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Notes
Although my primary concern in what follows is neither with the textual history of the Verses nor with its critical interpretations, it would be foolish to separate discussion of the Notes as a narrowly editorial and textual problem from judgments about Swift's style, intention and motives in the text of the poem. My argument is that the Notes belong integrally to the text. There is no previous discussion of Williams's reconstruction of the Notes, but for the textual and critical fortunes and misfortunes of the poem, see A. H. Scouten and R. D. Hume, 'Pope and Swift: Text and Interpretation of Swift's Verses on His Death', Philological Quarterly, 52 (1973), 205-31.
Cf. John Hayward, ed. Nonesuch Swift (1934), pp. 812-813, 866-868; Pat Rogers, ed., Jonathan Swift: The Complete Poems, Harmondsworth, 1983, pp. 846-857 (the gaps in Rogers's text are 'normally filled out from' the copy in the Victoria and Albert Museum Library and two copies in the Williams Collection, Cambridge University Library, and they are sometimes referred to as Swift's and sometimes as 'note in Faulkner edn'); and, most recently, Angus Ross and David Woolley, eds., Jonathan Swift (Oxford Authors), 1984, pp. 514-530, who restore the footnotes to their proper place but make no comment on their provenance or status.
All quotations are from Williams's second edition of The Poems of Jonathan Swift (1958), and are given in the text by volume number and page.
Reproduced by permission of the Librarian, Monash University. The MoU copy, part of the Monash Swift Collection, was Hollick's own copy. Page 34, reproduced here, indicates the precision of its manuscript continuation.
The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams (1963-65, IV, 152. All subsequent references are to this edition and are incorporated into the text.
David F. Foxon, English Verse, 1701-1750: A Catalogue of Separately Printed Poems . . . (1975), I, 774-775.
Sherburn suggests (The Correspondence of Alexander Pope [1956], IV, 129-130) that Lord Orrery may also have had a hand in editing the Verses. This is possible, but the evidence suggests only that Orrery delivered a copy of the poem for Pope's opinion. Pope wrote to Orrery on 25 September, 1738: "I return the Verses you favord me with, the latter part of which is inferior to the beginning, the Character too dry, as well as too Vain in some respects, & in one or two particulars, not true." Scouten and Hume have pointed out that this accurately foreshadows the nature of the changes King and Pope were to make in the Bathurst edition. Their question is: Why, if the MS Verses were circulating in London in mid-1738, did Swift bother to send a copy to William King? This rhetorical question conceals a particular and largely neglected literary alliance formed between King and Swift in the mid-1730s. The first element in King's poem The Toast (Dublin, 1732-36), Epistola ad Cadenum, was inscribed to Swift and 'contains some of the most elegant tributes ever paid to Swift. None of the standard works on Swift makes reference to it, and . . . no English translation of it has appeared' (David Greenwood, William King: Tory and Jacobite (1969), p. 57). In Political and Literary Anecdotes of his Own Times (second edition, 1819, pp. 97-98) King says that Swift not only perused 'the greatest part of it in the manuscript' and encouraged King to finish it, but had been 'chiefly pleased with the notes'. Inspired by the example of Pope's Dunciad, King put his defamatory attacks into (Latin) notes. Thus King and Swift share the feature of libellous annotations, and King may have provided Swift with a textual model. King also remarks that Swift informed a lady relative that 'if he had read the TOAST when he was twenty years of age, he never would have wrote a satire.' It seems to me that the real mystery is not Swift's choice of King, to whom the MS of The Four Last Years was also to be entrusted via Orrery in July 1737, but the role of Orrery in relation to the Verses. Greenwood cites a previously unknown letter from King to Orrery, for 8 July 1738, stating that 'Roch [i.e. the Verses] is in the press, and shall certainly be published in September or the beginning of the next Term. I believe I mentioned to you the accidents which had retarded the publication of this work so long, when I had the honour of seeing you last' (pp. 86-87). On 9 November 1736 (Correspondence, IV, 542) King writes to Mrs. Whiteway about 'the little MS' (i.e. not the History of the Four Last Years) which he will soon put to the press. Teerink (A Bibliography of the Writings . . . of . . . Swift (1937), pp. 303-304) suggested that this may have been the C version (i.e. what became Faulkner's 1739 Dublin octavo), in which case this is the earliest conjectured mention of the complete Verses. Orrery wrote to Swift, 23 July 1737, that 'Your commands are obeyed long ago. Dr King has his cargo' (referring, apparently, to the History), and he also acted as go-between for the affair of the Pope-Swift letters (see Ehrenpreis, III, 887-898). If Orrery also carried the MS Verses for Swift to England, it seems that the MS may have been sent back from King to Orrery via Pope. It is a pity that Orrery, a trusted emissary of Swift in other respects, was also prone to exaggerate and therefore obscure if not deliberately distort his knowledge of Swift's publishing strategies: on 6 October 1740, he informed Pope: 'I shall not be surprised to see the dean's manuscripts of all kinds in print. To give you one instance of the careless unsuspicious manner in which they are kept, out of thirteen volumes in manuscript on one particular subject he has lost ten' (Correspondence of Pope, IV, 276). Even so, the possibility exists that Orrery may be one of the targets for Faulkner's 'Publisher's Advertisement', which solicits help from those who had seen the MS.
Herman Teerink, A Bibliography of the Writings of Jonathan Swift, second edition, Revised and Corrected, ed. Arthur Scouten (1963), pp. 371-372.
Works, 6 vols., Dublin, 1735, I, second paragraph of The Publisher's Preface. Williams remarks on this Faulkner edition that 'Swift was trying to conceal the real measure of his co-operation with Faulkner' (Poems, I, xxxi).
See Smedley's Epistle to . . . Grafton, Swift's reply, and Williams's discussion, in Poems, II, 357-361, 474-479.
See George P. Mayhew, Rage or Raillery: The Swift Manuscripts at the Huntington Library (1967), p. 109.
The task of assembling texts for this article was greatly assisted by Thomas V. Lange (Newberry Library, Chicago), and by librarians at the following institutions: Humanities Research Centre, The University of Texas at Austin; the Forster Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum Library; The Swift Collection, Monash University; Cambridge University Library; Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino California; Yale University Library; University of Dublin. At an early stage, my colleagues Dr. Brian McMullin and Dr. Harold Love made useful suggestions. David Woolley (characteristically) provided some meticulous observations. None should be held responsible for whatever subsequent defects I have preserved.
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