Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Britain's greatest satirist, Jonathan Swift was a brilliant, troubled man who achieved literary fame and high standing in the church, but never felt that id gained what he wanted and deserved. He was born in Dublin of English parents (his father before he was born) and entered life as a member of the Protestant ruling class disliked by Catholic majority. After studying at Trinity college, Dublin, Swift went to England to serve as the secretary to Sir William Temple, a retired mat and writer of essays who wanted help setting papers in order. Swift found in Temple the father he never had, but frustration as well, for he expected Temple to help him begin a political career in England, and this never occurred. Abandoning his dream, Swift returned to Ireland and took orders in the church, but after an unhappy year in a parish he was back in Temple's household, re he remained until 1699.The fifteen years that followed were in many ways his happiest. He made friends with Alexander; and other leading writers, and published anonymously in 1704 a brilliant satire called A Tale Tub that exposed abuses in religion and learning. In The Battle of the Books he involved himself literary controversy. The Tory administration id his talent for argument useful, and he pro-ed a great deal of political writing for the government, feeling at last that he was near the center lower. He looked forward to being named an Irish bishop because of his well-placed friends, when Queen Anne died in 1714 and the Tories from office, Swift's hopes vanished. He had to tent himself with the position of Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, where he remained the next thirty years. Swift's life in Ireland was far from miserable, particularly when he became a national hero for losing a system of debased coinage which the government in London tried to introduce. He had a wide circle of friends, and his letters to Esther Johnson, the close confidante whom he called Stella, reveal his gift for affectionate humor. Yet he maintained a deeply private man; he would never marry Stella, despite her wishes, and took care that their meetings were always conducted with strict propriety. Ireland itself he regarded as a place of exile. A Modest Proposal, which suggests ironi­cally that the English might as well eat Irish babies since they are already devouring the country eco­nomically, betrays a good deal of disgust for the people he was defending. He wrote, "What I do is owing to perfect rage and resentment, and the mor­tifying sight of slavery, folly, and baseness about me, among which I am forced to live." In 1726 Swift published his immortal master­piece, Gulliver's Travels. On the level of fantasy it is full of charming inventiveness and has always been loved by children.) On the level of satire it rises, by the time of the final "Voyage," to deep moral indignation against what Swift elsewhere referred to as "that animal called man." In a letter to Pope, he objected to the standard definition of man as the rational animal, holding that man is capable of reason but seldom uses it. Swift's favorite weapon was irony, the device of saying something outrageous with a straight face, while dropping enough clues to let the reader know what is really meant. The narrator of the Travels is Lemuel Gulliver, a well-meaning but not very bright Englishman who describes whatever he sees with simple innocence. (A "gull" was a term for someone easily duped or "gullible"; it is up to the reader to see the truths that Gulliver misses.) Swift is one of the greatest masters of clear and simple writing. He once said that the secret of good prose is "proper words in proper places," and noth­ing is more difficult than that.