Jonathan Swift

the type is commonly protestant and sometimes seems to be almost anti-national in its acrid instinct for judging itself Its nationalism only appears when it flings itself, with even bitterer pleasure, into judging the foreigner or the invader.

The first and greatest of such figures was Swift.

Thackeray simply denied that Swift was an Irishman, because he was not a stage Irishman.

He was not, in the English novelist's opinion, winning and agreeable enough to be Irish.

The truth is that Swift was much too harsh and disagreeable to be English.

There is a great deal of Jonathan Swift in Bernard Shaw.

Shaw is like Swift, for instance, in combining

extravagant fancy with a curious sort of coldness.

Then I fell to envy the bird extremely, and repine at his happiness that he should have a privilege to make a nearer approach to heaven than I. excuse me that i trouble you thus with these rambling meditations they are to correspond with you in some part for those accurate fancies of yours lately sent me so i rest your entire and true servitor j h holborn seventeen march sixteen thirty nine End of Meditation by James Howell 1594-1666 From the Familiar Letters of James Howell

a modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people in ireland from being a burden to their parents or the country and for making them beneficial to the public by jonathan swift it is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country when they see the streets the roads and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex followed by three four or six children all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms these mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work or leave their dear native country to fight for the pretender in spain or sell themselves to the barbados i think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms or on the backs or at the heels of their mothers and frequently of their fathers is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance and therefore whoever could find out a fair cheap and easy method of making these children sound and useful members of the commonwealth would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation but my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars it is of a much greater extent and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age are born of parents in effect as little able to support them as those who demand our charity in the streets as to my own part having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject and maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors i have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation it is true a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a solar year with little other nourishment at most not above the value of two shillings, worth the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging, and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them, in such a manner as, instead of being a charge upon their parents, or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding and partly to the clothing of many thousands.

There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas, too frequent among us, sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast.

the number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half of these i calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders from which number i subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children although i apprehend there cannot be so many under the present distresses of the kingdom but this being granted there will remain a hundred and seventy thousand breeders i again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry or whose children die by accident or disease within the year there only remain an hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born the question therefore is how this number shall be reared and provided for which as i have already said under the present situation of affairs is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed for we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture we neither build houses i mean in the country nor cultivate land they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing till they arrive at six years old except where they are of towerly parts although i confess they learn the rudiments much earlier during which time they can however be properly looked upon as probationers as i have been informed by a principal gentleman in the county of cavan who protested to me that he never knew above one or two instances under the age of six even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art am assured by our merchants that a boy or girl before twelve years old is no saleable commodity and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds or three pounds and half a crown at most on the exchange which cannot turn to account either to the parents or the kingdom the charge of nutriment and rags having been at least four times that value i shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts which I hope will not be liable under the least objection.

therefore i repeat let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients till he hath at least some glimpse of hope that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them in practice but as to myself having been wearied out for many years with offering vain idle visionary thoughts and at length utterly despairing of success i fortunately fell upon this proposal which as it is wholly new so it hath something solid and real of no expense and little trouble full in our own power and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging england for this kind of commodity will not bear exportation the flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt although perhaps i could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it after all i am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer proposed by wise men which shall be found equally innocent cheap easy and effectual but before something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme and offering a better i desire the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points first as things now stand how they will be able to find food and raiment for an hundred thousand useless mouths and backs and secondly there being around a million of creatures in human figure throughout this kingdom whose whole subsistence put into a common stock would leave them in debt of two million of pounds sterling adding those who are beggars by profession to the bulk of farmers cottagers and laborers with their wives and children who are beggars in effect i desire those politicians who dislike my overture and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an answer that they will first ask the parents of these mortals whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food at a year old in the manner i prescribe and therefore have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of landlords the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade the want of common sustenance with neither house nor clothes to cover them from inclemencies of weather and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed for ever I profess in the sincerity of my heart that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich.

I have no children, by which I can propose to get a single penny, the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past childbearing.

End of A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift

the natural advantages which arise from the position of the earth which we inhabit with respect to the other planets afford much employment to mathematical speculation by which it has been discovered that no other conformation of the system could have given such commodious distributions of light and heat or imparted fertility and pleasure to so great a part of a revolving sphere it may be perhaps observed by the moralist with equal reason that our globe seems particularly fitted for the residence of a being placed here only for a short time whose task is to advance himself to a higher and happier state of existence by unremitted vigilance of caution and activity of virtue the duties required of man are such as human nature does not willingly perform and such as those are inclined to delay who yet intend some time to fulfil them it was therefore necessary that this universal reluctance should be counteracted and the drowsiness of hesitation waken into resolve that the danger of procrastination should be always in view and the fallacies of security be hourly detected to this end all the appearances of nature uniformly conspire whatever we see on every side reminds us of the lapse of time and the flux of life the day and night succeed each other the rotation of seasons diversifies the year the sun rises attains the meridian declines and sets and the moon every night changes its form the day has been considered as an image of the year and the year as the representation of life the morning answers to the spring and the spring to childhood and youth the noon corresponds to the summer and the summer to the strength of manhood the evening is an emblem of autumn and autumn of declining life the night with its silence and darkness shows the winter in which all the powers of vegetation are benumbed and the winter points out the time when life shall cease with its hopes and pleasures he that is carried forward however swiftly by a motion equable and easy perceives not the change of place but by the variation of objects if the wheel of life which rolls thus silently along passed on through undistinguishable uniformity we should never mark its approaches to the end of the course if one hour were like another if the passage of the sun did not show that the day is wasting if the change of seasons did not impress upon us the flight of the year quantities of duration equal to days and years would glide unobserved if the parts of time were not variously colored we should never discern their departure or succession but should live thoughtless of the past and careless of the future without will and perhaps without power to compute the periods of life or to compare the time which is already lost with that which may probably remain but the course of time is so visibly marked that it is observed even by the birds of passage and by nations who have raised their minds very little above animal instinct there are human beings whose language does not supply them with words by which they can number five but i have read of none that have not names for day and night for summer and winter yet it is certain that these admonitions of nature however forcible however importunate are too often vain and that many who mark with such accuracy the course of time appear to have little sensibility of the decline of life every man has something to do which he neglects every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat so little do we accustom ourselves to consider the effects of time that things necessary and certain often surprise us like unexpected contingencies we leave the beauty in her bloom and after an absence of twenty years wonder at our return to find her faded we meet those whom we left children and can scarcely persuade ourselves to treat them as men the traveller visits in age those countries through which he rambled in his youth and hopes for merriment at the old place the man of business wearied with unsatisfactory prosperity retires to the town of his nativity and expects to play away the last years with the companions of his childhood and recover youth in the fields where he once was young from this inattention so general and so mischievous let it be every man's study to exempt himself Let him that desires to see others happy make haste to give, while his gift can be enjoyed, and remember that every moment of delay takes away something from the value of his benefaction.

You can buy 15 euro coins of, say, for example, Sean O'Casey or Daniel O'Connell or George Bernard Shaw, all this kind of thing.

Jonathan Swift has a 15 euro coin.

And God, you got to love this country sometimes, Tom.

You really got to absolutely love this country.

The yellowback by Professor Borkowski.

One more guy trying to explain Jonathan Swift.

I forgot when his deanship lived and died, but they must have been at it for centuries.

And without examining the new volume, I bet I can tell its contents.

But now I would battle in the interests of orthodoxy, even of the commonplace, and yet could find nothing better to say than, It is not necessary to judge everyone by the law, for we also have Christ's commandment of love.

He turned and said, looking at me with shining eyes, Jonathan Swift made a soul for the gentleman of this city by hating his neighbor as himself.

At any rate you cannot deny that to teach so dangerous a doctrine is to accept a terrible responsibility.

Leonardo da Vinci, he replied, has this noble sentence.

if the picture of the spanish dancer illustrates as it seems to me to do the latent dangers of the impressionist practice so this performance shows what victories it may achieve and in relation to the latter i must repeat what i said about the young lady with the flower that this is the sort of work which when produced in youth leads the attentive spectator to ask unanswerable questions he finds himself murmuring ay but what is left and even wondering whether it is an advantage to an artist to obtain early in life such possession of his means that the struggle with them the discipline of ceases to exist for him may not this breed an irresponsibility of cleverness a wantonness an irreverence what is vulgarly termed a larkiness on the part of the youthful genius who has as it were all his fortune in his pocket such are the possibly superfluous broodings of those who are critical even in their warmest admirations and who sometimes suspect that it may be better for an artist to have a certain part of his property invested in unsolved difficulties when this is not the case the question with regard to his future simplifies itself somewhat portentously what will he do with it we ask meaning by the pronoun the sharp completely forged weapon it becomes more purely a question of responsibility and we hold him altogether to a higher account this is the case with mr sargent he knows so much about the art of painting that he perhaps does not fear emergencies quite enough and that having knowledge to spare he may be tempted to play with it and waste it various curious as we have called him he occasionally tries experiments which seem to arise from the mere high spirits of his brush and runs risks little courted by the votaries of the literal who never expose their necks to escape from the common for the literal and the common he has the smallest taste when he renders an object into the language of painting his translation is a generous paraphrase as i have intimated he has painted little but portraits but he has painted very many of these and i shall not attempt in so few pages to give a catalogue of his works every canvas that has come from his hands has not figured at the salon some of them have seen the light at other exhibitions in paris some of them in london of which city mr sargent is now an inhabitant at the royal academy and the grosvenor gallery if he has been mainly represented by portraits there are two or three little subject pictures of which i retain a grateful memory there stands out in particular as a pure gem a small picture exhibited at the grosvenor representing a small group of venetian girls of the lower class sitting in gossip together one summer's day in the big dim hall of a shabby old palazzo the shutters let in a clink of light the scaliola pavement gleams faintly in it the whole place is bathed in a kind of transparent shade the tone of the picture is dark and cool the girls are vaguely engaged in some very humble household work they are counting turnips or stringing onions and these small vegetables enchantingly painted look as valuable as magnified pearls the figures are extraordinarily natural and vivid wonderfully light and fine is the touch by which the painter evokes all the small familiar venetian realities he has handled them with a vigour altogether peculiar in various other studies which i have not space to enumerate and keeps the whole thing free from that element of humbug which has ever attended most attempts to reproduce the italian picturesque i am however drawing to the end of my remarks without having mentioned a dozen of those brilliant triumphs in the field of portraiture with which mr sargent's name is preponderantly associated i jumped from his careless durand to the masterpiece of eighteen eighty one without speaking of the charming madame peleron of eighteen seventy nine or the picture of this lady's children the following year many or rather most of mr sargent's sitters have been french and he has studied the physiognomy of this nation so attentively that a little of it perhaps remains in the brush with which to-day more than in his first years he represents other types i have alluded to his superb docteur posey to whose very handsome still youthful head and slightly artificial posture he has given so fine a french cast that he might be excused if he should even on remoter pretexts find himself reverting to it this gentleman stands up in his brilliant red dressing-gown with a prestance of certain figures of vandyke i should like to commemorate the portrait of a lady of a certain age and of an equally certain interest of appearance a lady in black with black hair a black hat and a vast feather which was displayed at that entertaining little annual exhibition of the mirlitons in the palace vendme with the exquisite modelling of its face no one better than mr sargent understands the beauty that resides in exceeding fineness this head remains in my mind as a masterly rendering of the look of experience such experience as may be attributed to a woman slightly faded and eminently sensitive and distinguished subject and treatment in this valuable piece are of an equal interest and in the latter there is an element of positive sympathy which is not always in a high degree the sign of mr sargent's work what shall i say of the remarkable canvas which on the occasion of the salon of eighteen eighty four brought the critics about our artist's ears the already celebrated portrait of madame g it is an experiment of a highly original kind and the painter has had in the case in regard to what mr ruskin would call the rightness of his attempt the courage of his opinion a beauty of beauties according to parisian fame the lady stands upright beside a table on which her right arm rests with her body almost fronting the spectator and her face in complete profile she wears an entirely sleeveless dress of black satin against which her admirable left arm detaches itself the line of her harmonious profile has a sharpness which mr sargent does not always seek and the crescent of diana an ornament in diamonds rests on her exquisite head this work had not the good fortune to please the public at large and i believe it even excited a kind of unreasoned scandal an idea sufficiently amusing in the light of some of the manifestations of the plastic effort to which each year the salon stands sponsor the picture will always remain interesting to those who follow the artist's career and note its different stages even though they may not clearly see the light by which some portions of it are painted it has singular beauty of line and certainly in the body and arms we feel the pulse of life as strongly as the brush can give it two of mr sargent's recent productions have been portraits of american ladies whom it must have been a delight to paint i allude to those of lady playfair and mrs henry white both of which were seen in the royal academy of eighteen eighty five and the former subsequently in boston where it abides these things possess largely the quality which makes mr sargent so happy as a painter of women a quality which can best be expressed by a reference to what it is not to the curiously literal prosaic philistine treatment to which in the commonplace work that looks down at us from the walls of almost all exhibitions delicate feminine elements have evidently so often been sacrificed mr sargent handles these elements with a special feeling for them and they borrow something of nobleness from his brush this nobleness is not absent from the two portraits i just mentioned that of lady playfair and that of mrs henry white it looks out at us from the erect head and frank animation of the one and the silvery sheen and shimmer of white satin and white lace which form the setting of the slim tallness of the other in the royal academy of eighteen eighty six mister sergeant was represented by three important canvases all of which reminded the spectator of how much the brilliant effect he produces in an english exhibition arises from a certain appearance that he has of looking down from a height a height of cleverness a kind of giddiness of facility at the artistic problems of the given case sometimes there is even a slight impertinence in it that doubtless was the impression of many of the people who passed staring with an ejaculation before the triumphant group of the three mrs v these young ladies seated in a row with a room much foreshortened for a background and treated with extraordinary freedom and vigour excited in london a chorus of murmurs not dissimilar to that which it had been the fortune of the portrait exhibited in eighteen eighty four to elicit in paris and had the further privilege of drawing forth some prodigies of purblind criticism works of this character are a genuine service after the short-lived gibes of the profane have subsided they are found to have cleared the air they remind people that the faculty of taking a fresh direct independent unborrowed impression is not altogether lost in this very rapid review i have accompanied mr sargent to a very recent date if i have said that observers encumbered with a nervous temperament may at any moment have been anxious about his future i have it on my own conscience to add that the day has not yet come for a complete extinction of this anxiety mr sargent is so young in spite of the place allotted to him in these pages so often a record of long careers and uncontested triumphs that in spite also of the admirable works he has already produced his future is the most valuable thing he has to show we may still ask ourselves what he will do with it while we indulge the hope that he will see fit to give successors to the two pictures which i have spoken of emphatically as his best there is no greater work of art than a great portrait a truth to be constantly taken to heart by a painter holding in his hands the weapon that mr sargent wields the gift that he possesses he possesses completely the immediate perception of the end and of the means putting aside the question of the subject and to a great portrait a common sitter will doubtless not always conduce the highest result is achieved when to this element of quick perception a certain faculty of lingering reflection is added i use this name for want of a better and i mean the quality in the light of which the artist sees deep into his subject undergoes it absorbs it discovers in it new things that were not on the surface becomes patient with it and almost reverent and in short elevates and humanizes the technical problem End of John S. Sargent by Henry James From Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 75 October 1887 Read for LibriVox by Sue Anderson

A Meditation Upon a Broomstick From The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces by Jonathan Swift This is a LibriVox recording.

All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dale Grothman.

A Meditation Upon a Broomstick by Jonathan Swift.

According to the style and manner of the Honorable Robert Boyle's Meditations.

This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest.

comedy with something to say, usually something critical.

So you can go all the way back to Jonathan Swift, who wrote a famous pamphlet called A Modest Proposal, which was about how to deal with poverty in Ireland by eating babies.

Okay.

All right.