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Prose

Notes grew up she become an important person in his life. Stella moved to Ireland to live near him and
followed him on his travels to London. Their relationship was a constant source of gossips.
According to some speculations, they were married in 1716. Stella died in 1728 and Swift kept a
lock of her hair among his papers for the rest of his life.
“As the common forms of good manners were intended for regulating the conduct of those who
have weak understandings; so they have been corrupted by the persons for whose use they were
contrived. For these people have fallen into a needless and endless way of multiplying ceremonies,
which have been extremely troublesome to those who practice them, and insupportable to everyone
else: insomuch that wise men are often more uneasy at the over civility of these refiners, than they
could possibly be in the conversations of peasants or mechanics.” (from ‘A Treatise on Good
Manners and Good Breeding’, 1754)
After William Temple’s death in 1699, Swift returned to Ireland. He made several trips to London
and gained fame with his essays. Throughout the reign of Queen Anne (1702-14), Swift was one of
the central characters in the literary and political life of London. From 1695 to 1696 Swift was the
vicar of Kilroot. There he met Jane Wairing, with whom he had an affair. For Swift’s disappointment,
she did not consider him a suitable marriage partner. Between the years 1707 and 1709 Swift was
an emissary for the Irish clergy in London. Swift contributed to the ‘Bickerstaff Papers’ and to the
Tattler in 1708-09. He was a cofounder of the Scriblerus Club, which included such member as
Pope, Gay, Congreve, and Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford.
In 1710 Swift tried to open a political career among Whigs but changed his party and took over the
Tory journal The Examiner. With the accession of George I, the Tories lost political power. Swift
withdrew to Ireland. Hester Vanhomrigh, whom Swift had met in 1708, and whom he had tutored,
followed him to Ireland after her mother had died. She was 22 years younger than Swift, who
nicknamed her Vanessa. In the poem ‘Cadenus and Vanessa’ from 1713 Swift wrote about the
affair: “Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, / Will have the teacher in her thought.” In
1723 Swift broke off the relationship; she never recovered form his rejection.
From 1713 to 1742 Swift was the dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It is thought that Swift suffered
from Ménière’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease. Many considered him insane - however, from the
beginning of his twentieth year he had suffered from deafness. Swift had predicted his mental
decay when he was about 50 and had remarked to the poet Edward Young when they were gazing
at the withered crown of a tree: “I shall be like that tree, I shall die from the top.”

25.1 Introduction to Hints Towards An Essay on Conversation

In this essay, the great Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift (author of Gulliver’s Travels and “A
Modest Proposal”) enumerates “the faults and errors” of those who lack the ability to participate
in an agreeable conversation.
Compare Swift’s thoughts on this “useful and innocent . . . pleasure” with those expressed by
Francis Bacon in “Of Discourse,” Samuel Johnson in “Conversation,” William Cowper in “On
Conversation,” and H.G. Wells in “Of Conversation: An Apology.”
Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation (1713)
I have observed few obvious subjects to have been so seldom, or, at least, so slightly handled as
this; and, indeed, I know few so difficult to be treated as it ought, nor yet upon which there
seemeth so much to be said.
Most things, pursued by men for the happiness of public or private life, our wit or folly have so
refined, that they seldom subsist but in idea; a true friend, a good marriage, a perfect form of
government, with some others, require so many ingredients, so good in their several kinds, and so
much niceness in mixing them, that for some thousands of years men have despaired of reducing

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