AMeditation upon a Broom-stick

Textual Account

Copy text is provided, as for several other non-topical works in this volume, by Faulkner's 1735 Dublin Works, vol. I, taken to indicate Swift's final intention for the work (see General Textual Introduction). ‘A Meditation’ is also the first of several early works in the present volume that, once brought into Swift's 1711 Miscellanies, share large elements of their textual transmission. ‘AMeditation’ exhibits little variation between its first appearance and its attainment of its final authorised form in 1735.

Whatever its date of original composition (see Headnote), ‘A Meditation’ was apparently being circulated in Swift's circle by 2 November 1708, when Anthony Henley complained that ‘you won't send mee yr Broomstick’. The earliest source now extant appears to be a scribal transcript among the Portland papers at the University of Nottingham (SwJ 439). It is dated 1709 on the reverse in the hand of Edward Harley, second Earl of Oxford (1689–1741); but it is unclear when this endorsement was made, and far from certain thatHarley intended the date to refer to transcription rather than composition (although this is much later than the dates of composition usually suggested, and later than the complaint by Henley cited above). This text varies slightly from the printed versions, not only in accidentals (less heavily capitalised, differently punctuated, with manuscript abbreviations), but also in its substantive readings: these may have their origin either in some earlier version deriving from Swift himself, or perhaps in the process of manuscript circulation. One evident mistake, probably indicative of the preoccupations of the transcriber, is the attribution of the works parodied to Henry Boyle rather than Robert Boyle: the transcriber started to write ‘Robert’, but changed his mind, cancelled what he had written and replaced it with ‘Henry’. Henry Boyle, Baron Clifford of Lanesborough (1669–1725), was at this time a prominent court Whig (he had replaced Robert Harley as Secretary of State for the southern department in 1708, and would in 1710 be a manager in the Sacheverell trial: a great-nephew of Robert Boyle, he was not himself known as an author). This suggests that the transcript was made by someone more familiar with current political personalities than with outmoded authors.