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

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James Woolley
began as a compilation of work by a single poet and family guest became a more
miscellaneous assortment of poems, some of great Irish interest and some of them
unpublished. One of few surviving manuscript collections of eighteenth-century
Anglo-Irish verse, this volume contains twenty-nine poems in all.11
The manuscript was written by a number of scribes. Seven of the hands transcribed
more than one poem: Jonathan Swift, Lady Acheson, her son Sir Archibald
Acheson, and four unidentified persons here called Hand A, Hand B, Hand C,
and Hand D .12 In the following list, items have been numbered for convenient
reference.13
1. [Swift.] “My Lady’s lamentation, and complaint against the Dean. At Market-
hill[.] Jul. 28th 1728”; pp. 1-9. Swift’s hand; lines numbered by tens in the
left margins; 227 lines, with a missed line inserted in Swift’s hand; catchwords
(Figure 2). First published by Deane Swift in 1765 from a manuscript no longer
extant, presumably the one Sir Walter Scott mentions in his 1824 edition of
Swift’s Works, XV, 215.
Figure 2. Part of Swift’s “My Lady’s Lamentation,”
with his insertion, from p. 1 ; actual size.
2. [Swift.] “An excellent new Panegyrick on Skinnibonia. August 12 1728”;
pp. 10-14. Lady Acheson’s hand. Lines numbered by tens against the left
11 Counting Robert Lindsay’s epigram (item 4 in the following list) and not counting Harley’s prose
(item 27).
12 On Lady Acheson’s handwriting, see “Stella’s Manuscript of Swift’s Poems.” I have identified Sir
Archibald Acheson’s hand by comparing the manuscript with known samples of his writing from the
National Archives of Ireland (M648-657, letters of Sir Archibald to the fourth Viscount Townshend,
1772); the same handwriting appears in Sir Archibald to Townshend (by then first Marquess), 20
October 1778, BL MS Add. 50006, f. 73. I have ruled out Sir Arthur Acheson as a possible scribe by
comparing the manuscript with known samples of his writing from the Houghton Library, Harvard
University (bMS 188.5, Sir Arthur to George Bubb Dodington, 23 October 1735), and the Princeton
University Library (MS RTC 01, no 121, item 27: Swift to James Stopford, 30 August 1729, addressed
and franked by Sir Arthur).
13 See Appendix for a first-line index to the manuscript.