strength, and interest enough in the world to stem, the torrent of your ambition.

But then thirdly, may they say; supposing it was not sq; supposing you had met with no rub in your pretences (which yet you know you did); supposing our family were not so suddenly aware of the mischief that would come upon them from those your usurpations, as to make a present opposition; doth now it follow, that because no opposition was just then made to your pretences, that therefore your pretensions to the whole estate are justifiable? No, we can prove they are not so; for it is plain by the Testament, by the settlement of our common father, that we have as much a right to our parts in this estate as you have, or as your ancestors ever had. Tell not us, that you were not at first, or that you were not always, opposed in your claim: But tell us by what right or justice you can pretend to be the sole lord of this inheritance. Let the will of our common parent be produced, and that will plainly shew, that we have as much a share in this estate as you have.1

The allegory is so pat to our business, and the application of it so easy to our present case, that I think I should injure the most vulgar understanding, if I should suspect his ability to make that use of it which I intend.

'Indagator' was satisfied with pointing out the similarity between this allegory and the allegory in the Tale. Mr. Churton Collins went further: 'The sermon referred to ', he said, 'is one of fourteen' which are devoted to an elaborate exposure of the errors and corruptions of the Church of Rome, furnishing indeed, even to minute details, the whole text for Swift's satire, which follows Sharp's commentary step by step.' He made no attempt to illustrate his statement. The sermons were not printed until thirty-one years after the Tale was published. It is most unlikely that Swift could have obtained such accurate reports of them as to be able to follow them 'step by step' and 'in minute details'. In May 1686 he was in Ireland, and the sermons were preached in London. But the sermon

1 Dryden replied to this argument in The Hind and the Panther (ii, II. 373 ff.), published in April 1687. Cf. Religio Laici, 1682,

II. 388-93

2 There are fifteen sermons in the series.

which contains the allegory was well known. brought to the notice of James II, who instructed the Bishop of London, Henry Compton, to suspend Sharp from further preaching. Compton refused, and the dispute roused much public interest.'

The view that Swift was indebted to Sharp may seem to gain some support from a passage in Deane Swift's Essay upon the Life, Writings, and Character, of Dr. Jonathan Swift (1755):

MR. WARREN, the chamber fellow of DR. SWIFT in the university of Dublin, and a gentleman of undoubted veracity, (whose sister had made some very considerable impressions upon the Doctor's heart in the days of his youth) assured a relation of mine, whom he courted for a wife about eight or nine and forty years ago, that he saw The Tale of a Tub in the hand-writing of DR. SWIFT, when the Doctor was but nineteen years old; but what corrections or improvements it might have received before its publication in the year 1697, he could by no means declare."

Deane Swift is not always a trustworthy authority, and this statement is full of blunders he gets Waring's name wrong, calls him a 'chamber fellow' when in fact he did not enter Trinity College till three years after Swift had left, and gives the date of publication of the Tale as 1697, whereas it was not published till 1704. But the main point of his statement is supported by the annotations made by the Rev. John Lyon, who had charge of Swift in his last illness, in his copy of Hawkes

worth's Life of Swift.' Hawkesworth had paraphrased the statement in a foot-note, and in continuation of the words 'declared that he then saw a copy of the Tale of a Tub in Swift's own hand writing' Lyon wrote in the margin 'So did other persons'. Later on Hawkesworth says that when Swift was with Sir William Temple at Moor Park he corrected and improved his Tale of a Tub', and again Lyon wrote in the margin 'which he had begun in the College'.

There is, further, a remarkable coincidence in dates. Tus, The Tale is said to have existed in manuscript when Swift was nineteen years old—that is in 1686. Sharp's sermon was preached in 1686.

A comparison of the two allegories shows that the resemblance is slight. In Swift's the heirs are three, in Sharp's their number is not stated; in Swift's they are sons, in Sharp's they are descendants removed by 'some generations'; in Swift's the main part of the allegory concerns the coats which the father gives his sons, in Sharp's there is nothing corresponding; and on the other hand in Swift's there is nothing corresponding to the argument of Sharp's 'insolent pretender'. In fact there is nothing in common but the ancestor, the descendants, and the will. So much of Sharp's sermon might have reached Swift, and might have remained in

This volume (Dublin, 1755) is now in the Forster Collection in the South Kensington Museum. It has had a distinguished pedigree, having been in the possession of Monck Mason, John Nichols, Malone, Haslewood, and Mitford before it was procured by Forster. It may have also been owned by Farmer, as it contains a MS. note by him. The notes quoted above are on pp. 15 and 24.

с

There is the following note on Lyon (1702-90) in Mason's hand: ... the Rev. John Lyon, sometime Curate of St. Bride's, and after, a præb. of St. Patrick'she was the Compiler of the Novum Registrum in Christ Church, the Catalogue of the College MSS. and other important works.' There is an account of him in The Dictionary of National Biography.

his mind for years before he used it. But it is plain enough that Swift might have thought of the father, the sons, and the will for himself. The allegory is much older than Sharp's sermon. It had been used by Dryden in his Religio Laici; and it is found in other supposed 'sources of the Tale.

2

2. The Story of the Three Rings.

3

The story of the three rings exists in several forms. In general, a father gives or bequeaths a ring to each of his three sons, and leads each of them to understand that his ring alone is genuine. The owner of the genuine ring is to be the heir to his father's estate, but the rings are so similar that they cannot be distinguished. In some forms of the story, as in Boccaccio's Decameron, the sons are never able to decide which is the genuine ring; in others, as in the Gesta Romanorum, the true ring is known by its power to heal the sick, or by some other virtue. In either case the father is God, and the three rings represent the Jewish, Christian, and Mohammedan religions.5

4

The likeness of the story to the allegory in the Tale was first noticed by René Macé, whose French adapta

Moyen-Age, ii, pp. 131-63 (this contains abstracts of the stories); Marcus Landau, Die Quellen des Dekameron, pp. 183-8; and Gesta Romanorum, ed. Oesterley, p. 726 (Oesterley cites the parallel in Plutarch, Numa, 13). Further references will be found in Traversari, Bibliografia Boccaccesca, under Anelli, Novella de' Tre; Painter's Palace of Pleasure, ed. Jacobs, vol. i, p. lxxi; Gaston Paris, La Légende de Saladin, pp. 13 ff.; and Lessing, Nathan der Weise, ed. J. G. Robertson, pp. xxi-v.

tion, Les Trois Justaucorps, was published at Dublin in It begins as follows:

1721.

Il y eut jadis, dans un certain coin de l'Empire Romain, un bon Père de Famille qui avait trois Garçons, que sa Femme lui avoit mis au Monde d'une seule couche. Ils étoient si ressemblans, que la sage Femme ne put certainement dire lequel étoit l'Aîné. Cette question se trouva aussi difficile à décider que celle des trois aneaux, que le Juif Melchisedech proposa autrefois à Saladin, Soudan de Babilone, lesquels étoient si semblables que les experts n'en purent 'faire la diférence.

A poem entitled Les Trois Anneaux was printed at the end of the little volume, and was thus referred to in the Avertissement: On a ajouté les trois Anneaux, qui y sont citez dès la première page. C'est une Nouvelle tirée de Bocace, qu'on ne sera point fâché de trouver à la suite de ce Conte.'

The likeness was again pointed out in Voltaire's Lettres Philosophiques, xxii, 'Sur Mr Pope et quelques autres Poëtes fameux': 'Ce fameux Conte du Tonneau est une imitation de l'ancien Conte des trois Anneaux indiscernables qu'un père légua à ses trois enfans. Ces trois Anneaux étaient la Religion Juive, la Chrétienne & la Mahometane '.'

Both the story and the allegory in the Tale deal with three conflicting forms of religion, and both employ the imagery of a father giving or leaving to each of three sons objects exactly similar to one another. But in the allegory the likeness of the coats causes no dispute, because nothing is made to depend upon distinguishing them, and there is this further difference that the allegory proceeds with the history of the three sons and their treatment of their father's gifts from the

This passage is not in the original edition of the Lettres Philosophiques but is found in the Collection complète des œuvres de M. de Voltaire published in 1756.

See Gustave Lanson's edition (Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1909), vol. ii, p. 136. Cf. Euvres, 1879, vol. xxii, p. 175, and vol. xxvi, p. 489.