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THE PROSE WORKS OF JONATHAN SWIFT
,.
“Biographical Introduction”
by W.E.H. Lecky, in Swift’s Tale of a Tub
and Other Early Works (1897)
Introduction
In this passage from his biographical essay on the life and
works of Jonathan Swift, W.E.H. Lecky attempts to illuminate
the temperament that produced such “coarse and irreverent”
works as Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels. “Pouring a torrent
of ridicule and hatred on all its opponents,” Swift incorporated
taboo material in his writings for moral purposes. For Lecky,
though Swift “indulged more habitually in coarse, revolting,
and indecent imagery” than any other author of the period, “his
faults in this respect are rather those of taste than of morals.”
Lecky concludes that Swift’s satirical use of the taboo was
also precipitated by his melancholic worldview: “It was his
deliberate opinion that man is hopelessly corrupt, that the evil
preponderates over the good, and that life itself is a curse.”
According to Lecky, this perspective informs Gulliver’s Travels:
as Swift himself once wrote, he intended his most famous work
“to vex the world rather than to divert it.”
f
Lecky, W.E.H., M.P. “Biographical Introduction.” Swift’s Tale of a Tub and
Other Early Works. Ed. Temple Scott. The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D.,
Volume I. London: George Bell and Sons, 1897.
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