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Sitwell, Great Flower Books, 141. A most attractive copy of this rare
work, with none of the fine plates showing the unpleasant off-setting
that so often disfigures some of the plates.
€1,000-€1,500 (£800-£1,200 approx.)
1326
.
SWIFT (Jonathan) & POPE (Alexander).
A supplement
to Dr. Swift’s and Mr. Pope’s works. Containing: I. Miscellanies,
by Dr. Arbuthnot. II. Several pieces, by Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope.
III. Poems on several occasions. Now first collected into one
vol. This volume contains all the pieces in verse and prose
published by Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope in their miscellanies, which
are not printed in Mr. Faulkner’s edition of the Dean’s Works in
six volumes, or Mr. Pope’s in four volumes.
Dublin: Printed by S.
Powell, for Edward Exshaw at the Bible on Cork-hill, over-against the
Old-Exchange,
1739
Pages (14),5-354, 12mo, contemporary calf, with label, gilt: neat
repair to portion of the very extreme blank fore-edge of three
leaves, otherwise a very good copy.
Teerink 58.
ALSO WITH THIS LOT:
[SWIFT (Jonathan)].
Some remarks
on the Barrier Treaty, between Her Majesty and the States-
General. By the author of The Conduct of the Allies. To which
are added, the said barrier-treaty, with the two separate articles;
part of the counter-project; the sentiments of Prince Eugene and
Count Sinzendorf, upon the said treaty; and a representation of
the English merchants at Bruges.
Printed for John Morphew,
1712.
FIRST EDITION, 48-pages, 8vo, recent wrapper: one leaf cut
close touching text on two pages but without any serious loss,
otherwise a very good copy.
Teerink 559. Rothschild 2036. Kress 28ll.
(2)
€120-€180 (£96-£144 approx.)
1327. SWIFT (Jonathan). A proposal for giving badges to the
beggars in all the parishes of Dublin. By the Dean of St.
Patrick’s.
Printed for T. Cooper,
1737
FIRST LONDON EDITION, 16-pages, large 4to, disbound
and all edges uncut: a nice copy in a folding stiff-board slip-
case.
“Teerink 756. Rothschild 2157. The first London edition; an octavo
edition appeared at about the same time in Dublin, but it is not clear
which has precedence. This has long been a very difficult Swift title
to find, in any form. For this London quarto the EST lists 14
locations (L, C, Ct, D; CLU-C, CSmH, InU-Li, IU, KU-S, NjP,
NNC, PPL, TxU; Turnbull); also a copy at Yale, but none at
Harvard or Pennsylvania, two of the very best Swift collections in
North America. The Dublin edition is similarly rare. The only copy
of any edition to appear at auction in the last fifty years or more
was the Hollick copy of the Dublin printing, sold in 1980 for £1000.
As to this fine London 4to edition we have never seen another on the
market. One of Swift’s last essays on the state of Ireland, and on
the question of poverty in particular; the text owes something to his
masterpiece, A Modest Proposal, (first published 1729), although,
ironically, the savage tone seems to reveal not so much the same
mordant irony, for which it might easily have been mistaken, but a
genuine contempt and disgust for the poor as a class. A workhouse
had been established in Dublin in 1704, but it did little to relieve the
poor or suppress begging. As a man who loved to walk the city streets
Swift was disgusted by the beggars who swarmed in his way. In 1726
he presented a plan which would oblige beggars to wear a badge that
would identify him and be, as it were, his licence to beg. The badges
were to be of brass, copper or pewter and be firmly attached to the
outside of the beggar’s outward garment. By this means beggars
could be confined to their own parish. Any found straying could be
whipped and sent back; any foreigner or beggar not a native of
Dublin could be, in accordance with the practice in England,
apprehended and “sent from one Parish to another until they reach
their own homes... as for the aged and infirm” (found begging
without a badge), it would not be necessary to flog them “it would be
sufficient to give them nothing, and then they must starve or follow
their Brethren”. Although the scheme was in many ways impractical
the archbishop adopted Swift’s proposal and badges were distributed.
But the beggars refused to wear them or wore them so that they could
not be seen. Swift clung to this project and in 1737 produced the
present pamphlet, uncharacteristically revealing his authorship.
According to Ehrenpreis “the striking feature of this pamphlet is not
the exposition of doctrine but the way it illustrates Swift’s famous
declaration that he gave his love to individuals rather than to
communities of men. For any particular beggar Swift might
instinctively feel compassion. Imaginatively he could join himself to
the unique sufferer. However, when he thought of the poor as a class,
he felt appalled by their collective faults and rejected them as he
rejected the fine ladies in the filthy verse satires... So hyperbolic and
relentless is the language that an ill-informed reader might suppose
the great ironist was impersonating a brutal misanthrope... “ Not
only did Swift detest the poor as a class he seems to conflate them
with the Irish in general: “To say the truth, there is not a more
undeserving vicious race of human kind than the bulk of those who
are reduced to beggary, even in this beggarly country... I am
confident, that among the meaner people, nineteen in twenty of
those who are reduced to a starving condition, did not become so by
what the lawyers call the work of God, either upon their body or
goods but merely for their own idleness, attended with all manner of
vices, particularly drunkenness, thievery, and cheating. This
(Ireland) is the only Christian country where people contrary to the
old maxim, are the Poverty and not the Riches of the Nation, so, the
blessing of increase and multiply is by us converted into a Curse... “
As to the beggars who refused to wear their badges: “They are too
lazy to work, they are not afraid to steal, nor ashamed to beg; and
yet are too proud to be seen with a badge... They all look upon such
an obligation as a high indignity done to their office. I appeal to all
indifferent people, whether such wretches deserve to be relieved. “
Swift was noted for his charities to the poor and for his kindness to
individual suffers. The apparently contrasting stance revealed in this
pamphlet is not unique; there is a very similar dichotomy in the
work of Henry Fielding whose compassion for the individual shown
in his imaginative work as a novelist is in sometimes surprising
contrast to the Draconian repression, severity and apparent
inhumanity of his proposals for social reform as seen, for example,
in A proposal for making an effectual provision for the poor, 1753.
Swift published this tract when he was on the verge of a decline
which ended in dementia; the pamphlet concludes with the plea of a
tired old man: “I had some other thoughts to offer upon this subject:
but as I am a desponder in my nature, and have tolerably well
discovered the disposition of our people, who never will move a step
towards easing themselves from any one single grievance; it will be
thought, that I have already said too much, and to little or no
purpose; which hath often been the fate, or fortune of the writer, J.
Swift. “
€6,000-€7,000 (£4,800-£5,600 approx.)
1328
.
[SWIFT (Jonathan)].
A Tale of a Tub. Written for the
universal improvement of mankind. To which is added A Battel
between the Antient and Modern Books in St. James’s Library.
[London?]
1711
310-pages, complete with preliminary advert leaf and the two
blank leaves (M2 and N12), 12mo, contemporary sheep: with
some light browing and the spine label rubbed but still a very
good to nice, unsophisticated copy with the armorial bookplate
of Gordon Castle
Teerink-Scouten 224, the first of the four small 12mo editions of 1711.
ESTC locates sixteen copies, only one (Dt) in Ireland. Includes: ’A
discourse concerning the mechanical operation of the spirit’. The
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