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Swift and Keats

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

H. E. Briggs
H. E. Briggs*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
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Extract

Swift's influence on Keats has gone unrecognized although Keats refers to Swift in several of his letters, imitates his style on occasion, and, I believe, incorporates reminiscences of Swift's work in at least five of his poems. The evidence to be given seeks to explain several hitherto unexplained references in Keats's letters, to clarify a much-debated passage in I Stood Tip-toe, and to show the persistence in Keats's mind of a favorite image. Incidentally it reveals something about Keats's methods of composition; and it shows how Swift was regarded by Hazlitt, Keats, and their circle, calls attention to Keats's early and long-continued interest in Homer (whose work he first knew in Pope's translation), and indicates in Keats a catholicity of taste and an interest in satire to which perhaps more attention might be paid.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 61 , Issue 4-Part1 , December 1946 , pp. 1101 - 1108
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1946

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References

1 M. B. Forman, ed., The Letters of John Keats (New York: Oxford University Press, 1935), p. 107.

2 See Lecture vi of Lectures on the English Poets.

3 A reference to Thomas Moore's Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress.

4 Forman, ed. cit., p. 454.

5 Ibid., p. 175. The peculiarities in capitalization and punctuation are Keats's.

6 Vss. 215-218 of I Stood Tip-toe.

7 “Three Passages of Keats,” London Times Literary Supplement, March 5, 1925, p. 156.

8 Ibid., March 12, 1925, p. 172.

9 Ibid., February 2, 1933, p. 76.

10 Ibid., February 9, 1933, p. 92.

11 See Sir Sidney Colvin, John Keats (New York: Scribner's, 1917), p. 39.

12 See Forman, ed. cit., pp. 137 and 193.

13 Ibid., p. 509.

14 Ibid., p. 455.

15 M. B. Forman, in a communication to the London Times Literary Supplement, “Keats's Amen to Nonsense,” July 6, 1933, p. 464, supplies the information that “Twangdillo” was quite common as the refrain of a song fifty years ago, that it was the name of the fiddler in William Somerville's Hobbinol, and that the O.E.D. cites two uses of the term. Possibly Keats had heard it, and perhaps even the phrase in full. My contention is that the passage as a whole is Swiftean.

16 In Part iii of Gulliver's Travels, Chapter 6, Swift heaps scorn upon the informers who twist every word from its proper meaning. “For instance,” he says, “they can discover a close-stool to signify a privy council . . . a cap and bells, a favourite. . . .” The “favourite” in The Cap and Bells may be Bertha of Canterbury. Since Keats apparently used material from Chapters 3, 5, 7, and 8, it is not unlikely that he remembered Swift's use of “cap and bells” in Chapter 6.

17 See the first three chapters of Part iii of Gulliver's Travels.

18 When creating the astrologer Hum, Keats could scarcely have entirely forgotten Swift's satire on astrologers and their ilk in “A Voyage to Laputa.” And Crafticant is an informer (St. vi: “He's Elfinan's great state-spy militant”) and a hypocritical backbiter (St. xi). He prides himself on the acquisition of worthless knowledge (St. lxxii: “Mem.:— birds fly in the night”) and yet he knows little (St. vii: “Show him a mouse's tail and he will guess, With metaphysic swiftness, at the mouse”). For Swift's treatment of spying and informing, see, e.g., Part iii, Chapter 6; and for his treatment of worthless “scientific” pursuits, see Chapters 4 and 5.

19 Forman, ed. cit., p. 302.

20 A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover, edd., Collected Works of Willliam Hazlitt (12 vols., London: J. M. Dent, 1902), v, 110.

21 There is at least one hidden, indirect allusion, suggesting that Keats's interest in Swift was more pervasive than might be expected. In his journal letter begun on December 16, 1818, to his brother George, Keats said: “I am looking into a Book of Dubois's—he has written directions to the Players—one of them is very good. ‘In singing never mind the music—observe what time you please. It would be a pretty degradation indeed if you were obliged to confine your genius to the dull regularity of a fiddler—horse hair and cat's guts—no, let him keep your time and play your tune—dodge him‘.” (See Forman, ed. cit., p. 257.)

Keats's reference to “a Book of Dubois's” has never, I think, been explained. In 1807 Edward Dubois (1774-1850), a lawyer, art critic, editor, wit, and politician whom Keats met in 1817, had brought out My Pocket-Book. It appeared in a second and third edition in 1808. The book contains an appendix in which Dubois pretended to print for the first time three newly discovered manuscripts of Swift's, the third manuscript being the “Directions to Players” to which Keats refers and from which he quotes.

There is another connection between Swift and this work by Dubois, for like Gulliver's Travels, Dubois's book is a satire on travellers' tales, especially on Sir John Carr's Stranger in Ireland. It is perhaps significant of Keats's interest in Swift that the only part of Dubois's book which seems to have impressed him pretends to be by Swift himself. Also, the fact that Keats enjoyed the “Directions to Players” is another indication of his taste for satire.