Swift's “Skinnibonia”: A New Poem from Lady ... - Lafayette College

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330 James Woolley First Visit, June 1728-February 1729 June 1728? Intelligencer, no 8. First published 29 June-2 July 1728.57 Includes “A Dialogue between Mad Mullinix and Timothy.” June 1728? Intelligencer, no 9. First published 6-9 July 1728. July 1728? Intelligencer, no 10. First published 13-16 July 1728. Includes the poem “Tim and the Fables.” 28 July 1728 “My Lady’s Lamentation and Complaint against the Dean.” Dating confirmed in the Acheson manuscript. First published in Swift’s Works, XVI (London, 1765). 12 August 1728 “An Excellent New Panegyrick on Skinnibonia.” Previously unpublished. So dated in the Acheson manuscript. 2 September 1728 “The Grand Question Debated” (= “A Soldier and a Scholar”). In Trinity College Cambridge MS Rothschild 2271, a holograph, Swift incorrectly endorses the manuscript 2 September 1729 but gives the 1728 date following the title. Williams and Rogers were inclined to favour the 1729 date, which is used by Faulkner, but the 1728 dating is unambiguous in the Acheson manuscript.58 If we accept the 1728 dating, lines 175-76 (“So, then you look’d scornful, and snift at the Dean, / As, who shou’d say, Now, am I Skinny and Lean?”) plainly allude to “Skinnibonia.” First published January 1732 (Foxon S904). September 1728 “The Answer [to Lindsay].” First published in William King’s The Dreamer (London, 1754). The date is inferred from the date of Lindsay’s poem, 7 September 1728, which appears in the Acheson manuscript as well as The Dreamer. 14 September 1728 “On Cutting Down the Old Thorn at Market Hill.” So dated in a contemporary manuscript among the Portland Literary Manuscripts, University of Nottingham Library MS PwV 409. Dated 1728 by Faulkner, but the greater specificity of the Portland manuscript, which was probably collected by the second Earl of Oxford, seems plausible and is accepted by Williams. First published June 1732 57 For the Intelligencer datings, see Intelligencer, ed. Woolley, pp. 26-33. 58 Poems, ed. Williams, III, 865; Poems, ed. Rogers, p. 796.
Swift’s “Skinnibonia” 331 (Foxon S869). On 18 September, Swift told Sheridan that he was “taken up so much with long Lampoons on [Lady Acheson] that if I do not produce one every now and then of about two Hundred Lines, I am chid for my Idleness.”59 September 1728 “An Answer to the Ballyspellin Ballad.” Sent to the printer 28 September 1728. Swift’s holograph is BL MS Add. 4805, ff. 180-81; Lady Acheson’s transcript is Huntington MS HM 14340. Fall 1728 “Lady A——s——n Weary of the Dean.” The poem was evidently written in the fall, at a time when Swift had been at Market Hill at least “a Quarter” (l. 9) and expected to continue there until winter (ll. 19-23). Of Swift’s three Market Hill visits, only the one in 1728 fits these points, and the poem must be from 1728, not earlier than September and before the onset of winter. Williams and Rogers both rule out 1730.60 Rogers notes that a 1728 dating would accord with Swift’s report to Pope in February 1729 that he had been writing “family verses of mirth by way of libels on my Lady.” It would also accord with the complaint put into Lady Acheson’s mouth that Swift had called her “skinny, boney” (l. 42). Davis dates the poem “1728?”61 First published 1730 (Foxon S868). 1728 “On the Five Ladies at Sots-Hole.” Lady Acheson transcribed this poem into Esther Johnson’s manuscript of Swift’s poems. First published in Swift’s Works, II (Dublin: Faulkner, 1735). 1728 “The Beau’s Reply to the Five Ladyes Answer.” Swift’s holograph is Huntington Library MS HM 14335. First published in Swift, Works, XVI (London, 1765). 1728 “An Epistle to a Lady.” Dated 1728 in the Acheson manuscript (Figure 6). It seems likely that the Achesons would have been reliably informed about the origins of a poem about Lady Acheson. Williams says that the poem “must have been begun during one of Swift’s visits to Market Hill, 1728-30. We may surmise that, after a beginning, the poem was laid aside, and completed, with some revision of the earlier part, in 1732-3. The first draft extends, apparently, to line 132. The later addition, with its satire on the authorities of the day and Sir Robert Walpole, may be regarded as beginning with line 133: ‘To conclude 59 Correspondence, ed. Woolley, III, 194. 60 Poems, ed. Williams, III, 859; Poems, ed. Rogers, p. 787. 61 Swift, Poetical Works, eds Herbert Davis [and David Woolley] (London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 370-72. Hereafter cited as Davis.
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