Jonathan Swift
The smooth rise of Addison was interrupted only when the Whigs were out, which
took him briefly into journalism (and so into this book). Defoe, Swift and Pope did
not have his advantages. Defoe (b.1660) is taken later as a novelist; he was a
Dissenter, who wrote over 560 books, pamphlets and journals. Pope (b.1688), an
invalid, a Catholic, and largely self-educated, also lived by the pen.Jonathan Swift
(1667–1745), born of English parents in Dublin after his father’s death, had a career
as frustrating as Addison’s was successful.
Educated alongside William Congreve at Kilkenny and at Trinity College, Dublin,
Swift came to England and was secretary to Sir William Temple, statesman, author
and proponent of naturalness in garden design. Lacking preferment, Swift was
ordained in Ireland, but visited London from Dublin. He left the Whigs over their
failure to support the Church against Dissent. In 1713 he became Dean of Dublin’s
St Patrick’s Cathedral – not, as he would have preferred, a bishop in England. He
lived in Dublin in indignant opposition to the Whig government in London, defend-
ing Ireland and the (Anglican) Church. He gave one-third of his income to the –
usually Catholic – poor.
In 1704 Swift held up to satirical review the claims of ancient and modern
authors in The Battle of the Books, and the claims of Rome, Canterbury, Geneva and
the sects in the more complex A Tale of a Tub.His usually anonymous controversial
works could be straightforward, as in the Drapier’s Letters,which successfully
prevented an English currency fraud in Ireland. But his lasting works argue from an
absurd premise, as in An Argument to Prove that the Abolishing of Christianity in
England may, as things now stand, be attended with some inconveniences, and perhaps
not produce those many good effects proposed thereby. Swift believe d that ‘we need reli-
gion as we need our dinner, wickedness makes Christianity indispensable and there’s
an end of it’. But here he writes from a different point of view:
The system of the Gospel, after the fate of other systems, is generally antiquated and
exploded; and the mass or body of the common people, among whom it seems to have
had its latest credit,are now grown as much ashamed of it as their betters .... I hope no
reader imagines me so weak to stand up in the defence of real Christianity, such as used
in primitive times (if we may believe the authors of those ages) to have an influence186 6 · AUGUSTAN LITERATURE: TO 1790
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)Chief works:
1704 The Battle of the Books; A Tale of a Tub
1708 The Bickerstaff Papers
1710 The Examiner(ed.); Meditations on a Broomstick
1711 An Argument against Abolishing Christianity; The Conduct of the Allies
1717 A Proposal for Correcting the English Language
1724 Drapier’s Letters
1726 Gulliver’s Travels
1728 A Short View of the State of Ireland
1729 A Modest Proposal
1738 Conversation
1739 Verses on the Death of Dr Swift