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Unit 27: Swift: Thoughts on Various Subjects ...

(iii) In ..............., a cobbler named John Partridge published a popular almanac of astrological Notes
predictions.
(iv) In ..............., Sir William Temple, Swift’s patron, published An Essay upon Ancient and
Modern Learning a defense of classical writing.

27.3 Summary

• Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs,
then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.
He is remembered for works such as Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to
Stella, Drapier’s Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing
Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English
language, and is less well known for his poetry.
• Swift’s family had several interesting literary connections: His grandmother, Elizabeth
(Dryden) Swift, was the niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of the poet John Dryden.
The same grandmother’s aunt, Katherine (Throckmorton) Dryden, was a first cousin of the
wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-great grandmother, Margaret (Godwin) Swift, was the
sister of Francis Godwin, author of The Man in the Moone which influenced parts of Swift’s
Gulliver’s Travels. His uncle, Thomas Swift, married a daughter of the poet and playwright
Sir William Davenant, a godson of William Shakespeare.
• Swift left Temple in 1690 for Ireland because of his health, but returned to Moor Park the
following year. The illness, fits of vertigo or giddiness—now known to be Ménière’s disease—
would continue to plague Swift throughout his life. During this second stay with Temple,
Swift received his M.A. from Hart Hall, Oxford in 1692. Then, apparently despairing of
gaining a better position through Temple’s patronage, Swift left Moor Park to become an
ordained priest in the Established Church of Ireland and in 1694 he was appointed to the
prebend of Kilroot in the Diocese of Connor, with his parish located at Kilroot, near
Carrickfergus in County Antrim.
• Swift appears to have been miserable in his new position, being isolated in a small, remote
community far from the centres of power and influence. While at Kilroot, however, Swift
may well have become romantically involved with Jane Waring.
• Swift became increasingly active politically in these years. From 1707 to 1709 and again in
1710, Swift was in London, unsuccessfully urging upon the Whig administration of Lord
Godolphin the claims of the Irish clergy to the First-Fruits and Twentieths (“Queen Anne’s
Bounty”), which brought in about £2,500 a year, already granted to their brethren in England.
• Swift’s first major prose work, A Tale of a Tub, demonstrates many of the themes and
stylistic techniques he would employ in his later work. It is at once wildly playful and funny
while being pointed and harshly critical of its targets. In its main thread, the Tale recounts
the exploits of three sons, representing the main threads of Christianity, who receive a
bequest from their father of a coat each, with the added instructions to make no alterations
whatsoever.

27.4. Key-Words

1. Affectation : writing that is artificial and designed to impress.
2. Singularity : a measure or probability distribution whose support has zero Lebesgue (or
other) measure
3. Positiveness : Characterized by or displaying certainty, acceptance, or affirmation: a positive
answer; positive criticism.

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