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Satires on Man and “The Dignity of Human Nature”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Bertrand A. Goldgar
Bertrand A. Goldgar*
Affiliation:
Lawrence University, Appleton, Wis.
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Extract

In his recent critical work on Swift, Mr. Edward Rosenheim, Jr., argues that satire is an attack upon “discernible historic particulars”; a true “satire against mankind,” he adds, necessarily lies beyond this definition and must be considered as a species of philosophic writing. Without questioning his definition of satire, which is intended as a critical tool rather than as historical description, I think it worth recalling that attacks on human nature or the human species as such were thought in Swift's day to be well within the satiric genre. More significantly, such satires on man fell into general disfavor in the first half of the eighteenth century; they appear to have been the first to suffer from the general reaction against satire which Stuart Tave and others have traced. The hostile reception encountered by the greatest example of the genre, Gulliver's Travels, embodied the same charges as had been levelled earlier in the century against lesser works. While other forms of satire were still flourishing and meeting with critical approval, satiric indictments of mankind as a whole were censured as libels on the “dignity of human nature.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 80 , Issue 5 , December 1965 , pp. 535 - 541
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1965

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References

1 Swift and the Satirist's Art (Chicago, 1963), pp. 30–31.

2 Stuart Tave, The Amiable Humorist (Chicago, 1960), pp. 16–39; Andrew M. Wilkinson, “The Decline of English Verse Satire in the Middle Years of the Eighteenth Century,” RES, N. S. iii (1952), 222–233.

3 See George Boas, The Happy Beast in French Thought of the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore, 1933); for a list of such satires and for an account of their reception quite different from my own, see A. O. Lovejoy, Reflections on Human Nature (Baltimore, 1961), pp. 15–19.

4 Hibernicus's Letters, 2nd ed. (London, 1734), ii, 129.

5 Thomas Catesby Paget, Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (London, 1741), p. 14; Hibernicus's Letters, i, 414–415.

6 Essays upon Several Moral Subjects, 5th ed. (London, 1703), p. 148.

7 Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope (London, 1782), ii, 111.

8 A Sermon Preached Before the King, Feb. 24, 1674/5 (London, 1675), pp. 6–7; see also Charles Hickman, Fourteen Sermons (London, 1700), p. 46.

9 Jenyns, Miscellaneous Pieces in Verse and Prose, 3rd ed. (London, 1770), p. 398; Hume, Philosophical Works (Edinburgh, 1854), iii, 86.

10 Characteristicks, 2nd ed. (London, 1714), ii, 425; The Spectator No. 317; Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, 6th ed. (London, 1724), p. 19; James Foster, Sermons on the Following Subjects, 2nd ed. (London, 1733), p. 86; Francis Gastrell, A Moral Proof of the Certainty of a Future State, 2nd ed. (London, 1728), pp. 72, 77; The Lay-Monk No. 37 (5–8 Feb. 1714).

11 Richard Fiddes, Fifty-two Practical Discourses on Several Subjects (London, 1720), p. 516; The Prompter No. 171 (25 June 1736), quoting Bacon; Tatler No. 87.

12 Matthew Tindal, Christianity as old as the Creation (London, 1730), p. 390; John Leland, An Answer to a Book, Intituled Christianity as old as the Creation, 2nd ed. (London, 1740), ii, 402; John Balguy, A Collection of Tracts Moral and Theological (London, 1734), pp. 315–316; cf. an anonymous pamphlet The Dignity of Human Nature (London, 1762), which consists simply of the first part of John Wesley's defense of the doctrine of original sin. See also my discussion in The Curse of Party: Swift's Relations with Addison and Steele (Lincoln, Neb., 1961), pp. 20–23.

13 Paget, p. 233.

14 Poetical Works, ed. G. C. Faber (London, 1926), p. 273.

15 Prose Works, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford, 1939 —), xi, 123.

16 The Spectator, ed. George A. Aitken (London, 1898), iii, 201 (No. 210).

17 The Weekly Miscellany, No. 94 (28 Sept. 1734), as printed in The Gentleman's Magazine, iv, 499–500.

18 Works, ed. A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop (London, 1950), iii, 87.

19 The Female Spectator (Glasgow, 1775), ii, 266; see also The Censor (London, 1717), ii, 219–220.

20 Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift (London, 1752), pp. 132–133, 187, 190.

21 Spectator, ed. Aitken, iii, 200–201.

22 Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. E. Spingarn (Oxford, 1909), ii, 154; iii, 244.

23 An Essay upon Wit, Augustan Reprint Society, No. 1 (May 1946), p. 210; Poems, ed. Harold Williams (Oxford, 1937), ii, 571.

24 The Champion for 22 Jan. 1739/40, in Works, ed. W. E. Henley (London, 1903), xv, 162.

25 Observations upon Lord Orrery's Remarks (London, 1754), p. 171.

26 Correspondence, ed. George Sherburn (Oxford, 1956), iii, 423.

27 The Tablet, or Picture of Real Life (London, 1762), p. 85.

28 See Spectator, Nos. 23, 355; Tatler, No. 108.

29 Spectator, ed. Aitken, vii, 309 (No. 537).

30 Hibernicus's Letters, i, 409–416.

31 No. 169 (18 June 1736). For a reference to the Yahoo more in accord with Swift's intention, see London Magazine, ii (1733), 459.

32 Works (London, 1757), i, 77. Cf. James Foster: When the dignity of human nature is debased, “this has a manifest tendency to encourage their degenerate … practices, and furnishes them with an excuse for their wickedness, viz. the necessary corruption … of their nature.” Sermons on the Following Subjects, pp. 81–82. See also Charles Gildon, The Post-Boy Robb'd of his Mail, 2nd ed. (London, 1706), p. 14.

33 Letters on Several Subjects by the late Sir Thomas Fitzosborne, Bart. (London, 1748), p. 191.

34 Pp. 16–39.

35 Correspondence, iii, 255.

36 See, for example, Isaac Barrow, Theological Works, ed. Alexander Napier (Cambridge, 1859), ii, 169; and The Weekly Miscellany for 5 May 1739, as printed in The Scots Magazine, i (1739), 199–200.

37 See John Hughes, Spectator, ed. Aitken, vii, 308–309 (No. 537).

38 As printed in Gentleman's Magazine, ii (1732), 906–907.

39 The Censor (London, 1717), i, 13; “To the Imitator of … Horace,” London Magazine, ii (1733), 152.

40 Hibernicus's Letters, ii, 398–399; see also The World, No. 191 (26 Aug. 1756).

41 Characteristicks, i, 94.

42 Works, i, 77.

43 Works, ed. Henley, xv, 94.

44 The Fable of the Bees, ed. F. B. Kaye (Oxford, 1924), ii, 275.

45 Works in Verse and Prose (London, 1773), ii, 184.

46 Fielding, Works, ed. Henley, xv, 102.