An Apology For the &c. Commentary p. 1: AN APOLOGY For the, &c. – Headnote] It is tempting to read the Apology as Swift’s Apologia pro satura sua (Miriam Kosh Starkman, Swift’s Satire on Learning in “A Tale of a Tub” [Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1950], pp. 11-12), but any such assumption is misleading. The ‘Satirist’s Apologia’ is a distinct subtype of satire with generic conventions of its own, of which Swift was well aware from his reading of Horace (Satyrae, in Quintus Horatius Flaccus, ed. Daniel Heinsius [Leiden: Elzevir, 1628], pp. 152-54 [II, i]), Persius (Satyrae, in Avli Persii Flacci Satyrarvm liber vnvs, ed. Joseph Lang [Freiburg: Johannes Maximilian Helmlin, 1608], pp. 2-6 [I]), and Juvenal (Satyrae, in Decii Jvnii Ivvenalis Satyrae omnes, ed. Joseph Lang [Freiburg: Johannes Maximilian Helmlin, 1608], pp. 2-6 [I] [PASSMANN AND VIENKEN II, 905-6, 999]). The most significant of these features is “the device of a conversation between [the satirist] and an interlocutor,” who “speaks of the animosity which the satirist inevitably arouses toward himself gives warning that the satirist runs the risk of incurring the disfavour of his influential friends or faces even graver dangers, and urges the poet to turn his attention to some other field of literature.” The satirists’ replies to these appeals are essentially the same, emphasizing an “irresistible impulse to speak out,” provoked by a sense of moral outrage and buttressed by the example of illustrious predecessors (Lucius Rogers Shero, “The Satirist’s Apologia,” University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, no 15, Classical Studies, ser. 2 [Madison, 1922], pp. 148-67 [154-55, 163]; see also P. K. Elkin, The Augustan Defence of Satire [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973], pp. 100-11). All of this is conspicuously absent from the Apology, except that Swift by invoking an ‘apology’ pays “lip service to the form” (Raymond A. Anselment, “‘Betwixt Jest and Earnest’: Marprelate, Milton, Marvell, Swift & the Decorum of Religious Ridicule [Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1979], p. 136). Instead, it is more appropriately described as an ‘explanatory’ introduction, whose “ever-present tonal ambiguity,” its “bewildering mixture of fact and fiction,” modulates from serious factuality to teasing parody to downright aggression, it warns and threatens at the same time, suggesting very 2 early on that Swift the author of the Tale and his Apologist “are not of identical minds” (Raymond A. Anselment, “A Tale of a Tub: Swift and the ‘Men of Tast,’” The Huntington Library Quarterly, 37 [1974], 265-82 [p. 267 and n4]; Philip Pinkus, Swift’s Vision of Evil, I: “A Tale of a Tub” [University of Victoria, British Columbia, 1975], p. 27; Robert M. Philmus, “Andrew Marvell, Samuel Parker, and A Tale of a Tub,” Swift Studies, 14 [1999], 71-98 [p. 74]; Howard D. Weinbrot, Menippean Satire Reconsidered: From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century [Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005], p. 121). On the other hand, it is questionable that the Apologist, who is manifestly not a Grub Street hack, should be identical with “the persona of the Tale-teller” (Kate Loveman, Reading Fictions, 1660-1740: Deception in English Literary and Political Culture [Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008], pp. 155-56). In his annotated copy of GUTHKELCH AND NICHOL SMITH, Ehrenpreis usefully suggests to compare the Apology with the Eleventh Letter of Pascal’s pseudonymous Lettres provinciales ([EC 431], p. 3), a series of eighteen letters written to defend Pascal’s friend Antoine Arnauld against Jesuit casuistry, the ‘Cologne’ 1669 edition of which was in Swift’s library (PASSMANN AND VIENKEN II, 1382). While generically and stylistically the similarities between Pascal and Swift seem rather remote, the two men are united in their convictions, first, that “laughter at religion has to be distinguished from laughter at those who profane religion with their extravagant opinions [il y a bien de la difference entre rire de la Religion, & rire de ceux qui la profanent par leurs opinions extravagantes],” and, second, that laughter and ridicule, mockery and irony may be adequate means of reclaiming men from their errors, being sanctioned as these means are by the example of God, the Prophets, and Christ themselves, and thus being not unworthy of Christians (Les Provinciales: ou, les lettres écrites par Louis de Montalte, 7th ed. [Cologne: Nicolas Schoute, 1669], pp. 204-28 [206]). For the, &c.] Possibly because “&c.” is generally shorthand for unpleasant attributes, both sexual indelicacies and others (GORDON WILLIAMS I, 448-49), it became Swift’s secret code, used in communications with his publisher, “to avoid specifically naming his master-work” (Correspondence, ed. Woolley, I, 282 and n2; III, 526 and n11; see also Journal to Stella, ed. Williams, I, 47 and n50). Additionally, the “etc.” may here be intended as an ironical echo of the widespread controversy about the Oath which was “formulated by Convocation in 1640 to be taken by all clergy” and whereby “archbishops, bishops, deans, and © Online.Swift/Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies, Münster 3 archdeacons, &c.” had to approve “the doctrine, discipline, and government of the Church of England” (“A Dialogue between Two Zealots upon the &c. in the Oath,” The Poems of John Cleveland, eds Brian Morris and Eleanor Withington [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967], pp. 4-5, 82-86; Heimo Ertl, Die Scheinheiligen Heiligen: das Bild der Puritaner im Zerrspiegel satirischer und polemischer Literatur des 17. Jahrhunderts [Frankfurt am Main and Bern: Peter and Herbert Lang, 1977], pp. 183-84). See also Resolutions 1699, ed. Hermann J. Real, with the assistance of Kirsten Juhas, Dirk F. Passmann, and Sandra Simon (Online.Swift/Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies, Münster, October 2011) [http://www.anglistik.uni-muenster.de/Swift/online.swift/works/resolutions1699/], gloss on [4]. p. 1, ll. 1-2 IF good and ill Nature equally operated upon Mankind, I might have saved my self the Trouble of this Apology] Swift’s Apologist is bent on mischief from the start, laying, in a tone of pretended, or playful, impatience, waste of time at the door of his ill-natured critics. This smacks more of counter-attack and retaliation than of apology, all the more so when it turns out that what is declared to be a formal defence, or self-justification for past errors, is in fact an ‘explanation’ “for the Satisfaction of future Readers” (p. 5, ll. 29-30) who, paradoxically, have not even seen the Tale by the time its ‘Apology’ is being written, and who, as a result, were unable to take offence. Appearances notwithstanding, Swift silences his critics by shrugging them off, thinking it “unnecessary to take any notice of such Treatises as have been writ against this ensuing Discourse,” the Tale (p. 5, ll. 30-31). This ‘argument’ is a first parody of Swift’s “Answerer,” William Wotton, who, in 1705, had claimed the same justification for himself: “You [the addressee, Anthony Hammond] know the true Reasons and Inducements of my Writing the Reflexions at first; I cannot think it needed any Apology then, and so I do not write this Letter as an Apology now” (William Wotton, A Defense of the Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning ... with Observations upon “The Tale of a Tub” [London: Tim. Goodwin 1705], p. 540). p. 1, ll. 3-6 for it is manifest by the Reception the following Discourse hath met with, that those who approve it, are a great Majority among the Men of Tast] While that may not be an exaggeration, few contemporary judgements have © Online.Swift/Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies, Münster 4 survived in writing. An exception is Francis Atterbury, Dean of Carlisle in 1704, who, in a letter not published before 1784, praised the Tale “as an original in it’s kind, full of wit, humour, good sense, and learning” that “the town [was] wonderfully pleased with.” At the same time, Atterbury conceded that the Tale’s success was rather a succès de scandale, warning that the author “hath reason to conceal himself, because of the prophane strokes in that piece, which would do his reputation and interest in the world more harm than the wit can do him good” (Swift: The Critical Heritage, ed. Kathleen Williams [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970], p. 36). In 1716, Sir Richard Blackmore complained that the author of the Tale, whom he characterized as “this impious Buffoon,” not only escaped “Affronts and the Effects of publick Resentment,” but was also “caress’d and patroniz’d by Persons of great Figure and of all Denominations” (Essay upon Wit [1716], Augustan Reprint Society, ser. 1, no 1 [1946], p. 217). It seems more than likely that Swift would have taken notice of these orally transmitted responses during his London stay from November 1707 to June 1709 (Ehrenpreis, Dr Swift, pp. 195-349). p. 1, ll. 6-7 yet there have been two or three Treatises written expresly against it] William Wotton, A Defense of the Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning … with Observations upon “The Tale of a Tub”, printed both separately and as part of the third edition of Wotton’s Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning ([London: Tim. Goodwin, 1705] [TEERINK AND SCOUTEN 223]; A. T. Bartholomew and J. W. Clark, Richard Bentley, D.D.: A Bibliography of his Works and of All the Literature Called Forth by his Acts or his Writings [Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1908], p. 40 [*133]); William King, Some Remarks on “The Tale of a Tub” ([London: A. Baldwin, 1704] [TEERINK AND SCOUTEN 834]), published on 10 June (Stephen Karian, “Edmund Curll and the Circulation of Swift’s Writings,” Reading Swift [2008], pp. 99-129 [111]). As Ehrenpreis notes in his annotated copy of the Tale (GUTHKELCH AND NICHOL SMITH [EC 431], p. 3), later broadsides would be fired from Daniel Defoe (The Consolidator [1705], The Stoke Newington Daniel Defoe Edition, eds Michael Seidel, et al. [New York: AMS, 2001], pp. 14, 179), Sir Richard Blackmore (Essay upon Wit [1716], pp. 217-18) and the Earl of Shaftesbury, among others (Anselment, “‘Betwixt Jest and Earnest’: Marprelate, Milton, Marvell, Swift & the Decorum of Religious Ridicule, pp. 157-58). © Online.Swift/Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies, Münster 5 p. 1, ll. 7-8 besides many others that have flirted at it occasionally] Flirt, “To propel or throw with a jerk or sudden movement” (OED), the usual meaning in Swift (Poems, ed. Williams, I, 137, l. 20; 219, l. 110; II, 364, l. 38). It is doubtful whether The Tale of a Tub, Revers’d (1705), a free adaptation of Furetière’s Nouvelle allégorique of 1658 (A. C. Guthkelch, “The Tale of a Tub, Revers’d and Characters and Criticisms upon the Ancient and Modern Orators, etc.,” The Library, 3rd ser., 4 [1913], 270-84), may justly be described as a “flirt” (GUTHKELCH AND NICHOL SMITH, p. 3n2). Other candidates reflecting on the Tale in a hostile manner were Defoe in the Consolidator (London: B. Bragge, 1705), Tom D’Urfey in An Essay towards the Theory of the Intelligible World of [1705], and Charles Gildon in The Golden Spy (London: J. Woodward and J. Morphew, 1709) (ELLIS, p. 226). For a more complete list of “Criticism, Imitations, &c.” see TEERINK SCOUTEN 997-1014A. p. 1, ll. 8-9 without one Syllable having been ever published in its Defence, or even Quotation to its Advantage, that I can remember] In June 1709, or possibly a year earlier when Swift embarked on the Apology, this statement was correct. While it may be true that Swift was given to understand that “the town [was] wonderfully pleased with [the Tale]” (see gloss on ll. 3-6), it is equally true that there had been no published defence: “Here is one pose of the extreme Juvenalian, or apocalyptic, or severe Menippean satirist: a brave lonely figure fights against enormous odds to preserve virtue in distress” (Weinbrot, Menippean Satire Reconsidered: From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, p. 122). p. 1, ll. 10-11 except by the Polite Author of a late Discourse between a Deist and a Socinian] Swift alludes to Francis Gastrell (1662-1725), the future Bishop of Chester, whom he befriended in 1711 (Journal to Stella, ed. Williams, I, 296n10; II, 377-78), who had published The Principles of Deism Truly Represented and Set in a Clear Light: In Two Dialogues between a Sceptick and a Deist (London: John Morphew, 1708) before they met, and who had paid Swift the compliment of being “an Ingenious Author” (p. 54). Deist] Both ‘Socinian’ and ‘Deism’ are terms of denunciation in religious and philosophical controversy of the second half of the seventeenth century. © Online.Swift/Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies, Münster 6 Although its semantic spectrum is elusive and Deism failed to develop a coherent system of its own (Karl-Josef Walber, Charles Blount (1654-1693), Frühaufklärer: Leben und Werk [Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 1988], pp. 237-62), in polemical usage, the term tended to be considered a camouflage for the even more disreputable contemporary attitude towards atheism, as becomes clear, for example, in Richard Bentley’s first Boyle Lecture, The Folly of Atheism, and (what is now called) Deism (1692): “There are some infidels among us that not only disbelieve the Christian religion, but oppose the assertions of Providence, of the immortality of the soul, of an universal judgment to come, and of any incorporeal essence; and yet, to avoid the odious name of Atheists, would shelter and screen themselves under a new one of Deists, which is not quite so obnoxious” (The Works, ed. Alexander Dyce, 3 vols [Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms, 1971 [1836-38], III, 1-26 [p. 4]; for further sources, see, in addition to Walber, Charles Blount (1654-1693), Frühaufklärer, pp. 237-62, Hermann J. Real “‘An horrid Vision’: Jonathan Swift’s ‘(On) the Day of Judgement,’” Swift and his Contexts, eds John Irwin Fisher, Hermann J. Real, and James Woolley [New York: AMS 1989], pp. 65-96 [77-79]). Swift had his share in disseminating this hostile stance in his sermon “On the Trinity,” in which he elaborated his “fundamental opposition” towards the movement, particularly with regard to the nature of Faith (Prose Works, IX, 108-9). Socinian] Socinianism, in the second half of the seventeenth century, was associated with the ‘heresy’ of two Italian theologians, Lelio Francesco Maria Sozini (1525-62), and his nephew, Fausto Paolo Sozzini (1539-1604), the most marked characteristic of whose doctrine was its Unitarianism, which rejected the doctrines of the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ (ODCC, pp. 1285, 1409). “They deny the eternal Divinity of the second Person of the Blessed Trinity,” Thomas Blount stated laconically in his Glossographia of 1656 (BLOUNT, s.v.). A more detailed and informative account of the Socinian “Delusions” was available to Swift in Moréri’s Dictionary, to which he subscribed in 1694: “Faustus Socinus held, That the Arians had given too much to Jesus Christ, asserting that he was meer Man, had no Existence before Mary, denied openly the Pre-existence of the Word, denied that the Holy Ghost was a distinct Person, and maintained, that the Father alone was truly and properly God, exclusive of the Son and Holy Ghost, alledging, that the Name of God given to Jesus Christ in the Scriptures signifies no more than that he hath sovereign Power over all Creatures” (MORÉRI s.v.). During © Online.Swift/Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies, Münster 7 the late seventeenth-century debate known as the Socinian Controversy, anti- Trinitarian Socinianism was widely decried as “a step towards conversion to Islam,” aligned as Islam’s “spiritual forebear,” Mahomet, was with the ‘heretical’ theology and eschatology of the Sects, such as Familists, Anabaptists, and Quakers (Dirk F. Passmann, “The Dean and the Turk: Jonathan Swift, ‘Mahometanism,’ and Religious Controversy before Discourse concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit,” Swift Studies, 22 [2007], 113-145 [pp. 129-41]). p. 1, ll. 12-13 since the Book seems calculated to live at least as long as our Language, and our Tast admit no great Alterations] A self-ironical praise inasmuch as the Tale, implicitly, is granted but a very short lifespan. In his contribution to Steele’s Tatler, no 230, Swift deplored the flux of the English language, arguing that these “Alterations” had already set in: “These Two Evils, Ignorance and Want of Tast, have produced a Third; I mean the continual Corruption of our English Tongue” (The Tatler, ed. Donald F. Bond, 3 vols [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987], III, 190-96 [p. 191]; Prose Works, IV, 232). In his annotated copy of GUTHKELCH AND NICHOL SMITH (EC 431), Ehrenpreis suggests that Swift’s phrasing may have influenced that of Pope in the Advertisement to the Dunciad Variorum: “Of the Persons it was judg’d proper to give some account: for sins it is only in this monument that they must expect to survive (and here survive they will, as long as the English tongue shall remain such as it was in the reigns of Queen ANNE and King GEORGE)” (The Dunciad, ed. James Sutherland, 3rd ed. [London: Methuen, and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963], p. 8). p. 1, ll. 15-16 The greatest Part of that Book was finished above thirteen Years since, 1696] Since the Apology is signed “June 3, 1709” (p. 14, l. 14), the Tale’s composition is generally placed in, or around, 1696 and 1697: “It is difficult to see why [Swift] should have given these dates if the book was not written then,” Swift’s editors have ruled (GUTHKELCH AND NICHOL SMITH, p. xliii). But the case is not as simple and straightforward as that, some degree of mystification creeping in early in the Apology. It is by no means clear to what part of the Tale “the greatest Part of that Book” refers, tempting though it may be to suppose that Swift was hinting at the religious allegory. At the same time, he emphasized that “the greatest Part of that Book was finished,” not that it was “written,” in 1696. In other © Online.Swift/Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies, Münster 8 words, writing could have begun earlier, but it is unknown how much earlier. It seems safe to suggest that Swift was not in holy orders when he first embarked on his project (GUTHKELCH AND NICHOL SMITH, p. 4n1). At the earliest, the beginnings are likely to have coincided with the period of intensive specialized study, 1692–94, preparatory to Swift’s ordination on 13 January 1694/5, and may have continued beyond and well into his year at Kilroot (Prose Works, I, xvi). But then, it is doubtful whether Swift would have found circumstances in this run- down parish with its hostile Presbyterian atmosphere congenial to his work. It is true that he did meet cultured people worth knowing there, but he also needed to borrow books (Correspondence, ed. Woolley, I, 137 and n1; see also Ehrenpreis, Mr Swift, pp. 157-65), and there was nothing in the vicinity that remotely resembled Sir William Temple’s (presumably well-stocked) library at Moor Park. Swift returned to Moor Park some time in the spring of 1696, presumably June, and shortly after seems to have resumed his customarily avid reading (REAL [1978], pp. 26-27, 128-32). This spell lasted well into 1697/8, some of it clearly spilling over into the Tale (see also the gloss on p. 1, ll. 17-18). All of this tends to cast doubt on 1696 as the end of composition. p. 1, ll. 16 which is eight Years before it was published] A Tale of a Tub was published on 10 May 1704 (The Daily Courant, 10 May 1704); there was a pre- publication newspaper advertisement the day before (The Post-Man, 9 May 1704). Certainly, Swift was not heeding Horace’s advice, in De arte poetica (l. 388), “to keep one’s work for nine years” before publication (ELLIS, p. 227). For the reasons delaying publication, see Textual History, A Tale of a Tub (Online.Swift, forthcoming). p. 1, ll. 17-18 The Author was then young, his Invention at the Height, and his Reading fresh in his Head] Some of Swift’s most learned and perceptive readers have argued that the particular doctrinal bias evident in the religious allegory points to the period of intensive specialized study, 1692–94, preparatory to Swift’s ordination in January 1694/5 (Phillip Harth, Swift and Anglican Rationalism: The Religious Background of “A Tale of a Tub” [Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1961], pp. 154-64). While this view is undoubtedly correct, it needs modifying, all the more so since the Tale is said to have been finished “eight Years” before publication (p. 1, l. 16). That date points towards © Online.Swift/Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies, Münster 9 Swift’s return to Moor Park some time in the spring of 1696, presumably June (Ehrenpreis, Mr Swift, pp. 169-71; Correspondence, ed. Woolley, I, 127-28n). The return was soon to be followed by the resumption of his omnivorous reading habits, in January 1696/7 (REAL [1978], pp. 128-32). An account of this, according to Sheridan in Swift’s own hand (The Life of the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift [Dublin: Luke White, 1785], p. 22n*), was inserted in John Lyon’s copy of Hawkesworth’s Life of the Revd. Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin (Dublin: S. Cotter, 1755), in the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, today (shelfmark 48.D.39; see A. C. Elias, Jr, “Swift’s Don Quixote, Dunkin’s Virgil Travesty, and Other New Intelligence: John Lyon’s ‘Materials for a Life of Dr. Swift,’ 1765,” Swift Studies, 13 [1998], 27-104 [p. 28n1]). In fact, there is evidence that Swift’s most intense reading set in earlier than 1696/7. His biographer Patrick Delany affirms that, after his having taken the Oxford M.A. (5 July 1692) and his subsequent return to Moor Park, Swift “studied at least eight hours a day, one with another, for seven years,” laying “a large and solid foundation of classick, and other learning” (Observations upon Lord Orrery’s Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift [London: W. Reeve and A. Linde, 1754], p. 50; for Swift’s interests in specific subjects and authors, see two essays by Heinz J. Vienken, “Jonathan Swift’s Library, his Reading, and his Critics,” Walking Naboth’s Vineyard: New Studies of Swift, eds Christopher Fox and Brenda Tooley [Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995], pp. 154-63; “‘Nobody has ever written a really good book about Jonathan Swift’: Scouring the Recesses of the Swiftian Mind,” Reading Swift [2003], pp. 147-57). More precisely, Swift’s interest in theology and church history never stopped after 1695. Not only did he continue to study bulky ecclesiastical historians like Pietro Soave, better known as Father Sarpi (History of the Council of Trent, trans. Sir Nathanael Brent [London: J. Macock for Samuel Mearne, et al., 1676 [PASSMANN AND VIENKEN III, 1704-5]), and Gilbert Burnet (The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, whose first two volumes were published in 1679 and 1681, with a second edition, also in two volumes, coming out in 1681 [London: Richard Chiswell]; see Brean S. Hammond, “Swift’s Reading,” Reading Swift [2003], pp. 133-46), he also took “copious extracts” from Fathers of the Church, such as St Cyprian and St Irenaeus, throughout 1697 and especially at the end of that year (Deane Swift, An Essay upon the Life, Writings, and Character, of Dr. Jonathan Swift [London: Charles © Online.Swift/Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies, Münster 10 Bathurst, 1755], pp. 274-75), at the very time he was presumably engaged not only with the Tale but also the Discourse’s thematically related ‘History of Fanaticism’ (J. R. Crider, “Dissenting Sex: Swift’s ‘History of Fanaticism,’” Studies in English Literature, 18 [1978], 491-508). It is hard to imagine that all these materials which Swift was so busy reading, annotating, and abstracting did not feed into a satire as erudite as that of the Tale of a Tub some way or another. Indeed, “the Tale shows traces of many books which he read in 1697 and 1698” (Ehrenpreis, Mr Swift, p. 187). Besides, it is crucial to bear in mind that A Tale of a Tub not only consists of the religious allegory but also of substantial Preliminaries, some admittedly of a later date, as well as five Digressions. The Digressions bear more immediately on issues related to the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns (Starkman, Swift’s Satire on Learning in “A Tale of a Tub”; Ehrenpreis, Mr Swift, p. 187). This controversy first flared up in 1690, and again in 1694/5, but it peaked in 1698 and 1699 (Introduction to The Battle of the Books, ed. Hermann J. Real, with the assistance of Kirsten Juhas, Dirk F. Passmann, and Sandra Simon [Online.Swift/Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies, Münster, October 2011] [http://www.anglistik.uni-muenster.de/Swift/online.swift/works/battleofthebooks/], pp. 3-16). The composition of the whole of Swift’s first masterpiece, then, covered a span of several years, possibly the whole decade, with Swift working on it intermittently, even in circumstances as adverse and bleak as those at Kilroot, Swift’s first impoverished parish in the north-east of Ireland, where he was installed in March/April 1695 (Correspondence, ed. Woolley, I, 136-39 and n1; Ehrenpreis, Mr Swift, pp. 157-65). This view is confirmed by Swift himself, later in the Apology, that “his Discourse [was] the Product of the Study, the Observation, and the Invention of several Years” (p. 6, ll. 20-21). By contrast, there is no evidence substantiating the old rumour, first spread by Deane Swift and endorsed by W. H. Dilworth shortly afterwards (An Essay upon the Life, Writings, and Character, of Dr. Jonathan Swift, pp. 31-32; The Life of Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of Saint Patrick’s, Dublin [London: G. Wright, 1758], p. 26; see also Prose Works, I, ix), that a nineteen-year-old Jonathan showed the manuscript of A Tale of a Tub, or sketches of it, to William Waring, Jr, Jane Waring (Varina’s) brother, who was Swift’s almost exact contemporary at Trinity College (Correspondence, ed. Woolley, I, 128n2; Anselment, “‘Betwixt Jest and © Online.Swift/Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies, Münster