The text of Swift's best-known poem generated a
substantial bibliography of studies before and after Harold Williams's
reconstructed text in The Poems of Jonathan Swift (3 vols.,
Oxford, 1937: second edition, 1958, II, 551-572), but his reconstruction of
the Notes has passed without subsequent comment.[1] After Williams, all serious editions
of
Swift's poems include his notes at some point, conceding if only tacitly
their function as part of Swift's total meaning in the poem; but all hover
uncertainly around the questions of their provenance and their status, in
marked contrast, of course, to the unproblematical but similarly functioning
notes added by Pope to The Dunciad.[2] Williams examined only four
examples
with manuscript additions (from a still unknown total number), and his
reconstruction was therefore appropriately cautious. In the absence of
definitive evidence caution is still necessary,
for the textual depredations of King and Pope have left a permanent legacy
of textual uncertainty.
Thus to one note (to 1. 345) Williams attaches the contradictory puzzle
common to them all: this note, from a single and unique source as far as
Williams was then aware, 'may have come originally from Swift himself'
(p. 566).
[3] What follows is an
attempt to penetrate the screen erected by King, Pope, Faulkner, and to
some extent Swift himself, and to provide the textual parameters inside
which Williams's reconstruction of the Notes may be further considered in
the light of new evidence. Swift 'substantially approved' (Williams's words)
Faulkner's 1735-8 edition of his
Works, and expressed anger
and dismay at the 381-line King-Pope edition of the poem, which cut 165
lines, all of the notes, and added 62 lines from
The Life and Genuine
Character of Dr. Swift (London, J. Roberts, 1733), for the first
folio
version published by Bathurst in 1739. We also know that Swift took steps
to ensure that Faulkner produced an authentic version of the
original poem. There are thus two questions at issue. What is the evidence
for Swift's authorship and sanction of those parts of the Notes and additions
which have come down to us only in manuscript form and in other than
Swift's own handwriting? And secondly, is a minimally uncertain
reconstruction of these Notes possible?
