Swift, Jonathan 1667-1745
Anglo-Irish satirist and clergyman

He was born in Dublin, of English parents. He was educated at Kilkenny Grammar School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he obtained his degree only by 'special grace' in 1685. Family connections helped him become secretary to the diplomat, Sir William Temple, then resident at Moor Park, Farnham. He supported his patron on the side of the Ancients in the 'Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes' which had spread to Great Britain from France. His contribution was the mock-epic Battle of the Books, published along with the much more powerful satire on religious dissension, A Tale of a Tub, in 1704. At Moor Park he first met Esther Johnson (1681-1728), then a child of eight, who from then on as pupil and lover or friend was to play an important role in his life and to survive for posterity in Swift's verse tributes and the Journal to Stella (1710-13), but it is uncertain if he ever married her. When Swift was presented to the living of Laracor near Dublin, 'Stella' accompanied him. In 1708, during a visit to London, he met Esther Vanhomrigh (1690-1723), who insisted, to her own detriment, on being near him in Ireland. She is the Vanessa of Swift's clever poem Cadenus and Vanessa (1726), a tribute to her but also a manoeuvre of disengagement. His visits to London were largely political, but he also visited the great in literary and aristocratic circles. Having been introduced to politics by Temple, he supported the Whigs, but his interest in the Church steered him towards the Tory party. The friendship of Robert Harley assisted the change which was resolved in 1710 when Harley returned to power. His History of the Four Last Years of the Queen [Anne] (1758) described the ferment of intrigue and pamphleteering during that period. The chief aims of the Tory Party were to secure the Establishment and end the war with France. The latter was powerfully aided by Swift's On the Conduct of the Allies (1713), one of the greatest pieces of pamphleteering. The death of Queen Anne (1714) disappointed all the hopes of Swift and his friends of the Scriblerus Club, founded in 1713. Swift accepted his 'exile' to the Deanery of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and from then on, except for two visits in 1726 and 1727, correspondence alone kept him in touch with London. Despite his loathing for Ireland he threw himself into a strenuous campaign for Irish liberties, denied by the Whig government. The Drapier's Letters (1724) is the most famous of these activities, which were concerned with England's restrictions on Irish trade, particularly the exclusion of Irish wool and cattle. This campaign, and his charitable efforts for Dublin's poor, greatly enhanced his reputation. On his first visit to London after the fall of the Tory ministry in 1714 he published the world-famous satire Gulliver's Travels (1726). In 1729 he published his ironical A Modest Proposal. His light verse now ranged from The Grand Question Debated (1729) to the Verses on His Own Death (1731), which, with its mixture of pathos and humour, ranks with the great satirical poems in the lighter manner. He himself considered his On Poetry; a Rhapsody (1733), his best verse satire. The ironical Directions to Servants and A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation followed in 1731. The satire in the first part of Gulliver's Travels is directed at political parties and religious dissension. The second part introduces deepening misanthropy, culminating in the king's description of mankind as 'the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth'. The third part, a satire on inventors, is fun though less plausible. The last part, in the country of the Houyhnhnms, a race of horses governed only by reason, is a savage attack on humanity which points to the author's final mental collapse (now thought to have been brought on by M�ni�re's disease). Politics apart, Swift's influence, like that of the Scriblerus Club generally and Alexander Pope in particular, was directed powerfully against the vogue of deistic science and modern invention and in favour of orthodoxy and good manners.

Bibliography: I Ehrenpreis, Jonathan Swift: the man, his works, the age (2 vols, 1962-67)