21st century gulliver's travels(4)

Jonathan Swift, whose name stands unchallenged at the head of the list of English satirists, was born on Irish soil, for it was in Dublin on November 30, 1667, that he opened his eyes upon a career in which fortune and misfortune alternated in swift succession for seventy-eight years. Before his birth his father died, and his youth was embittered by the grudging provision made by an uncle for his education. Though a keen lover of history and poetry, he held in high disdain the ordinary study routine and the various regulations which govern institutions, obtaining his degree from Trinity College in Ireland’s capital city only by grace of special indulgence.

Restless and resentful and unhappy, when the Revolution of 1688 drove him forth from the Emerald Isle, he sought employment in England, and while secretary to Sir William Temple, a statesman of no ordinary culture and ability, qualified himself for the literary work which has made his name famous for two centuries. Then wearying of dependence, he returned to Ireland and resolved to enter the Church.

As prelate and later as politician his name never rang with the praise which early rewarded the efforts of his pen, for as a master of “humor, irony, and invective he has no superior.” His love affairs were disastrous and reflect only discredit upon his manhood, but to the strength of his passion for Esther Johnson, or “Stella,” whom it is contended that he secretly married but never acknowledged, and for Vanessa—Miss Vanhomrigh—are due the great works that immortalized them.

The Tale of the Tub first betrayed his transcendent genius and irresistible wit, but the grave humor of all his other productions which were not really serious in character, paled before the keen satire and ludicrous exaggeration of Gulliver’s Travels. Its covert ridicule of rulers, courts, statesmen, and political organizations was so severe and cut so ruthlessly and cruelly deep, that only its diabolical cleverness prevented its suppression and instead lent it an unprecedented popularity. It is so true, so simple in expression, its searching[2] irony so based on the frailties of human nature; it is so comic, and yet its tone so whimsically solemn, that it provides prodigious enjoyment for thousands who never catch a glimpse of—much less grasp—its inner meaning.

But the veiled significance is unmistakably there, for the voyage to Lilliput is merely a revelation of the policy of the English court during the reign of George I; the trip to Brobdingnag affords opportunity for picturing an ideal ruler and government; the journey to Laputa holds up to contumely the proceedings of the British Royal Society, while the visit to the Houyhnhnms is a rabid satire against humanity.

And after achievements which deservedly won the plaudits of the master brains among his contemporaries, and continue to reflect on him lasting glory, this gifted man four years before his death on October 19, 1745, sank into a condition of dementia. But though the powers of his marvelous, eccentric mind weakened and finally failed, “his works do follow him,” for he contributed to the world’s literature one of the most delightful children’s books ever written, and his name echoes through history as the clerical exposer of human frailties in a manner to call forth only innocent mirth.