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Swift and “The Greatest Epitaph in History”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2021

Maurice Johnson
Maurice Johnson*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia 4
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Extract

It is dangerous writing on marble, where one cannot make errata, or mend in a second edition,“ Jonathan Swift once remarked about an epitaph to be placed in St. Patrick's Cathedral. The Latin phrases he framed for his own epitaph, to be set up in that cathedral in Dublin, have been variously considered ”scarce intelligible,“ ”terrible,“ the ”best clue to Swift,“ and ”the greatest epitaph in history.“ They have more than once been offered as proof that he was not deeply a Christian but that he ”hated the chains of oppression more than the shackles of sin.“ Because of W. B. Yeats's version of it in the form of English verse, Swift's epitaph now has a double identity: as an unusually controversial eighteenth-century biographical document, and as a familiar twentieth-century work of literature.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 68 , Issue 4-Part1 , September 1953 , pp. 814 - 827
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1953

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References

1 Letter to the Rev. Philip Chamberlain, 20 May 1731, in Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. F. E. Ball (London, 1910-14), IV, 231. The epitaph referred to is that of Marshal Schomberg.

2 John Boyle, 5th Earl of Orrery, Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Swift, 5th ed. (London, 1752), p. 185; Leslie Stephen, Swift, English Men of Letters Series (New York, 1899), p. 205; W. D. Taylor, Jonathan Swift: A Critical Essay (London, 1933), p. 301; W. B. Yeats, The Words Upon the Window-Pane,“ Wheels and Butterflies (London, 1934), p. 45.

3 Shane Leslie, The Skull of Swift (Indianapolis, 1928), p. 336.

4 A brief account of Yeats's use of the epitaph in “Blood and the Moon,” “The Words Upon the Window-Pane,” “Swift's Epitaph,” and “Under Ben Bulben” is in my essay The Sin of Wit: Jonathan Swift as a Poet (Syracuse, 1950), pp. 132-135; and I have commented ou T. S. Eliot's use of Swift-through Yeats—in “The Ghost of Swift in Four Quartets,” MLN, LXIV (April 1949), 273.

5 Spectator No. 26, Friday, 30 March 1711. The interest in epitaphs showed itself in 17th-century collections like those of William Camden, John Weever, and Thomas Ding-ley, but more especially in 18th-century works, e.g, John Le Neve, Monumenta Anglicana: Being Inscriptions on the Monuments of several Eminent Persons Deceased on or since the year 1700 to the end of the year 1713, 5 vols (1717-19); W. Toldervy, Select Epitaphs (1755); John Hackett, Select and Remarkable Epitaphs (1757); T. Webb, A New Select Collection of EpitaphS (1775).

6 Spectator No. 518, Friday, 24 Oct. 1712.

7 Poems, ed. D. N. Smith and E. L. McAdam (Oxford, 1941), p. 395.

8 Works, ed. Arthur Murphy, 7th ed. (London, 1823), x, 328.

9 Lives of the English Poets, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1905), III, 254.

10 F. E. Ball, Swift's Verse: An Essay (London, 1929), pp. 5-6; but authenticity of the elegy is discounted in Poems, ed. Harold William (Oxford, 1937), III, 1055.

11 Lines 103-104, Poems, I, 101.

12 Lines 22-24, Poems, II, 431.

13 Berkeley's epitaph is printed in Swift's Corr., I, 389.

14 Letter to Knightley Chetwode, 13 March 1722 (Corr., III, 127).

15 McGee's epitaph appears in R. W. Jackson, Jonathan Swift: Dean and Pastor (London, 1939), p. 113. Jackson also attributes to Swift the inscription on the restored monument of Archbishop Trugury (d. 1471).

16 Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Time, ed. M. J. Routh, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1833). IV, 92.

17 Macaulay, who calls Schomberg “the first captain in Europe,” mistakenly adds, “To his corpse every honor was paid . . .” (History of England, ed. C. H. Firth, London. 1915, IV, 1885).

18 20 July 1731 (Corr., IV, 244). The Prussian envoy with the hard name was Christoph Martin von Degenfeld, who married lady Mary Schomberg, a granddaughter.

19 Prose Works, ed. Temple Scott (London, 1897-1908), IX, 404-405. The printing of the entire Will covers pp. 404-417. Photographs of the inscription as it appears in St. Patrick's Cathedral may be seen in Bernard Acworth, Swift (London, 1947), front., and R. W. Jackson, Jonathan Swift: Dean and Pastor, facing p. 143. The “S.T.P.” (Sacrae Theologiae Professor) of the Will has been altered in the inscription to “S.T.D.” (Sacrae Theologiae Doctor).

20 Thackeray, “Charity and Humour,” in The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, Works, introds. by W. P. Trent and J. B. Henneman (New York, n. d.), XXIII, 252; Stephen, Swift, p. 205.

21 Le Neve, Monumenta Anglicana, IV, Ch. 5.

22 Boswell's Lift of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill and L. F. Powell (Oxford, 1934), II, 407.

23 “The Life and Character of Sir William Temple,” Works (London, 1770), I, xxiv.

24 Poetical Works, ed. Austin Dobson (Oxford, 1906), p. 100. Similar line, had earlier appeared in the Swift-Pope Miscellany of 1727:

Well then, poor G[ay?] lies under ground|

So there's an end of honest Jack.

So little justice here be found,

'Tis ten to one he'll ne'er come back.

25 “On the Poor Man's Contentment,” Prose Works, IV, 202.

26 “The Irony of Swift,” Determinations (London, 1934), p. 107.

27 Lines 456-457, Poems, II, 571.

28 Remarks, p. 44. There have been studies of Swift's likeness to Lucretius, but Swift's joining of indignation and death is unlike that of Lucretius: tu vero dubitabis et indignabere obire? (And will you hesitate, will you be indignant to die?). De Rerum Natura III. 1045.

29 “A Note in Defence of Satire,” ELH, VII (Dec. 1940), 258.

30 “Thoughts on Religion,” Prose Works, III, 308.

31 Patrick Delany, Observations upon Orrery's Remarks on the Life and Writings of Jonathan Swift (London, 1754), pp. 148-149.

32 April 1731 (Corr., IV, 218).

33 Gentleman's Magazine, I, iv (April 1731), 169.

34 Letter to Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk, 26 Oct. 1731 (Corr, IV, 265-266).

35 This “convention of pretending that the dead man, through his epitaph, addresses the wayfarer. . . is especially interesting in that it exhibits the influence exerted by inscriptions on literature, not the other way. For the address to the traveler is a feature which it fundamentally appropriate to the inscribed epitaph, and to nothing else; it could only be grounded in the fact that in classical times the dead were buried, for reasons hygienic or religious or both, outside of cities, and therefore the great highways became lined with tombs.” Richmond Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs, Illinois Stud. in Lang, and Lit., XXVIII, 1-2 (Urbane, 1942), 230.

36 Inscription for John Ardern, in the parish church of Stockport, County of Chester, printed in Le Neve, IV, 64.

37 Works, I, 367-368.

38 “An Essay on Epitaphs,” Works, x, 328.

39 “An Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain” (1721), Works, ed. A. C. Fraser (Oxford, 1901), IV, 321.

40 Samuel Clarke, A Demonstration (London, 1706), p. 114.

41 W. A. Eddy, Introd., Setires and Personal Writing, by Jonathan Swift (Oxford, 1933), p. xxii.

42 Lines 347-348, 351-352, Poems, II, 566.

43 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Letter to Mr. Wortley Montagu, 9 Aug. 1714.

44 “Thought, on Religion,” Works, III, 309, For an almost exhaustive study of Swift's ideas on political freedom, see Irvin Ehrenpreis, “Swift on Liberty,” JHI, XIII, ii (April 1952), 131-146. See also A. D. McKillop, “Ethics and Political History in Thomson's Liberty,” Pσpe and His Contemporaries: Essays Presented to George Sherburn, ed. J. L. Clifford and L. A. Landa (Oxford, 1949), pp. 215-229; and The Background of Thomson's “Liberty,” Rice Inst. Pamphlet, XXXVIII, 2 (July 1951).

45 8 March 1735 (Corr., V, 143).

46 Remarks, p. 185.

47 The Olio, ed. Francis Grose (London, 1793), p. 321.

48 “Jonathan Swift,” Encycl. Brit., 9th ed. (1875-89).

49 Swift and His Circle (Dublin, 1945), pp. 1-2.

50 “Situational Satire: A Commentary on the Method of Swift,” Univ, of Toronto Quart., XVII (Jan. 1948), 133.

51 Spoken by “John Corbet” in “The Words Upon the Window-Pane,” Wheels and Butterflies, p. 45.