Swift, Jonathan

Swift, Jonathan (1667–1745), was born in Dublin and was educated with Congreve, at Kilkenny Grammar School, then at Trinity College, Dublin. He was a cousin of Dryden. He was admitted (1689) to the household of Sir W. Temple, and there acted as secretary. He wrote Pindaric odes, one of which provoked, according to Dr Johnson, Dryden's remark, ‘Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.’ He returned to Ireland, was ordained (1694), and returned to Temple at Moor Park in 1696, where he edited Temple's correspondence, and in 1697 wrote The Battle of the Books, which was published in 1704 together with A Tale of a Tub. At Moor Park he first met Esther Johnson (‘Stella’). On the death of Temple in 1699, Swift went again to Ireland, where he was given a prebend in St Patrick's, Dublin. He wrote his Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions between the Nobles and the Commons in Athens and Rome, with reference to the impeachment of the Whig lords, in 1701. In the course of numerous visits to London he became acquainted with Addison, Steele, and Halifax. In 1708 he began a series of pamphlets on church questions with his ironical Argument against Abolishing Christianity. Amid these serious occupations, he diverted himself with the series of squibs upon the astrologer John Partridge (1708–9, see under Bickerstaff) and his ‘Description of a City Shower’ and ‘Description of the Morning’, poems depicting scenes of London life (1709). Disgusted at the Whig alliance with Dissent, he went over to the Tories in 1710, attacked the Whig ministers in the Examiner, which he edited, and in 1711 wrote The Conduct of the Allies and Some Remarks on the Barrier Treaty, pamphlets written to dispose the mind of the nation to peace. He became dean of St Patrick's in 1713. He had already begun his Journal to Stella, a series of intimate letters (1710–13) to Esther Johnson and her companion Rebecca Dingley, who had moved to Ireland in 1700/1; it is written partly in baby language, and gives a vivid account of Swift's daily life in London. Swift's relations with Stella remain obscure; they were intimate and affectionate, and some form of marriage may have taken place. Another woman, Esther Vanhomrigh (pron. ‘Vanummery’), entered his life in 1708; his poem Cadenus and Vanessa suggests that she fell deeply in love with him (‘She wished her Tutor were her Lover’). She is said to have died of shock in 1723 after his final rupture with her, inspired by her jealousy of Stella. Stella died in 1728.

In 1714 Swift joined Pope, Arbuthnot, Gay, and others in the celebrated Scriblerus Club. He returned to Ireland in August 1714 and occupied himself with Irish affairs, and by his famous Drapier's Letters (1724) he prevented the introduction of ‘Wood's Half-pence’ into Ireland. He came to England in 1726 and published Gulliver's Travels (1726). He wrote some of his most famous tracts and characteristic poems during his last years in Ireland, The Grand Question Debated (1729); Verses on the Death of Dr Swift (1731, pub. 1739), in which with mingled pathos and humour he reviews his life and work; A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation (1738); and the ironical Directions to Servants (written about 1731 and published after his death). He kept up his correspondence with Bolingbroke, Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot. He spent a third of his income on charities, and saved another third to found St Patrick's Hospital for Imbeciles (opened 1757). The symptoms of the illness from which he suffered for most of his life (now thought to have been Ménière's disease) became very marked in his last years, and his faculties decayed to such a degree that many considered him insane. He was buried by the side of Stella, in St Patrick's, Dublin, his own famous epitaph ‘ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit’ being inscribed on his tomb. Nearly all his works were published anonymously, and for only one, Gulliver's Travels, did he receive any payment (£200). Dr Johnson, Macaulay, and Thackeray, among many other writers, were alienated by his ferocity and coarseness, and his works tended to be undervalued in the late 18th–19th cents. The 20th cent. has seen a revival of biographical and critical interest, stressing on the whole Swift's sanity, vigour, and satirical inventiveness rather than his alleged misanthropy.

Swift published a great number of works besides those mentioned above including political writings, notably The Importance of the Guardian Considered (1713) and The Public Spirit of the Whigs (1714); pamphlets relating to Ireland, notably A Modest Proposal (1729); pamphlets on Church questions; miscellaneous verses, including Baucis and Philemon (1709); and other writings.