Swift's Enduring Jest, The Calculated Crafting of a Posthumous Self

“ Yet malice never was his aim;
He lashed the vice, but spared the name;
No individual could resent
Where thousands equally were meant.
His satire points at no defect
But what all mortals may correct;
For he abhorred that senseless tribe
Who call it humour when they gibe. ”

“ That gives surprise, and this delight, Humour is odd, grotesque, and wild, Only by affectation spoil'd; 'Tis never by invention got, Men have it when they know it not. Our conversation to refine, True humour must with wit combine: From both we learn to rally well, Wherein French writers most excel; [2] Voiture, in various lights, displays That irony which turns to praise: His genius first found out the rule For an obliging ridicule: He flatters with peculiar air The brave, the witty, and the fair: And fools would fancy he intends A satire where he most commends. ”

“ The author cannot conclude this apology without making this one reflection; that, as wit is the noblest and most useful gift of human nature, so humour is the most agreeable; and where these two enter far into the composition of any work, they will render it always acceptable to the world. Now, the great part of those who have no share or taste of either, but by their pride, pedantry, and ill manners, lay themselves bare to the lashes of both, think the blow is weak, because they are insensible; and where wit has any mixture of raillery, it is but calling it banter, and the work is done. ”

“ When the time set was past, he published a minute account of Partridge's last moments; and when the subject of this excellent fooling printed an indignant denial of his own death, Swift answered very temperately, proving that he was dead and remonstrating with him on the violence of his language. "To call a man a fool and villain, an impudent fellow, only for differing from him in a point merely speculative, is, in my humble opinion, a very improper style for a person of his education." ”

“ No wonder then, if art began The simple votaries to frame, To shape in timber foolish man, And consecrate the block to fame. From hence poetic fancy learn'd That trees might rise from human forms; The body to a trunk be turn'd, And branches issue from the arms. Thus Dædalus and Ovid too, That man's a blockhead, have confest: Powel and Stretch [1] the hint pursue; Life is a farce, the world a jest. The same great truth South Sea has proved On that famed theatre, the alley; Where thousands, by directors moved Are now sad monuments of folly. ”

“ All progress in literary style lies in the heroic resolve to cast aside accretions and exuberances, all the conventions of a past age that were once beautiful because alive and are now false because dead. The simple and naked beauty of Swift’s style, sometimes so keen and poignant, rests absolutely on this truth to the logic of his thought. The twin qualities of flexibility and intimacy are of the essence of all progress in the art of language, and in their progressive achievement lies the attainment of 184great literature. ”

“ All these fictions of giants, pygmies, flying islands, are means for depriving human nature of the veils with which habit and imagination cover it, to display it in its truth and its ugliness. There is still one cloak to remove, the most deceitful and familiar. Swift must take away that appearance of reason in which we deck ourselves. He must suppress the sciences, arts, combinations of society, inventions of industries, whose brightness dazzles us. He must discover the Yahoo in man. What a spectacle! ”

“ He has, it seems, no use for the human race as such or interest in its continuance. He has no sentimentality about universal brotherhood, like Swift; he has no use for the works of men. And has come to this view, I think, by the same road as Swift, by an overwhelming sense of personal liberty, a largeness of heart, and an intense desire for perfection so obviously unattainable as hardly to be worth starting for. ”

“ Perhaps there never was a man whose true character has been so little known, or whose conduct at all times, even from his first setting out in life, has been so misrepresented to the world, as his. This was owing to several causes, which will be laid open in the following work. But the chief source of all the erroneous opinions entertained of him, arose from Swift himself, on account of some singularities in his character, which at all times exposed him to the shafts of envy and malice, while he employed no other shield in his defence, but that of conscious integrity. ”

“ Said Heinrich Heine, prone on his bed in Paris: "The wittiest sarcasms of mortals are only an attempt at jesting when compared with those of the great Author of the Universe—the Aristophanes of Heaven!"
Wise men over and over have wasted good ink and paper in bewailing Swift's malice and coarseness. But without these very elements which the wise men bemoan, Swift would be for us a cipher. Yet love is life and hate is death, so how can spite benefit? ”

“ The work brought him into notice as the most powerful satirist of the age, and he soon gave up his church to enter the strife of party politics. The cheap pamphlet was then the most powerful political weapon known; and as Swift had no equal at pamphlet writing, he soon became a veritable dictator. For several years, especially from 1710 to 1713, Swift was one of the most important figures in London. The Whigs feared the lash of his satire; the Tories feared to lose his support. ”

“ The moral lesson is as fine as the intellectual exhibition is amusing. It is an attempt to tear off the mask of imposture from the world; and nothing but imposture has a right to complain of it. It is, indeed, the way with our quacks in morality to preach up the dignity of human nature, to pamper pride and hypocrisy with the idle mockeries of the virtues they pretend to, and which they have not: but it was not Swift’s way to cant morality, or any thing else; nor did his genius prompt him to write unmeaning panegyrics on mankind! ”

“ The power of the satire, which anticipates Carlyle's clothes philosophy as a general denunciation of shams and pedantry, is indisputable. The contemptuous ridicule of theological pedantry in particular produced very natural suspicions of Swift's orthodoxy. The ridicule which he directs against papists and dissenters was only too applicable to Christianity in general. For the present, however, the book was known only to Temple's circle. In 1710 Swift prefixed an anonymous ‘Apology’ to a fifth edition. ”

“ It displays the dangerously Satanic aspect of Swift—that side of his character which for some people represented the whole man since the allegedly blasphemous satire in A Tale of a Tub, published and misunderstood early in his career, critically affected, even by his own admission, his employment in the Church. It is this evil character of the author, the priest with an indecorous and politically suspect humor, that offended some contemporary readers. To them, the engraved frontispiece of Jonathan Smedley's scurrilous Gulliveriana (1728) is the proper image of the author of the Travels. ”

“ It makes out Swift to be the worst of rascals: for it makes him more regardful of other men's opinions than of his own. It exhibits him as contravening conscience with seeming. Now, to my mind, the mere suspicion of hypocrisy is a far less evil than the positive conviction of it. ”

“ Envy's a fiend all excellence pursues, But mostly poets favour'd by the Muse; Who wins the laurel, sacred verse bestows, Makes all, who fail in like attempts, his foes; No puny wit of malice can complain, The thorn is theirs, who most applauses gain. Whatever gifts or graces Heaven design'd To raise man's genius, or enrich his mind, Were Swift's to boast—alike his merits claim The statesman's knowledge, and the poet's flame; The patriot's honour, zealous to defend His country's rights—and faithful to the end ”

“ Who does not remember odious images that can never be washed out from the consciousness which they have stained? A man's vocabulary is terribly retentive of evil words, and the images they present cling to his memory and will not loose their hold. One who has had the mischance to soil his mind by reading certain poems of Swift will never cleanse it to its original whiteness. Expressions and thoughts of a certain character stain the fibre of the thinking organ, and in some degree affect the hue of every idea that passes through the discolored tissues. ”

“ Swift, who exaggerated the follies of men till he covered the whole race with infamy, and wrote at length his own name on the gallows which he had erected for it—even Swift could not inflict such deadly wounds on human nature as these dangerous thinkers, who, laying great claim to penetration, adorn their system with all the specious appearance of art, and strengthen it with all the arguments of self-interest.
Why should the whole species suffer for the shortcomings of a few members?
I admit freely that I believe in the existence of a disinterested love. I am lost if I do not exist ”

“ He longed for power, and owned that he was never so happy as when treated like a lord. He longed for wealth, for "wealth," he said, "is liberty, and liberty is a blessing fittest for a philosopher." And if Swift was displeased at being made only a Dean, the Irish people were equally displeased with him as their Dean. As he rode through the streets of Dublin to take possession of his Deanery, the people threw stones and mud at him and hooted him as he passed. ”

“ Such was his first reception, as dean of St. Patrick's. Fewer talents, and less firmness must have yielded to so outrageous an opposition. He had seen enough of human nature to be convinced that the passions of low, self-interested minds ebb and flow continually. They love they know not whom, they hate they know not why. They are captivated by words, guided by names, and governed by accidents. But to few the strange revolutions in this world, Dr. Swift, who was now the detestion of the Irish rabble, lived to be afterwards the most absolute monarch over them, that ever governed men. ”

“ In September 1742 a crisis took place. Swift suffered much agony from an abscess in the eye. When this broke the pain ceased; he recognised his friends for a short time, and then sank into a state of apathy. He survived till 19 Oct. 1745. Painful anecdotes of his last days and occasional gleams of intelligence are given by his biographers, chiefly from letters of Mrs. Whiteway and Deane Swift (first published by Orrery, pp. 136–42) . At midnight on 22 Oct. Swift was buried privately, according to his own careful directions, in the cathedral of St. Patrick, by the side of Stella. ”

“ His allegations of not being conscious of anything on her part, are not to be trusted. There are few men whose self-love is not very sharp-sighted on such occasions,—men of wit in particular; nor was Swift, notwithstanding the superiority he assumed over fopperies of all sorts, and the great powers which gave a passport to the assumption, exempt, perhaps, from any species of vanity. The more airs he gives himself on that point, the less we are to believe him. He was fond of lords and great ladies, and levees, and canonicals, and of having the verger to walk before him. ”

“ He recollects not what he says; He cannot call his friends to mind: Forgets the place where last he din'd; Plyes you with stories o'er and o'er; He told them fifty times before. How does he fancy we can sit To hear his out-of-fashion'd wit? But he takes up with younger folks, Who for his wine will bear his jokes. Faith! he must make his stories shorter, Or change his comrades once a quarter: In half the time he talks them round, There must another set be found. "For poetry he's past his prime: He takes an hour to find a rhyme; His fire is out, his wit decay'd, His fancy sunk, his Muse a jade. ”

“ Of Swift's general habits of thinking, if his letters can be supposed to afford any evidence, he was not a man to be either loved or envied. He seems to have wasted life in discontent, by the rage of neglected pride and the languishment of unsatisfied desire. ”

“ Years passed. City and cemetery were each grown vaster. It was again an afternoon when the people strolled among the graves and monuments. An old man had courteously attached himself to a group that stood around a crumbling memorial. He had reached a great age; but his figure was erect, his face animated by strong emotions, and his eyes burned beneath his brows.
"Sirs," said he, interposing in the conversation, which turned wholly on the monument, "you say nothing of him in whose honour it was erected."
"We say nothing because we know nothing." ”

“ The humour of exploding many things under the name of trifles, fopperies, and only imaginary goods, is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions. For instance, with regard to fame, there is in most people a reluctance and unwillingness to be forgotten. We observe, even among the vulgar, how fond they are to have an inscription over their grave. It requires but little philosophy to discover and observe that there is no intrinsic value in all this; however, if it be founded in our nature as an incitement to virtue, it ought not to be ridiculed. ”

“ Because, alas! when we all die, Careless and ignorant posterity, Although they praise the learning and the wit, And though the title seems to show The name and man by whom the book was writ, Yet how shall they be brought to know, Whether that very name was he, or you, or I? Less should I daub it o'er with transitory praise, And water-colours of these days: These days! where e'en th'extravagance of poetry Is at a loss for figures to express Men's folly, whimseys, and inconstancy, And by a faint description makes them less. Then tell us what is Fame, where shall we search for it? ”

“ There is nothing of late which I think of more than mortality, and what you mention, of collecting the best monuments we can of our friends, their own images in their writings: for those are the best, when their minds are such as Mr. Gay's was, and as yours is. I am preparing also for my own, and have nothing so much at heart, as to show the silly world that men of wit, or even poets, may be the most moral of mankind. ”

“ A man in possession of his reason would have wished for such a kind dissolution; but Swift was totally insensible of happiness, or pain. He had not even the power or expression of a child, appearing for some years before his death, referred only as an example to mortify human pride, and to reverse that fine description of human nature, which is given us by the inimitable Shakespeare. 'What a piece of work is man! ”

“ Of what moment are facts that can be lost,—which need to be commemorated? The monument of death will outlast the memory of the dead. The pyramids do not tell the tale that was confided to them; the living fact commemorates itself. Why look in the dark for light? ”