The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface
• Key to Abbreviations and References
• Introduction
• 1.: The Manuscript
• 2.: The Lectures
• 3.: Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages
• 4.: Rhetoric and Literary Criticism
• 5.: System and Aesthetics
• Bibliographical Note
• Lectures On Rhetoric and Belles Lettres: Lecture 2D.
• Lecture 3D.: Of the Origin and Progress of Language 1
• Lecture 4tha
• Lecture 5. A
• Lecture 6.THA: Of What Is Called the Tropes and Figures of Speech. B
• Lecture. 7. A
• Lecture. 8. A
• Lecture. 9tha
• Lecture. 10tha
• Lecture. 11 a
• Lecture. 12.THA: Of Composition
• Lecture. 13 a
• | Lecture. 14 a
• Lecture 15tha
• Lecture. 16th. a
• Lecture XVII. A
• Lecture Xviii a
• Lecture. Xixth. a
• Lecture. XX.THA
• Lecture Xxist. a
• Lecture Xxiida
• Lecture Xxiiida
• Lecture Xxivtha
• Lecture XXV. A
• Lecture Xxvitha
• Lecture Xxvii a
• Lecture Xxviiitha
• Lecture Xxix a
• Lecture. Xxx a
• Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages,&c. &c.1
• Appendix 1 (see P. 32) the Bee, Or Literary Weekly Intelligencer, For Wednesday, May 11, 1791.
• Appendix 2 Table of Corresponding Passages

Lecture. 9^tha

Decr. 6.^th

Monday

Mr Smith.

As there are two Sorts of Objects that excite our admiration, viz when an object is Grand, or when it is beautiful, and two that excite our contempt, viz those that are little and mean, or such as are deformed and disagreable in themselves; So there must be too sorts of Ridicule proceeding from the Combinations of these different objects. 1^st When mean objects are exposed by considering them as Grand, or 2^dly when Grand ones or such as pretend or are expected to be so, are ridiculed ^b by exposing the ^c meaness and the littleness which is found in them. Swift has chosen the former and Lucian the latter of these Sorts.

| 118 The characters of these different men would naturally lead them to choose these conterary Subjects. Swifts naturall moroseness joined to the constant dissapointments and crosses he met with in life would ^d make contempt naturall to his character; and those follies would most provoke him that partake most of gayety and levity. ^e This was so prevalent a part of his character that we are told he studiously avoided what are called the common forms of Civility and good breeding. When he saw those that had little else to recommend <them> not only have some tollerable character and pass thro life with some sort of applause, but even be preferred before himself, ^f the reverence he had for his own good sense and judgement which he thought far above that ^g of the common stamp[t]; he would | 119 surely be ^h prompted to expose to the ultmost of his power these and such like ⁱ follies and silliness in men. Accordingly we find all his less serious works are wrote with a design to ridicule some one of the prevailing gay follies of his Time. The<y> are chiefly levelled against Coxcombs, Beaus, Belles and other characters where gay follies rather than the graver ones <prevail>; these he never attacks in any of his works except the Tale of a tub, which was wrote when he was very young and is a work of a very different sort from all the rest. It is much less Correct than those which he wrote when more advanced in life.— — — —

We may observe he never uses that sort of ridicule which may be thrown on any subject by the choise of words, his Language is always correct and Proper and no ornaments are ever introduced nor does he ever write but in a manner most suitable to the Nature of the Subject. As his morose temper directed him to make choise of the gayer follies | 120 of men ^j to exercise his talent for ridicule, so the character of a plain man which he affected hindred him from ever making us laugh ^k to excess at any subject in however ridiculous a light he may set. This he does when he speaks in his own person. But when he has a mind to throw a great degree of Ridicule on any subject he puts it into the mouth of some other person as in Gullivers travells and the Dyers Letters. ^l Even in these works he never uses any expressions but what are suitable to his Subject. The most common manner in which he ^m throws ridicule on any subjects when he speaks in an other character is to make them express their admiration and esteem for those things he would [he] expose. As ridicule | 121 proceeds from a combination ⁿ of the Ideas of admiration and contempt it is very evident he could not take a more effectual method to ridicule any foible or silly object than by making someone express the highest admiration for it, as the contrast is here the strongest. In those works that appear the most silly and trifling, as his Song of Similies 1 and that other of Ditton and Whiston, he shews ^o the folly that then prevailed in a very strong light ^p — —

Lucian, if we may judge of the man from his works, has been of a very opposite turn. He was of a merry gay and jovial temper with no inconsiderable portion of Levity. {He was a follower of the Epicurean or rather of the Cyrenaic Sect; his principles are all adapted to ^q that scheme of life where the chief thing in view is to pass it easily and happily, and with as much pleasure as we possibly can. And as Life is ^r short and transitory he lays it down as a maxim that we ought not to omit any present happiness in expectation of a greater to come butt lay hold of the present opportunity. Friendship and the exercise of the sociall affections are in his opinion the chief fund for enjoyment and consequently chiefly to be cultivated.} The characters which Swift 2 exposes | 122 were those which best suited his taste. Grave men who had any thing ^s of levity or folly in their character were those that he most despised, as those who[s] went about their follies with an air of importance appeared most despicable in the eyes of the morose Swift. Agreably to these different casts of mind, the<y> chose different characters to expose by their wit. Swift as we said exposes none but Empty Coxcombs, Fine Gentlemen, Beaus, Belles, and any that encouraged themselves in ^t employments of no moment or importance of life. {Lucian exposes only Grave Characters and the Graver pursuits of men, as the miser and ambitious man} ^u Lucian on the other hand has pitched on, for the subject of his ridicule, persons of the most sollemn and respectable characters, as Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, Senators, | 123 Generalls, Historians, Poets, and Philosophers [as], as those wherein the Gra<v>er sort of follies are most commonly found. Of such personages all his dialogues are composed and those writings in which he talks in his own person turn chiefly on such follies. His discourse de Luctu 3 will serve as an example both of the Subject and his manner of treating it. We may observe he never uses any witticisms derived from language, nor any ornaments of that sort but what his subject naturally leads him to. He never makes any digressions from his Subject; his fruitfull Imagination always affording him matter enough on every subject without being obliged to call in another to his assistance, perhaps very little connected with it. | 124 His design of surprising and diverting his reader sometimes leads him into seeming digressions, that his return to his Subject after keeping one in suspence may be the more entertaining. One way he often does this in, is by putting the Comparison before the subject to which it is compared. Thus he puts the fatall effects of the fever at Abdera before ^v his complaint on the number of historicall writers then in Greece. And the same may be seen in the Comparison betwixt Diogenes tumbling his Tub and his own labours. {He often brings in the Illustration before that which it illustrates because commonly it is the most diverting, ex Gr in the beginning of his Directions for the writing of history 4^w A Graver author would have followd the Naturall order.} ^x

By the different ends that Swift and Lucian have had in view, they have ^y formed a complete system of ridicule. There is hardly any folly of the gayer sort that Swift passes over and ^z scarce any of the graver that is ommitted by Lucian. | 125 Either ^a of them taken alone might be apt to prejudize one [an] in favour of the follies conterary to those he ridicules; But both together form a System of morality from whence more sound and just rules of life for all the various characters of men may be drawn than from most set systems of Morality.

Nor are Lucians works altogether confined to subjects of a ludicrous nature, he has many discourses of a serious cast, recommending the different virtues. These are all very excellent; his manner in them is no less agreable than in his other works; he always keeps to his Subjects and never is necessitated to betake himself to generall praises of virtue in order to recommend any particular one (as has been the fashion for some time) that the discourse migh<t> | 126 have the appearance of a complete system and be drawn out to the length of a pocket Volume. In a word there is no author from whom more reall instruction and good sense can be found than Lucian. ^b

| v.124 {There are scattered thro his works severall Essays very much in the manner of Mr Addison, wherein he illustrates the Virtue he would re<c>ommend with all the Graces of Serious Composition and yet never departs from the consideration of its Particular Nature, nor launches out into ^c vague and Generall declamations suited to any Virtue whatever and shewing this chiefly that the author is not particularly | v.125 acquainted with his Subject. In this respect he may be an excellent moddell to those whose particular business it is to teach morality, in opposition to a very different manner which prevails at present.} ^d

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[1 ]These two poems are no longer ascribed to Swift. A new song of new similies appeared in the Pope–Swift Miscellanies in Verse (1727), iii.207–12, and is included in John Gay’s Poetical Works, ed. G. C. Faber (1926), 645–6, and ed. V. A. Dearing and C. E. Beckwith (1974), 376–8.—The scatological 16–line Ode for Musick: On the Longitude, recitativo and ritornello, on W. Whiston and H. Ditton’s A New Method for discovering the Longitude both at Sea and Land (1714) circulated in London in April 1715 and was published in the so–called Miscellanies: The Last Volume (1727). It has been variously ascribed to Swift, Pope and Gay, and was included in Swift’s Works (1824), xiii.336, but its author is unknown. Gay wrote a brilliant prose satire on the eccentric Whiston in Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (1732), 255–76: ‘A True and Faithful narrative’.

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[2 ]The antithesis requires Lucian, not Swift.

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[3 ]On Funerals (LCL iv.112–31), a satire on superstitious expressions of grief inspired by the mythographers Homer, Hesiod, et al.

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[4 ]How to write History (LCL vi.2–73), an attack on the host of chroniclers of the Parthian War, ad 162–5).

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[d]Hand B, v.124–v.125