University of Virginia Library

II

Faulkner's Dublin edition of 1739 makes two calculated and distinct provisions for the reader's additional manuscript contributions, the precise extent of which, the internal evidence suggests, was already known. First, this overt plea entitled 'The Publisher's Advertisement':

This paragraph is, in one respect, disingenuous. Faulkner, no less than Swift, knew that the English edition was a mangled version of the original (see King's letter quoted below), and his 1739 text had as its main commercial advantage an exposure of the Bathurst folio. In plainly stating that what follows is still textually incomplete there is also the implication that informed sources knew very well what had been cut out. King and Pope were the initial recipients of the complete text and notes of the Verses; but they would be unlikely to send back for distribution in Dublin material which they had already deemed unsuitable for printing and circulation in London, thereby exposing their own edition as a textual travesty of the original. Faulkner's appeal, perhaps, was directed primarily at his Dublin readers.[8] To an English readership, the close working relationship between the only reliable source (Swift) and his only authorised publisher (Faulkner) would render this appeal supererogatory. If Swift remained (at least in public) unwilling to provide an authoritative version of the Notes, then Faulkner could only appeal to those in the Dublin circle who possessed manuscript copies.

My hypothesis is that in all important respects as to substance and wording of the Notes Faulkner knew exactly what was missing; that he had no unequivocal sanction for publishing them from Swift himself, and therefore provided virtually a do-it-yourself edition in which the most inflammatory of the Notes were toned down by excisions. Agreement among the various transcripts of the manuscript notes suggests a single source, perhaps a copy of the complete and original manuscript quite separate from the manuscript sent to and edited by King and Pope for Bathurst. Faulkner's Advertisement coolly functions if (as the MoU copy indicates in a manuscript note on [A2]) Faulkner was simply carrying out Swift's original intention to have the complete poem published only after his death. Certainly, the notes on the Irish parliament and on Walpole and the Queen would provoke both English and Irish interests, as King and Pope realised. They would also have done Faulkner a deal of harm. His publishing relationship with Swift, both profitable and dangerous, had led to his arrest for libel on three occasions between 1731/2 and 1737.[9]

The second provision Faulkner made for readers' additions also suggests that very little indeed lay outside Faulkner's ability to provide.

The simple fact is that he left exactly estimated space beneath the printed text for all subsequent manuscript additions as we know them (with the possible exception of the note at l. 345 on the Irish Parliament, which is cramped even in the MoU copy) and ostentatiously inserted clues to their continuation. The notes which in particular carry the Swiftian tone, i.e. on Queen Anne and the medals (l. 184), on Whig vengeance after the Queen's death (l. 379), and on the pusillanimity of the Irish peers (l. 439), all break in the middle of a printed sentence, and yet provide no more and no less space for the various versions of known manuscript continuations. Swift's scathing attack on the Irish parliament (l. 445) generated a footnote simply beginning with the word The, but again the space to be filled—by a neat secretarial hand (MoU) if not by an untidy scrawl (ICN)—is precisely calculated. It would seem, therefore, that although Faulkner's Advertisement may be explained by political discretion, there is no compelling reason to see it as an excuse for an imperfect text. There is reason for regarding it as a coverup, a device to catch the reader's inquisitive instinct. The MoU copy does state that the Notes were 'printed against the Author's Judgment (not to say Co¯ands)', and if this says anything, it suggests that Swift's Notes were supplied to Faulkner in a provisional form, i.e. complete enough to allocate space for them, but not 'final' versions ready for publication.

Finally, the examination of copies unknown to Williams above yields the following:

• l. 194 n. The CSmH Bathurst folio, p. 12, has the MS reading became his mortal Enemy which ICN S926 gives, the latter stating that the alternative reading exists 'in another printed copy.' The reading common to both copies therefore comes from an as yet unrecorded copy of S926. The Bathurst folio does have some textual importance, since it is copied from at least two printed versions of S926. All of its readings and alternatives are to be found in known copies, except this one.
• l. 294 n. The reading 'Jesus' (LVA-F, CSmH, 4102) also exists in TxU1, and unless the latter were copied from one of the former provides further confirmation (if any were needed) of this being the intended reading (rather than, for example, 'Moses', a reading for which Williams gives no source).
• l. 340 The four lines of verse marked in LVA-F for insertion (as by Dowden on the flyleaf of 4102, taken from 'a copy of the second Dublin edition'), also appear in TxU2: this may be the hitherto unidentified copy Dowden used, or an indication that a further sub-group of annotations existed.
• l. 345 n. Williams used the CSmH Bathurst folio, S922, to supply

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  this note, stating that it existed in no other copy (Poems, II, 566). But the note appears in three other copies of the Faulkner edition, from which the Bathurst copy was completed, i.e. MoU, ICN, TxU1. This can only strengthen Williams's supposition that this note 'may have come originally from Swift himself.'

The CSmH Bathurst folio MS additions incorporate all of Faulkner's printed notes, completes them in manuscript, includes the lines suppressed by King and Pope, and even copies out verbatim the Advertisement which only appears in Faulkner's Dublin edition. Williams cites Bathurst S922 (the Huntington copy) for ll. 360, 384, 422, 427, 447. All of these readings are to be found in TxU1 S926, however. If copies of annotated S926 are at one remove from Swift's manuscript, the Bathurst folio is at two removes, and has no independent textual authority, except in making clear that MS textual variants exist in at least two printed copies of S926.

Teerink indicates that Faulkner's five 1739 editions of the Verses are all of the same printing, the alterations concerning especially some of the notes, and afterwards almost exclusively the punctuation, and that variants occur because sheets from one edition were wrongly mated with those of another.[10] One previously unnoticed error is the apparently random correction of an erroneous catch-word between pp. 24-25 (C4v-D14). Incorrect in MoU, CSmH, TxU1, TxU2 (and in the unannotated Yale copy) but corrected in 4101, 4102, ICN, it is possible that page 24 was set without the footnotes being included, i.e. with the average of 20 lines of text. But in that case the oversight was remedied before printing started by simply removing six lines and taking them over to p. 25. In either case the footnote was available whilst setting up type, and before printing began, a further indication that Faulkner possessed full knowledge of the complete text.