Histoire d'Ethiopie Elian, 1st Vol: Homer, Iliad & Odyss. Cicero's Epistles Bernier's Grand Mogol 2 Vol: Burnet's Hist: of Reform: fo Petronius Arbiter Oevres Melées 5 Vol: From Jan: 7th 1697 Thucydides by Hobbes fol abstracted Theophrasti Characteres. Vossius de Sybillinis No farther Acct remains of his Studys at this time. 3 This list contains two of the small number of modern books that Swift cited in his marginal notes, the Histoire de M. Constance by the Père d'Orléans,1 and Bernier's Grand Mogol. Neither of the citations can be dated before the middle of 1697. About the same time he read the passage from Irenæus that he gave on his titlepage. The quotations from Lucretius must likewise have been suggested by his three recent readings. Other books on the list supplied him with allusions. He appears, for instance, sometimes to have remembered Jeremy Collier's Essays upon Several Moral Subjects*; he certainly remembered Blackmore's Prince Arthur. The annotator who had the energy to work his way through all the books in Swift's list would probably be able to overburden his notes with a large number of parallel passages. But the list has a much wider interest. It admits us, as it were, to a secret view of Swift's habits of mind when he was gaining his full powers, and Swift never wrote anything that gives a greater sense of sheer power than some of the later sections of the Tale. The list gives only a fraction of the reading that went to the making of the Tale. His constant allusions to the classics are drawn from a very large number of authors, not merely from the authors that he read in 1697, but even from Pausanius, Photius, and Hippocrates. His knowledge of rosicrucian and alchemical literature ranged far beyond the Comte de Gabalis; he had found prolonged amusement in the 'dark authors', and notably in Paracelsus and Thomas Vaughan. As a churchman he knew the Fathers, and the controversial literature of the seventeenth century. In the household of Temple he was familiar with every detail of the controversy on the letters of Phalaris, and the wider controversy on the Ancients and Moderns. He could speak with authority on current criticism and the productions of Grub Street. He was equally at home in Rabelais and Cervantes. And already he had long been preparing himself for Gulliver's Travels. The list includes accounts of travels and descriptions of far-away countries such as the Voyage de Syam, the Histoire d'Ethiopie, and the Voyage de Maroc, and they are among its most interesting entries. The Tale itself shows that he knew Heylyn's Cosmography, Guagninus's Sarmatiae Descriptio, and Hall's Mundus Alter et Idem. I I All this multifarious reading is placed under contri Among the Dean's books, sold by auction 1745, was an edition of Rabelais' works, with remarks and annotations in his own hand.'-Scott, Works of Swift, 1824, vol. i, p. 83 n. bution. At one time it is Hippocrates or the Schoolmen, Bentley or Scaliger, Cervantes or the Apocrypha; at another Dick Whittington and his Cat somehow get into the same sentence with Jehuda Hannasi and the Jerusalem Mishna. Yet the Tale remains one of the most original books ever written. The author's wit was entirely his own.' The ingredients of a dozen Tales lie ready to hand for any writer who has the wit to make another. Though the book is a tissue of allusions, Swift could well insist upon it, that throughout it all he had not borrowed one single hint from any writer in the world. Many years afterwards he made the same proud boast in his verses On the Death of Dr. Swift': To steal a hint was never known, But what he writ was all his own. 2 Two other books must be mentioned, both of which Swift knew much better than might be suspected. The first is Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors. It appears to have suggested not only the use of some uncommon words like exantlation', atramentous', and 'fuliginous', but also the passages about the orientation of man's body,' the description of Moses, the white powder that kills without report,3 the belief that by slitting the ear of a stag the defect may be spread through a whole herd, and the story of the Macrocephali. Swift might have been directly indebted to the same sources as Browne, but, taken together, these points of contact are satisfactory evidence that the Vulgar Errors was one of his favourite volumes. The other book is Marvell's Rehearsal Transpros'd. There he found the story of the whale and the tub (though he also found it in many other places), and the mathe 5 2 matical principle (and Swift was not proficient in mathematics) that a straight line if continued far enough will become a circle.' Above all there is the new form of the old story about the same food appearing again and again at table. In Italian it is tutta fava'; in French toujours perdrix'. Swift has it is all Pork', and cites Plutarch in the margin. He ought to have cited Marvell. He refers to the Rehearsal Transpros'd in his 'Apology' as a book that we still read 'with pleasure'. The style of Swift is Swift himself, a style which has never been imitated successfully, and could not be formed by imitation. But when we read Marvell after reading Swift we feel the kinship in the muscular strength, the simplicity that is fraught with meaning, and the seemingly careless ease that comes from perfect confidence. X. THE HISTORY OF MARTIN. A Tale of a Tub was included in the collection of Swift's writings issued in 1720 under the title Miscellaneous Works, Comical & Diverting.3 It was there furnished with explanatory Notes, never before printed'; and there were considerable Additions', the most important of which is the Abstract of 'The History of Martin'. 4 To judge from the type, the setting of the page, and some of the spellings, the volume was printed abroad, probably in Holland. Nichols definitely calls it 'the Dutch edition'. It was clearly a pirated edition. The volume opens with 'The Bookseller's Advertisement' which consists almost entirely of an extract from a letter by an ingenious gentleman' explaining how the new matter came to his hands. He claims to have seen a manuscript.of the Tale which contains a great deal more than what is printed'. Not being allowed to take a copy, he had to trust to his memory, and wrote down 'as near as I can now remember' the heads of the most material parts, and afterwards extended them 'as near as I can remember in the Author's own words'. The authenticity of the 'History of Martin' is therefore made to depend on the word of an anonymous bookseller quoting an anonymous ingenious gentleman who professed to have seen a manuscript which is not even said to have been written by the author of the Tale, and of which he had made a summary from memory. The MS. version is described as differing from the printed version after Section IX. Here are said to have come― The History of Martin2; A Digression on Wars and Quarels; A Discourse concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit; A Project, for the universal benefit of Mankind. But prudential considerations' necessitated another ending. Some things', we are told, 'seem to have been written since to fill up the place of what was not thought convenient then to print'. We are asked to believe that Section XI and the Conclusion in the authentic version were an afterthought. It will at once be recognized that if the sections containing The History of Martin' ever existed in more than abstract, they must have been an awkward sequel to the main part of the Tale. They satirize the Church of England. The objects of Swift's satire were the abuses in Roman Catholicism and Calvinism. As he said explicitly in the 'Apology', the Tale 'celebrates 2 pp. 302 ff. I p. 296. 3 pp. 296, 306. |