Headnote

This contribution to the Bickerstaff hoax seems first to have been published, without date or place, as ‘Squire Bickerstaff Detected; or, the astrological impostor convicted, by John Partridge, student in physick and astrology. Part I, presumably during 1708. The implied promise of a further part seems not to have been fulfilled.

The present text, with the correction of three literal errors, is taken from the first inclusion of the piece alongside Swift's own Bickerstaff papers, in Miscellanies … The First Volume (1727), where it is introduced by a headnote: ‘This Piece being on the same Subject, and very rare, we have thought fit to add it, tho’ not written by the same Hand.’

In the first volume of Works (1735), ‘Squire Bickerstaff Detected is attributed to Nicholas Rowe (1674–1718): ‘The following Piece, under the Name of John Partridge, was written by that famous Poet Nicholas Row, Esq; and therefore being upon the same Subject, although not by the same Author, we have thought fit to publish it, that the Reader may have the whole Account together.’

In Hawkesworth's edition, however, it is attributed to Thomas Yalden (1670–1736): ‘In the Dublin edition it is said to be written by the late N. Rowe, Esq; which is a mistake: for the reverend Dr. Yalden, preacher of Bridewell, Mr. Partridge's near neighbour, drew it up for him.’ It seems highly unlikely that such a seasoned controversialist as Partridge would have felt the need of a ghost-writer, and equally unlikely that a Tory clergyman like Yalden would have leapt to the defence of a neighbour so flagrantly offensive to his profession and politics. The note also seems, implausibly, to take the piece as a defence rather than a satire of Partridge: if it is taken as a satire, Yalden would have had ample motive. William Congreve (1670–1729) has also been suggested as a possible author.6 It may be that it is to some extent a collaborative work.

The piece is written in the person of John Partridge, who is represented as priding himself on his ‘double Capacity’ (as trader in prognostication and in proprietary medicines – the reader will later be reminded also of his background as a shoemaker,when he is commemorated as ‘Practitioner in Leather, Physick, and Astrology’).

Headnote

This piece was probably composed by Swift as a conclusion to the Bickerstaff affair, but was apparently not published. For commentary, see Ehrenpreis. The text is taken from the first printing, 1765a.

AN ANSWER TO BICKERSTAFF.

BY A PERSON OF QUALITY.

I have not observed, for some years past, any insignificant paper to have made more noise, or be more greedily bought, than that of these predictions. They are the wonder of the common people, an amusement for the better sort, and a jest only to the wise; yet, among these last, I have heard some very much in doubt, whether the author meant to deceive others, or is deceived himself. Whoever he was, he seems to have with great art adjusted his paper both to please the rabble and to entertain persons of condition. The writer is, without question, a gentleman of wit and learning, although the piece seems hastily written in a sudden frolic, with the scornful thought of the pleasure he will have, in putting this great town into a wonderment about nothing: Nor do I doubt but he and his friends in the secret, laugh often and plentifully in a corner, to reflect how many hundred thousand fools they have already made. And he has them fast for some time: For so they are like to continue until his prophecies begin to fail in the events. Nay, it is a great question whether the miscarriage of the two or three first will so entirely undeceive people, as to hinder them from expecting the accomplishing of the rest. I doubt not but some thousands of these papers are carefully preserved by as many persons, to confront with the events, and try whether the astrologer exactly keeps the day and the hour. And these I take to be Mr. Bickerstaff's choicest cullies, for whose sake chiefly he writ his amusement. Meanwhile he has seven weeks good, during which time the world is to be kept in suspense; for it is so long before the almanack-maker is to die, which is the first prediction: And, if that fellow happens to be a splenetic visionary fop, or has any faith in his own art, the prophesy may punctually come to pass by very natural means.

Headnote

Published 1709; copy text 1709 (see Textual Account).

A Famous Prediction of Merlin, the BritishWizard; Written above a Thousand Years Ago, and Relating to this Present Year. With Explanatory Notes. By T. N. Philomath was published in February 1709, in the popular format of a single sheet headed with a woodcut portrait (see Textual Account). Like Predictions in the previous year, it prompted unauthorised reprints, identifiable in part by their imperfect attempts to copy the woodcut. The piece consists of what is alleged to be a prophecy by Merlin, with commentary by one T.N. Philomath: the prediction, in verse, is set in black letter while the ‘Explanatory Notes’ are in roman. T. N.'s declared purpose is to support Partridge against Bickerstaff, and the piece presents significant connections with the print culture of the late seventeenth-century crises in which Partridge's career had taken shape.

The woodcut block (originally including some features excised before its use by Swift) had been used by Partridge in two attacks on his high-church Tory adversary John Gadbury (1627–1704): the anonymously published Gadburies Propheticall Sayings: or; The Fool Judged out of the Knave's Mouth (1690), and Nebulo Anglicanus: or, The First Part of the Black Life of John Gadbury (1693) which Partridge published under his own name. Like Swift's Famous Prediction, Gadburies Propheticall Sayings carried a Baldwin imprint: it exemplifies the crude but visually striking Whig propaganda that was Richard Baldwin's stock-in-trade. The caption to the portrait reads ‘Multi multa Sciunt, sed ego nihil’ (Many people know many things, but I know nothing: Gadbury, in his joy at the birth of an heir to James II, had signally failed to foresee the Revolution). Partridge, intent on convicting Gadbury of covert Roman Catholicism, ridicules his claims to be a loyal member of the Church of England (which he in any case habitually vilified as papist); and the portrait seems calculated to accuse Gadbury of trying to hide his treachery under a hat, bands, and clean-shaven visage suggestive of Protestant innocence and humility. In this original form of the woodcut, however, the beads and cross around his neck are supplemented by a large cross in the space to the right of the image, and the insinuation thatGadbury is awolf in sheep's clothing is underlined by a speechscroll in which he declares himself ‘a special Protestant’.

Headnote

Tatler no. 230, and nos. 5 and 20 of the continuation by William Harrison, are included in the body of the present volume as being definitely by Swift; and the poems that Swift contributed to Tatler no. 9 and Tatler no. 238 will be included in the appropriate volume of CWJS. Today's readers, unlike previous generations, also have the advantage of setting speculation about Swift's role in these periodicals in the fuller context provided by the editions of the Tatler and Spectator annotated and indexed by Donald F. Bond.

Early editors added enthusiastically to the tally of Swift's possible contributions, and Davis, in a valuable review of the tradition, concluded that, at least at the beginning of Steele's project, ‘there can be little doubt that these early papers contain many hints and suggestions given by Swift to Steele, or directly worked up from Swift's conversation’. The list that follows summarises some of the suggestions most frequently encountered; but an authorfocused approach seems, in any case, less than helpful in estimating Swift's contribution to such an obviously collaborative and conversationally inspired project as the Tatler, particularly at its inception, when his fertility of invention and his generosity in throwing out hints and ideas for others to develop (notably the character of Bickerstaff himself) were obviously much in evidence. As time went on, however, Swift came to feel that his efforts to obtain a measure of protection from the new ministry for Steele and Addison were unappreciated, and he became progressively alienated from them, particularly from Steele.

For Harrison's continuation, however, the case is rather different, since in this case Swift (along with Bolingbroke) was more patron than companion; and he made no secret to Johnson and Dingley of his fear that his prot´eg´e was unfitted for the task (see Headnote to Harrison's Tatler no. 5). Swift in effect acknowledged his ghost-writing of nos. 5 and 20 by allowing them to appear in his Works in 1735 (but see below for texts of further numbers for which he probably furnished hints).

The following list draws principally on Swift's testimony in JSt, on the claims of the 1735 headnote to Tatler no. 230, on suggestionsmade by Ball, on Elliott's ‘Swift's “Little” Harrison’, on Davis's review of traditional attributions and his Appendix C, on the account given by R. P. Bond, and on Donald F. Bond's editions of the Tatler and Spectator:

Headnote

Published 1711; copy text 1735 (see Textual Account).

In 1711, Richard Steele brought the Tatler to a close, and the Whig poet William Harrison (1685–1713), best known for his praise of Marlborough in his topographical poem Woodstock Park (1706) was encouraged by Bolingbroke and Swift to attempt a continuation. The McLeods suggest that Harrison's continuation, under Swift's guidance, ‘might be considered the tory response to the more whiggish attitudes of the original Tatler’.

Harrison's previous reputation was as a poet, and Swift had serious reservations about his aptitude for the periodical essay. Swift seems to have supplied Harrison with two essays, nos. 5 and 20 in Harrison's series, as well as hints for others, including the first, which set up the continuation's connection with Steele's original Tatler. Although in 1711 Swift successfully solicited a diplomatic secretaryship forHarrison, he returned unpaid in January 1713 and died the following month: his only extant letter to Swift is dated from Utrecht, 16 December 1712. Swift, who had remained a loyal supporter, was deeply saddened by his death: he concerned himself forHarrison's mother and sisters, organised his funeral, and cleared his debts.

Harrison's Tatler 5, written, like the Tatler proper, in the person of Isaac Bickerstaff (whom Swift had created in Predictions) belongs to a genre of dream-vision already well established in the Tatler proper. The lions in the royal menagerie at the Tower of London were a standard tourist attraction, classed in Tatler 30 as ‘Entertainments to raw Minds, because they strike forcibly on the Fancy’: Swift had seen them in 1710. Cf. the account given by Edward Ward in The London Spy (whose fourth edition had appeared in 1709):

Headnote

Published 1711; copy text 1735 (see Textual Account).

For Swift's involvement in Harrison's continuation of the Tatler, seeHeadnote to Harrison's Tatler no. 5. Bickerstaff's difficulty in getting away from his hosts recalls the Conclusion of the Tale, whose supposed author recalls experiences of ‘Visiting, where the Ceremony of taking Leave, has employ’d more Time than the whole Conversation before’. The advocacy of mutual comfort over ceremony is close to the views that Swift would express in ‘On Good-Manners and Good-Breeding’ and ‘Hints on Good Manners’; and the experience of oppressive hospitality thatBickerstaff here reports will be recalled in the complaint of the ‘honest gentleman’ who laments ‘having been kept four days, against his will, at a friend's house’.

THE TATLER. NUMBER X X .

—— Ingenuas didicisse fideliter Artes

EmollitMores. —— Ovid.

From Saturd. Mar. 3, to Tuesd. Mar. 6, 1710.

From my own Apartment in Channel-Row, March 5.

Those inferior Duties of Life which the French call les petites Morales, or the smaller Morals, are with us distinguished by the Name of Good Manners, or Breeding. This I look upon, in the general Notion of it, to be a Sort of artificial good Sense, adapted to the meanest Capacities; and introduced to make Mankind easy in their Commerce with each other. Low and little Understandings, without some Rules of this Kind, would be perpetually wandering into a Thousand Indecencies and Irregularities in Behaviour; and in their ordinary Conversation fall into the same boisterous Familiarities that one observes amongst them, when a Debauch has quite taken away the Use of their Reason. In other Instances, it is odd to consider, that for want of common Discretion, the very End of Good Breeding is wholly perverted; and Civility, intended to make us easy, is employed in laying Chains and Fetters upon us, in debarring us of our Wishes, and in crossing our most reasonable Desires and Inclinations. This Abuse reigns chiefly in the Country, as I found to my Vexation, when I was last there, in a Visit I made to a Neighbour about two Miles from my Cousin. As soon as I entered the Parlour, they put me into the great Chair that stood close by a huge Fire, and kept me there by Force, untill I was almost stifled.

Headnote

Published 1708; copy text 1708 (see Textual Account).

Bickerstaff had claimed, in Predictions, that John Partridge would die on 29 March 1708. Swift follows up his prediction with what purports to be an independent third-party account of Partridge's death (see Headnote to Predictions; see also Textual Accounts of Predictions and Accomplishment).

THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE F I R S T OF MR. BICKERSTAFF ‘ S PREDICTIONS.

BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF MR. PARTRIGE, THE ALMANACK-MAKER, Upon the 29th Instant.

In a Letter to a Person of Honour.

My LORD,

In Obedience to your Lordship's Commands, as well as to satisfie my own Curiosity, I have for some Days past enquired constantly after Partrige, the Almanack-maker, of whom it was foretold inMr. Bickerstaff 's Predictions, publish’d about a Month ago, that he should die the 29th Instant about 11 at Night, of a Raging Fever. I had some sort of Knowledge of him when I was employ’d in the Revenue, because he used every Year to present me with his Almanack, as he did other Gentlemen, upon the Score of some little Gratuity we gave him: I saw him accidentally once or twice about 10 Days before he died, and observed he began very much to Droop and Languish, tho’ I hear his Friends did not seem to apprehend him in any Danger. About Two or Three Days ago he grew Ill, was confin’d first to his Chamber, and in a few Hours after to his Bed, where Dr. Case and Mrs. Kirleus were sent for to Visit and to Prescribe to him. Upon this Intelligence I sent thrice every Day one Servant or other to enquire after his Health; and yesterday, about Four in the Afternoon, Word was brought me that he was past Hopes; upon which I prevailed with my self to go and see him, partly out of Commiseration, and, I confess, partly out of Curiosity. He knew me very well, seem’d surprized at my Condescention, and made me Complements upon it as well as he could in the Condition he was. The People about him said he had been for some Hours delirious; but when I saw him he had his Understanding as well as ever I knew, and spoke Strong and Hearty, without any seeming Uneasiness or Constraint.

Headnote

This dialogue in Latino-Anglicus was apparently left unfinished. Autograph materials containing the major part, not apparently the source of the printed edition, are found in SwJ 396. Further variant material is found in SwJ 393. This dialogue, like the earlier ‘Castilian’ material, may well have had a dimension of collaborative improvisation. Mayhew, noting that the piece was well advanced by December 1735, when Swift was working on it during a visit to Sheridan, suggests that its incomplete state may be related to the death in February 1736 of Theophilus Harrison, the son of Swift's cousin Mrs Whiteway, himself a medical student: Mrs Whiteway had written to Swift on 2 December 1735 that ‘My son intreats you will finish your Latina Anglia treatise; which he desires you will immediately send him a copy of.’ Swift's Dublin physician Richard Helsham would also have had a professional interest in the joke. Other manuscript puns from this stage of Swift's life confirm a preoccupation with encroaching illness. Child, in ‘Jonathan Swift's Latin Quacks’, suggests that the ‘unstable form in which one language converges into another and both converge into nonsense … projects the instability of Swift's own body, “disordered” by noise and deafness and vertigo’.

The range of language games within which this dialogue finds its context is described in Mayhew's ‘Anglo-Latin Games and a Fragment of Polite Conversation’. In order to discern the sense, the Latin words must be read aloud in such a way as to form English words (so the conversation would begin: ‘Is his Honour sick? Pray let us feel his pulse. It does beat very slow today’). The process of translating between the word as read and the word as heard is by no means easy or automatic: Child, who provides a parallel text in Latino-Anglicus and English, notes the ‘dizzying excursions between ear and eye’ required of the reader.

Swift evidently respected Richard Mead (1673–1754: ‘Fourth Doctor. Ire membri re ad it in Doctor me ades Esse’). The Second Doctor cites an older authority, the French physician Jean Fernel (1497–1558).

Headnote

Published 1738; copy text 1738b (see Textual Account). The title from the title page runs as follows: ‘A TREATISE ON Polite CONVERSATION’.

Conversation was a topic of lifelong concern to Swift, and the development of Polite Conversation can be traced over four decades (see Introduction above). Swift noted two of the sayings he would use in the dialogues in his account book for 1702–3. At this time he was in Ireland, and an Irish dimension to the work is confirmed by the identification of other sayings as specific to the Irish English that Swift would have known in his youth. He seems to have continued his collections during his several visits to England; and a Londonmilieu is indicated by the place names and allusions of the published dialogues, perhaps implying a specific charge against an English elite blamed for the oppression of the Church and of Ireland. Johnson found in Polite Conversation and Directions to Servants evidence of ‘a mind incessantly attentive, and, when it was not employed upon great things, busy with minute occurrences’, and argued that Swift ‘must have had the habit of noting whatever he observed; for such a number of particulars could never have been assembled by the power of recollection’. Mayhew, who located sayings from Polite Conversation among Swift's informal jottings, also concluded that Swift, like his creation Simon Wagstaff, made notes from conversation: ‘Itmay reasonably be concluded that Wagstaff's methods and Swift's were the same; that this page of manuscript represents portions of actual conversations which Swift overheard in Dublin drawing rooms and recorded in briefest form, hot as he heard them, later to be written out fair, and amplified.’ Mackie Jarrell argued, in contrast, for Swift's use of published proverb collections, while David Hamilton supported Mayhew's account. Proverb books could account for only a proportion of the material; they would not explain variation between Swift's forms and those published; and their actual role in Swift's sense of the proverb tradition remains unclear (and indeed, Swift's letters and poems demonstrate that he had at his fingertips many more such sayings than would find a place in Polite Conversation).

Headnote

These precepts, with their emphasis on the servants’ duty of care for the wellbeing of master and horses, provide an illuminating context for the advice on comparable topics in Directions, particularly the chapter addressed to the groom.

The text is taken from its first appearance in vol. VIII of Faulkner's 1746 Works. Evidence for the date of composition is lacking: it may belong to the same period as ‘Laws for the Dean's Servants’, which is dated to 1733 (Associated materials III).

THE DUTY OF SERVANTS AT INNS

Be mounted before your Master. When you see him mounted, ride out before him. When he baiteth at Noon, enter the Inn-Gate before him, and call the Ostler to hold your Master's Horse while he alights. Leave your Master to the Servants of the Inn; go you with the Horses into the Stable; chuse a Place farthest from the Stable-Door; see the Standing be dry; send immediately for fresh Straw; see all the old Hay out of the Rack, and get fresh put in; see your Horses Girths be loosed and stuffed; take not off the Bridle until they are cool, nor Saddles in an Hour; see their Hoofs be well picked; try if the Heads of the Nails be fast, and whether they be well clinched, if not, send presently for a Smith; always stand by while the Smith is employed. Give the Oats the last thing. Water your Horses when you are within a Mile or more of the Inn. Never keep above forty Yards before or behind your Master, unless he commands you. Try the Oats by smelling and weighing them; see you have good Measure; stand by while your Horses are eating their Oats. When you enter your Evening-Inn, let your Horses Feet be stuffed with Cow-Dung every Night.

Observe the same Rules, only be sure if any thing be wanting for a Smith, let it be done over Night.

Know the Time your Master will set out in the Morning: Allow him a full Hour to get himself ready. Contrive both at Morn and Noon to eat, so that your Master need not stay for you.

Headnote

Published 1710; copy text 1735 (see Textual Account).

The earliest account of the origins of ‘A Meditation upon a Broom-stick’ comes from George Faulkner's ‘Some Further Account of Dr. Swift’, printed in 1762 in vol. XI of his Works, and reprinted with commentary by Barry Slepian:

A more elaborate account was given by Thomas Sheridan in his edition of the Works; and although lengthy, it is worth quoting in full:

Headnote

Probably composed after 1727; posthumously published; copy text 1765a (see Textual Account).

This posthumously published fragment is placed in the present volume with two items on related topics (‘Hints towards an Essay on Conversation’; ‘On Good-Manners and Good-Breeding’). Swift's claim to have known the court under four monarchs implies a date after his return to Ireland in 1727, shortly after the accession of George II. Woolley suggests that the piece may have been intended as an Intelligencer. The fragment also prompts comparisons with the conversation of the Houyhnhnms. For its possible relation to ‘On Good- Manners and Good-Breeding’, see Headnote to that work. For its relation to Swift's wider thinking about courtesy and conversation, see Introduction.

HINTS ON GOOD MANNERS

Good manners is the art ofmaking every reasonable person in the company easy, and to be easy ourselves.

What passeth for good-manners in the world, generally produceth quite contrary effects.

Many persons of both sexes, whom I have known, and who passed for well-bred in their own and the world's opinion, are the most troublesome in company to others and themselves.

Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; if you flatter only one or two, you affront the rest.

Flattery is the worst, and falsest way of shewing our esteem.

Where company meets, I am confident the few reasonable persons are every minute tempted to curse the man or woman among them, who endeavours to be most distinguished for their good-manners.

A man of sense would rather fast till night, than dine at some tables, where the lady of the house is possessed with good-manners; uneasiness, pressing to eat, teazing with civility; less practised in England than here. Courts are the worst of all schools to teach good-manners.

A courtly bow, or gait, or dress, are no part of good-manners. And therefore every man of good understanding is capable of being well-bred upon any occasion.

To speak in such a manner as may possibly offend any reasonable person in company, is the highest instance of ill-manners.

Good-manners chiefly consist in action, not in words. Modesty and humility the chief ingredients.

A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet, not included in the present edition, was published by J.Hyde inDublin in 1721, bearing an attribution to ‘E. F’ on its title page, and was attributed to Swift when reprinted in London. Although this attribution has sometimes been credited, Davis, who printed it as an appendix, was sceptical of Swift's authorship, and pointed out that Hyde had in the previous year published The Right of Precedence between Physicians and Civilians Enquir’d into (1720), which Swift had specifically disowned on 4 April 1720 in a letter to Ford. (It could perhaps be objected that some of Curll's publications of Swift, though technically unauthorised, do in fact have considerable textual authority, as in the case of ‘A Meditation upon a Broom-stick’; but The Right of Precedence is a markedly unimpressive piece that has relatively little to suggest an association with Swift.) Ehrenpreis, far more outspoken in his views than Davis, was entirely dismissive of any attribution of the Letter to Swift.

The piece was subjected to quantitative analysis by L. T. Milic in 1967 in AQuantitative Approach to the Style of Jonathan Swift:Milic concluded, on the basis of manifest similarities, and despite some differences, that ‘the evidence permits the conclusion that Swift was the author of the Letter, though it was probably subject to the influence of another hand’, and that ‘until definite evidence comes to light about the circumstances under which A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet was written, it must therefore be accepted as Swift's work’. Further computer analysis undertaken in 2003 by John Burrows at the suggestion of Claude Rawson compared the Letter with samples including work by Addison, Budgell, Defoe, Grove, Hughes, Hume, Locke, Pope, Steele, Swift, Shaftesbury and Welsted (a selection in which writers who could not be candidates for authorship were included as surrogates for such other writers asmight be unidentified, ormight not be able to be represented by an adequate body of comparable work: the aim of the study was to test the plausibility of an attribution to Swift, rather than to identify other candidates for authorship). Results indicated a grouping of The Right of Precedence and the Letter with Swift rather than any of the other authors, but also showed a particularly strong correlation between The Right of Precedence and A Letter.

Headnote

Published 1709; copy text 1709 (see Textual Account). The title from the title page runs as follows: ‘A VINDICATION OF Isaac Bickerstaff Esq; AGAINST What is Objected to Him by Mr. Partridge, in his Almanack for the Present Year 1709. By the said ISAAC BICKERSTAFF Esq;’.

On 24 April 1708 Partridge had written to his friend Isaac Manley, mistakenly identifying theHigh-Church pamphleteer William Pittis as the author of Predictions. (Manley, Postmaster-General of Ireland, was also a cardplaying companion of Esther Johnson and of Swift, who would in 1710 attempt to help him when he was ‘complained of for opening letters’ and threatened with dismissal.) Evidently aware of the constituency from which the attack had come, Partridge responded to Predictions in his Merlinus Liberatus for 1709. First, he added a note at the end of the title, ‘to inform the World that I am Living, contrary to that base Paper said to be done by one Bickerstaff ‘. Second, in his calendar for February he predicted the likelihood of ‘Scandalous Pamphlets’ and speculated that ‘Perhaps we may have a second Bickerstaff appear.’ Third, in a passage placed just before the advertisements at the end of his almanac, he made a concerted attack:

In the Vindication Swift responds by taking up the character of Bickerstaff for a second time.

Headnote

The figure to whom all pay court in this dialogue is Henry Herbert (1656/7– 1733), eighth Earl of Pembroke and fifth Earl of Montgomery, in his role as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (‘L.L’). The Dublin Castle location gives rise to ‘the Castilian Language’ (with a play on the language of Castile as the standard form of Spanish). Pembroke had been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1707 and Lord High Admiral in November 1708, but would be replaced in the former role and agree to resign the latter in 1709. The punsters include Thomas Ashe (‘Tom A.’); Sir Andrew Fountaine (‘Sr A.F.’); Dillon Ashe (‘Dill’); St George Ashe, Bishop of Clogher and Swift's former tutor (‘Bp.Cl.’). Of the Ashe brothers, cherished members of Swift's social circle, Thomas was the eldest, St George the middle brother, and Dillon the youngest. The figures on whom the punsters hone their wit appear to be Swift's physician Dr Richard Helsham (‘Dr. H.’); Thomas Molyneux, a key figure in the Dublin Philosophical Society (‘Dr. Molnx.’); and Pembroke's chaplain Thomas Milles, formerly Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, soon to become Bishop of Waterford (‘Dr Mi.lls’). Mr F. makes a single literally minded contribution thatmay identify him as Charles Ford, who did not share Swift's love of punning.

Davis regretted that ‘though there is some attempt at imitation of the different manner of speaking, the conversation is mainly a string of puns or riddles’. Jokes are indeed made at the expense of companions presented as tediously pedantic in their attachment to the literal, and Mayhew, placing the piece in the wider context of Swift's love of puns, conjures a milieu in which punning was of the essence:

Headnote

Probably composed before 1730; posthumously published; copy text 1765a (see Textual Account).

This posthumously published fragment, apparently intended as preamble to an unwritten account of female education, is particularly hard to date. Davis, noting its apparent address to an English audience, placed it before Swift's final return to Ireland in 1727, but there is also evidence that might connect it with the Intelligencer, the periodical on which Swift collaborated with Sheridan in 1728–9 (see Textual Account).

For Swift's thinking on the subject, cf. Gulliver's description of the Lilliputian ‘Female Nurseries’, where ‘the young Girls of Quality are educated much like the Males’, since ‘their Maxim is, that among People of Quality, a Wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable Companion, because she cannot always be young’. Also relevant is the Houyhnhnm master's response to Gulliver's account of female education in England:

OF THE EDUCATION OF LADIES .

There is a subject of controversy which I have frequently met with, in mixt and select companies of both sexes, and sometimes only of men; whether it be prudent to chuse a wife, who hath good natural sense, some taste of wit and humour, sufficiently versed in her own natural language, able to read and to relish history, books of travels, moral or entertaining discourses, and be a tolerable judge of the beauties in poetry.

This question is generally determined in the negative by the women themselves, but almost universally by the men.

We must observe, that, in this debate, those whom we call men and women of fashion are only to be understood, not merchants, tradesmen, or others of such occupations, who are not supposed to have shared in a liberal education. I except likewise all ministers of state, during their power, lawyers and physicians in great practice, persons in such employments as take up the greater part of the day, and perhaps some other conditions of life which I cannot call to mind.

Headnote

Swift was an enthusiastic observer of All Fools’ Day (1April), with its tradition of hoaxing acquaintances by preposterous but convincingly presented lies: ideally ‘the victims were not simply deceived by a big lie but betrayed into going on a fool's errand’. The Bickerstaff hoax of 1708 had also had a significant April Fool dimension (see Introduction and Headnote to Predictions). Rogers comments on the ‘intriguing’ possibility, ‘in view of Swift's later addiction to April foolery’, that Swift's ‘Ode to the Athenian Society’ (1692), his first appearance in print, had been published on 1 April. Further instances of such ‘foolery’ include Swift's 1711 allegation to Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley that ‘The duke of Buckingham's house fell down last night with an earth-quake, and is half swallowed up; – Won't you go and see it?’, which he immediately reveals as ‘An April fool, an April fool, oh ho, young women’. In 1713 there followed a collaborative but apparently unsuccessful hoax, started as a rumour to be passed on by servants, alleging that a hanged man had been revived after being cut down. In the same year Swift was also involved in the mystification of Bishop Ashe about the circulation of the ‘Hack at TomPoley’s’ pun that he had invented. In 1717 he wrote to Archdeacon Walls of his plan to ‘make April Fools of the Ladyes to morrow’. On 1 April 1721, at the Theatre Royal in Dublin, Swift's friend, the actor-manager Thomas Griffith, spoke an ‘Epilogue’ by Swift to a benefit performance for the distressed weavers. For an April Fool's joke of 1722, see A History of Poetry. A poem of compliment to Mrs Cope of Loughgall, ‘The First of April’, dated byWilliams to 1720–4, also makes crucial reference to the All Fools’ tradition. On 1 April 1732 he wrote to Lady Acheson about a woman supposedly ‘brought to bed … of a half child’ that ‘was dead born’; and Lady Acheson promptly replied that ‘since it was so, I am heartily glad she has got rid of it’.

The text of this 1709 joke is taken from The Post-Boy, no. 2165 (Tuesday 29 March 1709), where Swift's hoax appeared among the advertisements, half way down the second column of the verso.