No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In The Monthly Mirror are some writings of Jonathan Swift which appear to have been overlooked by all of his commentators— a satirical essay, a letter to Mrs. Pendarves, and a soliloquy attributed to him. The most significant of these is the satirical essay, entitled Directions to Players and printed, it is stated, “from an unpublished MS. by Dean Swift, preserved by Mr. O'Nick.”
1 Monthly Mirror for Oct. 1807, New Series, ii, 261 ff.
2 Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. F. E. Ball (1910–14), ii, 96 n.
3 Scott, Works of Jonathan Swift (1814), i, 471, and Elwin, Works of Alexander Pope (1871), vii, 167 n., have aroused the just indignation of modern authorities on Swift by foolishly questioning the Dean's knowledge of Shakespeare.
4 Monthly Mirror for Mar. 1797, iii, 150 ff.
5 Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, v, 13 n.; vi, 204.
6 Harold Williams, Dean Swift's Library (Cambridge, 1932), p. 34.
7 It seems appropriate to introduce Swift's humorous analysis of Hamlet's advice to the players, with the famous lines themselves.
8 The Advancement of Learning, Bk. ii. xxiii. 30.
9 Henry VIII, iii. ii.
10 That is, the upper gallery.
11 Essay on Criticism, Pt. ii, ll. 17–18.
12 Cymbeline, ii. iii.
13 Variation. Canon 11. 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 hairs and cat's guts”—no, let him keep your time and play your tune.—Dodge him.
14 Southerne, Oroonoka, ii. ii.
15 Ars Poetica, I. 127.
16 To this, Mrs. Pendarves replied, in her letter of Nov. 8, 1735: “Our acquaintance was so short, I had not time to disgrace myself with you. I was ambitious of gaining your esteem, and put on all my best airs to effect it; I left you at a critical moment; another month's conversation might have ruined all. I still beg you will encourage your indulgent way of thinking of me. What will you gain by discovering my follies, and I shall lose the honour of your friendship, which loss cannot be repaired in England or Ireland” (Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, v, 257 f.).
17 “At last I was informed your not writing to me was occasioned by your ill state of health. That changed my discontent, but did not lessen it, and I have not yet quite determined it in my mind, whether I would have you sick or negligent of me. They are both great evils, and hard to choose out of. I heartily wish neither may happen” (Mrs. Pendarves to Swift, May 16, 1735; op. cit., v, 180).
18 “I am infinitely obliged to you for the concern you express for the weakness of my eyes; they are now very well” (op. cit., v, 181).
19 “You call yourself by a great many ugly names, which I take ill; for I never could bear to hear a person I value abused. I, for that reason, must desire you to be more upon you guard when you speak of yourself again. I much easier forgive your calling me knave and fool” (op. cit., v, 180 f.). Mrs. Pendarves was alluding to Swift's letter of Feb. 22, 1734/5.
20 “I am just going to lose Mrs. Donnellan, and that is enough to damp the liveliest imagination. It is not easy to express what one feels on such an occasion: the loss of an agreeable, sensible, useful companion, gives a pain at the heart not to be described. You happy Hibernians that are to reap the benefit of my distress will hardly think of anything but your own joy and not afford me one grain of pity” (op. cit., v, 181).—Anne Donnellan, daughter of James Donnellan, Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland, was Mrs. Pendarves' most intimate friend.
21 That is, Robert Fausset, Precentor of Achonry, who apparently made a proposal of marriage to Mrs. Pendarves while she was visiting Bishop Clayton at Killala in the summer of 1732. On Feb. 22, 1734/5, Swift had written her in a similar vein: “Pray, Madam, preserve you eyes, how dangerous soever they may be to us; and yet you ought in mercy to put them out, because they direct your hand in writing, which is equally dangerous. Well, Madam, pray God bless you wherever you go or reside! May you be ever as you are, agreeable to every Killala parson and Dublin Dean, for I disdain to mention temporal folks without gowns and cassocks” (op. cit., v, 138).
22 “My sister [Anne Granville, afterwards Mrs. John D'Ewes], the only one I have and an extraordinary darling, has been extremely indisposed this whole winter. I have had all the anxiety imaginable on her account; but she is now in a better way, and I hope past all danger” (Mrs. Pendarves to Swift, May 16, 1735; op. cit., v, 181).
23 The Reverend Patrick Delany (1686?–1768), Chancellor of St. Patrick's; the close friend of Swift, who later called him “the most eminent preacher we have” (op. cit., vi, 68). The husband of Margaret Tenison, a rich widow, Dr. Delany was very hospitable, and it was at his house that Mrs. Pendarves had met Swift in Jan. 1733 (Autobiography … of … Mrs. Delany, ed. Lady Llanover (1861), i, 396). “Dr. Delany,” Swift had written Pope on July 8, 1733, “is the only gentleman I know, who keeps one certain day in the week to entertain seven or eight friends at dinner” (Correspondence, v, 2). After the death of his wife in 1741, he married Mrs. Pendarves.
24 Richard Helsham, M.D. (1682?–1738), Swift's physician and Regius Professor of Physic in the University of Dublin. He was the author of Lectures on Natural Philosophy, edited by Bryan Robinson, and published in 1739. Swift described him to Pope as “an ingenious good-humoured physician, a fine gentleman, an excellent scholar, easy in his fortunes, kind to everybody, has abundance of friends, entertains them often and liberally. … He offends nobody, is easy with everybody. Is not this the true happy man?” (op. cit., iv, 58 f.).
25 Mrs. Pendarves' letter of May 16 had concluded with the remark: “I have made a thousand blunders, which I am ashamed of” (op. cit., v, 182). Swift had begun to correct her grammar and pronunciation soon after they had met, for on April 5, 1733, Mrs. Pendarves had written her sister from Dangan: “The day before we came out of town, we dined at Doctor Delany's, and met the usual company. The Dean of St. Patrick's was there, in very good humour, he calls himself ‘my master,‘ and corrects me when I speak bad English, or do not pronounce my words distinctly. I wish he lived in England, I should not only have a great deal of entertainment from him, but improvement” (Autobiography, i, 407).
26 Du Bartas, Divine Weeks, translated by Josuah Sylvester; The Fourth Part of the First Day of the II. Weeke, ll. 185–186. By writing “snow” instead of “wool,” the author of The Toper makes the same error as Dryden, who quotes these lines in the preface to The Spanish Fryar (1681).