University of Virginia Library

The Earliest London Printings of "Verses on the Death of Doctor Swift"
by
A. H. Scouten

Despite the biographical testimony indicating that "Verses on the Death of Doctor Swift" was first printed in January 1739 by C. Bathurst in London, Dr. H. Teerink has offered, in Studies in Bibliography, IV, 183-188, three kinds of evidence to suggest that Swift's poem was previously printed in 1736. He cites a pirated edition of Pope's Essay on Man that includes "Verses on the Death of Doctor Swift," now at the University Library, Cambridge, with the date of 1736 on the following general title page:

He presents variant readings of the text of Swift's poem from the above edition, from other pirated issues, and from one of the Bathurst folios of 1739 to show that the latter must have been printed from the edition dated 1736. He invokes the analogy of Pope's intricate publishing practices, stating that the procedure with the present work was to bring out a pseudo-surreptitious printing to suggest that a stolen manuscript had reached the press, follow it with a reprint purported to be derived from a Dublin edition, and then release the "genuine" edition.

The identical curved F was used in "SWIFT" in each title page but

On 5 January 1738/39, William King wrote Swift that "Verses" had gone to press (Correspondence, ed. F. Elrington Ball, VI, 106). On 17 January Bathust announced in the Daily Advertiser, "Tomorrow will be publish'd" the "Verses"; on 19 January his advertisement read, "This Day are publish'd" (repeated on 20, 23, 25, 27 and 31 January). He listed a new advertisement of the "Verses" in the Daily Advertiser of 9 February (repeated 15 February). On 6 March King reported to Mrs. Whiteway that "Two editions have already been sold off . . ." (VI, 114). And on 29 March Bathurst's notice read, "This Day is Publish'd (Price 1s) The Third Edition."

Of both the second and third editions two states exist. I will list the title pages in which all five of the printings appeared, though this is not the arrangement given by Dr. Teerink under item 771 in his Bibliography, and I will refer to them as B (i.e., Bathurst) a, b, c, d, and e.

(a) VERSES / ON THE / DEATH / OF / Doctor SWIFT. / Written by Himself: Nov. 1731. / [ornament: cock in medallion] / LONDON: / Printed for C. Bathurst, at the Middle Temple-Gate / in Fleetstreet. MDCCXXXIX. [Copies examined at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Texas, and Penn.]

(b) VERSES / ON THE / DEATH / OF / Doctor SWIFT. / Written by Himself: Nov. 1731. / The SECOND EDITION. / [ornament: Fame blowing a trumpet] / LONDON: / Printed for C. Bathurst, at the Middle-Temple Gate / in Fleetstreet. MDCCXXXIX. [Copies examined at Harvard, Texas, and Penn.]

(c) VERSES / ON THE / DEATH / OF / Doctor SWIFT. / Written by Himself: Nov. 1731. / The SECOND EDITION. / [ornament: bust on pedestal with flowers] / LONDON: / Printed for C. Bathurst, at the Middle-Temple Gate / in Fleestreet. MDCCXXXIX. [Copies examined at Texas and Penn.]

(d) VERSES / ON THE / DEATH / OF / Doctor SWIFT. / Written by Himself: Nov. 1731. / The THIRD EDITION. / [ornament: urn on base] / LONDON: / Printed for C. Bathurst, at the Middle Temple-Gate / in Fleestreet. MDCCXXXIX. [This entry is not given by Dr. Teerink in his bibliography. I have examined copies at Harvard and Yale.]

(e) VERSES / ON THE / DEATH / OF / Doctor SWIFT. / Written by Himself; November 1731. / [rule] / The THIRD EDITION. / [rule] / [ornament: bust in medallion] / [rule] / LONDON, / Printed for C. Bathurst, at the Middle-Temple-Gate in Fleetstreet. / MDCCXXXIX. [Copies examined at Harvard and Penn.]

Be, where italic caps were used. In examining these copies for his forthcoming bibliography of English verse, 1700-1750, D. F. Foxon has kindly informed me that Bd seems to be partly the same setting of type as Bc and would therefore precede Be.

Dr. Teerink also lists four other printings of An Essay on Man which include the "Verses" (in the article cited above and again in Studies in Bibliography, VII, 238-239). However, he offers no proof to show that any of them were printed before 1739. One, his IVa, was set from IV; and the others show readings that first appeared in the text of "Verses" as printed in the Miscellanies of 1742. Consequently, the only text that must be dealt with is that with the date 1736 on the general title page.

The collational readings come from the five Bathurst folios and from the printing of "Verses" dated 1736.

                                                       

	Ba	Bb	Bc
(epigraph)	quelque chose	quelque chose	quelque chose
line 8	Ends;	Ends;	Ends;
16	shou'd	should	should
	view	view	view
21	heroick	heroick	heroick
24	Lawrels	Lawrels	Laurels
25	Ned	Ned	Ned
36	side	side	Side
37	fantastick	fantastick	fantastick
41	Power, and Station;	Power, and Station;	Power, and Station;
47	He	he	he
52	humorous biting way	humorous biting way	humorous biting way
63	Heaven	Heav'n	Heav'n
64	reason	reason	reason
72	dye	die	die
76	Which way	Which way	Which way
88	'em fifty times	'em fifty times	'em fifty times
122	worse!)"	worse!)"	worse!)"
126	his Judgment	his Judgment	his Judgment
147	Prayer is read:	Prayer is read:	Prayer is read;
151-162, 169-174, 189-194 (enclosed in quotation marks in Be and Teerink TV only)
191-194 (initial quotation marks in Be and Teerink IV only; terminal quotation marks for line 194 in Be only.)
214	felt;	felt;	felt;
220	approacht	approacht	approacht
283-286, 290-293 (enclosed in quotation marks in Be and Teerink IV only)
278	honour	Honour	Honour
281	discourse	Discourse	Discourse

               

Bd	Be	An Essay on Man and
		"Verses" 1736 (Teerink IV)
quelque choses	quelque choses	quelque choses
Ends:	Ends:	Ends:
should	should	should
view	View	View
heroick	heroic	heroic
Laurels	Laurels	Laurel

                                   

Ned	Ned	Ned
Side	Side	Side
fantastick	fantastic	fantastic
Power, and Station;	Power and Station,	Power and Station,
he	he	he
humorous biting way	humourous biting Way	humourous, biting Way
Heav'n	Heav'n	Heav'n
reason	Reason	Reason
die	die	die
Which way	Which Way	Which Way
'em fifty times	them fifty Times	them fifty Times
worse!"	worse!"	worse!"
the Judgment	the Judgment	the Judgment
Prayer is read;	Pray'r is read;	Pray'r is read;
felt?	felt?	felt?
approacht	approach'd	approach'd
Honour	Honour	Honour
Discourse	Discourse	Discourse

Now Dr. Teerink makes the entirely plausible bibliographical point that the profusion of quotation marks and added capitalization in Teerink IV and Be suggests that the latter was printed from the former. Swift used numerous spokesmen in his poem, and it is not always clear whether their statements are to be rendered as direct or as indirect discourse. In Be and Teerink IV, but not in the earlier folios, quotation marks have been inserted for lines 151-162, 169-174, 190-194, 283-286, and 290-293 (except for the omission in Teerink IV of terminal quotation marks at line 194).

In view of the sequence of readings listed above, to support Dr. Teerink's thesis we would have to assume that Teerink IV was printed from one manuscript of Swift's poem (with Be set from Teerink IV) and that Ba was set from a different manuscript.

However, the textual collation renders such hypotheses untenable. From these readings, we can see a text of the poem evolving through five printings. The readings from Bb in lines 16, 63, 72, 278, and 281 above show variants from Ba which were continued in the remaining three folios and in Teerink IV. The readings from Bc in the epigraph, in lines 24 and 36, and the punctuation in lines 8 and 147 show variants from Bb retained in the remaining two folios and in Teerink IV. The readings from Bd in lines 126, 147, and 214 show variants from Bc retained in Be and Teerink IV, especially the reading "the Judgment" of line 126 which Dr. Teerink, in his SB article, uses to demonstrate the priority of Teerink IV. We know from the entries in his Swift bibliography that he had never seen a copy of Bd; consequently, he did not know that this reading of line 126 had already entered the text. (It was not until I found a copy of Bd at Harvard that I felt able to prove a line of textual descent.) Finally, the readings from Be in lines 16, 21, 25, 37, 41, 52, 64, 76, 88, 220, and the above-mentioned insertion of quotation marks, show changes from Bd which were followed by Teerink IV. The conclusion to be drawn from this textual collation is, I think, indisputable. The text which Pope and King sent to Bathurst developed through the five

folios with changes made in each printing until it reached the condition from which it was used for Teerink IV. Never having seen Bd, Dr. Teerink lacked sufficient evidence to observe the line of textual descent that I have traced in my collation above.

In fact, there is some very slight evidence that Teerink IV may have been printed from the text of Swift's poem as it appeared in Bathurst's 1742 edition of the Miscellanies. This text was set from Be, and it contains the following variants which also appear in Teerink IV: "Monday," in line 256, and "Craftsman," in line 272, are italicized; "to" in line 234 is followed by a dash; and line 319 reads "'scape" for "scape."

There still remains the fact that Teerink IV carries the date 1736. I have searched for some time to secure bibliographic evidence explaining this misdating. I have not found the printer's ornaments used in it in any other work of the 1730's or 1740's that I have examined. Both Maynard Mack and Irvin Ehrenpreis have kindly examined Teerink IV for me.[1] The former points out that gathering E (in six) which contains Swift's poem could have been added to a reissue. Ehrenpreis comments on the rather odd fact that the general title page is engraved and that it is not conjugate with another leaf. But it does not matter. The textual collation shows that the text of the London edition evolved throughout the five Bathurst folios printed between January and March 1739 and that Teerink IV must have been printed after that time. It and the other four pirated editions listed by Dr. Teerink were very likely printed after the deaths of Pope and Swift.

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