Abstract
There can be few historical or literary figures who have aroused more controversy or who have had more nonsense written about them than Jonathan Swift. Since his death more than two hundred years ago the comment about him has grown steadily more abusive. Dr. Johnson started the process and it has continued ever since. Thackeray’s vilification of his character in English Humourists is quite absurd. Robert Louis Stevenson likened him to ‘a kind of human goat, leaping and wagging [his] scut on mountains of offence’.1 Sir Harold Nicolson calls him ‘… a turncoat, a place seeker, and a most untruthful journalist’ and speaks of ‘his cruelty’ and of ‘the envy that turned his soul a putrid green’.2 These are hard words, but they can at least be supported by a superficial knowledge of Swift’s career. But Malcolm Muggeridge’s statement in the same national Sunday newspaper that he suffered from general paralysis of the insane, better known as G.P.I. which is a late effect of syphilis, is quite unjustifiable.3
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Patrick Delany, Observations upon Lord Orrery’s Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift (1754), p. 197.
Denis Johnston, ‘The Mysterious Origin of Dean Swift’, Dublin Historical Record, June-August 1941, p. 89.
Louis I. Bredvold, Pope and his Contemporaries (New York, 1949), p. 2.
Harold Williams (ed.), The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift (Oxford, 1965), vol. IV, p. 210.
Harold Williams (ed.), Journal to Stella (Oxford, 1948), vol. I, p. 77.
Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets (London, 1905), vol. III, p. 62.
Christopher Morris (ed.), The Journeys of Celia Fiennes, (London, 1949).
Herbert Davis (ed.), Gulliver’s Travels (Oxford, 1941), p. 273.
W. A. Eddy, Gulliver’s Travels: A Critical Study (Princeton and London, 1923).
Harold Williams (ed.), The Poems of Jonathan Swift, (Oxford, 1958).
Deane Swift, An Essay on the Life, Writings and Character of Dr. Jonathan Swift (London and Dublin, 1755), p. 277.
Temple Scott (ed.), The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. (London, 1908), vol. XI, p 127.
Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift the Man, his Works and the Age: vol. I. Mr, Swift and his Contemporaries (London, 1962).
Editor information
Copyright information
© 1967 Macmillan & Co. Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wilson, T.G. (1967). Swift’s Personality. In: Jeffares, A.N. (eds) Fair Liberty was all his Cry. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00409-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00409-6_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-00411-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-00409-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)