Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-n9wrp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T03:14:35.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Swift's Historical Outlook

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

James William Johnson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The art and mind of Jonathan Swift have been the objects of ever greater critical attention for the last twenty or thirty years. So thoroughly have the commentators discussed Swift's attitudes and their origins that there would seem to be little left to discover about the Dean's views or why he held them or how he applied them. In respect to the rôle played in Swift's thought by his reading in historiography, however, and the importance of history in the conceptual bases of his writings, critics have assumed more than they have demonstrated. In spite of some useful published disquisitions — by Herbert Davis and Irvin Ehrenpreis — the implications of the importance of Swift's historical outlook have not been fully explored, nor have the formation and configuration of his historically founded beliefs been clarified and documented. The present study will attempt to explain in some detail Swift's ideas of history, where he got them, and how they affected his non-historiographical compositions.

Swift's vital interest in historiography is now commonly acknowledged. The post in government he most actively tried to get was that of Historiographer Royal. Between 1714 and 1720, he devoted a good deal of time to composing his “histories” of political activities during the Tory ministry. He essayed a history of England. His letters as well as his other works are packed with references to a multiplicity of historians drawn from disparate ages and cultures. In his library, which numbered about five hundred separate works at the time of his death, at least three fifths were historical opera, including diaries, memoirs, and chronologies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , May 1965 , pp. 52 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1965

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. See Davis, Herbert, “The Augustan Conception of History,” in Jonathan Swift: Essays on His Satire and Other Studies (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; Ehrenpreis, Irvin, The Personality of Jonathan Swift (Cambridge, Mass., 1958)Google Scholar. More specialized treatments include Ehrenpreis, Irvin, “Swift's History of England,” J.E.G.P., LI (1952), 177–85Google Scholar; Ehrenpreis, Irvin, “Swift on Liberty,” J.H.I., XIII (1952), 131–46Google Scholar; and Moore, John R., “Swift as Historian,” S.P., XLIX (1952), 583–603Google Scholar. Ward, Addison's “The Tory View of Roman History,” Studies in English Literature, IV (1964), 413–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, joins useful data with some questionable conclusions. The most extended studies of Swift's historical views are unpublished: Jones, Myrddin, Swift's View of History (B. Litt. thesis, Oxford, 1953)Google Scholar, and Johnson, James William, Scythia, Cato, and Corruption: Swift's Historical Concepts and Their Background (Ph.D. thesis, Vanderbilt, 1954)Google Scholar.

2. See Williams, Harold, Dean Swift's Library (Cambridge, 1932), pp. 67–78Google Scholar; Bensly, Edward, “The Library at Moor Park,” N. & Q., CLIX (1930), 48Google Scholar; Williams, Harold, “Jonathan Swift and the Four Last Years of the Queen,” Library, XVI (1935), 61–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Swift's pose as historian is significant in The Battle of the Books and The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit as well as other works. See Swift, Jonathan, Works, ed. Davis, Herbert (Oxford, 1939–1962), I, 83Google Scholar; I, 145; I, 186 ff. Future references to the Works will be to this edition unless the volume number is prefaced by the letters TS, which refer to the edition of Temple Scott (London, 1910-14). See Swift, Works, TS, V, 477; TS, XI, 376-78.

3. Cf. Saintsbury, George, The Peace of the Augustans (London, 1916)Google Scholar; Quintana, Ricardo, The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (New York, 1936)Google Scholar; Van Doren, Carl, Swift (New York, 1930)Google Scholar; Murray, John Middleton, Jonathan Swift: A Critical Biography (London, 1954)Google Scholar; Hazard, Paul, La Crise de la Conscience Européenne (1680-1715) (Paris, 1935)Google Scholar.

4. The ferment of interest in historiographical theory, practice, and utility during the Restoration and Hanoverian eras is shown by the plethora of treatises published between 1660 and 1760. Typical essays include those of Pierre Le Moine (tr. in 1695), William Temple (1692), Jean LeClerc (tr. in 1700), Thomas Hearne (1714), Richard Rawlinson (1728), Charles Rollin (tr. in 1734), Edward Manwaring (1737), Peter Whalley (1746), and Bolingbroke (written in 1735, published in 1752). While Swift doubtless shared many of the sentiments expressed in these variational treatments of the historiographical theories of J. J. Scaliger and G. J. Vossius, they were not entirely congruent with his own beliefs nor preemptive of them.

5. See Maxwell, Constantia, A History of Trinity College, Dublin, 1591-1892 (Dublin, 1946), pp. 50–51Google Scholar; Stanford, W. Bedell, “Classical Studies in Trinity College, Dublin, since the Foundation,” Hermathena, LVII (1941), 3–24Google Scholar.

6. That Swift used historical exempla most extensively in such works as “Contests and Dissentions,” “The Sentiments of a Church of England Man,” the essays for The Examiner, The Conduct of the Allies, and “A Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue” — all composed as exercises in persuasive logic — is probably indicative of his high seriousness. He often says so in the works themselves, obviously without ironic intent. See Swift, , Works, I, 222Google Scholar; II, 1-2; III, 29; III, 41-42; VI, 55; TS, XI, 840. Swift's most concentrated use of historical precedents came, understandably, between 1701 and 1714, when he was most directly concerned with political matters in England.

7. Cf. Swift's eternally quoted statement: “I have got up my Latin pretty well, and am getting up my Greek, but to enter upon causes of Philosophy is what I protest I will rather die in a ditch than go about.” Swift, Jonathan, Correspondence, ed. Ball, F. E. (London, 1910), I, 336Google Scholar. Swift's knowledge of Greek literature should not be underestimated, however. Not only did he urge the young clergyman to read Hellenic literature; his knowledge and use of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Homer, Hesiod, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pindar, and Plutarch is readily demonstrable in Swift's own writings. Moreover, he owned multiple copies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and he was familiar with the chief Byzantine historians and critics.

8. See Bredvold, Louis, “The Gloom of the Tory Satirists,” in Pope and His Contemporaries, ed. Clifford, J. L. and Landa, L. A. (Oxford, 1949)Google Scholar; Johnson, J. W., “The Meaning of ‘Augustan,’” J.H.I., XIX (1958), 507–22Google Scholar. A contrary view is incorporated in Maxwell, J. C.'s “Demigods and Pickpockets, The Augustan Myth in Swift and Rousseau,” Scrutiny, XI (1942–1943), 34 ffGoogle Scholar.

9. This is only one of several aphorisms on history in the “Thoughts on Various Subjects.” See Swift, , Works, I, 241–42Google Scholar.

10. Addison often repeated his warning of the inapplicability of historical parallels. For one partisan example and Swift's comment on it, see Swift, , Works, TS, X, 376Google Scholar. The “Tritical Essay” may be found in Swift, , Works, I, 246 ffGoogle Scholar.

11. The method shows to advantage in Crane, R. S., “The Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos, and the History of Ideas,” in Reason and the Imagination, ed. Mazzeo, J. A. (New York, 1962), pp. 231–53Google Scholar; Ehrenpreis, Irvin, Mr. Swift and His Contemporaries (Cambridge, 1962)Google Scholar; and Harth, Philip, Swift and Anglican Rationalism (Chicago, 1961)Google Scholar.

12. As with other of his beliefs, Swift was able to criticize a too narrow or trite usage by other writers. Cf. “The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit”: “For I do not remember any other Temper of Body, or Quality of Mind, wherein all Nations and Ages of the World have so unanymously agreed, as That of a Fanatick Strain … as will soon appear to those who know any thing of Arabia, Persia, India, or China, of Morocco and Peru.” Swift, , Works, I, 174Google Scholar. For other nuances, of the Uniformitarian premise, see Swift's letter to Bolingbroke on April 5, 1729, and Pope's letter to Swift on October 9, 1729. See also Abrams, M. H., The Mirror and the Lamp (New York, 1953)Google Scholar.

13. Swift gave objective praise to history for these qualities in a number of later works, notably the Latin “Character of Herodotus” (Swift, , Works, TS, XI, 186Google Scholar), the “Vindication of Carteret” (ibid., VII, 232), “The Presbyterian's Plea of Merit” (ibid, III, 46), and “An Essay on Modern Education” in The Intelligencer, No. IX (1729). Subjectively, he declared himself profoundly affected in his youth by reading classical history; e.g., “A Fragment of Autobiography” (Swift, , Works, TS, XI, 376–78Google Scholar), “Memoirs Relating to that Change in the Queen's Ministry in 1710” (ibid., V, 380), Swift, , Correspondence, III, 34Google Scholar. Bolingbroke, who well knew how to play on Swift's vanity, often referred to his knowledge of ancient history. Cf. Bolingbroke's letter of September 9, 1730: “You have returned and supported ministers; you have set kingdoms in a flame by your pen. Pray, what is there in that, but having the knack of hitting the passions of mankind? With that alone, and a little knowledge of ancient and modern history, and seeing a little further into the inside of things than the generality of men, you have made this bustle” (ibid., III, 31). Probably the clearest statement of Swift's notion of the cyclic patterns of history is to be found in Book III of Gulliver's Travels (Swift, , Works, XI, 194Google Scholar). Clear-cut examples of his confidence in history as a source of political prudence are found in Swift, , Correspondence, II, 239Google Scholar; III, 191, and the works cited in note 6 above.

14. Johnson, Samuel, Works (London, 1825), I, 264Google Scholar.

15. This thesis is more fully developed in Johnson, , “Meaning of ‘Augustan,’” J.H.I., XIX (1958), 507–22Google Scholar.

16. See, especially, Defoe's poems and pamphlets written in the period between 1710 and 1716.

17. Toynbee's capacious The Study of History shows a strong influence by the Augustan historiographical theorists of paradigmatic culture.

18. J. W. Thompson and Wallace Ferguson have written helpful surveys of theogonic history, before and during the Renaissance. Modern theologian-historians such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Karl Jaspers express the twentieth-century equivalent of Swift's basic position.

19. Cf. Louis Landa's Preface to Swift's Sermons. Swift, , Works, II, 19Google Scholar; TS, I, 281.

20. Swift, , Works, TS, I, 279Google Scholar.

21. Ibid.; Swift, , Works, III, 17-18, 19–23Google Scholar.

22. See also ibid., II, 75; III, 49; III, 158-59; VII, xxxiv; X, 43, 126-27.

23. Ibid., IX, 261-63.

24. Ibid., IX, 264. Aspects of Swift's attitude are treated in Harth's Swift and Anglican Rationalism and Tuveson, Ernest's “Swift and the World-Makers,” J.H.I., XI (1950), 54–74Google Scholar.

25. Swift, , Correspondence, I, 130Google Scholar; III, 120 ff.; V, 179.

26. Thompson and Fueter have summarized the variations of this practice. Cf. Cochrane, Charles, Christianity and Classical Culture (London, 1944)Google Scholar; Mommsen, T. E., “St. Augustine and the Christian Idea of Progress,” J.H.I., XII (1951), 346–74Google Scholar.

27. See Johnson, J. W., “Chronology: Its Concepts and Development,” History and Theory, II (1962), 124–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28. Swift, , Works, IX, 69 ff.Google Scholar, 155-56, 241 ff.

29. Ibid., IX, 18-19; XI, 183-84.

30. Swift, , Correspondence, III, 31et seqGoogle Scholar. Cf. Davis, “Augustan Conception of History.”

31. Polybius, I.1, I.35; Diodorus, I.1; Dionysius, V.74. Cf. Thompson, J. W., A History of Historical Writing (New York, 1942), 32 ffGoogle Scholar.

32. Herodotus, I.34, 62; V.92; VI.27; Xenophon, , Memorabilia, I.1, 4Google Scholar; Plutarch, , “Romulus,” XXVIIIGoogle Scholar. See Fueter, Eduard, Geschichte der Neueren Historiographie (Berlin, 1911)Google Scholar, for the influence of classical theogonic writers on Comines, de Thou, and other Renaissance historians known to Swift.

33. See Jones, R. F., Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Background of the Battle of the Books (St. Louis, 1936)Google Scholar. This pioneer study has been misapplied to Swift by later critics.

34. Swift, , Works, I, 128–29Google Scholar.

35. Ibid., XI, 122.

36. Swift, , Correspondence, V, 231Google Scholar.

37. Swift, , Works, XI, 122Google Scholar.

38. Ibid., IX, 38-41, 264. Cf. VI, 78; IX, 250; XI, 243, 250.

39. Ibid., II, 1-23.

40. Swift, , Correspondence, IV, 77Google Scholar. Cf. Book III of Gulliver's Travels in Swift, , Works, XI, 194Google Scholar: “THESE Strulbruggs and I would mutually communicate our Observations and Memorials through the Course of Time; remark the several Gradations by which Corruption steals into the World, and oppose it in every Step, by giving perpetual Warning and Instruction to Mankind; which, added to the strong Influence of our own Example, would probably prevent that continual Degeneracy of human Nature, so justly complained of in all Ages. ADD to this the Pleasure of seeing the various Revolutions of States and Empires; the Changes in the lower and upper Worlds; ancient Cities in Ruins, and obscure Villages become the Seats of Kings. Famous Rivers lessening into shallow Brooks; the Ocean leaving one Coast dry, and overwhelming another: The Discovery of many Countries yet unknown. Barbarity over-running the politest Nations, and the most barbarous becoming civilized.”

41. Swift, , Works, III, 161Google Scholar; VI, 95.

42. Augustine, , Confessions, XIGoogle Scholar. R. F. Jones, Carl Becker, J. B. Bury, and Heinrich Meyer, among others, have dealt with aspects of chronology and theories of time. See Haber, Francis C., The Age of the World: Moses to Darwin (Baltimore, 1959)Google Scholar.

43. Swift, , Works, I, 241Google Scholar.

44. Ibid., I, 22 ff.

45. Ibid., II, 15, 52, 84.

46. Ibid., II, 63.

47. Cf. Becker, Carl, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers (New Haven, 1932), p. 124Google Scholar.

48. Herodotus, I.5; Dionysius, V.77; Diodorus, I.6.

49. Tertullian, , Apology, XIXGoogle Scholar; Orosius, Paulus, Seven Books of History Against the Pagans (New York, 1936), p. 75Google Scholar; Cyprian, , Writings (Edinburgh, 1868), pp. 423–29Google Scholar.

50. Cf. Harris, Victor, All Coherence Gone (Chicago, 1949)Google Scholar.

51. Swift, , Works, TS, XI, 8Google Scholar.

52. This subject is expanded in Johnson, J. W., “Of Differing Ages and Climes,” J.H.I., XXI (1960), 465–80Google Scholar.

53. Swift, , Works, II, 17–18Google Scholar.

54. Swift, , Works, TS, XI, 72, 74Google Scholar.

55. Ibid., XI, 13.

56. Herodotus, IX.122.

57. Xenophon, , Memorabilia, I.2Google Scholar.

58. Strabo, VII.3.7.

59. Cato, I-VI; Varro, I-II.

60. Diodorus, VII.12; Livy, VII.32, XXIII.45, XXXIX.6; Appian, III.1; Florus, I.31.15, I.38.3; Justin, , History of the World, in Watson, J. S. (ed.), Justin, Cornelius Nepos, and Eutropius (London, 1884), p. 10Google Scholar.

61. See Vergil, Polydore, English History (London, 1846), pp. 77, 109, 245–46Google Scholar; Daniel, Samuel, History, (London, 1650), pp. 25, 166, 204–05Google Scholar; Clarendon, Lord, History of the Rebellion (London, 1826), I, 4Google Scholar; Burnet, Gilbert, History of My Own Time (London, 1897), p. 330Google Scholar.

62. Temple, William, Works (London, 1757), III, 93Google Scholar. See also I, 54; I, 61; I, 136; III, 74.

63. Swift, , Works, TS, I, 284Google Scholar; TS, XI, 11.

64. Ibid., III, 302.

65. Ibid., X, 214.

66. Swift, , Works, IX, 33Google Scholar; XI, 185-86.

67. Ibid., IX, 200-01.

68. Swift, , Correspondence, V, 143Google Scholar.

69. Cf. Fink, Zera, The Classical Republicans (Evanston, 1945)Google Scholar, for a full scale study of the “balanced government” theory in the seventeenth century and after.

70. Polybius, IV-VI. Cf. Dionysius, II.8; also Eutropius, and Justin, in Watson, (ed.), Justin, Cornelius Nepos, and Eutropius, pp. 39 ff., 453 ffGoogle Scholar. Addison, in The Freeholder, No. 51, and Temple, in “Of Popular Discontents,” countenance the Polybian Thesis.

71. Swift, , Works, I, 25Google Scholar; II, 17-18, 23, 83.

72. Ibid., VI, 123.

73. Swift, , Works, TS, X, 225–27Google Scholar.

74. See “Upon the Martyrdom of King Charles,” in Swift, , Works, IX, 219Google Scholar.

75. Livy, IV.8, XXIV.1; Dionysius, IV.24; Florus, II.34; Plutarch, , “Cato,” XVIGoogle Scholar.

76. Swift, , Works, II, 49Google Scholar.

77. Ibid., VI, 95.

78. Xenophon, II.1; Polybius, XI.10; Diodorus, I.94, XI.1; Justin, in Watson, (ed.), Justin, Cornelius Nepos, and Eutropius, p. 68Google Scholar; Plutarch, , “Numa,” VIGoogle Scholar. Cf. Temple, Works, I, 54Google Scholar; III, 43.

79. Swift, , Works, II, 47 ffGoogle Scholar.

80. Swift, , Works, TS, X, 206, 214, 256, 263Google Scholar.

81. Swift, , Works, IX, 157Google Scholar.

82. Swift, , Correspondence, I, 252Google Scholar; II, 239; V, 179; VI, 53.

83. Swift, , Works, TS, XI, 173–74Google Scholar.

84. Dionysius, VI.86; Livy, II.32; Dio Cassius, IV. Each refers to the Aesopian fable.

85. Temple, Works, III, 12-13, 458Google Scholar; Swift, , Correspondence, III, 91–92Google Scholar.

86. Florus, Intro., I.17.23. The implications of the comparison to Swift are more completely dealt with in Johnson, , “Meaning of ‘Augustan,’” J.H.I., XIX (1958), 507–22Google Scholar.

87. Swift, , Works, I, 31Google Scholar; TS, I, 281.

88. Swift, , Works, X, 55Google Scholar.

89. Swift, , Correspondence, V, 179Google Scholar.

90. Ibid., V, 226.