“There is none so blind as they that won’t see”

“How is it possible to expect mankind to take advice when they will not so much as take warning?” 

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others”

Jonathan Swift was a clergyman, wit, pamphleteer, political activist and fierce critic of inhumanity. He is recognized as one of the greatest satirists in the English language; his writings are appreciated for their mordantly witty and playful style, spare elegance, and masterful use of irony, innuendo, and metaphor.

Swift was born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin, the son of Protestant Anglo-Irish parents. His father died seven months before his birth and his mother returned to England while he was very young leaving Jonathan in the care of his uncle, Godwin Swift. He was educated at the prestigious Kilkenny Grammar School but was by no means an exemplary student - at Trinity College, Swift was granted his BA in 1686 by ‘special grace’. In 1689 he left for England where his mother helped him secure a position as private secretary to the retired diplomat Sir William Temple at Moor Park in Surrey. One of his duties was to act as tutor and mentor for the young Esther “Stella” Johnson, the fatherless child of one of the household servants. They formed a profound and lasting relationship - Stella later moved to Dublin with her friend Rebecca Dingley to live close to him.

Swift returned to Ireland twice during this period: first, in 1690, because of poor health (a disorder of the inner ear with symptoms of vertigo and nausea now known as Ménière’s disease but little understood in Swift’s time) and again, in 1694, to be ordained and work for a time as an Anglican priest. In the meantime, in 1692, with Temple’s help he gained entrance to Oxford University where he achieved his MA. He was awarded his Doctorate of Divinity from Trinity College in 1701. Through various posts as vicar and chaplain he rose through the Church ranks and was appointed Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, but the succession of George I and the triumph of the Whigs with whom he had previously severed links thwarted his ambitions for further advancement.

A Tale of a Tub published anonymously in 1704 was Swift’s first major work: a brilliant satire attacking corruption in religion and education; in The Battle of the Books, also in 1704, he satirised the Church and literati of the time. Swift’s brilliance as an essayist was confirmed in The Bickerstaff Papers in 1708. In 1713, he formed the 'Scriblerus Literary Club' with, among others, Alexander Pope, John Gay and John Arbuthnot. Around this time Swift met Esther "Vanessa" Vanhomrigh, another fatherless young woman, who inspired his poem "Cadenus and Vanessa" (1713). Their correspondence suggests that Vanessa was infatuated with him and her affections were reciprocated, but it seems that he later regretted their involvement and tried to end the relationship. She travelled to Ireland in 1714 to be near Swift and there followed a confrontation with him involving a letter written from her to Stella. Vanessa died within a few weeks of the incident at the age of 35.

                          "Stella"                                                                       "Vanessa"

Along with his clerical duties, Jonathan Swift immersed himself in Dublin society and politics; he identified closely with Irish causes. He became a national hero when he used his literary gifts to protest over the unfair treatment of the Irish on the part of the English government. His Drapier’s Letters published anonymously in 1724 inspired the successful Irish opposition to granting William Wood a monopoly to provide Ireland with an inferior copper coin, ‘Wood’s Halfpence’. In A Letter to the Whole People of Ireland, Swift wrote: "by the Laws of God, of Nature, of Nations, and of your Country, you are, and ought to be, as free a people as your brethren in England," Swift's writing was so effective in undermining the project that the English government offered a reward to anyone disclosing the author’s true identity. It was hardly a secret: when Swift returned to Dublin after a trip to England, he was greeted with a banner “Welcome Home, Drapier”. No-one turned him in and later Swift recalled this work as one of his best achievements.

Gulliver’s Travels, considered to be Swift’s masterpiece, was published anonymously in 1726. It was an immediate hit as a sophisticated parable of contemporary corruption and human pretensions. The book consists of four parts, each with a different theme, describing the adventures of Lemuel Gulliver as he travels to lands inhabited by the Lilliputians, giants and intelligent horses. Its scourging of human failings reaches a climax in the episode where Gulliver lives among the noble horse-people, the Houyhnhnms, beside whom his own kind, the Yahoos, are revealed in all their vileness. It is still widely read today and the expurgated version of the episodes in Lilliput are a classic in children’s literature.

            Book illustration of Gulliver (1894) (left) and "Gulliver's Travels" - first edition (right)

Swift became a freeman of Dublin in 1729 and in the same year published A Modest Proposal: a work of searing satire and cynicism to highlight the cruelty of the governing classes at a time of famine in Ireland. Since the people of Ireland were so poor and numerous, Swift suggested, with grotesque logic, that the solution to Ireland’s economic crisis was to sell Irish children as food to be eaten by the rich: “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”

On 28 January 1729 Esther "Stella" Johnson died: Swift was overcome by grief. In the 1730s Swift’s own health was increasingly undermined by Ménières disease and he slipped gradually into dementia. In 1742 he appears to have suffered a paralytic stroke and guardians were officially appointed to care for his affairs. He died in Dublin on 19 October 1745 and was buried in St Patrick’s Cathedral next to Stella, in accordance with his wishes. His fortune was left to found a hospital for the mentally ill - St.Patrick’s Hospital which opened in 1757 and still exists today - bearing out his earlier words: “He gave the little wealth he had / To build a house for fools and mad.” His wrote his own epitaph, loosely translated from the Latin in a poetic version by WB Yeats:

Swift has sailed into his rest.
Savage indignation there
cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
world-besotted traveller.
He served human liberty.