Anonymous

“ How will a future Ministry become wise from this great Pattern. How easy will it be for a Man to make a Figure at the Head of Affairs when in all Difficulties he has nothing else to do but to act in Conformity to his Measures? ”

“ What a Cloud of Witnesses might I have, if required, to set in Opposition to this single Assertion of the Doctor's, he is indeed the only Person that ever was known to have thought such a Thing. The great Condescention and Kindness, the good Nature and Complacency with which that Person treats all Mankind, render him amiable to all ”

“ Swift's mean character of Flimnap, the Lilliputian Prime Minister, stung badly: "With what Indignation must every one that has had the Honour to be admitted to this Great Man, review the Doctor's charging him with being morose" (p. 15) . He counters Swift's insulting reduction of the Great Man to a petty little man with an egregiously fulsome panegyric that magnifies the virtues of Sir Robert's public and private character, and concludes with abuse of Swift's character as an Irish dean disaffected from the government—hence deserving of permanent exile in Ireland. ”

“ A vulgar work obviously meant to appeal to a neurotic taste for sexuality, it includes no attack on Swift as it explores at length some topics to which Gulliver in his memoirs only tangentially alludes. The second abortive effort, an animal satire of exotic talking fowl, also resembles Swift's satire as it touches on several similar topics—the hypocrisy of the people, the scepticism of their nobility, the love of luxury of the higher clergy—but again because it includes no comment on Swift's personal or public character, it is not relevant to a discussion of the angry Letter from a Clergyman. ”

“ Here I might make a general Challenge and say; who can charge him with want of Wisdom, Judgment, Knowledge, Integrity, Uprightness, Justice, or Clemency, and a long &c. But this would be but faint to the Latitude I may with Justice take the other Way: This great Man, is the wise Director of the publick Affairs; he is the Delight of his Royal Master, and the Darling of the People; he is an Honour to his Nation, adds a Lustre to the Crown, and is deservedly valued by us and all Europe, as a general publick Blessing; born for the Good, the Happiness of Mankind ”

“ ENVY, the Crime Mankind should be the most ashamed of, having the least to say in Excuse for it; the Canker of the Soul, most uneasy to the Possessor; a Passion not to be gratify'd, not possible of Pleasure ”

“ As Gay's letter suggests, details concerning the contemporary reception of Gulliver's Travels exhibit two sides of Jonathan Swift's character—the pleasant (that is, merry, witty, amusing) and the unpleasant (that is, sarcastic, envious, disaffected) . A person with a powerful ego and astringent sense of humor, Swift must have been a delightful friend, if somewhat difficult, but also a dangerous enemy. ”

“ John Oldmixon, another Whig writer, repeats some of these slanders against Swift, even using some of the same words like "Trifling and Grimace"—in his reactions to the Swift-Pope Miscellanies and Gulliver's Travels. He too finds the tales in the Travels frivolous because lacking a moral and the satire a debasing of "the Dignity of human Nature" (The Arts of Logick and Rhetorick [London, 1728] , pp. 416-418) . ”

“ In almost every conceivable literary style Smedley takes exception to Swift's divinity and politics and attempts to blacken Swift's character. As we should expect, differences over politics and religion were determining causes. Thus Smedley adores the outstanding literary Whig Addison, contrasting the polish and beauty of Addison's style with Swift's failures, ugliness, ineptitude, vulgarity, intolerable filthiness. Likewise, following the author of the Letter, he writes favorably of Steele, castigating Swift for his treacherous betrayal of Steele's friendship. ”

“ How, in a word, has he, by a Management, peculiar to himself secur'd that Tranquility in Europe, which if broke in upon, might have cost the Lives of a million of Men, an immense Treasure, and many Years to have restor'd? ”

“ He spares neither Age or Sex, neither the Living or the Dead; neither the Rich, the Great, or the Good; the best of Characters is no Fence, the Innocent are the least secure; even his Majesty's Person is not sacred, the Royal Blood affords no Protection here; he equally endeavours to bring into Contempt with the People, his Majesty, the Royal Family, and the Ministry. ”

“ A Knave loves and delights in Scandal, Detraction, Infamy, in blasting, ruining his Neighbour's Character, because these are consonant to the Depravity of humane Nature, and in themselves vile: Upon the very same Account an honest Man abominates them all, with the utmost Abhorrence of Soul. ”

“ He daily feeds the Hungry, cloaths the Naked, delivers the Prisoner; and what I look upon a thousand Degrees beyond the other, he saves and raises many a Family just sinking into Ruine; delivers them from Infamy, Imprisonment, and Want; which to those that never felt either, and have the Appearance of all in View, must be Circumstances more dreadful than 'tis possible can be rightly conceived of by any, but those who have themselves been in them: To help these has been his peculiar Care. Here's one of the best Acts can be done by Man in private Life ”

“ Great Britain will undoubtedly be led to espouse her true Interest; her Commerce will be extended and established; and we shall become a more flourishing, united, powerful People, than we are, even at present ”

“ However this I am fully persuaded of, that as no good Government ought to be so insulted and male-treated; so there is no honest Man among us but would contribute the utmost in his Power to bring the Author, and those concerned with him to exemplary Punishment, in order to deter others from the like pernicious Practices for the future. ”

“ I shall but say, a Soldier for Neglect of Duty only, is discarded, never fails to meet with Disgrace, and often Death; here is what's much worse [Pg 22] than the utmost such a Charge can amount to; that the Cloth should make such a Difference that he who ought to have the severest Treatment, finds the most favourable is no great Encomium upon our national Justice. ”

“ This is beyond all Bounds; who that are English Men can with Temper think of such an Insult upon the Body of their Representatives; the Centre of the National Power; the great Preserver of our Laws, Religion and Liberties, and of all, that as Men and Christians we ought to hold dear and valuable. ”

“ There is no immediate Fence indeed against an infamous Tongue, and must often be for some Time submitted to; but in this Case 'tis otherwise; what the Doctor asserts of this Person and his Family is so universally known to be false, and condemned as such by the Voice of the whole Nation; that the Doctor has the Mortification to find his Aspersions here, do not take in the least. ”

“ We have Religion and Liberty, Wealth, Trade, Peace, and the greatest Plenty at home; we are loved by our Friends, dreaded by our Enemies, and in the utmost Reputation abroad; so that in his Majesty's Reign and under the present Administration we have nothing so much to desire as the Continuance of both, being the Source under God, whence all our Felicity flows.
But whatever the Doctor deserves, 'tis given out that he has been so much upon his Guard, that no Forms of Law can touch him ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus it is also not strange for the antagonistic clergyman to say nothing in his Letter about the heart of the Lilliputian narrative—the profound allegory on the religious wars over [Pg viii] the Eucharist and the serious issues raised by Swift. No doubt, however, he probably read Swift's interpretation of Gulliver's role in this conflict as a Tory version of history, and resented it accordingly. ”

“ Measures, that as they have done, in the like Cases will always do; but I find, Sir, I must put a Restraint upon my Inclination, or this agreeable Subject would run me much beyond the Limits of a Letter; and indeed, it is a very great Restraint I put upon myself to break off without saying much more, for how can an honest true-hearted Englishman bear to have the Person insulted, who is so much the Cause of his Prosperity and Happiness; whose ONE general intention is the Good of his Country; who is indefatigable in his Endeavours to procure it ”

“ In general, the Keys are pleasantly written, including no nasty innuendoes critical of Swift's high-church sectarian zeal or his high-flying Tory political sympathies. They may be considered a frankly commercial venture meant to exploit the popularity of the Travels. Curll merely summarizes the narratives, occasionally providing substantial extracts or sprinkling explanatory comments on some allusions that attract him. ”

“ Man to an Archbishoprick, cannot lift another above a Deanery. [4]
Such commentary suggests that at least one very early reader of the Travels sensed the possibility of Swift's use of certain portions of his narrative to vent disappointment at his failure to receive the church preferment he thought he deserved and to carry on his personal vendetta against obstructive bishops like the "crazy Prelate" Sharpe, Archbishop of York, one of the detestable and "dull Divines" pilloried in the autobiographical poem "The Author Upon Himself" (1714) . ”

“ In this long tedious Part the Reader loses all that might have been engaging to him in the three former; the Capacity and Character given there of Brutes, are so unnatural; and especially the great Preheminence asserted of them, to the most virtuous and noble of humane Nature, is so monstrously absurd and unjust, that 'tis with the utmost Pain a generous Mind must indure the Recital; a Man grows sick at the shocking Things inserted there ”

“ Consider also his defense of Swift's exposure of the corrupt bishops, the "holy Persons" in the House of Lords (Travels, II, vi) . Believing that Swift's pungent satire on the church hierarchy is good and true, he makes the dean himself the target of a playful bit of raillery, a type of irony for which Swift and Arbuthnot were both notorious:
Being slavish prostitute Chaplains is certainly a good step towards becoming an Holy Lord ”

“ In the following pages, we shall define the historical context of the clergyman's Letter and illuminate the nature of the literary warfare in which Swift was an energetic if not particularly cheerful antagonist when Gulliver's Travels was published late in 1726.
In another letter, Gay remarked to Swift (17 November 1726) that "The Politicians to a man agree, that it [the Travels] is free from particular reflections" ”

“ Some of the annotations are ridiculous, or curious, like the equations of Blefuscu with Scotland, of the storm Gulliver passes through before reaching Brobdingnag with "the South-Sea and Mississippi Confusion," and of the giants with inflated South Sea stock (II, 4) . Some remarks, however, appear convincing, such as his belief that "the trifling Transactions of the present English Royal Society" on insects and fossils are "finely rallied" (II, 11-12) . Curll also notes about the third voyage that "besides the political Allegory, Mr. ”

“ He is also immortalized in Pope's Dunciad (1728) as "a person dipp'd in scandal, and deeply immers'd in dirty work" (Dunciad A, II, 279ff; B, II, 291ff) . His Gulliveriana (including the satires on Pope, the Alexandriana) , a scurrilous anthology of abuse in the form of jingles, ballads, parodies in prose, and other satirical essays, was inspired by the recent publication of the Pope-Swift [Pg ix] Miscellany. In his preface Smedley indicts Swift for an almost endless series of misdemeanors—for shifting his allegiance from the Whigs to the Tories ”

“ William E. Conway, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library; George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles; Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles
Corresponding Secretary: Mrs. Edna C. Davis, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
The Society's purpose is to publish rare Restoration and eighteenth-century works (usually as facsimile reproductions) . All income of the Society is devoted to defraying costs of publication and mailing. ”