As Gay's letter suggests, details concerning the contemporary reception of Gulliver's Travels exhibit two sides of Jonathan Swift's character—the pleasant (that is, merry, witty, amusing) and the unpleasant (that is, sarcastic, envious, disaffected). A person with a powerful ego and astringent sense of humor, Swift must have been a delightful friend, if somewhat difficult, but also a dangerous enemy. A Letter from a Clergyman (1726), here reproduced in a facsimile of its first and only edition, is a reaction typical of those who regard Swift and the sharp edge of his satire with great suspicion and revulsion. It displays the dangerously Satanic aspect of Swift—that side of his character which for some people represented the whole man since the allegedly blasphemous satire in A Tale of a Tub, published and misunderstood early in his career, critically affected, even by his own admission, his employment in the Church. It is this evil character of the author, the priest with an indecorous and politically suspect humor, that offended some contemporary readers. To them, the engraved frontispiece of Jonathan Smedley's scurrilous Gulliveriana (1728) is the proper image of the author of the Travels. It portrays Swift in a priest's vestments that barely conceal a cloven hoof.

In the following pages, we shall define the historical context of the clergyman's Letter and illuminate the nature of the literary warfare in which Swift was an energetic if not particularly cheerful antagonist when Gulliver's Travels was published late in 1726.

In another letter, Gay remarked to Swift (17 November 1726) that "The Politicians to a man agree, that it [the Travels] is free from particular reflections"; nevertheless some "people of greater perspicuity" would "search for particular applications in every leaf." He also predicted that "we shall have keys publish'd to give light into Gulliver's design." His prediction was correct, for it was not long before four Keys, the earliest commentary in pamphlet form on the Travels, were published by a Signor Corolini, undoubtedly a pseudonym for Edmund Curll, the London printer and bookseller. But surprisingly, the observations do not exhibit Swift in a harsh factional light. As a matter of fact, in his introduction to the Keys, which are entitled Lemuel Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. Compendiously Methodized, For Publick Benefit: With Observations and Explanatory Notes Throughout (1726), Curll flatters Swift as possessing "the true Vein of Humour and polite Conversation" (I, 4). Regarding the Travels, he observes, "The Town are infinitely more eager after them than they were after Robinson Crusoe" (I, 5).

In general, the Keys are pleasantly written, including no nasty innuendoes critical of Swift's high-church sectarian zeal or his high-flying Tory political sympathies. They may be considered a frankly commercial venture meant to exploit the popularity of the Travels. Curll merely summarizes the narratives, occasionally providing substantial extracts or sprinkling explanatory comments on some allusions that attract him. Some of the annotations are ridiculous, or curious, like the equations of Blefuscu with Scotland, of the storm Gulliver passes through before reaching Brobdingnag with "the South-Sea and Mississippi Confusion," and of the giants with inflated South Sea stock (II, 4). Some remarks, however, appear convincing, such as his belief that "the trifling Transactions of the present English Royal Society" on insects and fossils are "finely rallied" (II, 11-12). Curll also notes about the third voyage that "besides the political Allegory, Mr. Gulliver has many shrewd Remarks upon Men and Books, Sects, Parties, and Opinions" (III, 10-11). Concerning the fourth, he equates the good Portuguese Captain Don Pedro with the Dean's "good Friend the Earl of P[eterboroug]h" (IV, 26). The Roman Catholic Peterborough, we recall, fought in Spain and was also Pope's good friend.

Other more suggestive comments on Swift's political meaning may be cited. For example, the "ancient Temple" in which Gulliver is housed in Lilliput, a structure "polluted ... by an unnatural Murder," he identifies as "the Banquetting-House at White-Hall, before which Structure, King CHARLES I was Beheaded" (I, 7-8). This allusion to "the Royal-Martyr" (III, 32) may be considered a modest clue to Swift's Toryism, and it is associated with the Jacobitism of which his Whiggish enemies accused him. Yet an unusual reading of the Struldbruggs in the third voyage (particularly the controls imposed on the senile creatures in order to prevent their engrossing the civil power) as an attack on the religious dissenters demonstrates that Curll and Swift agreed on the issue of an established church. The clergy who wished to separate state from church, or as Curll describes the situation,

Indeed, among the most interesting of Currl's annotations are those which suggest that a religious reading of the Travels was by no means unappreciated by Swift's contemporaries. Thus, again, besides his unusual politico-religious comment on the Struldbruggs, Curll is fairly sharp in his annotation of the passage on religious differences in Chapter V of the fourth voyage, concerning "Transubstantiation as believed by the Papists," "Cathedral-worship," kissing the Crucifix, vestments,—and resulting furious religious wars (IV, 12-13). All in all, however, the Keys are singularly shallow and agreeably bland. Curll simply agrees with Gulliver-Swift, and reinforces the meaning by practically repeating the text, as he does at this point when deploring inessential differences in ritual as needless causes of cruel conflict. Although Curll was aware of the presence of politics and religion in Swift's allegories, his annotations do not reflect unfavorably on Swift's character.

But it was not long before an attack on Swift was mounted. It began with A Letter from a Clergyman to His Friend, With an Account of the Travels of Capt. Lemuel Gulliver: And a Character of the Author. To Which is Added, The True Reasons Why a Certain Doctor Was Made a Dean (1726)—the first substantial attack on Swift resulting from the publication of his most celebrated work. The identity of the author is unknown. Steele, Swift's implacable political enemy, had retired to the country at this time and was soon to die. Because of the numerous references to Swift's treacherous disloyalty to Steele's friendship, we could speculate on a connection between the anonymous author and Steele and infer that it was a friendly relationship.

The long and breathless title underlines the malicious content of this polemical pamphlet, a pungent libel on Swift's character that includes cutting observations on Swift's chief fiction as well. Obviously, the author's intent is to vilify Swift in retaliation for attacks on the writer's friends. Inspired by the publication of the Travels, he presents a crudely defamatory "Character of the Author." He claims an acquaintance with Swift "in publick and private Life" (p. 4) but offers no evidence to substantiate this claim. Drawing from common knowledge, he simply cites the well-known negative evidence of A Tale of a Tub, in which Swift, he indignantly asserts like Swift's former enemy William Wotton, "levelled his Jests at Almighty God; banter'd and ridiculed Religion," thereby offending Queen Anne and blocking his own church preferment (p. 19). Except for "some gross Words, and lewd Descriptions, and had the Inventor's Intention been innocent" (p. 6 [note the suspicion of Swift's political and religious bias]), the author is mildly pleased with the first three voyages. But he finds intolerable the satire on human nature in the last, here echoing Addison's criticism of the demoralizing effect of a satire on mankind (Spectator 249, 5 December 1711).

However, Swift's "Intention" in the first three voyages is, he angrily declares, tinctured by his poisonous malice and envy, the result of twelve years of exile. He is positive of the identity of the vicious person behind the mask of the imaginary memoirist:

He detects envy in what he believes is the incendiary narrator of the Travels, and insists that by siding with the enemies of the nation, meaning France, Swift was "endeavouring to ruin the British Constitution, set aside the Hanover Succession, and bring in a [tyrannical] Popish Pretender," and, of course, "destroy our Church Establishment" (pp. 14, 8-9). Thereupon, he furiously threatens Swift with punishment for his pernicious attack on the government, that is, the present political administration. Clearly motivated by politico-religious fears, this Whig militantly defends not only the Protestant succession but also the ministry of Sir Robert Walpole—which the numerous allusions to the "Great Man" and "the greatest Man this Nation ever produced" (p. 15) confirm. Swift's mean character of Flimnap, the Lilliputian Prime Minister, stung badly: "With what Indignation must every one that has had the Honour to be admitted to this Great Man, review the Doctor's charging him with being morose" (p. 15). He counters Swift's insulting reduction of the Great Man to a petty little man with an egregiously fulsome panegyric that magnifies the virtues of Sir Robert's public and private character, and concludes with abuse of Swift's character as an Irish dean disaffected from the government—hence deserving of permanent exile in Ireland.[1]

The author of the fiery Letter focuses on Swift's impiety—pointing to his wickedness, the sneering tone of his sacrilegious satire, his indiscreet joking about religion, all of which Swift's enemies were quick to emphasize as the outstanding features of A Tale of a Tub, as well as portions of the Travels. For example, even Gay, in the letter to Swift quoted above (17 November 1726) also noted that those "who frequent the Church, say his [Gulliver's] design is impious, and that it is an insult on Providence, by depreciating the works of the Creator,"—a line of attack soon to be pursued by Edward Young, James Beattie, and others who were not in the least charmed by Swift's satire. But Swift's friends were not idle; for it was precisely this bitter onslaught on Swift's religion in the Letter that brought another writer to the defense in the ironically entitled Gulliver Decypher'd: or Remarks on a Late Book, Intitled, Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World, Vindicating the Reverend Dean on Whom it is Maliciously Father'd, With Some Conjectures Concerning the Real Author (1726).[2]

This writer, probably John Arbuthnot, may be considered one of the earliest defenders of the religious orthodoxy of the Travels. He extracts passages from Swift's work, such as the Lilliputian quarrel over breaking eggs, the satire on corrupt bishops, and the affirmation of the principle of limited toleration for religious dissent in Brobdingnag as evidences of his belief, presented ironically, that "the Reverend Dean" could not possibly have fathered the work because the author of the Travels did not have religious ideals in mind. One of the passages that this defender cites demonstrates that only a person like the religious dean could have made this observation about the concern for religious instruction by the Lilliputians before their fall from original perfection:

Consider also his defense of Swift's exposure of the corrupt bishops, the "holy Persons" in the House of Lords (Travels, II, vi). Believing that Swift's pungent satire on the church hierarchy is good and true, he makes the dean himself the target of a playful bit of raillery, a type of irony for which Swift and Arbuthnot were both notorious:

Such commentary suggests that at least one very early reader of the Travels sensed the possibility of Swift's use of certain portions of his narrative to vent disappointment at his failure to receive the church preferment he thought he deserved and to carry on his personal vendetta against obstructive bishops like the "crazy Prelate" Sharpe, Archbishop of York, one of the detestable and "dull Divines" pilloried in the autobiographical poem "The Author Upon Himself" (1714).

Concerning Swift's religious uniformitarianism, the author of Gulliver Decypher'd defends Swift's understandable bias for the established Anglican Church as a vested interest, which in the Travels is expressed through the giant king's strictures against civil liberty for religious dissenters (II, vi). He recommends this passage as a proper explanation of the principle restricting the civil liberty of potentially subversive dissidents, adding, furthermore, that "the Sectaries" themselves were "averse to all the Modes" of religion and opposed religious diversity.[5]

All these remarks figured prominently in what may be considered the earliest debate on the religious meaning of the Travels. Certainly, some contemporary readers of Swift's major work were not insensitive to its religious significance, as even the commentary on the religious instruction of the upper classes—a relatively minor part of the satire which twentieth-century readers would easily overlook, as well as the more serious observations on the Endian dispute between Catholics and Protestants over the Eucharist demonstrate. Yet like all the early critics of the Travels, this author has nothing to say about this episode of central importance in the narrative about Lilliput, the reason probably being that its meaning was taken for granted by the Protestants of Swift's England. Thus the author of Gulliver Decypher'd merely says the obvious: "The Reflections that will accrue to every Reader, upon this Conference [with Reldresal], is [sic] so obvious, that we shall not so much as hint at them."[6] Thus it is also not strange for the antagonistic clergyman to say nothing in his Letter about the heart of the Lilliputian narrative—the profound allegory on the religious wars over the Eucharist and the serious issues raised by Swift. No doubt, however, he probably read Swift's interpretation of Gulliver's role in this conflict as a Tory version of history, and resented it accordingly. That is, like the Whigs of the day, he would object to an easy peace for Catholic France and would conclude that the Treaty of Utrecht concluding the War of the Spanish Succession, was not sufficiently punitive.

Among the works that capitalized on the popularity of the Travels were the imitative Memoirs of Lilliput (1727) and A Voyage to Cacklogallinia (1727). The author of the Memoirs emphasizes the evil character of the Lilliputians, particularly their lecherous clergy, and concludes with an account of the sufferings of Big-Endian exiles and extensive observations on the dangers of political factionalism. But he is most attracted by prurient sexual adventures. A vulgar work obviously meant to appeal to a neurotic taste for sexuality, it includes no attack on Swift as it explores at length some topics to which Gulliver in his memoirs only tangentially alludes. The second abortive effort, an animal satire of exotic talking fowl, also resembles Swift's satire as it touches on several similar topics—the hypocrisy of the people, the scepticism of their nobility, the love of luxury of the higher clergy—but again because it includes no comment on Swift's personal or public character, it is not relevant to a discussion of the angry Letter from a Clergyman. We can therefore pass quickly from these two works to perhaps the best, in the sense of the most stinging and most comprehensive, assault on Swift at the time of the publication of his Travels, that entitled Gulliveriana (1728), by the Irish Dean of Clogher, Jonathan Smedley.

"That rascall Smedley," about whom Swift once wrote in vexation (to Archdeacon Walls, 19 December 1716), is the very same hack who carried on the subsidized Baker's News; or the Whitehall Journal (1722-23) on behalf of Sir Robert Walpole's government. He is also immortalized in Pope's Dunciad (1728) as "a person dipp'd in scandal, and deeply immers'd in dirty work" (Dunciad A, II, 279ff; B, II, 291ff). His Gulliveriana (including the satires on Pope, the Alexandriana), a scurrilous anthology of abuse in the form of jingles, ballads, parodies in prose, and other satirical essays, was inspired by the recent publication of the Pope-Swift Miscellany. In his preface Smedley indicts Swift for an almost endless series of misdemeanors—for shifting his allegiance from the Whigs to the Tories; for restricting his verse to the burlesque style and its groveling doggerel manner; for failing in eloquence and oratory, theology and mathematics; and for being a pedant, poetaster, hack-politician, jockey, gardener, punster, and skilful swearer. In short Smedley insists that Swift is accomplished in the art of sinking according to the prescription which he and Pope wrote in the Peri Bathos, the first part of the Miscellany that aroused Smedley's ire. Swift is, to sum up, "ludicrous, dull, and profane; and ... an Instance of that Decay of Delicacy and Refinement which he mentions" (p. xxvii). As for the recently published Gulliver's Travels, Smedley shows it no mercy:

It comes as no surprise to see that Smedley's Whiggish bias encourages him to detect "hints" in the Travels of Swift's "Zeal for High Church and Toryism" (p. 280), so that obviously the work is "Trifling" and "Nothing."

Among Smedley's clever parodies of Swift's writings are those of A Tale of a Tub, Against Abolishing Christianity, and Gulliver's Travels. The comprehensiveness of abuse is demonstrated in the nasty Gulliverian allegory, in which Swift is accused of being an ignorant, hypocritical, atheistical Irishman, high-flying Tory, and Jacobite Papist. Even Swift's sex life—his relationship with Stella and Vanessa—is made ugly (pp. 1-10). Indeed, Smedley believes that it is his duty to keep his readers well-informed about Swift's "odd" conduct; thus with evident relish he advises the poet to

Tell us what Swift is now a doing:
Or whineing Politicks or Wooing;
With Sentence grave, or Mirth uncommon,
Pois'ning the Clergy, and the Women. (p. 41)

Among the ballads, one will see the infamous "Verses, fix'd on the Cathedral Door, the Day of Dean Gulliver's Installment," which begins with the following delectable quatrain:

Today, this Temple gets a Dean,
Of Parts and Fame, uncommon;
Us'd, both to Pray, and to Prophane,
To serve both God and Mammon.

Then the poem proceeds with the usual diatribe of Swift's desertion of the Whigs, his atheism, high-church sympathies, and sacrilegious humor (pp. 77-79).

In almost every conceivable literary style Smedley takes exception to Swift's divinity and politics and attempts to blacken Swift's character. As we should expect, differences over politics and religion were determining causes. Thus Smedley adores the outstanding literary Whig Addison, contrasting the polish and beauty of Addison's style with Swift's failures, ugliness, ineptitude, vulgarity, intolerable filthiness. Likewise, following the author of the Letter, he writes favorably of Steele, castigating Swift for his treacherous betrayal of Steele's friendship. But his catalogue of Swift's vices is far more intriguing than that of our clergyman, his gossip far more detailed and malicious. Clearly, Swift could not possibly do anything to please some of his readers. If their hostile reactions have any meaning, they prove that Swift's political connections and high-church sympathies prevented many of his contemporaries from responding to the virtues of Gulliver's Travels; and that, on the contrary, his chief work was tapped for evidence of the author's suspected impiety and partisan politics.

That this hostility persisted far into the eighteenth century may be seen in the illuminating anecdote told in the 1780's by Horace Walpole, son of the "Great Man" so glowingly praised in the Letter from a Clergyman:

Northern Illinois University

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NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

[1] In The Intelligencer, No. III (1728), Swift defends Gay's satire on the "Great Man," The Beggar's Opera (1728), and continues his offensive against Sir Robert Walpole. Here it may be mentioned that in his apology for the irony used by persecuted dissenters, Anthony Collins [A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony (1729)] remarks that "High-Church" overlooked Swift's "drolling upon Christianity," and was unwilling to punish him because of his "Drollery upon the Whigs, Dissenters, and the War with France." Collins interprets the effect of Swift's wit on his church career as follows: "And his Usefulness in Drollery and Ridicule was deem'd sufficient by the Pious Queen Anne, and her pious Ministry, to intitle him to a Church Preferment of several hundred Pounds per Ann. ... notwithstanding [the objections of] a fanatick High-Churchman, who weakly thought Seriousness in Religion of more use to High-Church than Drollery" (pp. 39-40).

[2] G. A. Aitken, The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot (Oxford, 1892), pp. 123-124; and H. Teerink-Arthur H. Scouten, A Bibliography of the Writings of Jonathan Swift (Philadelphia, 1963), No. 1216, consider it an uncomplimentary attack on Swift and his friends—but mistakenly, I believe. Lester M. Beattie, John Arbuthnot: Mathematician and Satirist (Cambridge, Mass., 1935), p. 311, unqualifiedly rejects Arbuthnot's authorship of this work. But a correspondent to Notes and Queries, Sixth Series, VII (1883), 451-452, argues convincingly for the attribution to Arbuthnot.

[3] Gulliver Decypher'd (London, 1726), pp. 29-30; reprinted in Arbuthnot's Miscellaneous Works (Glasgow, 1751), I, 100.

[4] Gulliver Decypher'd, pp. 26n, 35; Misc. Works, I, 97n, 104.

[5] Gulliver Decypher'd, p. 38; Misc. Works, I, 106.

[6] Gulliver Decypher'd, p. 25; Misc. Works, I, 97.

[7] John Oldmixon, another Whig writer, repeats some of these slanders against Swift, even using some of the same words like "Trifling and Grimace"—in his reactions to the Swift-Pope Miscellanies and Gulliver's Travels. He too finds the tales in the Travels frivolous because lacking a moral and the satire a debasing of "the Dignity of human Nature" (The Arts of Logick and Rhetorick [London, 1728], pp. 416-418).

[8] John Pinkerton, Walpoliana (London, n.d.), I, 126-127. For additional typical evidences of Horace Walpole's antipathy, see his angry assaults on Swift's insolence, arrogance, vanity, and hypocrisy (including sexuality), in his letters to Montagu, 20 June 1766 and to Horace Mann, 13 January 1780; and a remark in his Anecdotes of Painting, Works (London, 1798), III, 438.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

This facsimile of A Letter from a Clergyman (1726) is reproduced from a copy in the British Museum.

A

LETTER

FROM A

Clergyman to his Friend,

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF