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قراءة كتاب The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 1

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The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 1

The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 1

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 2

The Place of the Damned
The Day of Judgment
Judas
An Epistle to Mr. Gay
To a Lady
Epigram on Busts in Richmond Hermitage
Another
A Conclusion from above Epigrams
Swift's Answer
To Swift on his Birthday with a Paper Book from the Earl of Orrery
Verses on Swift's Birthday with a Silver Standish
Verses occasioned by foregoing Presents
Verses sent to the Dean with an Eagle quill
An Invitation, by Dr. Delany
The Beasts' Confession
The Parson's Case
The hardship upon the Ladies
A Love Song
The Storm
Ode on Science
A Young Lady's Complaint
On the Death of Dr. Swift
On Poetry, a Rhapsody
Verses sent to the Dean on his Birthday
Epigram by Mr. Bowyer
On Psyche
The Dean and Duke
Written by Swift on his own Deafness
The Dean's Complaint
The Dean's manner of living
Epigram by Mr. Bowyer
Verses made for Fruit Women
On Rover, a Lady's Spaniel
Epigrams on Windows
To Janus, on New Year's Day
A Motto for Mr. Jason Hasard
To a Friend
Catullus de Lesbia
On a Curate's complaint of hard duty
To Betty, the Grisette
Epigram from the French
Epigram
Epigram added by Stella
Joan cudgels Ned
Verses on two modern Poets
Epitaph on General Gorges and Lady Meath
Verses on I know not what
Dr. Swift to himself
An Answer to a Friend's question
Epitaph
Epitaph
Verses written during Lord Carteret's administration
An Apology to Lady Carteret
The Birth of Manly Virtue
On Paddy's Character of the "Intelligencer"
An Epistle to Lord Carteret by Delany
An Epistle upon an Epistle
A Libel on Dr. Delany and Lord Carteret
To Dr. Delany
Directions for a Birthday Song
The Pheasant and the Lark by Delany
Answer to Delany's Fable
Dean Smedley's Petition to the Duke of Grafton
The Duke's Answer by Swift
Parody on a character of Dean Smedley

INTRODUCTION

Dr. Johnson, in his "Life of Swift," after citing with approval Delany's character of him, as he describes him to Lord Orrery, proceeds to say: "In the poetical works there is not much upon which the critic can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions, easiness and gaiety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There seldom occurs a hard laboured expression or a redundant epithet; all his verses exemplify his own definition of a good style—they consist of 'proper words in proper places.'"

Of his earliest poems it is needless to say more than that if nothing better had been written by him than those Pindaric Pieces, after the manner of Cowley—then so much in vogue—the remark of Dryden, "Cousin Swift, you will never be a Poet," would have been fully justified. But conventional praise and compliments were foreign to his nature, for his strongest characteristic was his intense sincerity. He says of himself that about that time he had writ and burnt and writ again upon all manner of subjects more than perhaps any man in England; and it is certainly remarkable that in so doing his true genius was not sooner developed, for it was not till he became chaplain in Lord Berkeley's household that his satirical humour was first displayed—at least in verse—in "Mrs. Frances Harris' Petition."—His great prose satires, "The Tale of a Tub," and "Gulliver's Travels," though planned, were reserved to a later time.—In other forms of poetry he soon afterwards greatly excelled, and the title of poet cannot be refused to the author of "Baucis and Philemon"; the verses on "The Death of Dr. Swift"; the "Rhapsody on Poetry"; "Cadenus and Vanessa"; "The Legion Club"; and most of the poems addressed to Stella, all of which pieces exhibit harmony, invention, and imagination.

Swift has been unduly censured for the coarseness of his language upon Certain topics; but very little of this appears in his earlier poems, and what there is, was in accordance with the taste of the period, which never hesitated to call a spade a spade, due in part to the reaction from the Puritanism of the preceding age, and in part to the outspeaking frankness which disdained hypocrisy. It is shown in Dryden, Pope, Prior, of the last of whom Johnson said that no lady objected to have his poems in her library; still more in the dramatists of that time, whom Charles Lamb has so humorously defended, and in the plays of Mrs. Aphra Behn, who, as Pope says, "fairly puts all characters to bed." But whatever coarseness there may be in some of Swift's poems, such as "The Lady's Dressing Room," and a few other pieces, there is nothing licentious, nothing which excites to lewdness; on the contrary, such pieces create simply a feeling of repulsion. No one, after reading the "Beautiful young Nymph going to bed," or "Strephon and Chloe," would desire any personal acquaintance with the ladies, but there is a moral in these pieces, and the latter poem concludes with excellent matrimonial advice. The coarseness of some of his later writings must be ascribed to his misanthropical hatred of the "animal called man," as expressed in his famous letter to Pope of September 1725, aggravated as it was by his exile from the friends he loved to a land he hated, and by the reception he met with there, about which he speaks very freely in his notes to the "Verses on his own Death."

On the morning of Swift's installation as Dean, the following scurrilous lines by Smedley, Dean of Clogher, were affixed to the doors of St. Patrick's Cathedral:

To-day this Temple gets a Dean
  Of parts and fame uncommon,
Us'd both to pray and to prophane,
  To serve both God and mammon.
When Wharton reign'd a Whig he was;
  When Pembroke—that's dispute, Sir;
In Oxford's time, what Oxford pleased,
  Non-con, or Jack, or Neuter.
This place he got by wit and rhime,
  And many ways most odd,
And might a Bishop be in time,
  Did he believe in God.
Look down, St. Patrick, look, we pray,
  On thine own church and steeple;
Convert thy Dean on this great day,
  Or else God help the people.
And now, whene'er his Deanship dies,
  Upon his stone be graven,
A man of God here buried lies,
  Who never thought of heaven.

It was by these lines that Smedley earned for himself a niche in "The Dunciad." For Swift's retaliation, see the poems relating to Smedley at the end of the first volume, and in volume ii, at p. 124, note.

This bitterness of spirit reached its height in "Gulliver's Travels," surely the severest of all satires upon humanity, and writ, as he tells us, not to divert, but to vex the world; and ultimately, in the fierce attack upon the Irish Parliament in the poem entitled "The Legion Club," dictated by his hatred of tyranny and oppression, and his consequent passion for exhibiting human nature in its most degraded aspect.

But, notwithstanding his misanthropical feelings towards mankind in general, and his "scorn of fools by fools mistook for pride," there never existed a warmer or sincerer friend to those whom he loved—witness the regard in which he was held by Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot, and Congreve, and his readiness to assist those who needed his help, without thought of party or politics. Although, in some of his poems, Swift rather severely exposed the follies and frailties of the fair sex, as in "The Furniture of a Woman's Mind," and "The Journal of a Modern Lady," he loved the companionship of beautiful and accomplished women, amongst whom he could count some of his dearest and truest

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