A Tale of a Tub

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But if no other argument could occur to exclude the bench and the bar from the list of oratorial machines, it were sufficient that the admission of them would overthrow a number which I was resolved to establish, whatever argument it might cost me; in imitation of that prudent method observed by many other philosophers and great clerks, whose chief art in division has been to grow fond of some proper mystical number, which their imaginations have rendered sacred, to a degree that they force common reason to find room for it in every part of nature; reducing, including, and adjusting every genus and species within that compass, by coupling some against their wills, and banishing others at any rate. Now, among all the rest, the profound number THREE is that which has most employed my sublimest speculations, nor ever without wonderful delight. There is now in the press, and will be published next term, a panegyrical essa

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either or wit of sublime. François de Callières, Histoire Poetique de la Guerre nouvellement declarée entre les Anciens et les Modernes. 1688. Elias, A. C., Jr. Swift at Moor Park: Problems in Biography and Criticism. Philadelphia: U. Penn. Press, 1982. ISBN 0-8122-7822-4 During the Restoration the print revolution began to change every aspect of British society. It became possible for anyone to spend a small amount of money and have his or her opinions published as a broadsheet, and to gain access to the latest discoveries in science, literature, and political theory, as books became less expensive and digests and "indexes" of the sciences grew more numerous. The difficulty lay in discerning truth from falsehood, credible claims from impossible one. [13] Swift writes A Tale of a Tub in the guise of a narrator who is excited and gullible about what the new world has to offer, and feels that he is quite the equal or superior of any author who ever lived because he, unlike them, possesses 'technology' and newer opinions. Swift seemingly asks the question of what a person with no discernment but with a thirst for knowledge would be like, and the answer is the narrator of Tale of a Tub. The other answer is from a person of a graver character, and is made up of half invective, and half annotation; in the latter of which he has generally succeeded well enough. 14 And theHad the author's intentions met with a more candid interpretation from some, whom out of respect he forbears to name, he might have been encouraged to an examination of books written by some of those authors above described, whose errors, ignorance, dullness, and villainy, he thinks he could have detected and exposed in such a manner, that the persons who are most conceived to be infected by them, would soon lay them aside and be ashamed; but he has now given over those thoughts, since the weightiest men in the weightiest stations 8 are pleased to think it a more dangerous point to laugh at those corruptions in religion which they themselves must disapprove, than to endeavour pulling up those very foundations, wherein all Christians have agreed.

The Tale approved of by a great majority among the men of taste. Some treatises written expressly against it; but not one syllable in its defence. The greatest part of it finished in 1696; eight years before it was published. The Author's intention, when he began it. No irreligious or immoral opinion can fairly be deduced from the book. The Clergy have no reason to dislike it. The Author's intention not having met with a candid interpretation, he declined engaging in a task he had proposed to himself, of examining some publications that were intended against all religion. Unfair to fix a name upon an Author who had so industriously concealed himself. The Letter on Enthusiasm 4 ascribed by several to the same author. If the abuses in Law or Physic had been the subject of this treatise, the learned professors in either faculty would have been more liberal than the Clergy. The passages which appear most liable to objection, are parodies. The Author entirely innocent of any intention of glancing at those tenets of Religion which he has by some prejudiced or ignorant readers been supposed to mean. This particularly the case in the passage about the three wooden machines. An irony runs through the whole book. Not necessary to take notice of treatises written against it. The usual fate of common answerers to books of merit is to sink into waste paper and oblivion. The case very different when a great genius exposes a foolish piece. Reflections occasioned by Dr. King's Remarks on the Tale of a Tub; others, by Mr Wotton. The manner in which the Tale was first published accounted for. The Fragment not printed in the way the Author intended: being the groundwork of a much larger discourse. 5 The oaths of Peter, why introduced. The severest strokes of Satire in the treatise are levelled against the custom of employing wit in profaneness or immodesty. Wit the noblest and most useful gift of human nature; and Humour the most agreeable. Those who have no share of either, think the blow weak, because they are themselves insensible. However, further on, he seems to assert the originality of the work, and suggests that there is only one original genius that could have composed a work of such verve and erudition. Taking issue both his critics' charges that he had plagiarised the work, and with the fact that a man called Thomas Swift had recently claimed to have written the Tale, the apology asserts: In the case of the satire on writing and scholarship, as we have seen in the first half of this lecture, texts like Dryden's Virgil and scholarship of Bentley that are being undermined. They are works whose claim to authority is spurious, and whose authors fail to pay homage to the only true originals of classical civilisation.He thinks it no fair proceeding, that any person should offer determinately to fix a name upon the author of this discourse, who has all along concealed himself from most of his nearest friends: yet several have gone a farther step, and pronounced another book 9 to have been the work of the same hand with this; which the author directly affirms to be a thorough mistake, he having yet never so much as read that discourse: a plain instance how little truth there often is in general surmises, or in conjectures drawn from a similitude of style, or way of thinking. It is amazing to me that this person should have assurance in the face of the sun to go about persuading your highness that our age is almost wholly illiterate, and has hardly produced one writer upon any subject. I know very well, that when your highness shall come to riper years, and have gone through the learning of antiquity, you will be too curious to neglect inquiring into the authors of the very age before you: and to think that this insolent, in the account he is preparing for your view, designs to reduce them to a number so insignificant as I am ashamed to mention; it moves my zeal and my spleen for the honour and interest of our vast flourishing body, as well as of myself, for whom I know by long experience, he has professed, and still continues, a peculiar malice. John M. Bullitt, Jonathan Swift and the anatomy of satire: a study of satiric technique. (Harvard 1961). Claude Rawson (ed.), Jonathan Swift: a collection of critical essays. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jeresey, 1995). century plaque depicting Aeneas' descent into hell in Virgil's Aeneid [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Christopher Fox, Walking Naboth's vineyards: new studies of Swift (University of Notre Dame Ward-Philips lectures in English language and literature, Vol. 13). (Notre Dame/Indiana 1995). For more information on the complex relationship between Swift, Temple, and Swift's satirical style, see John Traugott, " A Tale of a Tub", The Character of Swift's Satire: A Revised Focus, Ed. Claude Rawson, Newark: University of Delaware Press (1983), 90–100; A. C. Elias, Jr. Swift at Moor Park: Problems in Biography and Criticism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1982): 155–59, 173–86. The Tale was immediately popular and controversial. Consequently, there were rumours of various people as the author of the work—Jonathan Swift then being not largely known except for his work in the House of Lords for the passage of the First Fruits and Fifths bill for tithing. Some people thought that William Temple wrote it. Francis Atterbury said people at Oxford thought it had been written by Edmund Smith and John Philips, though he thought it was by Jonathan Swift. Some people thought it belonged to Lord Somers. However, Jonathan Swift had a cousin, also in the church, named Thomas Swift. Thomas and Jonathan were in correspondence during the time of the composition of the Tale, and Thomas Swift later claimed to have written the work. Jonathan responded by saying that Thomas had no hand in anything but the smallest of passages, and he would welcome hearing Thomas 'explain' the work, if he had written it. The controversy over authorship is aggravated by the choice of publisher. Not only did Swift use Tooke after the publication of the Tale, he had used Tooke before its publication as well, so the appearance of the work in John Nutt's shop was atypical. John Eachard, The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion Enquired into. (1670).

Author: Jonathan Swift

containing additional letters, tracts, and poems, not hitherto published. With notes, and a life of the author. 19 vols. (Edinburgh: printed for Archibald Constable and Co.; White, Cochrane, and Co., and Gale, Curtis, and Fenner, London; and John Cumming, Dublin 1814). Ehrenpreis writes "[i]t is correct to read every part of the Tale as an adaptation of one attitude: that wilful rejection of the Established Church, limited monarchy, classical literary standards, and rational judgment is an act of pride, and leads to corruptions in government, religion, and learning." ( Swift and his Contemporaries, 202)

Had the author written a book to expose the abuses in law or in physic, he believes the learned professors in either faculty would have been so far from resenting it, as to have given him thanks for his pains, especially if he had made an honourable reservation for the true practice of either science. But religion, they tell us, ought not to be ridiculed; and they tell us truth: yet surely the corruptions in it may; for we are taught by the tritest maxim in the world, that, religion being the best of things, its corruptions are likely to be the worst.

The greatest part of that book was finished above thirteen years since, 1696, which is eight years before it was published. The author was then young, his invention at the height, and his reading fresh in his head. By the assistance of Engraving of Richard Bentley, a 'modern' Swift satirised, by James Thornhill [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons