Jonathan Swift

“ Another point, that has cost me some melancholy reflections, is the present state of the playhouse; the encouragement of which hath an immediate influence upon the poetry of the kingdom; as a good market improves the tillage of the neighbouring country, and enriches the ploughman. Neither do we of this town seem enough to know or consider the vast benefit of a playhouse to our city and nation: That single house is the fountain of all our love, wit, dress, and gallantry. ”

“ Knock down half a score reputations, and you will infallibly raise your own; and so it be with wit, no matter with how little justice; for fiction is your trade.
Every great genius seems to ride upon mankind, like Pyrrhus on his elephant; and the way to have the absolute ascendant of your rusty nag, and to keep your seat, is, at your first mounting, to afford him the whip and spurs plentifully; after which, you may travel the rest of the day with great alacrity. Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonable good understanding. ”

“ and have the same use with burning-glasses, to collect the diffused rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader’s imagination. ”

“ In a word, a young robber is usually entered by a murder: A young hound is blooded when he comes first into the field: A young bully begins with killing his man: And a young poet must shew his wit, as the other his courage, by cutting and slashing, and laying about him, and banging mankind. Lastly,
It will be your wisdom to look out betimes for a good service for your muse, according to her skill and qualifications, whether in the nature of a dairymaid, a cook, or char-woman. ”

“ For, indeed, nothing has surprised me more, than to see the prejudices of mankind as to this matter of human learning, who have generally thought it necessary to be a good scholar, in order to be a good poet; than which nothing is falser in fact, or more contrary to practice and experience. Neither will I dispute the matter, if any man will undertake to shew me one professed poet now in being, who is anything of what may be justly called a scholar ”

“ He says, “In our neighbour country, Ireland, where true learning goes very bare, yet are their poets held in devout reverence;” which shews, that learning is no way necessary either to the making a poet, or judging of him. And further to see the fate of things, notwithstanding our learning here is as bare as ever, yet are our poets not held, as formerly in devout reverence, but are perhaps the most contemptible race of mortals now in this kingdom, which is no less to be wondered at, than lamented. ”

“ For though a wit need not have religion, religion is necessary to a wit, as an instrument is to the hand that plays upon it: And for this the moderns plead the example of their great idol Lucretius, who had not been by half so eminent a poet (as he truly was) , but that he stood tiptoe on religion, Religio pedibus subjecta, and by that rising ground had the advantage of all the poets of his own or following times, who were not mounted on the same pedestal. ”

“ I have always a secret veneration for any one I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher; because the richest minerals are ever found under the most ragged and withered surface of earth. ”

“ It will teach you to bring things to a likeness, which have not the least imaginable conformity in nature, which is properly creation, and the very business of a poet, as his name implies; and let me tell you, a good poet can no more be without a stock of similes by him, than a shoemaker without his lasts. He should have them sized, and ranged, and hung up in order in his shop, ready for all customers, and shaped to the feet of all sorts of verse. ”

“ Every author by his management, sweats under himself, being over-loaded with his own index, and carries, like a north-country pedler, all his substance and furniture upon his back, and with as great variety of trifles. To him let all young students make their compliments for so much time and pains saved in the pursuit of useful knowledge; for whoever shortens a road, is a benefactor to the public, and to every particular person who has occasion to travel that way. ”

“ As I take the matter, neither philosophy, nor any part of learning, is more necessary to poetry, (which, if you will believe the same author, is “the sum of all learning”) than to know the theory of light, and the several proportions and diversifications of it in particular colours, is to a good painter. ”

“ The os magna sonaturum, which, if I remember right, Horace makes one qualification of a good poet, may teach you not to gag your muse, or stint yourself in words and epithets (which cost you nothing) contrary to the practice of some few out-of-the-way writers, who use a natural and concise expression, and affect a style like unto a Shrewsbury cake, short and sweet upon the palate; they will not afford you a word more than is necessary to make them intelligible, which is as poor and niggardly, as it would be to set down no more meat than your company will be sure to eat up. ”

“ But as I was saying, so many poets, I am confident, are sufficient to furnish out a corporation in point of number. Then for the several degrees of subordinate members requisite to such a body, there can be no want; for although we have not one masterly poet, yet we abound with wardens and beadles, having a multitude of poetasters, poetitoes, parcel-poets, poet-apes, and philo-poets, and many of inferior attainments in wit, but strong inclinations to it, which are by odds more than all the rest. ”

“ And well he deserves the favours of the nation; for, to do him justice, he has an uncommon skill in pastimes, having altogether applied his studies that way, and travelled full many a league, by sea and land, for this his profound knowledge. With that view alone he has visited all the courts and cities in Europe, and has been at more pains than I shall speak of, to take an exact draught of the playhouse at the Hague, as a model for a new one here. But what can a private man do by himself in so public an undertaking? ”

“ If any further applications shall be made on t’other side, to obtain a charter for a bank here, I presume to make a request, that poetry may be a sharer in that privilege, being a fund as real, and to the full as well grounded as our stocks; but I fear our neighbours, who envy our wit, as much as they do our wealth or trade, will give no encouragement to either. I believe also, it might be proper to erect a corporation of poets in this city. ”

“ And truly this defect has been attended with unspeakable inconveniences; for not to mention the prejudice done to the commonwealth of letters, I am of opinion we suffer in our health by it. I believe our corrupted air, and frequent thick fogs, are in a great measure owing to the common exposal of our wit; and that with good management, our poetical vapours might be carried off in a common drain, and fall into one quarter of the town, without infecting the whole, as the case is at present, to the great offence of our nobility, and gentry, and others of nice noses. ”

“ I would be very loth to give the least umbrage of offence by what I have here said, as I may do, if I should be thought to insinuate that these circumstances of good writing have been unknown to, or not observed by, the poets of this kingdom. I will do my countrymen the justice to say, they have written by the foregoing rules with great exactness, and so far, as hardly to come behind those of their profession in England, in perfection of low writing. The sublime, indeed, is not so common with us ”

“ Now I say, common swearing, a produce of this country, as plentiful as our corn, thus cultivated by the playhouse, might, with management, be of wonderful advantage to the nation, as a projector of the swearer’s bank has proved at large. ”

“ Let me entreat you then, by no means to lay aside that notion peculiar to our modern refiners in poetry, which is, that a poet must never write or discourse as the ordinary part of mankind do, but in number and verse, as an oracle ”

“ Our modern poets are, all to a man, almost as well read in the Scriptures as some of our divines, and often abound more with the phrase. They have read them historically, critically, musically, comically, poetically, and every other way, except religiously, and have found their account in doing so. For the Scriptures are undoubtedly a fund of wit, and a subject for wit. You may, according to the modern practice, be witty upon them or out of them. ”

“ A common-place book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that “great wits have short memories;” and whereas, on the other hand, poets being liars by profession, ought to have good memories. ”

“ Add to this the expediency of furnishing out your shelves with a choice collection of modern miscellanies, in the gayest edition; and of reading all sorts of plays, especially the new, and above all, those of our own growth, printed by subscription; in which article of Irish manufacture, I readily agree to the late proposal, and am altogether for “rejecting and renouncing everything that comes from England:” To what purpose should we go thither either for coals or poetry, when we have a vein within ourselves equally good and more convenient? ”

“ In the first place, I am not yet convinced, that it is at all necessary for a modern poet to believe in God, or have any serious sense of religion; and in this article you must give me leave to suspect your capacity; because religion being what your mother taught you, you will hardly find it possible, at least not easy, all at once to get over those early prejudices, so far as to think it better to be a great wit than a good Christian, though herein the general practice is against you ”

“ Upon these views, I cannot but commend your wise resolution to withdraw so early from other unprofitable and severe studies, and betake yourself to that, which, if you have good luck, will advance your fortune, and make you an ornament to your friends, and your country. It may be your justification, and farther encouragement, to consider, that history, ancient or modern, cannot furnish you an instance of one person, eminent in any station, who was not in some measure versed in poetry, or at least a well wisher to the professors of it. ”

“ Your own prudence will, I doubt not, direct you to take a place every evening amongst the ingenious, in the corner of a certain coffeehouse in this town, where you will receive a turn equally right as to wit, religion, and politics: As likewise to be as frequent at the playhouse as you can afford, without selling your books. ”

“ But I have learned a better construction, from the opinion and practice of the moderns; and taking it literally for a free spirit, i.e. a spirit, or mind, free or disengaged from all prejudices concerning God, religion, and another world, it is to me a plain account why our present set of poets are, and hold themselves obliged to be, free thinkers. ”

“ To these devote your spare hours, or rather spare all your hours to them, and then you will act as becomes a wise man, and make even diversion an improvement; like the inimitable management of the bee, which does the whole business of life at once, and at the same time both feeds, and works, and diverts itself. ”

“ There our young folks drop their childish mistakes, and come first to perceive their mother’s cheat of the parsley-bed; there too they get rid of natural prejudices, especially those of religion and modesty, which are great restraints to a free people. ”

“ When the matter of such discourses is but mere clay, or, as we usually call it, sad stuff, the preacher, who can afford no better, wisely moulds, and polishes, and dries, and washes this piece of earthen-ware, and then bakes it with poetic fire, after which it will ring like any pancrock, and is a good dish to set before common guests, as every congregation is, that comes so often for entertainment to one place. ”

“ That as a handsome way of praising is certainly the most difficult point in writing or speaking, I would by no means advise any young man to make his first essay in panegyric, besides the danger of it: for a particular encomium is ever attended with more ill-will, than any general invective, for which I need give no reasons ”

“ I have lamented nothing more in my time, than the disuse of some ingenious little plays, in fashion with young folks, when I was a boy, and to which the great facility of that age, above ours, in composing was certainly owing ”

“ Besides, you will sometimes meet with tolerable conversation amongst the players; they are such a kind of men, as may pass upon the same sort of capacities, for wits off the stage, as they do for fine gentlemen upon it. Besides that, I have known a factor deal in as good ware, and sell as cheap as the merchant himself that employs him. ”

“ But with this caution, that you are not to use those ancients as unlucky lads do their old fathers, and make no conscience of picking their pockets and pillaging them. Your business is not to steal from them, but to improve upon them, and make their sentiments your own ”

“ When writers of all sizes, like freemen of the city, are at liberty to throw out their filth and excrementitious productions, in every street as they please, what can the consequence be, but that the town must be poisoned, and become such another jakes, as by report of great travellers, Edinburgh is at night, a thing well to be considered in these pestilential times. ”