotten from me'. ^{[Footnote 4: 1Kb]} Nevertheless when Motte, who considered himself to have a prior claim to the Dean's writings, filed a bill in Chancery to stop the sale of Faulkner's edition in England, Swift wrote sternly to his English bookseller asserting that Irish printers were morally, if not legally, justified in trying to sell their publications in England. ^{[Footnote 5: 1Kb]}

These and other references by Swift to Faulkner's edition of his writings are, at the least, equivocal. He protests overmuch. Faulkner consulted him in the first

[Page xxxi]
instance; he knew that friends were furnishing Faulkner with copy; yet he pretends an inability to stay either him or them. It was but a part of his ingrained habit of dissociating himself from the open publication of his own writings.

There is, on the other hand, evidence, internal and external, which leaves no doubt that Swift was trying to conceal the real measure of his co-operation with Faulkner. The evidence, so far as it relates to the third volume of the Works, containing Gulliver's Travels, shows that Swift wrote to his friends for a manuscript list of errata and a corrected copy of Motte's edition, with the intention of allowing Faulkner to make use of them. There are further corrections in the text of Faulkner's third volume which could have come, directly or indirectly, only from the author. Swift's co-operation with the printer of the third volume is beyond a doubt. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} It is hardly likely that where assistance went far with one volume it was withheld from the other three; and an examination of their text supports this inference. In the second volume, which contains the poems, corrections are embodied which Swift made with his own hand in a copy of the Miscellanies, 1727-32. ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} Furthermore a set of Faulkner's edition, in six volumes, appears in the sale catalogue of Swift's library, lot number 486, marked as annotated by the Dean himself. This set is, possibly, that now in the Shirley library, Lough Fea, co. Monaghan, Ireland. The second volume has a number of corrections in Swift's hand. These are quite unimportant, relating chiefly to printer's errors and the like, and suggest that he approved both of Faulkner's selection and text.

In a letter written to Pope, 8 July, 1733, Swift drops into an important admission: 'As to the printing of my

[Page xxxii]
things going on here, it is an evil I cannot prevent. I shall not be a penny the richer. Some friends correct the errors, and now and then I look on them for a minute or two.' ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} This can be read only as a confession that he sometimes examined the proof-sheets. Orrery, who knew Swift well in his later years, has a more circumstantial story: 'Faulkner's edition, at least the four first volumes of it (for there are now eight) were published, by the permission and connivance, if not by the particular appointment of the Dean himself.' ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} And later he grows more explicit: 'The four first volumes were published by subscription, and every sheet of them was brought to the Dean for his revisal and correction. The two next were published in the same manner. ... In the publication of the six first volumes, the situation and arrangement of each particular piece, in verse and prose, was left entirely to the editor. In that point, the Dean either could not, or would not give him the least assistance. The dates were often guessed at.' ^{[Footnote 3: 1Kb]} The last remark is interesting, for it aptly fits the second volume containing the verses. Some of the dates are clearly wrong, and the result of pure guess-work. If we allow something for exaggeration, Orrery's evidence cannot be wholly set aside; and some years later it was emphatically corroborated by Deane Swift, who states that the first four volumes 'were actually revised and corrected by Swift himself, as indeed were afterwards the two subsequent volumes, printed by Faulkner in the year 1738: and, what is very surprising, these six volumes, as far as they run, are still by many degrees, notwithstanding they want at present many illustrations, the best edition of the Dr.'s Works now extant. If any one doubt this, let him compare Cadenus and Vanessa, or the poem on the South-Sea Project, as printed by Faulkner, with the English edition; especially the latter.' ^{[Footnote 4: 1Kb]} The statement is clear; the examples cited

[Page xxxiii]
are to the point. Nevertheless Faulkner's edition has been depreciated, its textual value overlooked for nearly two centuries, owing to the jealousy with which it was regarded by the English booksellers, furthered by a bitter but ignorant and misguided attack made upon it by Hawkesworth, in 1755, in the Preface to his edition of the Dean's Works issued in London by Bathurst and others.

Swift's admissions, the testimony of Orrery and Deane Swift, and the nature of the textual revisions, combine to give to Faulkner's first six volumes a semi-authoritative character. And Faulkner's prefaces are a further testimony in his favour. These are skilfully phrased, discreetly reserved, and may, very probably, have been written by Swift himself. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} 'The Publisher's Preface' to the set, appearing in the first volume, repeats in similar words Swift's remarks upon the edition in his letters. The 'supposed Author', we are told, was almost indifferent to the fate of any 'Copies of Verses' he ever wrote, which had, for the most part, found their way into print from transcripts made by friends. The 'supposed Author' could not be prevailed on by argument to lend assistance in the preparation of the new edition, although it was represented to him that disagreements between different booksellers on the question of partnership rights would prevent the publication of a full edition in London, that literary property was not recognized in Ireland, and that, failing Faulkner, a less desirable printer would seize upon his works. He would not, however, do more than permit some friends to revise proofs, and occasionally offer an opinion himself. In the 'Advertisement' prefixed to the volume of poems we are told that 'Our Intentions were to print the Poems according to the Time they were writ in; but

[Page xxxiv]
we could not do it so exactly as we desired, because we could never get the least Satisfaction in that or many other Circumstances from the supposed Author.' The style of these prefaces strongly resembles Swift's; and several of the phrases ring familiarly like those in his letters in which he had affected indifference to the whole project.

It seems plain that Faulkner was precluded from professing any direct communication with the author. And for years he loyally accepted a pose which cannot have been to his liking. A charge of piratical practices, however, stung him, and in 1744 he published a notice in his Dublin Journal declaring that his edition of the Dean's Works was published at the request of Swift's friends, that 'the Author was pleased to consent, and was so kind as to correct the whole work, ready for printing, and, in order to have them appear in the most accurate manner, the Author was pleased to revise every Proof Sheet'. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} Years later, after Hawkesworth's attack, he repeated this statement, affirming that it was his practice to attend the Dean and read aloud from the proof-sheets, not only to the author but to two men servants, 'Which, if they did not comprehend, he would alter and amend, until they understood it perfectly well, and then would say, This will do; for I write to the Vulgar, more than to the Learned. Not satisfied with this Preparation for the Press, he corrected every Sheet of the first seven Volumes that were published in this Life Time, desiring the Editor to write Notes, being much younger than the Dean, acquainted with most of the Transactions of his Life.'

If Faulkner's later preface, which is directed against Hawkesworth and the London booksellers, be suspected of overstating the measure of Swift's co-operation, the earlier prefaces, probably written by Swift himself, as definitely understate it. Faulkner's edition of the Works,

[Page xxxv]
so far as the first six ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} volumes are concerned, was secretly recognized by the author, and at least partially revised by him. In the third volume, Gulliver's Travels, revision was extensive; in the second volume, with which we are here concerned, it was more casual and desultory, nevertheless definitely apparent, as a study of the textual apparatus will show.

(ix)

Faulkner's second volume, containing the Poetical Works, more than doubled the quantity of Swift's verse gathered in the miscellany volumes of 1711 and 1727-32. Among pieces of importance here first collected were, 'The Fable of Midas', 'To the Earl of Peterborough', 'The Description of an Irish Feast', 'Stella at Wood-Park', 'A Receipt to restore Stella's Youth', 'A Pastoral Dialogue between Richmond-Lodge and Marble-Hill', four of the Market Hill poems, poems relating to Wood's coinage and Irish politics, the epistle 'To Mr. Gay', 'On Mr. Pulteney being put out of the Council', 'The Place of the Damn'd', and the poems published in London, 1733-4, through the agency of Pilkington. Here also appeared 'A Libel on Dr. Delany and Lord Carteret', omitted from the Miscellanies by Pope, although Moore included it in his slender volume of Swift Miscellanies, 1734. Faulkner's claim, in the 'Advertisement' to his second volume, that he had rejected what was not by Swift in the Miscellanies and added 'above a

[Page xxxvi]
third Part, which was never collected before', was fully justified.

Indications of editorial work, which proceeded while the volume was in the press, carry a suggestion of the author's rather than the publisher's hand. O8 is cancelled by O, pp. 207-8. Further signs of cancellation appear at Z, pp. 343-4, Aa, pp. 357-8, Bb2, pp. 371-2, Bb, pp. 379-80. In each of these instances the recto or verso of the starred leaf has a prefatory note to the poem, or poems, following. It seems most probable that these notes were written by Swift, and that the original leaves were cancelled to admit the insertion or recasting of the notes. T5-T8, pp. 281-8, representing the earlier part of 'A Panegyrick on the Dean', appears also to have been replaced by a cancel half-sheet signed T.

Faulkner published his edition of Swift's Works concurrently in octavo and duodecimo formats. 'Prometheus' was inadvertently omitted from the second volume of the octavo edition, and inserted at the close of the fourth volume. It appears in the proper volume in the duodecimo edition. There was, apparently, a greater demand for the octavo edition of the Poetical Works than for the other three volumes, for it was published separately in a new edition in 1737, with the addition of 'Prometheus' and a reshuffling of the order in which the pieces were printed. This 1737 volume was followed as a model throughout subsequent Faulkner editions. In 1746 (vol. viii) more poems were added; and more again in 1762-3. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]}

(x)

The successive Miscellanies issued by Samuel Fairbrother are the only other Dublin editions of Swift's verse which call for notice. In 1728 he published two piratical volumes of Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, called 'The Second Edition', taken, with some changes and slight

[Page xxxvii]
additions, from the three volumes edited by Pope in 1727. 'The Third Edition' of these two volumes was published in 1732, followed, in 1733, by 'The Second Edition' of a third volume, reproducing, with some additions, Pope's 1732 volume of Miscellanies. Faulkner's edition of the Works in 1735 gave Fairbrother a further opportunity to pilfer, which he seized upon by publishing Vol. IV. of the Miscellanies ... To which are added Several other Poems by the same Author, many of which are Printed from Original Manuscripts, not in any former Edition ... 1735. This volume contained an unblushing preface in which Fairbrother announced that he had extracted from the 'Author's Works, in Four Volumes 8vo' pieces not in his own edition for 'the Accommodation of all those Gentlemen' who were supplied with his first three volumes. And he repeated the claim made on his title-page that several poems 'never before Printed' had been added 'from the D---ns own Original Manuscripts'. A first instinct is to dismiss this for the usual puff of a piratical bookseller; but there is substance in Fairbrother's claim.

The first poem printed in the verse section of Fairbrother's fourth volume is a pindaric 'Ode to the King on his Irish Expedition'. Swift is known to have written a poem on this subject. Deane Swift tells us he had seen it, and that it was written in a 'Pindarique way'. The 'Ode to King William' which has found its way into Swift's Works, on the authority of Nichols, is not a pindaric, and it seems most probable that the poem printed by Fairbrother is authentic. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} Fairbrother's volume also printed for the first time a number of trifles in verse passing between Swift and his Irish friends, two of which are presented in an arrangement which differs from that of the accepted versions. In addition there are four trifling pieces hitherto not printed elsewhere. ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} It seems most likely that Fairbrother had access to the manuscript collection now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin,

[Page xxxviii]
known as The Whimsical Medley, and to other manuscripts of an authoritative character. His exceedingly rare fourth volume, which has not previously been noted by any editor, is both curious and important.

(xi)

The London booksellers had long been aware of Faulkner's project. Motte, as has been noted, complained of it to Swift; but neither he nor Lawton Gilliver, with whom he was joined in the publication of the 1732 volume of Miscellanies, appears to have taken sufficiently active steps to protect their common commercial interests, unless Motte thought he had gone far enough by filing a bill in Chancery. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} Or they may have delegated the work to Charles Davis, who, as early as the end of January, or beginning of February, 1735, ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} published a fifth and supplementary volume of Miscellanies, in Prose and Verse, in which full use was made of Faulkner's four volumes. It is clear that he was working from advance sheets, whether with, or without, Faulkner's knowledge.

If we confine our attention to the verse only we find that Davis omitted several poems contained in Faulkner's second volume. These he printed in a supplement, as A Collection of Poems, &c. Omitted in the Fifth Volume of Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, with pagination in sequence, and intended to be bound up with 'Volume the Fifth'. In the 'Advertisement' to his supplement Davis frankly admitted that the 'Copy of the Dublin Edition' transmitted to him 'from the Press' was not as complete as 'the Editor afterwards thought fit to make it'. Davis's omissions cannot be satisfactorily explained by the lack of specific sheets as they were gathered in Faulkner's second volume; but we know that this volume underwent revision in the press, and it is possible that alterations, now indistinguisable by us, may be reflected in Davis's publication.

On the other side it is noteworthy that Davis included three pieces which did not appear in Faulkner's edition, namely the two parts of 'Traulus' and an 'Epigram on Fasting'. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]}

(xii)

The four volumes published in 1735 presented a more complete body of verse than prose, for although, during the next thirty years, Faulkner extended the Works to twenty volumes, the additions in verse, though numerous, occupied a comparatively inconsiderable space. These additions immediately found their way into the London trade editions. To trace the extension of the verse canon, step by step, in this introduction would serve little purpose and occupy needless space. The Bibliographical Summary provides a working check-list of collected editions. Furthermore the textual and bibliographical notes accompanying each poem, or group of poems, as arranged in this edition, show how and when additions were made.

Both in London and Dublin Swift's Works commanded a sale; and the trade on one side, Faulkner on the other, continued to reprint and extend. The Miscellanies begun by Pope, supplemented by Davis's borrowings from Faulkner in 1735, were continued volume by volume by the London booksellers. Miscellanies. The Tenth Volume, published by Dodsley in 1745, added the 'Ode to the Athenian Society', the 'Ode to Temple', and some lesser pieces. Miscellanies. ... The Eleventh Volume, 1746, carrying the imprint of four members of the trade, drew upon Faulkner's eighth volume published earlier in the same year. These Miscellanies were variously reprinted until the booksellers commissioned Dr. Hawkesworth to edit a definitive set of the Dean's Works in opposition to that of Faulkner. The result was the handsome but indifferently edited volumes of 1755, which were published as six in

[Page xl]
quarto, or twelve in octavo, ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} The first continuation of this set came in 1762-4 (vol. vii, 4to; xiii and xiv, 8vo), when William Bowyer reprinted pieces in prose and verse which had been collected and published by Faulkner in 1762.

So far the London booksellers had, in the main, been dependent upon appropriations from Faulkner; but in 1765 Deane Swift carried the English edition further with vol. viii, 4to, vols. xv and xvi, 8vo, in which several important poems appeared for the first time. Thus matters stood when John Nichols, that great printer, chronicler, and literary commentator, began, among his many labours, his long task of making additions to Swift's Works. Between twenty and thirty verse pieces were added by him in the volume of 1775. In his Supplement, 1776 and 1779, he gathered together many poems by Swift and 'his Friends', a medley which has encouraged unfortunate conjectural attributions. Nichols, an untiring worker, was by no means a careful editor, but he brought genuine enthusiasm to his self-appointed task of presenting a complete collection of Swift's writings.

The result of these disconnected printing and editorial labours, extending over twenty-four years, was an irregular and disordered edition, running to twenty-five octavo volumes, in which shares were held by five different sets of proprietors. After some opposition an arrangement was reached with the shareholders for an amalgamation; and Thomas Sheridan, the son of Swift's friend, was commissioned to write a life of the Dean and compile a regular edition of his Works. He was to receive £300 for the Life, and £300 more as an editor. The whole, embodying the contents of the previous trade editions and the accumulations of Nichols, sorted into a better semblance of order, appeared in seventeen volumes, 1784. ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]}

Within a few years the indefatigable Nichols produced a supplement to Sheridan's edition, Miscellaneous Pieces, In Prose and Verse. ... Not inserted in Mr. Sheridan's Edition of the Dean's Works, published by Charles Dilley in 1789. Most of the verse additions in this volume were minor Swiftiana; but the 'Ode to King William on his Successes in Ireland', previously printed, as Swift's, by Nichols in his Select Collection of Poems, was here included with the works, and three early odes, 'To Sancroft', 'To Congreve', and that 'Occasioned by Sir William Temple's Late Illness', here first appeared in print, with a note stating that they were taken 'from an authentic Manuscript fairly and correctly written out as if intended for the 'Press'. No trace of this manuscript survives; nor is it affirmed to have been in Swift's hand, although the poems are certainly his. The 'Ode to King William', as noted above, ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} is probably a mistaken ascription.

In 1801 the London booksellers invited Nichols to prepare a new edition incorporating his further collections and notes. This appeared in the same year, in nineteen volumes, embodying Sheridan's Life and following the general outline of the 1784 edition. Nichols's additions are, for the most part, to be found in vols. xviii and xix. This edition was republished in twenty-four volumes, 1804, and in nineteen volumes, 1808. The 1808 edition was indebted to suggestions from Malone and to the researches of Barrett's Essay on the Earlier Part of the Life of Swift. ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]}

To John Nichols's immense industry and energy all students of eighteenth-century literature, biography, and printing owe a large debt. In addition to many other activities he busied himself with Swift over a period of nearly fifty years; and there is an irony, which he felt himself, in the fact that his last edition was so quickly supplanted by that of Sir Walter Scott, who, as he remarks caustically, 'having made a solid breakfast on John Dryden, conceived the idea of a pleasant dinner and

[Page xlii]
supper on Jonathan Swift; which, from the entertainment I had prepared, he found a task of no great difficulty'. And it was a bitter reflection that Scott, who, in a 'brief compliment', could not even spell Nichols's name correctly, received for his one edition thirty times the remuneration the latter 'had received, or expected' for three. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]}

(xiii)

The anecdotal and other additions of Wilson's Swiftiana, 1804, were not of special importance; but both Nichols, in 1808, and Scott, in 1814, regarded the contributions of John Barrett, eccentric Greek scholar and Vice-Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, with unnecessary respect. The Essay on the Earlier Part of the Life of Swift was published in 1808 with a prefatory 'Advertisement' by Nichols. Barrett's Essay supplies interesting details from the registers of Trinity College, Dublin, relative to Swift's residence there. It proceeds to ascribe to Swift, upon strained evidence which Scott himself questioned, the composition of a Tripos ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} pronounced in the college in July, 1688. The text of the Tripos Barrett extracted from the manuscript collection in the library of Trinity College known as The Whimsical Medley; ^{[Footnote 3: 2Kb]}

(xiv)

The aggrieved Nichols characterized Scott's edition of Swift as 'somewhat similar' to his, and 'consisting of the same number of volumes' compiled by 'a neat shuffling of the cards'. The description is only just in so far as it is fair to admit that so extensive was the work done for Swift by Nichols that all editors must, from time to time, turn to him. Scott's acknowledgement might have been more generous. But the fact remains that his edition, carried through with the extraordinary pace he commanded, is even now, in some respects, the most useful working set of the Dean's complete writings. The letters have been superseded by Dr. Elrington Ball's great edition of the Correspondence; the prose-writings have been re-edited by Temple Scott; single works have been documented with a research to which Scott made no pretence; but, taken as a whole, his editions of 1814 and 1824 have not yet been displaced. The verse, especially, may be better consulted there than in the more recent edition of W. E. Browning, which, if it adds something to our knowledge, makes no attempt at a revision of the canon, is unreliable textually, is less complete than Scott, and is sometimes misleading.

Scott claimed, in the 'Advertisement' to his edition of 1814, to have included over one hundred letters, essays, and poems not previously printed as a part of Swift's Works. These were drawn from manuscript communications and collections received from Theophilus Swift, son of Deane Swift, Major Tickell, a grandson of Tickell the poet, Leonard Macnally, the discreditable Irish barrister and playwright, the Rev. Edward Berwick, who furnished the correspondence between Swift and Vanessa ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]}

[Page xliv]

Thomas Steele, a nephew of the Rev. John Lyon who had charge of Swift's person during the last years, W. M. Hartstonge, and others. The verse, with some attempt at arrangement by subject-matter, appears in vols. x, xiii, xiv, and xv. Poems additional to those printed in previous editions appear chiefly in the tenth volume. Verse ascriptions also appear in the Appendix to vol. i, including suggestions by Barrett from The Whimsical Medley, and other poems from the same source.

In his second edition Scott made some rearrangement of the contents and inserted additions from papers of Theophilus Swift, ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} which were saved by James Smith. These papers, bound in two folio volumes, are now in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. But the passages deleted from 'On Poetry: A Rapsody', ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} which are added in footnotes to Scott's second edition, do not appear to have been among these papers, and, unfortunately, he gives no indication of the source from which he derived them.

Scott's edition was hurried, and no endeavour was made to present a faithful text. Careful collation was not, in his day, regarded as part of an editor's duty. But, despite all shortcomings, his editions of Swift, together with those of Nichols, are of permanent value to the critic and scholar as well as good library sets for the general reader. Roscoe's slighting observations upon Scott are not without justification if we adopt an exacting standard, but his own popular edition of Swift in two ungainly volumes, 1841, can scarcely be accepted as an improvement; nor is there much evidence of the research and collation which he professed.

The text, the canon, and the arrangement of Swift's verse, as these were left by Scott, were appropriated in the handy Aldine Edition of the Poetical Works, 1833-4, and its reprints, and persist, with some modifications and additions, in the Poems as edited by W. E. Browning in two volumes, 1910, which were published to accompany Temple Scott's edition of the Prose Works.

(xv)

The extent and character of supplementary researches since the time of Scott, which throw light upon the canon and text of Swift's verse, are set out fully in their appropriate contexts, and here need only be summarized.

In 1849 Sir W. R. Wilde published his Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life. He was the first to make use of an interleaved copy of Harward's Almanack ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} and of a folio volume ^{[Footnote 2: 1Kb]} of manuscripts and broadsides now in the Huntington Library. He was, however, mistaken in supposing the writing in either volume to be in Swift's autograph, he was not an accurate transcriber, he was too ready in his attributions, and his work cannot be accepted as it stands.

In 1875 John Forster published the first, and only, volume of his Life of Swift in which he gave some account of discoveries he had made among the Fountaine papers at Narford. ^{[Footnote 3: 1Kb]} His statement was by no means complete. These manuscripts are now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

In the Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1882, cclii. 731-43, Churton Collins printed the 'Holyhead Journal' from the manuscript in the Forster Collection, South Kensington. In the same year this piece appeared as Appendix IX to Craik's Life of Swift. ^{[Footnote 4: 1Kb]}

Swift's Verse: An Essay, written by that true scholar, Dr. F. Elrington Ball, was the first genuine attempt to arrange the poems in their chronological order and to link them with the story of Swift's life. For this Dr. Ball was peculiarly fitted by his wide knowledge of Anglo-Irish history. It may be, as he declares in his preface, and as he confessed to the present writer, that 'circumstances rather than inclination' connected him with Swift; but, embarked on the task which fell to him, he carried it

[Page xlvi]
through in his great edition of the Correspondence and in his essay on the verse as no one else could have done.

In 1935 Professor D. Nichol Smith, in his edition of the Letters of Jonathan Swift to Charles Ford, printed from the Ford papers two poems, 'The Bubble' and 'To Charles Ford Esq.^r on his Birth-day', surviving in Swift's autograph, and four poems by Swift transcribed by Ford. ^{[Footnote 1: 1Kb]} The Ford transcripts reveal a singularly interesting secret. No one had suspected, although the patchwork now becomes apparent, that the poem printed by Faulkner as 'Stella at Wood-Park' was a combination of two separate pieces.

We are closer to Swift in his verse, and in his letters, than in his prose-writings. In Dr. Ball's words: 'Without knowledge of his verse a true picture of Swift cannot be drawn. In his verse he sets forth his life as in a panorama, he shows more clearly than in his prose his peculiar turn of thought, and he reveals his character in all its phases. ... Before the testimony of his verse the work of many of his biographers cannot stand.'

If the editor of these volumes has made easier the approach to Swift he will be happy in the consciousness of having continued the work of Dr. Ball. And if he is compelled on occasion to dissent from him, it is with fitting respect and regard. He must, however, place it on record that he cannot accept a number of the conjectural attributions proffered in Swift's Verse. Dr. Ball believed that, outside the acknowledged metrical pieces, and others tentatively assigned to Swift, a large number 'owed their origin to his inspiration if not to his pen'. There exist certainly poems written by others at Swift's suggestion; but these, shining with a reflected light, are no part of the central system. If anything the canon, as it has been expanded by previous editors, calls for curtailment. Nichols, Scott, and Barrett have been responsible for questionable accretions. And, beyond these, is an untidy heap of meaningless, fanciful attributions.

[Page xlvii]
An attempt has here been made to consider or note all these ascriptions so far as any purpose is served thereby. But it will be found that this edition has narrowed the boundary of the canon, a service to Swift which was long overdue. Nevertheless, doubtful poems are printed in full if they have a reasonable claim to recognition, or if they are elsewhere scarcely available. Conjectural attributions, supported by little or no evidence, are noted with a varying degree of consideration.

A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY

The following lists make no pretence to furnish a complete bibliography of Swift's verse writings. List A presents a conspectus of the manuscript collections, and single manuscripts, which have been used to correct and establish the text of his poems as printed in these volumes; list B miscellanies, collected works, and other publications, containing the text of poems, or contributions to textual, chronological, and bibliographical problems; list C some general sources of reference. In list B titles are set in roman type, abbreviated imprints in italic. Unauthorized collections have been ranged in their chronological order; but doubtful single works, fully discussed in their place, have been excluded.

A list of separate publications, in broadsheet or pamphlet form, would involve needless repetition of fuller details given with each poem; and this has not, therefore, been provided.

A MANUSCRIPT SOURCES INCLUDING PRINTED VOLUMES WITH ANNOTATIONS I. LIBRARIES

Trinity College, Dublin. MS. 879 [I. 5.1-3]: The Whimsical Medley: Three quarto volumes, containing transcripts of contemporary verse, latter part of the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth century, made for Theophilus, first Lord Newtown-Butler. MS. 1050 [I. 4. 7]: Contemporary transcript of 'The Legion Club, on seven octavo leaves. Two volumes (Press 3, and Press A. 7. 6³⁸) containing manuscript miscellanies.

Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. MS. 24. C. 31: A small quarto volume, bound in vellum, containing transcripts of verses in an unidentified hand. In the same volume are a letter (7 Oct. 1737, to Lord Mayor Walker), and accounts relating to 1734-5, both in Swift's hand.

Forster Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. The valuable collection made by John Forster in preparation for his Life of Swift. Contains many MSS. in Swift's hand; papers by Percy, Malone, and others; transcripts, collations, and notes by Forster. Also a copy of Hawkesworth's Life of Swift, 1755, with marginal annotations by Dr. Lyon.

British Museum, London. Add. MSS. 4804-6: Journal to Stella and correspondence. Add. MS. 39839: Swift and Vanessa correspondence. Also a few further MSS., Add., Lansdowne, Harley, and Stowe; including the Marmaduke Coghill and Edward Southwell correspondence, which throws some light on the history of verse pieces.

Goldsmiths' Library, Imperial Institute, South Kensington. A copy of the Hibernian Patriot, 1730, with a couplet added in the hand of Lady Acheson (?).

Bodleian Library, Oxford. MS. Malone 37. On ff. 68-98 contains matter which appeared in Barrett's Essay on the earlier Part of the Life of Swift, 1808.

University Library, Cambridge. Contemporary transcripts in the Bradshaw Collection. See pp. 769, 801.

John Rylands Library, Manchester. English MS. 659. See pp. 662-4.

Sir Walter Scott's Library, Abbotsford. Principal Library, Press N. Shelf 7: A 12mo volume containing transcripts of poems by Swift in an unidentified hand. The volume was presented to Scott by a Mr. Bembridge, as being in Swift's hand. The copies are certainly neither by Swift, nor by Stella, as Scott conjectures. A collection made about the middle of the eighteenth century. The volume has no textual value.

Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Contains the valuable Fountaine MSS., for nearly two hundred years preserved at Narford, in Norfolk. Five poems in this collection are in Swift's hand. See further pp. 61, 78, 85, 88, 122. Manuscripts from the Ford papers are also in the library. See p. 744.

Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts. MS. Eng. 218. 2: Orrery Papers. MS. Eng. 218. 14: A copy of

[Page l]
Orrery's Remarks, 1752, annotated by the author. Also MS. Eng. 629 F: A verse miscellany.

Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Two miscellaneous volumes of Swiftiana salvaged by James Smith, after the death of Theophilus Swift. See the 'Advertisement', p. ix, to Scott's second edition of Swift's Works, 1824. The papers were at one time in the possession of Frederick Locker, who bound them. Later they were in the library of William Bixley of St. Louis, from whom Mr. Huntington bought them. Also a volume of annotated broadsheets and manuscripts (113198-259) first used by W. R. Wilde in his Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life, and mistakenly supposed by him to be in Swift's hand.

II. PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

Mrs. Baker, Malahow, Naul, Co. Dublin. A copy of Harward's Almanack, 1666, with transcripts of poems erroneously supposed to be in Swift's hand. For a description of this volume and its contents see pp. 1058-63. This book was formerly in the possession of the Christie family, at Newtown House, Swords, co. Dublin.

Shirley Library, Lough Fea, Co. Monaghan, Ireland. A set of Faulkner's edition of Swift's Works, six volumes, 1737-8, with textual annotations in Swift's hand. It is doubtful whether any of the notes or markings are by Swift, save those in vol. ii, which contains the verses, and even these are of little textual importance. The set is of value, however, in showing that Swift substantially approved of Faulkner's edition.

Mr. Shane Leslie, Glaslough, Co. Monaghan, Ireland. A commonplace book belonging to Florence O'Crowley, an Irish priest, and evidently in use by him from about 1736 onward. See further The Irish Book Lover, vol. xxi, no. 3, July-August, 1933. Contains transcripts of Swift's 'Advice to a Parson' and epigram on Hort (pp. 807-9). Also ascribes to him three doubtful pieces. See pp. 1115, 1137, 1138.

Duke of Bedford, Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire. A volume containing transcripts of Swift's poems carefully written by Stella. This book has eighty-five leaves, not counting binder's fly leaves, two in number. The format is small quarto, the leaves measuring 19.8 × 15.5 cm.; and the binding is eighteenth century calf with gilt back.

The volume contains a note by the fourth Duke of Bedford: 'This Manuscript was given me, by S^r Archibald Acheson at Bath 9.^ber 2.^d 1768. It was given to his Father, by the Dean of S^t Patrick, and is of the hand writing of Stella, M^rs Johnson. B.'

Only forty leaves have been used for the transcripts. The book contains nineteen pieces, of which eighteen are copies by Stella. The last piece, 'On the five Lady's at Sots-hole and the Doctor at their head', is in a different and unidentified handwriting.

Duke of Portland, Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire. Several contemporary transcripts of poems by Swift among the Harley Papers.

Marquis of Bath, Longleat, Wiltshire. Portland Papers, vols. xi, xiii, xvii, xviii, xix, xx. Verses in Swift's autograph, and contemporary transcripts.

Mr. Victor Rothschild, Merton Hall, Cambridge. Letters and papers belonging to Charles Ford, Swift's friend, passed, on Ford's death, into the possession of Sir John Hynde Cotton, his executor, and were long preserved at Madingley Hall, Cambridge. They came, through the Cotton family, to Mrs. Rowley Smith of Shortgrove. See Letters of Jonathan Swift to Charles Ford, ed. D. Nichol Smith, 1935, p. vii. Among these papers are six of Swift's poems, two, 'The Bubble' and 'To Charles Ford Esq^r. on his Birth-day', in Swift's hand, and four in the handwriting of Charles Ford. See pp. 78, 248, 309, 459, 744.

A copy of the Pope and Swift Miscellanies, 4 vols. 1727-32, with many corrections in Swift's hand. Previously in the libraries of Viscount Powerscourt, and of Mr. W. G. Panter, The Bawn, Foxrock, co. Dublin.

The Rev. J. Longe, Yelverton Rectory, Norfolk. Among papers at Yelverton, which have come down from the family of Sir William. Temple, are 'A description of Mother Ludwell's cave' (see p. 1068), and a contemporary copy of 'The Journal' (see p. 276).

Lord Mount Temple, Broadlands, Romsey, Hants. Among Lord Mount Temple's MSS. are copies of 'Apollo to the Dean', and two sets of verses written on the windows of St. Patrick's Deanery (see pp. 259, 262).

Mr. Harold Williams, Aspenden House, Buntingford, Herts. Two contemporary manuscripts of 'The Legion Club'; and two copies of Faulkner's editions of 'Verses on the Death of

[Page lii]
Dr. Swift' with the blanks, in text and notes, completed in contemporary hands. Also a copy of the first edition of 'On Poetry: A Rapsody' with the rejected lines added in the hand of Lord Orrery.

Miscellaneous. A few other manuscripts have been used---the holograph of Swift's lines 'From Catullus' (see p. 679); lines written in a copy of Le Sage's Devil upon Two Sticks (see p. 1139); and lines in a copy of Pope's Iliad (see p. 1136).

B MISCELLANIES, COLLECTED WORKS, BIOGRAPHIES, CRITICISM, &c.

1692 The Supplement to the Fifth Volume of the Athenian Gazette; ... London, Printed for John Dunton ... [1692]. The Gentleman's Journal: Or the Monthly Miscellany [Feby., June, and July, 1692]. Ed. P. A. Motteux.

1707 The Muses Mercury: Or The Monthly Miscellany. ... London, Printed by J. H. for Andrew Bell, ... 1707. [April-June, 1707.]

1709 Baucis and Philemon; A Poem On the ever lamented Loss Of the two Yew-Trees, In the Parish of Chilthorne, ... Together with Mrs. Harris's Earnest Petition. ... London: Printed and Sold by H. Hills ... 1709. [Another edn. 1710.]

The Works of the Right Honourable The Earls of Rochester, And Roscommon ... The Third Edition. To which is added, A Collection of Miscellany Poems. ... London: ... E. Curll,...1709

Poetical Miscellanies: The Sixth Part ... London, Printed for Jacob Tonson, ... 1709.

The Tatler. ... Sold by John Morphew ... [No. 9, 30 April, 1709; No. 238, 17 October, 1710; and No. 301, 13 March, 1710-11].

1710 A Meditation upon a Broom-Stick, And Somewhat Beside; Of the Same Author's. ... London: Printed for E. Curll, ... 1710. [The B.M. Copy of this pamphlet (C. 28. b. 11⁵) has on the title a note in Curll's handwriting: 'Given me by John Cliffe Esq.; who had them of the Bp. of Killala, in Ireland, whose Daughter he married & was my Lodger.---E Curll'.]

1711 Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. London: Printed for John Morphew, ... MDCCXI. [The first authorized collection of Swift's prose and verse. 2nd edn. 1713.]

Miscellanies by Dr. Jonathan Swift. ... London, Printed for E. Curll, ... 1711.

1714 A Collection of Original Poems, Translations, and Imitations, by Mr. Prior, Mr. Rowe, Dr. Swift, And other Eminent Hands. ... London: Printed for E. Curll, ... 1714.

1718 Letters, Poems, and Tales, Amorous, Satirical; and Gallant. ... London: Printed for E. Curll ... 1718.

1719 Ars Punica, sive Flos Linguarum: The Art of Punning; Or the Flower of Languages; ... Dublin: Printed by and for James Carson, ... 1719. [Also London edns., Roberts, in the same year.]

1720 A Defence of English Commodities. ... To which is Annexed, An Elegy upon the much lamented Death of Mr. Demar, ... Printed at Dublin: And Reprinted at London, by J. Roberts ... MDCCXX.

The Swearer's-Bank: ... (With The Best in Christendom. A Tale.) Written by Dean Swift. ... Reprinted at London by J. Roberts. ...

Miscellaneous Works, Comical & Diverting: By T. R. D. J. S. D. O. P. I. I. In Two Parts. I. The Tale of a Tub; ... II. Miscellanies in Prose & Verse, ... London, Printed by Order of the Society de propagando, & c. M.DCC.XX.

1721 Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. The Fourth Edition, ... Dublin: Printed by S. Fairbrother, ... 2721 [sic].

A Miscellaneous Collection of Poems, Songs and Epigrams. By several Hands. Publish'd by T. M. Gent ... Dublin: Printed by A. Rhames, 1721. 2 vols.

1722 Miscellanies, Written by Jonathan Swift, D.D. ... The Fourth Edition. London: Printed in the Year M.DCC.XXII.

1724 Miscellaneous Poems, Original and Translated, By Several Hands. ... Published by Mr. Concanen. ... London: Printed for J. Peele,...MDCCXXIV.

1725 Fraud Detected. Or, The Hibernian Patriot. ... Dublin: Re-printed and Sold by George Faulkner ... 1725.

A New Collection Of Poems On Several Occasions, By Mr. Prior, and Others ... London: Printed for Tho. Osborne, ... MDCCXXV.

1726 Miscellanea. In Two Volumes. Never before Published. ... London: Printed in the Year, 1727. [Published July, 1726.]

Whartoniana: Or Miscellanies, In Verse and Prose. By the Wharton Family, ... Printed in the Year, 1727. 2 vols. [Published September, 1726. Re-issued as The Poetical Works of Philip Late Duke of Wharton.]

1727-8. Miscellanies In Prose and Verse. The First Volume. London: Printed for Benjamin Motte, ... M.dcc.xxvii.

Miscellanies. The Second Volume. London: Printed for Benjamin Motte ... M DCC XXVII.

Miscellanies. The Last Volume. ... London: Printed for B. Motte, ... 1727. [The 'First' and 'Second' volumes were published in June, 1727; the 'Last' volume in March, 1728. The first three volumes of the famous Pope and Swift Miscellanies, and edited by the former. They were variously reprinted; and continued with 'The Third Volume', 1732, and 'Volume the Fifth', 1735.]

1728 Miscellanies In Prose and Verse. In Two Volumes. ... London Printed, and Re-printed in Dublin, By and for Sam. Fairbrother, ... 1728. [Reprinted 1732; a third volume added in 1733, and a fourth in 1735.]

Gulliveriana: Or, A Fourth Volume of Miscellanies. ... London: Printed for J. Roberts, ... M.DCC.XXVIII.

The Intelligencer. Numb. I Saturday. May, 11, To be Continued Weekly, Dublin: Printed by S. Harding, ... 172 [8]. [Continued for twenty numbers inclusive. London collected editions, A. Moor, 1729, Francis Cogan, 1730.]

1729 Miscellaneous Poems, By Several Hands: ... Publish'd by Mr. Ralph. London: Printed by C. Ackers, ... Mdccxxix.

1730 The Metamorphosis Of The Town: ... To which is added, The Journal of a Modern Lady. ... By Dr. Swift. ... London: Printed for J. Wilford, ... Mdccxxx. [Later edns. 1731, 1743.]

An Epistle To His Excellency John Lord Carteret ... To which is added, an Epistle upon an Epistle; ... Dublin: Printed, in the Year 1730.

A Satire On Dr. D---ny. ... To which is added, the Poem which occasion'd it. Printed at Dublin: And Re-printed at London, for A. Moore, ... M DCC XXX.

A Libel On Dr. D---ny, ... The Second Edition. Printed at

[Page lv]
Dublin: And Re-printed at London, for A. Moore. M DCC XXX. [Another edn., 1730, Reprinted for Capt. Gulliver.]

A Vindication of the Libel On Dr. Delany, ... Together with a Panegyric On Dean Sw---t; ... Dublin: Printed, London: Re-printed for J. Wilford ... M.DCC.XXX.

Select Poems from Ireland: Part I. [Part II.] ... Printed at Dublin: London, Reprinted and Sold by T. Warner ... M.DCC.XXX.

The Hibernian Patriot: ... To which are added, Poems and Songs ... Printed at Dublin. London: Reprinted and Sold by A. Moor ... MDCCXXX. [Reprinted from Fraud Detected, 1725, with alterations and additions.]

Poems On Several Occasions. ... By Jonathan Smedley, Dean of Clogher. ... London: Printed in the Year M.DCC.XXX.

1731 A Proposal Humbly offer'd to the P---t, ... To which is added, The Humble Petition of the Weavers. ... As also two Poems, viz. Helter Skelter, ... and The Place of the Damn'd. Dublin Printed. London, Re-printed for J. Roberts ... MDCCXXXI. [2nd edn. 1732.]

The Flower-Piece: A Collection Of Miscellany Poems. By Several Hands. ... London; Printed for J. Walthoe ... and H. Walthoe, ... M.DCC.XXXI. [Republished 1733.]

1732 The Grand Question debated: Whether Hamilton's Bawn Should be turn'd into a Barrack, or a Malt-house. ... London Printed for A. Moore. And, Dublin Re-printed by George Faulkner ... M,dcc,xxxii.

The Lady's Dressing Room. To which is added, A Poem on Cutting down the Old Thorn at Market Hill. ... London, Printed for J. Roberts ... MDCCXXXII. [2nd edn. in the same year.]

An Elegy On Dicky and Dolly, ... To which is Added The Narrative of D. S. when he was in the North of Ireland. Dublin: Printed by James Hoey, ... MDCCXXXII.

Miscellanies. The Third Volume. London: Printed for Benj. Motte, ... and Lawton Gilliver ... 1732. [Variously reprinted. See under 1727-8.]

1733 The Drapier's Miscellany. ... Dublin: Printed by and for James Hoey, ... 1733. [At least three editions.]

The Presbyterians Plea of Merit; ... To which is added, An Ode to Humphry French, Esq; ... London: Reprinted from the Dublin Edition, for G. F. and Sold by A. Dodd, ...

1734 Miscellanies. Consisting chiefly of Original Pieces in Prose and Verse. ... Dublin Printed. London: Reprinted for A. Moore ... 1734. [Two edns.]

An Epistle to a Lady, ... Also A Poem, Occasion'd by Reading Dr. Young's Satires, ... Dublin, Printed: And Reprinted at London for J. Wilford, ... M.DCC.XXXIV.

A New Miscellany For the Year 1734. Part I.

An Account Of A Strange and Wonderful Apparition Lately Seen in Trinity-College, Dublin. ... Printed in the Year Mdccxxxiv.

Mezentius on the Rack ... Printed in the Year Mdccxxxiv.

A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed. ... To which are added, Strephon and Chloe. And Cassinus and Peter. Dublin printed: London reprinted for J. Roberts ... MDCCXXXIV.

1734 (?) The History of John Bull. And Poems on several Occasions, ... Sold by D. Midwinter and A. Tonson in the Strand.

1734-5 The Works of J. S, D. D, D. S. P. D. in Four Volumes. Containing, I. The Author's Miscellanies in Prose. II. His Poetical Writings. III. The Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver. IV. His Papers relating to Ireland, ... Dublin: Printed by and for George Faulkner, ... M DCC XXXV. [Issued Nov. 1734-Jany. 1735. Another edn. of vol. ii in 1737. The set increased to six volumes in 1738, with some additional verse pieces in vol. vi. Gradually extended to twenty volumes, 1772. Vol. viii, 1746, contained more verse. The chief verse addition thereafter was in 1762; reprinted in the London edition of the Works in the same year.]

1735 Miscellanies, In Prose and Verse. Volume the Fifth. ... London: Printed for Charles Davis, ... MDCCXXXV. [See under 1727-8. This volume is based on Faulkner.]

A Collection of Poems, &c. Omitted in the Fifth Volume of Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. London: Printed for Charles Davis, ... MDCCXXXV.

Miscellaneous Poems on Several Occasions. By Mr. Dawson, ... And a Copy of Verses Spoke Extempore by Dean Swift upon his Curate's Complaint of hard Duty. ... 1735.

1736 The Poetical Works, Of J. S. D. D. D. S. P. D. ... Reprinted from the Second Dublin Edition, with Notes and Additions. ... Printed in the Year. MDCCXXXVI.

S---t contra Omnes. An Irish Miscellany. ... London ... Mrs. Dod ...

Miscellanies ... London: Printed for Benjamin Motte, and Charles Bathurst, ... MDCCXXXVI. [6 vols., 12mo, 1736, a trade venture, with other printers' names in later volumes. Vols. vii, viii, and ix added, T. Cooper, 1742. The first extension of the Pope and Swift Miscellanies, 1727-8-32-35, into sets which developed into Swift's works.]

1739 A Supplement to Dr. Swift's And Mr. Pope's Works. ... Dublin: Printed by S. Powell, For Edward Exshaw ... Mdccxxxix.

1740 Poems on Various Subjects, ... By Laurence Whyte. ... Dublin: Printed by S. Powell, And Sold by L. Dowling, ... M DCC XL.

1742 Miscellanies. In Four Volumes. ... The Fourth Edition Corrected: ... Vol. I. By Dr. Swift. London: Printed for Charles Bathurst, ... MDCCXLII. [A further trade development of the Miscellanies. Other printers' names in subsequent volumes. Extended to eleven volumes, 1742-6; and followed by reprints of varying dates, 1747, 1749, 1750, 1751, 1753.]

A New Miscellany In Prose and Verse. Containing, Several Pieces never before made public. By the Reverend Dr. Swift, ... And other Eminent Hands. London: Printed for T. Read, ... Mdccxlii.

1744 The Muse in Good Humour. Or, a Collection of Comic Tales, &c ... London: Printed for J. Noble, ... 1744. [Other edns. 1745, 1751, 1766; a second volume, 1757.]

1746 The Story Of The Injured Lady. ... With Letters and Poems. ... Printed for M. Cooper, ... MDCCXLVI.

1749 Poems on Several Occasions, from Genuine Manuscripts of Dean Swift, ... London: Printed for J. Bromage, ... 1749.

1750 (?) The Poetical Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift, ... In Two Volumes. ... London: Sold by A. Manson, R. Dilton, J. Thomson, H. Gray, T. Nelson, and P. Bland. [A trade edition, not earlier than 1745.]

1750 A Supplement To The Works of The Most celebrated Minor Poets ... To which are added, Pieces omitted in the Works of ... Dean Swift. London: Printed for F. Cogan, ... MDCCL.

1751 The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift, ... Vol. I. ... London: Printed for C. Bathurst, ... MDCCLI. [Fourteen volumes, 12mo. The first four vols. and vols. vi, and viii, carry the name of Bathurst only; other names added, or differing names, in subsequent volumes.]

1752 A Supplement to the Works of Dr. Swift. London: Printed for F. Cogan, ... 1752.

Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, ... In a Series of Letters from John Earl of Orrery To his Son, the Honourable Hamilton Boyle. ... London, Printed for A. Millar, ... MDCCLII. [Several further London edns. in the same year, and Dublin edns., Printed by George Faulkner.]

1754 The Dreamer. ... London: Printed for W. Owen, ... MDCCLIV. [By Dr. William King. Contains the first printing of 'Paulus' and 'The Answer'.]

Observations Upon Lord Orrery's Remarks ... To which are added, Two Original Pieces of the same author ... London, Printed: And Sold by W. Reeve ... MDCCLIV. [By Delany.]

Poems on Various Subjects: Viz. The Legion Club, by D---n S---t. ... Glasgow: Printed by Sawney McPherson. M.DCC.LIV. [Another edn. 1756.]

1754-5. The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. ... Accurately revised In Six Volumes, ... London, Printed for C. Bathurst, ... MDCCLV. [Edited by Hawkesworth, for the London trade, in opposition to Faulkner's Dublin edn. of the Works. The six volumes 4to also appeared as twelve volumes large and small 8vo. Gradually extended, 1755-79, to fourteen, twenty-five, and twenty-seven volumes respectively. Additions to the verse were made in 1762-4 by Bowyer, from Faulkner, 1762; by Deane Swift in 1765; and by Nichols in his Supplement, 1776 and 1779. This trade edn. was the basis of Sheridan's edn. of the Works, 1784, and Nichols, 1801. It was also used by Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dublin publishers, whose edns. have no independent value, and are not here noted.]

1755 An Essay upon the Life, Writings, and Character, Of Dr. Jonathan Swift. ... By Deane Swift, Esq; ... London, Printed for Charles Bathurst, ... MDCCLV.

1767 An Appendix To Dr. Swift's Works ... London, Printed for W. B. and sold by S. Bladon, ... MDCCLXVII.

1770 (?) The Trader's Garland, Composed of Five Excellent

[Page lix]
New Songs. ... Licensed and entered according tn [sic] order.

1776 Additions to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq. Together with Many Original Poems and Letters, Of Cotemporary Writers, Never Before Published. In Two Volumes. ... London: Printed for H. Baldwin, ... 1776.

1779 The Works of the English Poets. With Prefaces, ... by Samuel Johnson. ... [Vols. 39 and 40 contain Swift's Poems; but this trade edition has no textual or editorial value.]

1780-2. A Select Collection of Poems: With Notes Biographical and Historical. ... London: Printed By and For J. Nichols, ... [Eight volumes.]

1784 The Works of the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift, ... Arranged, Revised, and Corrected, with Notes, By Thomas Sheridan, A.M. A New Edition, in Seventeen Volumes. London: Printed for C. Bathurst, ... M DCC LXXXIV. [See under 1754-5.]

1789 Miscellaneous Pieces, In Prose and Verse. By the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift, ... Not Inserted in Mr. Sheridan's Edition Of the Dean's Works. London: Printed for C. Dilly, ... MDCCLXXXIX.

Literary Relics: Containing Original Letters from ... Swift, To which is prefixed, An Inquiry into the Life of Dean Swift. By George-Monck Berkeley, Esq.; ... London: Printed for C. Elliot ... M,DCC,LXXXIX. [2nd edn. 1792.]

1801 The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin. Arranged by Thomas Sheridan, ... A New Edition, In Nineteen Volumes; Corrected and Revised By John Nichols, ... London: Printed for J. Johnson, J. Nichols, ...1801. [See under 1784. Further edns., 1803, 24 vols., 1808, 19 vols.]

1804 Swiftiana. Vol. I. [Vol. II.] ... Printed for Richard Phillips, 71, St. Pauls Church Yard. 1804.

1806-7 The Poetical Works of Jonathan Swift; ... by Thomas Park, Esq. F.S.A. In Four Volumes. ... London: Printed at the Stanhope Pres, by Charles Whittingham, ... 1806-7. [No independent value.]

1808 An Essay On The Earlier Part of the Life of Swift. By the Rev. John Barrett, D.D. ... To Which are Subjoined Several Pieces Ascribed to Swift; ... London: Printed for J. Johnson; J. Nichols and Son;...1808.

1814 The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin; Containing Additional Letters, Tracts, and Poems, Not Hitherto Published; With Notesand A Life of the Author, By Walter Scott, Esq ... Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co. ... 1814. [In nineteen volumes. A 2nd edn. in nineteen volumes, 1824, containing further additions. Reprinted in nineteen volumes, 1883.]

1822 [The British Poets. Vols. 37-9.] The Poems of Jonathan Swift. ... Chiswick: From the Press of C. Whittingham, College House. [No independent value.]

1833-4. The Poetical Works of Jonathan Swift. [Aldine Edition.] ... London William Pickering. [In three volumes, based on Scott's 2nd edn., 1824. Further edns. 1853, 1866.]

1841 The Works of Jonathan Swift, ... Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published. In Two Volumes. With Memoirs of the Author, by Thomas Roscoe; ... London: Henry Washbourne, ... 1841. [A number of later edns.]

1849 The Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life; ... By W. R. Wilde, ... Dublin: Hodges and Smith. ... 1849. [2nd edn. in the same year.]

1875 The Life of Jonathan Swift. By John Forster. Volume the First. 1667-1711. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1875.

1882 The Life of Jonathan Swift ... By Henry Craik, M.A. ... London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1882. [2nd edn. 1894, 2 vols.]

1897-1908. The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Edited by Temple Scott ... London George Bell and Sons. [Ten volumes.]

1910 The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Edited by William Ernst Browning ... London G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. 1910. [Two volumes.]

1910-14. The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Edited by F. Elrington Ball ... London G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. [Six volumes.]

1921 Vanessa And Her Correspondence with Jonathan Swift ... With an Introduction by A. Martin Freeman ... London Selwyn & Blount, Ltd.

1929 Swift's Verse An Essay By F. Elrington Ball, Litt. D. ... London John Murray, Albemarle Street, W.

1931 Studies in English ... The University of Toronto Press 1931. [Contains an essay on 'Swift's View of Poetry' by Herbert Davis.]

1934 Swift Gulliver's Travels and Selected Writings in Prose & Verse. Ed. John Hayward. Nonesuch Press, Bloomsbury, 1934.

1935 The Letters of Jonathan Swift to Charles Ford. Ed. D. Nichol Smith ... Oxford At the Clarendon Press MCMXXXV. [Prints six of Swift's poems from the Ford papers,---two from Swift's autograph.]

1935 The Drapier's Letters to the People of Ireland ... Ed. Herbert Davis. Oxford At the Clarendon Press MCMXXXV. [Contains notes and bibliographical detail relative to verses connected with the Drapier.]

C MISCELLANEOUS BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND TEXTUAL AIDS

In addition to eighteenth-century periodicals specifically mentioned in the preceding list useful information has been derived from Abel Boyer's Political State of Great Britain, the Gentleman's Magazine, London Magazine, and European Magazine. At a later date valuable communications have appeared in Notes and Queries, The Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer, The Times Literary Supplement, the Review of English Studies, the Book-Collector's Quarterly, and other publications.

The published correspondence and memoirs of Swift's contemporaries, the various reports of the Historical Manuscripts' Commission, Nichols's Literary Anecdotes and Literary Illustrations throw light upon dates, ascriptions, and other matters.

Sale catalogues of libraries dispersed during the last two centuries have been laid under contribution.

The Catalogue of the Bradshaw Collection of Irish Books in the University Library Cambridge and the Catalogue of the Books & Manuscripts Comprising the Library of the late Sir John T. Gilbert, a collection now in the keeping of the City of Dublin, are valuable reference works for all students of Dublin printed books,

[Page lxii]
pamphlets, and broadsheets; and Sir J. T. Gilbert's scholarly History of the City of Dublin contains occasional notices of printers and their publications. To these should be added Plomer's Dictionary of Booksellers and Printers, which contains, in the 1726-75 volume, a section devoted to Irish printers, booksellers, and stationers, compiled by Mr. E. R. M^c C. Dix.

The Early Odes

For the periods of Swift's residences under the roof of Sir William Temple at Moor Park consult Forster's Life, ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} pp. 53-103, Craik's Life, 2nd edn., i. 26-94, and Lecky's 'Biographical Introduction' to Temple Scott's edition of the Prose Works, i, pp. xv-xxii.

It is at this time, when Swift was between twenty-two and twenty-three years old, that we meet with the earliest essays in the art of verse which are, beyond doubt, authentically his. Cowley's attempts to transplant the pindaric ode set a fashion, and, in common with others, Swift was beguiled into imitation. The first of his pindarics to appear in print was his 'Ode to the Athenian Society', published in The Supplement to the Fifth Volume of the Athenian Gazette, 1692; the second, if it be Swift's, was the 'Ode to the King on his Irish Expedition', printed in vol. iv of Fairbrother's Miscellanies, 1735; the third was the 'Ode to Sir William Temple', printed in vol. x of the Miscellanies, 1745; the fourth was the 'Ode to Dr. William Sancroft', included by Nichols in Miscellaneous Pieces, 1789.

In a group with these are two odes, or addresses, in heroic couplets, also first printed in 1789, the ode 'To Mr. Congreve', and that 'Occasioned by Sir William Temple's late Illness and Recovery'.

An 'Ode to King William on his Successes in Ireland', composed in quatrains, was rescued by Nichols from The Gentleman's Journal for July, 1692, and attributed to Swift; but there is good reason to suppose that the ode written in honour of King William was in pindaric form, and that the authentic ode is that printed by Fairbrother in 1735.

The odes are here arranged in their order of composition, not that of publication.

Apparently also, in these early days, Swift began another ode called 'The Poet', from which he quotes in the ode 'To Mr. Congreve' (see p. 49 n.). In a letter of 3 May, 1692, he speaks of a translation of Virgil which he was then attempting, and refers to a poem called 'the Ramble' (Corresp. i. 365-6). These three pieces have not been traced.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: ODE to the KING. On his Irish Expedition. AND The Success of his Arms in general. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

Written in the Year 1691.

[1]  The troubles following upon the revolution led to an exodus of refugees from Ireland; and with them came Swift early in 1689. After a visit to his mother at Leicester he entered the household of Sir William Temple at Moor Park before the close of the same year. In May, 1690, he returned to Ireland armed with a letter (Corresp. i. 1) of recommendation from Temple to Sir Robert Southwell, Secretary of State. He was back in England about August, 1691; and, after visits to Leicester and Oxford, he reached Moor Park in December.

[2]  On 1 July (o.s.), 1690, while Swift was in Ireland, was sought the battle of the Boyne. He is known to have written an ode celebrating William's Irish successes, composed presumably 1690-1. In his 'Ode to the Athenian Society' he refers to 'an Humble Chaplet for the King', and explains the allusion with a marginal note,---'The Ode I writ to the King in Ireland'. Furthermore, Deane Swift, writing 7 June, 1778, says that 'five or six and forty years ago' Mrs. Whiteway showed him the Dean's 'Ode to King William', apparently in printed form, but that, owing to its 'Pindarique way' he was unable to drudge through more than fifty or sixty lines of it (Nichols's Literary Illustrations, v. 382). He had previously in his Essay on the Life of Swift, 1755, p. 118, counted the 'Ode to King William' with the pindarics, although he was mistaken in supposing that it had appeared in the Athenian Oracle. But when as an editor, in 1765, he added a number of verse pieces hitherto omitted from the Works he made no attempt to recover the ode addressed to King William, perhaps because he regarded it as unreadable.

[3]  In 1780, however, the industrious John Nichols, in his Select Collection of Poems, printed an 'Ode to King William, On his Successes in Ireland', with the following footnote: 'With much pleasure I here present to the publick an Ode which had long been sought after without success. That it is Swift's, I have not the least doubt; ... He refers to it in the second stanza of his "Ode to the Athenian Society", ... See the "English Poets",

[Page 5]
vol. xxxix, p. 10; and "The Gentleman's Journal", July, 1692, p. 13.' At the reference given by Nichols to Johnson's English Poets a footnote merely states that the ode to the king 'cannot now be recovered'; in The Gentleman's Journal, loc. cit., appears the poem which Nichols claimed for Swift. It is entitled 'TO THE KING', and a prefatory note informs the reader that 'I have here some Verses upon the KING's Success in Ireland: You will find that tho they were written long ago, they carry their Recommendation by their Value, and it had been Pity to have conceal'd them, as their Author does himself'. Following upon the text of the poem, which runs to twelve four-line stanzas, some clue is offered to the author: 'I need not tell you that the Gentleman that wrote these Verses, hath merited highly the name of Vates in every respect. The intire Reduction of Ireland, and our late Victory over the French at Sea, make it obvious enough'. This does not carry us very far; but, if anything, suggests reference to an older and better-known person than was Swift at the time. Nor does the poem in the least resemble the ode which Deane Swift avers that he and Mrs. Whiteway understood to be Swift's. It is not pindaric in form; and it does not run to the fifty or sixty lines after which Deane Swift desisted from reading. Furthermore, we know that at this time Swift was immersed in ambitious imitations of Cowley. An ode to the king would almost certainly have been thrown into pindaric form, as he understood it. And, if it were, we should get the most probable grouping of his six early odes. Four in pindarics would then be followed by two in heroic couplets, ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} suggesting that he had learned to abandon a form unnatural to him. There is indeed no evidence to support Nichols's confident attribution to Swift of the poem he unearthed from The Gentleman's Journal. He included it, however, as Swift's, in the volume of Miscellaneous Pieces, 1789, which was published as a supplement to Sheridan's edition of the Dean's Works, 1784, whence it has been adopted by subsequent editors.

[4]  Between 1728 and 1735 Samuel Fairbrother, the Dublin printer, published four volumes of Miscellanies, the earlier volumes drawn from the Swift and Pope miscellany volumes published in London, the fourth extracted from the edition of Swift's Works in four volumes published in Dublin, by Faulkner, in 1735. Fairbrother claimed, over and above his borrowings from Faulkner, to have added in his fourth volume several poems 'taken from the D---ns own Original Manuscripts'. An examination of the verse section of his 1735 volume leaves no doubt that he had access to manuscripts unused by Faulkner. ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} The first poem printed by him is a pindaric 'Ode to the King on his Irish Expedition'. Its turgid style reads uncommonly like Swift's other attempts in the same form; and

[Page 6]
it is reasonable to believe that this is the lost ode for which Nichols and others sought in vain. It has the merit also of answering to Deane Swift's description.

[5]  This may be Swift's lost ode, and Nichols was probably wrong; but convincing evidence is lacking. Both pieces are, therefore, here printed, the pindaric ode first, as it appeared in Vol. IV. of the Miscellanies Begun by Jonathan Swift, D.D. and Alexander Pope, Esq. ... Dublin, Printed by and for Samuel Fairbrother, ... 1735, Verse section, pp. 1-6.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: ODE to KING WILLIAM, ON HIS SUCCESSES IN IRELAND [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  The Gentleman's Journal: Or the Monthly Miscellany, July, 1692, p. 13. The Whimsical Medley, ii. 391. [Ref. W.M.]

[2]  A Select Collection of Poems: ... London: Printed by and for J. Nichols, Red Lion Passage, Fleet-Street. MDCCLXXX. iv. 303.

[3]  Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse. By the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift, ... Not inserted in Mr. Sheridan's Edition of the Dean's Works. London: Printed for C. Dilly, in the Poultry. MDCCLXXXIX. p. 239.

[4]  The text of this ode, attributed to Swift by Nichols, and since included in editions of the Dean's Works, is reprinted from The Gentleman's Journal, 1692. The poem found a place in the manuscript miscellany, The Whimsical Medley, preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. The poem is there headed,

[5]  'On King William's Success in Ireland.

[6]  To the King.'

[7]  Two variants in the manuscript are noted.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: ODE TO THE Athenian Society. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  The Supplement to the Fifth volume of the Athenian Gazette; ... London, Printed for John Dunton at the Raven in the Poultry, ... [1691-2], p. 1.

[2]  A Supplement to the Athenian Oracle: ... London, Printed for Andrew Bell, ... 1710. p. 111.

[3]  Sphinx: A Poem, Ascrib'd to Certain Anonymous Authors. By the Rev'd. Dean S---T. ... Dublin: Printed in the Year 1724-5.

[4]  The Athenian Oracle: ... Vol. IV. The Third Edition. ... London, ... MDCCXXVIII. p. 111.

[5]  Miscellanies. The Tenth Volume. By Dr. Swift. London: Printed for R. Dodsley in Pall-mall. M.DCC.XLV. p. 178 (1750, p. 178).

[6]  Miscellanies, 1751, xiii. 175.

[7]  The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., ed. Hawkesworth, 1755, 4to, iv (1), 229.

[8]  With this ode (if we ignore doubtful attributions) Swift saw himself in print for the first time. The poem was 'rough drawn in a week, and finished in two days after' (Corresp. i. 363). It was published by John Dunton, in the supplement to the Fifth Volume of the Athenian Gazette, early in 1692, prefaced with a letter from Swift, dated from Moor Park. The Athenian Gazette, renamed the Athenian Mercury, was a periodical published weekly from 17 March, 1689-90, to 8 February, 1695-6, resolving all queries addressed to it by correspondents. In 1710, and again in 1728, the ode was reprinted in a fourth, and supplementary, volume of selections from the Athenian Gazette, of which three volumes first appeared in 1703 under the title of The Athenian Oracle. The poem also appeared in a curious little eight-leaf Dublin pamphlet, entitled Sphinx. It was included with Swift's works in the Miscellanies volume of 1745. The prefatory letter was not included in Sphinx, or in the successive editions of Swift's works.

[9]  Swift's interest in Dunton's venture may have been due to the fact that Sir William Temple was a contributor (Dunton's Life and Errors, 1705, p. 261). In the same work (p. 260) Dunton refers to Swift as 'a Country Gentleman' who sent 'an ingenious Poem', which 'was prefixt to the Fifth Supplement of the Athenian Mercury'. According to Johnson, in his life of Swift, this was the poem which led Dryden to observe, 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet', words which were 'the motive of Swift's perpetual malevolence to Dryden'.

[10]  The text is here given as it appeared in the supplement to the Athenian Gazette.

TO THE Athenian Society. Moor-park, Feb. 14. 1691.

[11]  GENTLEMEN,

[12]  Since every Body pretends to trouble you with their Follies, I thought I might claim the Priviledge of an English-man, and put in my share among the rest. Being

[Page 15]
last year in Ireland, (from whence I returned about half a year ago) I heard only a loose talk of your Society, and believed the design to be only some new Folly just suitable to the Age, which God knows, I little expected ever to produce any thing extraordinary. Since my being in England, having still continued in the Countrey, and much out of Company; I had but little advantage of knowing any more, till about two Months ago passing through Oxford, a very learned Gentleman there, first shew'd me two or three of your Volumes, and gave me his Account and Opinion of you; a while after, I came to this place, upon a Visit to---where I have been ever since, and have seen all the four Volumes with their Supplements, which answering my Expectation. The perusal has produced, what you find inclosed.

[13]  As I have been somewhat inclined to this Folly, so I have seldom wanted some-body to flatter me in it. And for the Ode inclosed, I have sent it to a Person of very great Learning and Honour, and since to some others, the best of my Acquaintance, (to which I thought very proper to inure it for a greater light) and they have all been pleased to tell me, that they are sure it will not be unwelcome, and that I should beg the Honour of You to let it be Printed before Your next Volume (which I think, is soon to be published,) it being so usual before most Books of any great value among Poets, and before it's seeing the World, I submit it wholly to the Correction of your Pens.

[14]  I intreat therefore one of You would descend so far, as to write two or three lines to me of your Pleasure upon it. Which as I cannot but expect from Gentlemen, who have so well shewn upon so many occasions, that greatest Character of Scholars, in being favourable to the Ignorant, So I am sure nothing at present, can more highly oblige me, or make me happier.

I am,

(Gentlemen) Your ever most Humble, and most admiring Servant. Jonathan Swift.

I.

II.

III.

V.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

Jonathan Swist.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: ODE To the Hon^ble Sir William Temple. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  Miscellanies. The Tenth Volume. By Dr. Swift. London: Printed for R. Dodsley in Pall-mall. M.DCC.XLV. p. 194 (1750, p. 194).

[2]  Miscellanies, 1751, xiii. 190.

[3]  The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., ed. Hawkesworth, 1755, 4to, iv (I), 239.

[4]  In the Miscellanies of 1745, where this ode was first printed, it is said to have been 'Written at Moorpark, June 1689'. This, however, is an extremely unlikely date. At that time Swift had barely entered Temple's service. See below, pp. 33-4, introductory notes to the 'Ode to Sancroft'. It is not improbable that, like that ode, the 'Ode to Temple' was antedated; and, if begun in 1689, not completed till a year or two later. Hawkesworth's footnote (1755) says that 'When the author's posthumous pieces were reprinted in Ireland', this poem and the 'Ode to the Athenian Society' were omitted. The note is intended as a stricture upon Faulkner's editions.

[5]  The text of the poem is here reprinted from the Miscellanies of 1745.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: ODE To Dr. William Sancroft, Late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse. By The Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin. Not inserted in Mr. Sheridan's Edition of The Dean's Works. London: Printed for C. Dilly, in the Poultry. MDCCLXXXIX. p. 215.

[2]  Works, ed. Nichols, 1801, xviii. 395.

[3]  Works, ed. Scott, 1814, xiv. 3.

[4]  This poem was first printed by John Nichols in 1789, together with the 'Ode to Congreve' and the verses occasioned by Temple's illness. The three were prefaced with a note: 'Now first published from an authentic Manuscript, fairly and correctly written out as if intended for the Press.' Below, in square brackets, was added: 'From the dates, it is supposed that these were among the first, if not the very first, productions of his muse.' No trace of this manuscript remains; and it is not stated whether the hand was Swift's, unless the word 'authentic' is to be read in that sense; but that the poems are by Swift cannot fairly be doubted. The 'Ode to Sancroft' is expressly mentioned by Swift in a letter to his cousin, Thomas Swift, dated 3 May, 1692: 'I have had an ode in hand these five months inscribed to my late Lord of Canterbury, Dr. Sancroft' (Corresp. i. 363). Nine stanzas, he says, are finished, but he finds difficulty in completing a poem which he had undertaken upon 'half a promise' to the Bishop of Ely. As it stands, with twelve stanzas, the poem is still unfinished.

[5]  The date of Swift's letter is of interest and importance. Nichols, presumably copying from the manuscript, heads the poem: 'Written May 1689, at the Desire of the late Lord Bishop of E---.' But three years later it was still in hand, denying every effort. Furthermore, stanza iii refers to Sancroft's 'divin'ty of retreat', and xi to his 'exaltation of retreat'. Although Sancroft was suspended 1 August, 1689, and deprived 1 February, 1690, for refusing the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, he did not leave Lambeth until his ejectment, 23 June, 1691. We may surmise that the poem was begun in 1689, at the request of Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely, also a non-juror, and abandoned incomplete in 1692.

[6]  This poem is one of Swift's four attempts to emulate a contemporary fashion, wholly unnatural to him, the so-called Pindaric ode. In the letter to his cousin Thomas, above referred to, he confesses that he is continually altering, and can 'seldom write above two stanzas in a week'. But 'when I write what pleases me I am Cowley to myself and can read it a hundred times over'. In his Letter concerning the Sacramental Text, 1708, he quotes 'Mr. Cowley's Love Verses', which, even at fifteen, he 'thought extraordinary' (Prose Works, ed. Temple Scott, iv. 10). For the greater part of his life a copy of Cowley's works was in his library. But the modern reader will agree with Deane Swift, that this 'was not a style of poetry that he excelled in' (Nichols's Literary Illustrations, v. 382). Sheridan (Life, 1784, p. 15) has said all that need be said: 'The sentiments were strained and crowded; and the numbers irregular and harsh.'

[7]  The text is here reprinted from Miscellaneous Pieces, 1789.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: To Mr. CONGREVE. Written November 1693. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse. ... MDCCLXXXIX. p. 225. Works, ed. Nichols, 1801, xviii. 407.

[2]  Works, ed. Scott, 1814, xiv. 36.

[3]  When only six years old Swift was sent by his uncle, Godwin Swift, to the grammar school of Kilkenny, where he remained 1674-82. Two years later he was joined by his cousin Thomas. In 1681, or 1682, William Congreve, who was two years Swift's junior, was sent to the same school. There is no evidence that they formed any acquaintance at this time. But later they were together at Trinity College, Dublin, which Swift entered 24 April, 1682, and Congreve 5 April, 1685, where, also, they had the same tutor, St. George Ashe.

[4]  In 1693 Swift was still in the household service of Sir William Temple, and obscure, while Congreve had risen to fame with the brilliant success of his first play, The Old Batchelor, which appeared in January of that year. His second play, The Double-Dealer, was performed at Drury Lane in October, 1693, and published on the 4th of December. Following the appearance of The Double-Dealer, Swift composed the following poem, to which he makes detailed reference in a letter addressed to his cousin, Thomas, 6 December, 1693, evidently from Moor Park: 'I desire you would inform yourself what you mean by bidding me keep my verses for Will Congreve's next play, for I tell you they were calculated for any of his, and if it were but acted when you say, it is as early as ever I intended, since I only design they should be printed before it, so I desire you will send me word immediately how it succeeded, whether well, ill or indifferently, because my sending them to Mr. Congreve depends upon knowing the issue. They are almost two hundred and fifty lines not Pindaric.' (Corresp. i. 368.)

[5]  There is no record that Congreve ever received a copy of the poem. It was first printed by Nichols in 1789. The text is here reprinted as given by him.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: OCCASIONED BY SIR W---T---'s LATE ILLNESS AND RECOVERY. Written December 1693 [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse.... MDCCLXXXIX. p. 233. Works, ed. Nichols, 1801, xviii. 415.

[2]  Works, ed. Scott, 1814, xiv. 45.

[3]  Sir William Temple was a constant sufferer from the gout and other complaints. In 1693 he was for some time seriously ill. See Courtenay's Memoirs of Sir William Temple, 1836, ii. 135.

[4]  The text follows that of Miscellaneous Pieces, 1789.

Occasional Poems 1698-1710

In this section are arranged, in chronological order, poems written after the death of Sir William Temple and before the period, 1710-14, in which Swift became a notable figure in the political world. He was between thirty and forty-three years of age. Abandoning imitative exercises he found a natural style. His movements during these years may be briefly indicated:
27 January, 1699: Sir William Temple died.
Summer of 1699 to the beginning of April, 1701: In Ireland with Lord Berkeley.
April to September, 1701: In England.
To April, 1702: In Ireland.
April to October, 1702: In England.
October, 1702, to November, 1703: In Ireland.
To May, 1704: In England.
June, 1704, to November, 1707: In Ireland.
November, 1707, to end of June, 1709: In England.
July, 1709, to end of August, 1710: In Ireland.
7 September, 1710: Arrived in London.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: VERSES wrote in a Lady's Ivory Table-Book. Anno. 1698. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, 1711, p. 351 (2nd edn., 1713, p. 349). Miscellanies. The Last Volume, 1727, p. 54 (1731, p. 166; 1733, p. 166). Faulkner, 1735, ii. II (1737, ii. 9). [Ref. F.]

[2]  The exact date of composition cannot be fixed. In the Miscellanies of 1711 it was assigned to 1698. No date is stated in the Miscellanies, 1727. Faulkner gives 1706. Deane Swift, Essay, 1755, p. 127, places it between 1703 and 1706. It may have been written early and revised about 1706.

[3]  The text is reprinted from the Miscellanies, 1711.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: The Discovery. An. 1699. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  Swift's autograph in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, formerly in the Fountaine Collection.

[2]  Orrery Papers, Harvard College Library, MS. Eng. 218. 14, vol. iii, pp. 112-14. [Ref. H.C.L.]

[3]  Miscellanies, 1746, xi. 261 (1749, xi. 261; 1751, xiv. 231).

[4]  The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., ed. Hawkesworth, 1755, 4to, iv (I), 298.

[5]  Essay, Deane Swift, 1755, p. 110. [Ref. D.S.]

[6]  Swift arrived in Dublin with Lord Berkeley in the summer of 1699, having, on the voyage, acted both as secretary and chaplain. According to his own statement it was intended that he should continue to hold both offices. It seems doubtful whether this could have been Lord Berkeley's intention. After the arrival of the party in Dublin Swift was superseded as secretary by Arthur Bushe, who had not travelled over with Berkeley (B.M., Add. MS. 28,884. f. 167; Corresp. i. 31 n.¹). Later Swift was further incensed by Bushe, to whom he believed Dr. John Bolton (see p. 72 n.) was indebted for the Deanery of Derry, a preferment he desired for himself. 'The Discovery' was written towards the end of 1699; or at least before February, 1700, when Bolton was presented to the Deanery of

[Page 62]
Derry, for the satire is not markedly bitter. Swift's manuscript gives the date as 'An. 1699.'; and this is the date stated by Deane Swift in his Essay.

[7]  On the whole incident see further Forster, Life, pp. 110-11; Craik, Life, 2nd edn., i. 98-100; Corresp. i. 33 n.¹. The account of the transaction given by Sheridan, Life, pp. 33-4, is based on hearsay, and its details are open to doubt.

[8]  The text is printed from the Fountaine MS., which is Swift's hand with an attempt, not unnatural, at disguise. Swift was copying from an earlier draft. Line 2, blotted out, originally stood as in the printed version; and the first line of the tenth stanza was copied four lines out of place, and then scratched out. The H.C.L. MS., in a clerical hand, has only one verbal variant. Both manuscripts divide the stanzas. There are no stanza divisions in the printed versions. Variants from Swift's spelling and punctuation are ignored in the apparatus, save in two instances.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: The PROBLEM. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  Orrery Papers, Harvard College Library, MS. Eng. 218. 14, vol. iii, pp. 110-12.

[2]  Miscellanies, 1746, xi. 263 (1749, xi. 263; 1751, xiv. 233).

[3]  The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., ed. Hawkesworth, 1755, 4to, iv (1), 299.

[4]  A sub-title to this poem, as first printed, runs, 'That my Lord B---ly stinks, when he's in Love---', and the satire has been interpreted as an attack upon Berkeley in consequence of Swift's anger at the preferment of Bolton to the Deanery of Derry. But Swift never broke off relationship with Berkeley, despite no great love for him; and it is a little difficult to believe that the satire of 'The Problem' was directed against a man with whom he was on sufficiently friendly terms (see n. p. 62, 1. 1). The satire of 'The Discovery' is comparatively harmless. Moreover, immediately before coming to Ireland, as chaplain to Berkeley, Swift conceived himself to have been injured by a man of very different character, Henry Sidney, Earl of Romney, who had promised to prefer to the King his petition for a prebend of Canterbury or Westminster, and gone no further in the matter (Essay, Deane Swift, 1755, Appendix, p. 50; Forster, Life, pp. 15-16). He never lost his dislike of Romney, describing him in the Fragment of Autobiography as 'an old, vicious, illiterate rake, without any sense of truth or honour'; and in a note to Macky's Characters (Prose Works, ed. Temple Scott, x. 274) denied him any honesty or capacity. It is therefore of the utmost significance that a manuscript copy of this poem, among the Orrery Papers at Harvard, carries the sub-title: 'That Sidney E. of R---mn---y st---ks, when

[Page 65]
he is in Love'. In addition, the satire is more directly applicable to Romney than to Berkeley.

[5]  Henry Sidney, fourth and youngest son of Robert, second Earl of Leicester, was born at Paris in 1641. While envoy at The Hague, 1679-81, he gained the confidence of William of Orange. He carried over the secret invitation to William, and accompanied him to England. In 1692 he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, where he acquitted himself incompetently, and was recalled. Nevertheless he was created Earl of Romney in 1694. He died in 1704. The handsomest man of his time, he was a notorious profligate, and the terror of husbands. He was the cause of an estrangement between the Duke and Duchess of York; and maintained a long intrigue with the wife of his nephew Sunderland. See Diary and letters, edited in two volumes, 1843, by R.W. Blencowe.

[6]  In 'The Problem' the object of the satire is described as 'So sweet a Passion', and 'an universal Lover'. Three women are named as his loves. All this applies much more aptly to the libertine bachelor, Romney, than to Berkeley. On the other hand 1. 35, 'Ambitious of a Regent's Heart', may be thought more appropriate to Berkeley, who was one of the Lords Justices with the Duke of Bolton and Lord Galway; but Romney had served in the same capacity, and as Lord Lieutenant. On the face of it, therefore, it is more than probable that Orrery is right in his attribution of the satire. The poem was not printed till after Swift's death, and there is no evidence for the suggestion that it was directed against Berkeley.

[7]  The Harvard MS. is more careful than the first printed text, and is here used.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: TO THEIR EXCELLENCIES THE Lords Justices of Ireland. The Humble Petition of Frances Harris, Who must Starve, and Die a Maid if it miscarries. Anno. 1700. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  Baucis and Philemon; ... Together with Mrs. Harris's Earnest Petition. ... London: ... H. Hills, ... 1709 (and 1710), p. 9. [Ref. H.]

[2]  Works of ... Rochester and Roscommon. ... To which is added, a Collection of Miscellany Poems ... London: ... Curll, ... 1709. p. 175.

[3]  A Meditation upon a Broom-Stick, and Somewhat Beside; ... London: ... Curll, ... 1710. p. 19. [Ref. C.]

[4]  The Whimsical Medley, ii. 368. (Copied from a printed edition.).

[5]  Miscellanies, 1711, p. 353 (2nd edn., 1713, p. 351).

[6]  A Collection of Original Poems, ... London: ... Curll, ... 1714.

[7]  The Bee. A Collection of Choice Poems. Part I. ... London. ... T. Ilive: ... MDCCXV. p. 20.

[8]  Miscellanies. The Last Volume, 1727, p. 56. (One manuscript correction in Swift's own copy of this volume.)

[9]  Faulkner, 1735, ii. 1 (1737, ii. 1). [Ref. F.]

[10]  Deane Swift, Essay, 1755, p. 119 n., is certainly wrong in placing this poem as early as 1699. The Miscellanies, 1711, gives the date as 1700, and Faulkner as 1701. It was composed early in 1701 during the latter part of Berkeley's residence in Ireland. The arrival of the 'Earl of Drogheda, who was one of the lords justices designated to succeed Berkeley and his colleague, ... is mentioned in the Petition as imminent' (Ball, Swift's Verse, p. 46). After some delay Berkeley left Ireland early in April, 1701.

[11]  Swift's poem on Mrs. Harris, one of Lady Berkeley's gentlewomen, passed in manuscript for nine years, and was then published by the pirate printers, Hills and Curll. A Meditation upon a Broom-Stick was published in April, 1710.

[12]  The text here printed is that of the Miscellanies, 1711. The unauthorized

[Page 69]
publications of Hills and Curll generally agree against 1711, 1727, and Faulkner. The poem, as it appeared in The Bee, was printed from a Hills edition.

[13]  Humbly Sheweth.

[14]  That I went to warm my self in Lady Betty's Chamber, because I was cold,

[15]  And I had in a Purse, seven Pound, four Shillings ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} and

[16]  six Pence, ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} besides Farthings, in Money, and Gold;

[17]  So because I had been buying things for my Lady last Night,

[18]  I was resolved to tell my Money, to see if it was right:

[19]  Now you must know, because my Trunk has a very bad Lock,

[20]  Therefore all the Money, I have, which, God knows, is a very small Stock,

[21]  I keep in a Pocket ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} ty'd about my Middle, next my Smock.

[22]  So when I went to put up my Purse, as God would have it, my Smock was unript,

[23]  And, instead of putting it into my Pocket, down it slipt:

[24]  Then the Bell rung, and I went down ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} to put my Lady to Bed,

[25]  And, ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} God knows, I thought my Money was as safe as my Maidenhead.

[26]  So when I came up again, I found my Pocket feel ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} very light,

[27]  But when I search'd, and miss'd my Purse, Lord! I thought I should have sunk outright:

[28]  Lord! Madam, says Mary, how d'ye do? Indeed, says I ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} never worse;

[29]  But pray, Mary, can you tell what I have done with my Purse!

[30]  Lord help me, said Mary, I never stirr'd out of this Place!

[31]  Nay, said I, I had it in Lady Betty's Chamber, ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} that's a plain Case.

[32]  So Mary got me to Bed, and cover'd me up warm,

[33]  However, she stole away my Garters, that I might do my self no Harm:

[34]  So I tumbl'd and toss'd all Night, as you may very well think,

[35]  But hardly ever set my Eyes together, or slept a Wink.

[36]  So I was a-dream'd, ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} methought, that we went and search'd the Folks round,

[37]  And in a Corner of Mrs. Dukes's ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} Box, ty'd in a Rag, the Money was found.

[38]  So next Morning we told Whittle, ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} and he fell a Swearing;

[39]  Then my Dame Wadgar ^{[Footnote: 1Kb] [Footnote: 1Kb]} came, and she, you know, is thick of Hearing; ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} Dame, said I, as loud as I could bawl, do you know what a Loss I have had?

[40]  Nay, said she, my Lord Collway's ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} Folks are all very sad,

[41]  For my Lord Dromedary ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} comes a Tuesday without fail;

[42]  Pugh! said I, but that's not the Business that ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} I ail.

[43]  Says Cary, ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} says he, I have been a Servant this Five and Twenty Years, come Spring,

[44]  And in all the Places I liv'd, I never heard of such a Thing.

[45]  Yes, says the Steward, ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} I remember ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} when I was at my Lady Shrewsbury's,

[46]  Such a thing as this happen'd, just about the time of Goosberries.

[47]  So I went to the Party suspected, and I found ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} her full of Grief;

[48]  (Now you must know, ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} of all Things in the World, I hate a Thief.)

[49]  However, I was resolv'd to bring the Discourse slily about,

[50]  Mrs. Dukes, said I, here's an ugly Accident has happen'd out;

[51]  'Tis not that I value the Money three Skips of a Louse; ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} But the Thing I stand upon, is the Credit of the House;

[52]  'Tis true, seven Pound, four Shillings, ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} and six Pence, makes a great Hole in my Wages,

[53]  Besides, as they say, Service is no Inheritance in these Ages.

[54]  Now, Mrs. Dukes, you know, and every Body understands,

[55]  That tho' 'tis hard to judge, yet Money ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} can't go without Hands.

[56]  The Devil take me, said she, (blessing her self,) if I ever ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} saw't!

[57]  So she roar'd like a Bedlam, as tho' ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} I had call'd her all ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} to naught;

[58]  So you know, what could I say to her any more,

[59]  I e'en left her, and came away as wise as I was before.

[60]  Well: But then they would have had me gone to the Cunning Man; ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]}

[61]  No, said I, 'tis the same Thing, ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} the Chaplain will be here anon.

[62]  So the Chaplain came in; now ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} the Servants say, he is my Sweet-heart,

[63]  Because he's always in my Chamber, and I always take his Part;

[64]  So, as the Devil would have it, before I was aware, out I blunder'd,

[65]  Parson, said I, can you cast a Nativity, when a Body's plunder'd?

[66]  (Now you must know, he hates to be call'd Parson, like the Devil.) ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]}

[67]  Truly, says ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} he, Mrs. Nab, it might become you to be more civil:

[68]  If your Money be gone, as a Learned Divine ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} says, d'ye see,

[69]  You are no Text for my Handling, so take ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} that from me:

[70]  I was never taken for a Conjurer before, I'd have you to know.

[71]  Lord, said I, don't be angry, I'm ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} sure I never thought you so;

[72]  You know, I honour the Cloth, I design to be a Parson's Wife,

[73]  I never took one in Your Coat for a Conjurer in all my Life.

[74]  With that, he twisted his Girdle at me ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} like a Rope, as who should say,

[75]  Now you may go hang your self for me, and so went away.

[76]  Well; I thought I should have swoon'd; ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} Lord, said I, what shall I do?

[77]  I have lost my Money, and shall ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} lose my True-Love too.

[78]  Then my ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} Lord call'd me; Harry, ^{[Footnote: 1Kb]} said my Lord, don't cry,

[79]  I'll give something towards thy Loss; and says my Lady, so will I.

[80]  Oh but, said I, what if after all my ^{[Footnote: 1Kb] [Footnote: 1Kb]} Chaplain won't come to?

[81]  For that, he said, (an't please your Excellencies) I must Petition You.

[82]  The Premises tenderly consider'd, I desire your Excelencies Protection,

[83]  And that I may have a Share in next Sunday's Collection:

[84]  And over and above, that I may have your Excellencies Letter,

[85]  With an Order for the Chaplain aforesaid; or instead of Him, a Better:

[86]  And then your poor Petitioner, both Night and Day,

[87]  Or the Chaplain, (for 'tis his Trade) as in Duty bound, shall ever Pray.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: A BALLAD on the Game of Traffick. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  Volume VIII. of the Author's Works, ... Dublin: ... Faulkner, M,DCC,XLVI. p. 312. [Ref. F.]

[2]  Miscellanies, 1746, xi. 240 (1749, xi. 240; 1751, xiv. 215). [Refs. 1746, 1751.]

[3]  The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., ed. Hawkesworth, 1755, 4 to, iv (1), 282.

[4]  This poem, which is closely connected with that which follows, was not printed till 1746, in the year after Swift's death, although its sequel appeared in 1711, under the author's supervision. Faulkner, misled by the references to Berkeley's household, assigned a wrong date to the poem, adding, under the title, 'Written at the Castle of Dublin, in the Time of the Earl of Berkeley's Government'. Its immediate sequel, the 'Ballad to the Tune of the Cutpurse', is dated 'August, 1702.' in the Miscellanies of 1711; and the mention of Jack Howe in the 'Ballad on the Game of Traffick' shows that this poem was written after the Gloucestershire election of December, 1701. The family scene depicted took place in Berkeley Castle, not Dublin Castle, and in 1702. It is known that Swift visited Lord Berkeley, after he had ceased to be his chaplain (see p. 62 n.); and he was in England between April and October, 1702.

[5]  Faulkner's text is printed.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: Lady B--- B--- finding in the Authors Room some Verses Unfinished, underwrit a Stanza of her own, with Railery upon him, which gave Occasion to this Ballade. August, 1702. To the Tune of the Cutpurse. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  The Whimsical Medley, i. Appendix, p. 51 (no significant variants).

[2]  Miscellanies, 1711, p. 361 (2nd edn., 1713, p. 359).

[3]  Miscellanies. The Last Volume, 1727, p. 65 (1731, p. 174; 1733, p. 174).

[4]  Faulkner, 1735, ii. 9 (1737, ii. 7). [Ref. F.]

[5]  Miscellanies, 1742, iv. 73.

[6]  Lady Betty Berkeley occasioned these verses by adding a stanza to the last poem. Born in 1680, she was the second daughter of the Earl of Berkeley. At the age of twenty-six she married Sir John Germain, a rake and soldier of fortune, reputed to be the son of William II, Prince of Orange. She remained one of Swift's firmest friends, and a constant correspondent. See especially Corresp., vols. iv and v passim; also D.N.B. xxi. 230. She lived a widow for over fifty years, dying in 1769. Cf. p. 1069.

[7]  Swift's verses are modelled upon the song of Nightingale, the ballad-singer, in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, III. i.

[8]  The text printed is that of the Miscellanies, 1711. Swift's reasons for omitting from that collection the poem which prompted it are obvious. Swift made one correction in his copy of the Miscellanies, 1727.

I.

II.

III.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: Vanbrug's House. An. 1703. Built from the burnt Ruins of Whitehall. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  In 1703 Whitehall was partially burnt down, and John Vanbrugh set out to build himself a house on the site. Swift, who had been meeting Vanbrugh at the coffee-houses, composed a poem jeering at his gifts as an architect, reflecting, at the same time, upon the dramatic verse of the period.

[2]  The version of the poem published by Swift in the Miscellanies, 1711, was a revision, probably made in 1708. John Forster discovered an earlier version, in manuscript, at Narford, the paternal home of the Fountaine family, and quoted it in part (Life of Swift, pp. 163-4). This manuscript, with others in Swift's hand, is now in the Pierpont Morgan Library (see p. xlix). A transcript of the earlier version, in the hand of Charles Ford, is preserved among the Ford papers, and has been printed by Professor D. Nichol Smith (Letters of Jonathan Swift to Charles Ford, 1935, pp. 179-82). Ford's transcript omits the date from the title.

[3]  The earlier version of the poem is here printed for the first time, completely and exactly, from Swift's manuscript. The variants of Ford's transcript are indicated by 'Ford'. The printed version appears below, p. 105.

[4]  Sir Andrew Fountaine, 1676-1753, probably made Swift's acquaintance in early days, when an official at the viceregal court in Dublin during the lieutenancy of Lord Pembroke, and their friendship continued till the death of Queen Anne, after which no communication passed between them for many years. He is frequently mentioned in the Journal to Stella. Fountaine was given favoured positions in the Hanoverian court, which would not commend him to his old friend; and in 1727 he was appointed Warden of the Mint in succession to Sir Isaac Newton. He formed a noble collection of coins, pictures, and objects of art. An authority on early English coins, his remarkable 'Numismata Anglo-Saxonica et Anglo-Danica breviter illustrata' was included in Hickes's great Thesaurus, 1705. The identification of Fountaine with 'Annius' of the Dunciad (iv. 347 ff.) is questionable.

[5]  Scott, Works, 1814, i. 46-9, on doubtful evidence, attributes a poem, 'On the Burning of Whitehall, in 1697', to Swift (see p. 1069). The old place was burnt to the ground on the 4th of January, 1698

[6]  In addition to a revised version of 'Vanbrug's House', Swift again attacked Vanbrugh in 'The History of Vanbrug's House' (see p. 85).

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: THE DESCRIPTION OF A Salamander. Out of Pliny Nat. Hist. L. 10. C. 67 and L. 29 C. 4. Anno. 1705. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  The Whimsical Medley, i, Appendix, p. 42. [Ref. W.M.]

[2]  Miscellanies, 1711, p. 372 (2nd edn., 1713, p. 370).

[3]  Miscellanies. The Last Volume, 1727, p. 89 (1731, p. 189; 1733, p. 189).

[4]  Faulkner, 1735, ii. 13 (1737, ii. 10). [Ref. F.]

[5]  The date, 1705, assigned to this piece in the Miscellanies of 1711, is, almost undoubtedly, correct. From June, 1704, to November, 1707, Swift was in Ireland. In 1705 Lord Cutts was appointed commander-in-chief in that country. Faulkner, in 1735, gives the date as 1706, which is possible. See also Deane Swift, Essay, 1755, p. 127.

[6]  John Cutts, 1661-1707, created Baron Cutts of Gowran in 1690, was one of the most distinguished soldiers of his day. He fought at the Boyne; and at the siege of Namur in 1695 he won the name of 'Salamander' for his intrepidity under withering fire. He took part in negotiating the Treaty of Ryswick; and fought at Blenheim. See further, D.N.B. xiii. 367.

[7]  Swift's scurrilous invective against a brave man is inexcusable, and excited indignation (Journal to Stella, 24 October, 1711). His dislike of Cutts endured; for, nearly thirty years later, he described him in a copy of Macky's Characters as 'The vainest old fool alive'. That he was inordinately vain is the testimony of contemporaries; and he may have personally offended Swift.

[8]  There is a manuscript copy in The Whimsical Medley. The text is here printed from the Miscellanies, 1711.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: The History of Vanbrug's House. 1706. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]

[1]  Swift's autograph: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

[2]  The Whimsical Medley, i, Appendix, p. 61.

[3]  Two transcripts among the Harley Papers, in the possession of the Duke of Portland, Welbeck Abbey. [Refs. W.¹, W.².]

[4]  A Meditation upon a Broom-Stick, and Somewhat Beside; ... London: ... Curll, ... , 1710. p. 27. [Ref. C.]

[5]  Miscellanies, 1711, p. 389 (2nd edn., 1713, p. 387).

[6]  A Collection of Original Poems, ... London: ... Curll, 1714.

[7]  Miscellanies. The Last Volume, 1727, p. 77 (1731, p. 182; 1733, p. 182).

[8]  Faulkner, 1735, ii. 36 (1737, ii. 29). [Ref. F.]

[9]  In the Miscellanies, 1711, this poem is assigned to 1708; and the date is accepted by Faulkner and Deane Swift (Essay, 1755, p. 137). There are two transcripts of the poem among the Harley Papers at Welbeck Abbey.

[Page 86]
One, with the title 'The History of Vanbrugh's House', is written on the first two pages of a folded folio sheet; the other, entitled 'The Architect', is written on the first and third pages of a folio half-sheet folded to quarto size. The latter transcript is endorsed by Edward Harley 'The Architect. 1709', and 'D^r Swift'. But Swift's autograph copy, formerly in the Fountaine collection, gives '1706'. Swift was then in Ireland: but this would be a natural date for his second lampoon on Vanbrugh, who was called to be 'Architect at Blenheim' in 1705.

[10]  The first appearance of the poem in print was in A Meditation on a Broom-Stick, which was published in April, 1710 (Daily Courant, 6, 7 April). Swift records that Vanbrugh, though 'a good-natured fellow', was incensed (Journal to Stella, 7, 11 Nov. 1710; and see Prose Works, ed. Temple Scott, xii. 79 n.) especially as 'Lady Marlborough used to tease him' with the verses.

[11]  The text is here printed from Swift's manuscript. In title and text Vanbrugh's name, or 'Van', was not printed in full prior to Faulkner, except by Curll.

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745: The Story of Baucis & Philemon. Ov. Met. I. 8. [from The Poems of Jonathan Swift. Edited By Harold Williams (1937)]