A Tale of a Tub

DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

GENERAL EDITOR: SUSAN L. RATTINER

EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: JANET B. KOPITO

Copyright

Copyright © 2017 by Dover Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2017, is a republication of the work first published by John Nutt, London, in 1704. A new Note has been prepared specially for this edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Swift, Jonathan, 1667–1745, author.

Title: A tale of a tub / Jonathan Swift.

Description: Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, 2017. | Series: Dover thrift editions

Identifiers: LCCN 2017041272| ISBN 9780486817521 (paperback) | ISBN 0486817520 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Satire, English. | BISAC: FICTION / Satire.

Classification: LCC PR3724 .T3 2018 | DDC 823/.5—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017041272

Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

81752101   2017

www.doverpublications.com

Note

RENOWNED FOR HIS satirical works, as well as his essays and poetry, Jonathan Swift was born in Ireland in 1667. His father died before he was born, and he and his sister and mother relied upon the generosity of relatives for their daily needs. Nevertheless, Swift was educated at the best schools in Ireland, first at Kilkenny School, and later on at Dublin University (later Trinity College). Like many of his Anglo-Irish contemporaries, he took refuge in England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Around this time, Swift joined the household of Sir William Temple, acting in a secretarial capacity. Swift’s association with Temple continued until Temple’s sudden death in 1699. While employed by Temple, Swift began writing verse. His poetry, however, never achieved the acclaim of his prose. In England, Swift’s reputation grew along with his political alignment with the Tory government then in power. Though his views were primarily Whiggish, the Tories promised greater support of the Anglican Church in Ireland (Swift had been ordained as a priest in the Church of Ireland—the Irish branch of the Anglican Church—in 1694).

Although his personal beliefs did not always conform to those of the Tories, he became their chief political writer. In 1714, the Tory party lost power, and Swift returned to Ireland to assume the deanery of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. Swift’s writings of the 1720s and ’30s are characterized by his fervent support of the Irish cause. The most famous of these works is A Modest Proposal, still a model of satirical political parody. Swift died in 1745 and was buried at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. His epitaph is a challenge to others to imitate his efforts to champion liberty.

A Tale of a Tub, Jonathan Swift’s earliest satirical work, was composed sometime in the late 1690s. Published anonymously in 1704, A Tale of a Tub nevertheless was recognizable as the work of Swift and helped earn him a reputation as a wit and a keen political satirist. The modern reader will immediately understand the words Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind, on the first page of A Tale of a Tub, as just the opposite of what the author of Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal intends; rather, he will apply his scathing satire to his chosen subjects for this work—an impossibly diverse assortment of topics, including religion, literature, and a preoccupation of the time—the Ancients versus the Moderns, examined in Sir William Temple’s publication An Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning. Numerous digressions weave through the text, raising the issue of whether there is, in fact, a tale to be told. The History of Martin, included here, is one of several additions to A Tale of a Tub; it concerns the religious figures Peter (Saint Peter), Martin (Martin Luther), and Jack (John Calvin and Jack of Leyden, the latter a stand-in for Protestant dissenters). The W. Wotton of the text notes is William Wotton, a clergyman who published an attack on Swift’s work, Defense of the Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, With Observations upon The Tale of a Tub (1705). Swift copied bits of Wotton’s work into A Tale of a Tub, presenting them as notes to the satire.

Although rooted in the controversies and culture of the time, Swift’s work brings to mind works by later authors such as Laurence Sterne (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman) and James Joyce (Ulysses and Finnegans Wake), whose masterful literary experimentation and layering of references share a common purpose: to create a work that can be read purely for the joy of its prose as well as for its multiple meanings to be discovered.

Contents

A Tale of a Tub

The History of Martin

A TALE OF A TUB

A TALE OF A TUB

Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind

Diu multumque desideratum

Basima eacabasa eanaa irraurista, diarba da caeotaba

fobor camelanthi. Iren. Lib. 1. C. 18.

Juvatque novos decerpere flores,

Insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam,

Unde prius nulli velarunt tempora Musæ. Lucret.

Treatises written by the same Author, most of them mentioned in the following Discourses; which will be speedily published.

A Character of the present set of Wits in this Island.

A panegyrical Essay upon the Number Three.

A Dissertation upon the principal Productions of Grub Street.

Lectures upon a Dissection of Human Nature.

A Panegyric upon the World.

An analytical Discourse upon Zeal, histori-theo-physi-logically considered.

A general History of Ears.

A modest Defence of the Proceedings of the Rabble in all ages.

A Description of the Kingdom of Absurdities.

A Voyage into England, by a Person of Quality in Terra Australis incognita, translated from the Original.

A critical Essay upon the Art of Canting, philosophically, physically, and musically considered.

AN APOLOGY

For the [Tale of a Tub.]

IF good and ill nature equally operated upon Mankind, I might have saved myself the trouble of this Apology; for it is manifest by the reception the following discourse hath met with, that those who approve it are a great majority among the men of taste; yet there have been two or three treatises written expressly against it besides many others that have flirted at it occasionally, without one syllable having been ever published in its defence, or even quotation to its advantage that I can remember, except by the polite author of a late discourse between a Deist and a Socinian.

Therefore, since the book seems calculated to live at least as long as our language and our taste admit no great alterations, I am content to convey some Apology along with it.

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 some thinking, and much conversation, he had endeavour’d to strip himself of as many real prejudices as he could; I say real ones because, under the notion of prejudices, he knew to what dangerous heights some men have proceeded. Thus prepared, he thought the numerous and gross corruptions in Religion and Learning might furnish matter for a satire that would be useful and diverting. He resolved to proceed in a manner that should be altogether new, the world having been already too long nauseated with endless repetitions upon every subject. The abuses in Religion he proposed to set forth in the Allegory of the Coats and the three Brothers, which was to make up the body of the discourse. Those in Learning he chose to introduce by way of digressions. He was then a young gentleman much in the world, and wrote to the taste of those who were like himself; therefore in order to allure them, he gave a liberty to his pen, which might not suit with maturer years or graver characters, and which he could have easily corrected with a very few blots, had he been master of his papers for a year or two before their publication.

Not that he would have governed his judgment by the ill-placed cavils of the sour, the envious, the stupid, and the tasteless, which he mentions with disdain. He acknowledges there are several youthful sallies which, from the grave and the wise, may deserve a rebuke. But he desires to be answerable no farther than he is guilty, and that his faults may not be multiplied by the ignorant, the unnatural, and uncharitable applications of those who have neither candour to suppose good meanings, nor palate to distinguish true ones. After which he will forfeit his life if any one opinion can be fairly deduced from that book which is contrary to Religion or Morality.

Why should any clergyman of our church be angry to see the follies of fanaticism and superstition exposed, though in the most ridiculous manner; since that is perhaps the most probable way to cure them, or at least to hinder them from farther spreading? Besides, though it was not intended for their perusal, it rallies nothing but what they preach against. It contains nothing to provoke them, by the least scurrility upon their persons or their functions. It celebrates the Church of England as the most perfect of all others in discipline and doctrine; it advances no opinion they reject, nor condemns any they receive. If the clergy’s resentments lay upon their hands, in my humble opinion they might have found more proper objects to employ them on: nondum tibi defuit hostis; I mean those heavy, illiterate scribblers, prostitute in their reputations, vicious in their lives, and ruined in their fortunes, who, to the shame of good sense as well as piety, are greedily read merely upon the strength of bold, false, impious assertions, mixed with unmannerly reflections upon the priesthood, and openly intended against all Religion; in short, full of such principles as are kindly received because they are levelled to remove those terrors that Religion tells men will be the consequence of immoral lives. Nothing like which is to be met with in this discourse, though some of them are pleased so freely to censure it. And I wish there were no other instance of what I have too frequently observed, that many of that reverend body are not always very nice in distinguishing between their enemies and their friends.