A TALE OF A TUB. NOTE. THE "Tale of a Tub" was first published in April or May of the year 1704. Before the end of the year there had appeared three editions in addition to those which were published in Ireland. In the following year an authorized edition was issued by Mr. John Nutt; this is the fourth. In 1710, the same bookseller published the fifth edition, which included, for the first time, the "Author's Apology," and the notes by Wotton and others. The present text is based on this edition. Apparently Nutt must either have sold or handed over the copyright of the work to Benjamin Motte and Tooke, for these booksellers issued the sixth and seventh editions in 1724 and 1727. There were other issues before 1750, but these will be detailed in the Bibliography of Swift's writings to be included in the last volume of this present edition. Wotton's annotations originally appeared in a pamphlet entitled "A Defense of the Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning with observations upon 'The Tale of a Tub,'" (London: Tim Goodwin, 1705). They were written by way of exposing the errors of what he considered to be a ridiculous work. Swift turned the tables on him by frankly accepting them, since they were really valuable expositions. Thus it happens, in the words of Mr. Forster, that "its most envenomed assailant has, in countless editions since, figured as its friendly illustrator." At the time of its publication Swift was thirty-seven years of age, but the "Tale" itself had been finished and ready for the printer more than seven years before. The greater part of it, as Swift himself says in his "Apology," was written in 1696. On its first appearance the book made a great hit, and, as it was issued anonymously, there was much speculation as to its author. Sacheverell ascribed it to Smalridge, but that gentleman had to keep clean a reputation which he was saving up for ecclesiastical preferment, and he immediately repudiated it. Two young Oxford students, Edmund Smith and John Philips, did not take any active steps to deny the imputation of authorship when it was laid upon them. Each had a fairly respectable literary ability, but of the first there are now left only the reputation of his profligacy, and a tragedy, "Phædra and Hippolitus," while the fame of the second rests on the tottering foundations of his Miltonic parody, "The Splendid Shilling.' Wotton, in his criticism on the "Tale," said that Thomas Swift was its author. This belief may have arisen from the fact that a copy of some portion of the satire which Swift originally made for Temple had, after Temple's death, fallen into the hands of Thomas Swift. Curll, in what Forster calls his "scurrilous "Key,' affirms that the "Tale" was "performed by a couple of young clergymen who, having been domestic chaplains to Sir William Temple, thought themselves obliged to take up his quarrel." The "couple of young clergymen were Jonathan and Thomas Swift. The base insinuations which Curll goes on to make were treated by Swift in a contemptuous fashion. He suspected, in a letter to Tooke (who had sent him a copy of the "Key"), that his "little parson-cousin" (meaning Thomas Swift) was at the bottom of it. Dr. Johnson's doubt about Swift being the author may be put down to the inexplicable repugnance he had for Swift. Forster sufficiently answers him when he sarcastically remarks that "Swift was to lose a bishopric in one generation because a piece of writing was thought too witty to be fathered on anybody else, and in the next he was to lose the credit of having written the piece because it was too witty to be fathered on him " ("Life," pp. 156, 157). But, The only written avowals of Swift with regard to the "Tale's" authorship are in letters to Esther Johnson and Ben Tooke. indeed, at the time it was perfectly well known among a certain set that Swift was the author. Otherwise it is difficult to explain how Archbishop Sharp could have succeeded in preventing Swift's appointment to a bishopric, when he urged that the author of the "Tale of a Tub" was not a proper person to hold such an office. Mrs. Whiteway's anecdote must also be taken as good evidence, and its meaning cannot be mistaken. In the latter years of Swift's life, she observed, on one occasion, the Dean looking over the "Tale,' when suddenly closing the book he muttered to himself unconsciously, "Good God! what a genius I had when I wrote that book!" Mr. Churton Collins draws attention to a curious point which has escaped other biographers. He finds that Archbishop Sharp, who biassed Queen Anne against Swift for writing the "Tale," printed a sermon in which he uses an allegory very similar to that of Swift's. As Sharp's sermon was in existence in 1686, it is probable that Swift was indebted to it for the hint. (See Mr. Collins's "Jonathan Swift," p. 47.) "The History of Martin" is reprinted from the third volume of the "Supplement to Dr. Swift's Works," edited by Hawkesworth, and published by Nichols in 1779. There it is stated that it is taken from à Dutch edition of 1720, and is headed, "Abstract of what, in the Dutch edition, is said to have followed Sect. IX. of the MS." The full title of this Dutch volume is "Miscellaneous Works, Comical and Diverting by T.A.D.J.S.D.O.P.I.I. in Two Parts. I. The Tale of a Tub; with the Fragment and the Battel of the Books; with considerable additions, and explanatory notes, never before printed._II. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, by the supposed Author of the First Part. London, Printed by Order of the Society de Propaganda, &c. 1720." (See Bibliography of Swift.) With the "Tale" have always appeared in the same volume "The Battle of the Books" and "The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit.' The "dissertations" of the "Tale" grew out of the "Battle of the Books." [T. S.] |