¹ Lamont, C., ‘A Checklist of Critical and Biographical Writings on Jonathan Swift, 1945–65’ in Jeffares, A. N. (ed.), Fair Liberty Was All His Cry (London, 1967), pp. 356–91,CrossRefGoogle Scholar gives an excellent bibliography of Swift scholarship since 1945. The period before 1945 is covered by Teerink, H., A Bibliography of the Writings of Jonathan Swift (Philadelphia, 1963), pp. 405–31,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and by Landa, L. and Tobin, J. E., Jonathan Swift: A List of Critical Studies Published from 1895 to 1945, to Which is Added ‘Remarks on Some Swift Manuscripts in the United States’ by Davis, Herbert (New York, 1945), pp. 17–62.Google ScholarQuintana, R., ‘A Modest Appraisal: Swift Scholarship and Criticism, 1945–65’ in Fair Liberty Was All His Cry, pp. 342–55,Google Scholar gives a very fair summary of the state of the question of interpretation in Swift scholarship. This can be supplemented by Voigt, M., Swift and the Twentieth Century (Detroit, 1964), pp. 29–164,Google Scholar and by Mayhew, G. P., ‘Recent Swift Scholarship’ in Jonathan Swift 1667–1967. A Dublin Tercentenary Tribute (Dublin, 1967), pp. 187–97.Google Scholar

² Swift's science has never been the subject of a monograph. The most extensive investigation of Swift's science is by Nicolson, M. and Mohler, N. M., ‘The Scientific Background of Swift's “Voyage to Laputa”’, first published in Annals of Science, ii (1937), 299–334, 405–30,CrossRefGoogle Scholar It is tne reprinted version in Fair Liberty Was All His Cry, pp. 226–69, that is employed here. The scope of the present essay extends beyond the ‘Voyage to Laputa’ to look at all of Swift's science, and at its relationship with his thought on other matters. Potter, G. R., ‘Swift and Natural Science’, Philological Quarterly, xx (1941), 97–118,Google Scholar is more general still in its scope and findings, but is a useful introduction to the subject. Moog, F., ‘Gulliver was a Bad Biologist’, Scientific American, CLXXIX (1948), 52–55 is useful, though it differs from this writer's point of view.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ Some examples will illustrate: ‘The third part of Gulliver's Travels is at once the longest and the worst … By common consent of readers it is the least interesting of all’, Eddy, W. A., Gulliver's Travels: A Critical Study (London, 1923), pp. 157, 48;Google Scholar ‘Swift's ridicule of human activities in the natural sciences, which occurs in the third voyage of Gulliver's Travels, is artistically the least effective part of his satire in that work’, Potter, G. R., ‘Swift and Natural Science’, Philological Quarterly, xx (1941), 97;Google Scholar ‘Swift's opinion of the scientific achievement of his day is, in itself, inadequate, and considered as an attack on science, the third book must seem wrongheaded and unfair’, Williams, K. M., Jonathan Swift and the Age of Compromise (London, 1959), p. 166.Google Scholar This line of criticism was the chief one also in contemporary England where, Swift wrote to Pope, Alexander, ‘Dr. Arbuthnot likes the Projectors least, others you tell me, the Flying Island’, The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Williams, H. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 111, 189. Henceforth referred to as Correspondence.Google Scholar

⁴ ‘The Scientific Background of Swift's “Voyage to Laputa”’, p. 228.Google Scholar

⁵ Swift, J., A Tale of a Tub to which is added The Battle of the Books and the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, ed. Guthkelch, A. C. and Smith, D. Nicho (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), p. 166. All subsequent references will be to this edition.Google Scholar

⁶ The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. Butt, J. (London, 1963), p. 808.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ ‘The Scientific Background of Swift's “Voyage to Laputa”’, p. 233.Google Scholar

⁸ The key importance of morality to Swift is carefully developed by Brown, J., ‘Swift as Moralist’, Philological Quarterly, xxxiii (1954), 368–87.Google Scholar

⁹ E.g. Quintana, R., The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (London, 1953), p. 316.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Swift, J., A Letter to Mr. Harding the Printer, upon Occasion of a Paragraph in his Newspaper of August 1st, 1724, Relating to Mr. Wood's Half-Pence, The Prose Worlds of Jonathan Swift, ed. Davis, Herbert (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 16–17. All subsequent references will be to this edition to be identified as Works.Google Scholar

¹¹ ‘The Scientific Background of Swift's “Voyage to Laputa”’, p. 235.Google Scholar The incident in question is one where a mistaken calculation in Newton's Principia was discovered by his contemporaries. It finds its parallel in a like mistake in geometrical calculations soon after Gulliver's arrival in Laputa. Gulliver's Travels, Works, xi, 162.Google Scholar

¹² Correspondence, iii, 240.Google Scholar

¹³ E.g. Earl, of Orrery, , Remarks on the Life and Writing of Swift (London, 1752), p. 148, noted: ‘Swift was little acquainted with mathematical knowledge.’Google Scholar

¹⁴ Potter, G. R., ‘Swift and Natural Science’, Philological Quarterly, xx (1941), 98.Google Scholar

¹⁵ A Tale of a Tub, p. 166.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Correspondence, iii, 103.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Gulliver's Travels, Works, xi, 170–1.Google Scholar

¹⁸ ‘The Scientific Background of Swift's “Voyage to Laputa”’, p. 239.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Quintana, R., The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift, p. 318.Google Scholar

²⁰ A Modest Proposal for Preventing the children of poor People in Ireland, from being a Burden to their Parents or Country; and for making them beneficial to the Public, Works, xii, 109–19.Google Scholar

²¹ Correspondence, iii, 289.Google Scholar

²² Less is known about Paracelsus than his importance seems to merit. An expert on the history of science, George Sarton, commented: ‘A history of Paracelsism is long overdue; it is badly needed for the understanding of medicine, chemistry, and philosophy not only in the Renaissance but also throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, Appreciation of Ancient and Medieval Science During the Renaissance (New York, 1961), p. 5.Google ScholarDebus, A. G.The English Paracelsians (London, 1965),Google Scholar is a long step forward. His comment: ‘There is little agreement among modern commen tators on Paracelsus. Some brand him a charlatan; others place him in the top rank of Renaissance natural philosophers’ (p. 9), while true with reference to work on the history of science, does not apply to Swift scholarship where it is agreed that Paracelsus should be dismissed lightly; for example: ‘And in a lunatic fringe were to be found a procession of quack sciences (alchemy, astrology …) occult studies (… the work of Paracelsus)’, I. Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age (London, 1964),Google Scholar 1.192. Harth, P., Swift and Anglican Rationalism (Chicago, 1961), p. 63, refers to ‘Paracelsus as a typical occultist’.Google Scholar

²³ While it is essential here to analyse the satire on Paracelsian science, this was not Swift's only reason for ridiculing the Aeolians. For example, R. H. Hopkins gives reason to believe that Swift also intended to ridicule Hobbes. Hopkins, R. H., ‘The Personation of Hobbism in Swift's Tale of a Tub and Mechanical Operation of the Spirit’, Philological Quarterly, XLV (1966), 372–8.Google Scholar

²⁴ A Tale of a Tub, p. 150.Google Scholar

²⁵ Guthkelch, A. C. and Smith, D. Nichol, ‘Introduction’ to A Tale of a Tub, p. lviii.Google Scholar

²⁶ A Tale of a Tub, p. 150.Google Scholar

²⁷ A Tale of a Tub, p. 152.Google Scholar Paracelsus' Christian names were Philip Theophrastus. Originally the family name was Banbast, corrupted into Bumbast, and later into Bombast, called ‘of Hohenheim’ after their ancient seat, Castle Hohenheim. He later called himself Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast and later still Paracelsus: ‘I mean to surpass them all – even the renowned Roman physician of the first century, Aurelius Cornelius Celsus. I intend to be para-Celsus – beyond Celsus – beyond them all. Para-Celsus – that's it. That's the name I've been looking for.’ Quoted in Hargrave, J., The Life and Soul of Paracelsus (London, 1951), pp. 16, 45.Google Scholar Bombast's surname was useful to Swift because the unfortunate Paracelsus, partly from his own flamboyance, partly through his own detractors, gave new meaning to the word ‘bombast’ in the English language. Hargrave, J., op. cit. p. 109.Google Scholar

²⁸ A Tale of a Tub, p. 166.Google Scholar

²⁹ Ibid. p. 163.

³⁰ Ibid. p. 167.

³¹ Ibid. p. 169.

³² Debus, A. G., ‘The Paracelsian Aerial Niter’, Isis, LV (1964), 46.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid. p. 47.

³⁴ Ibid. p. 59.

³⁵ Ibid. p. 51.

³⁶ A Tale of a Tub, p. 161.Google Scholar

³⁷ Brown, N. O., ‘The Excremental Vision’ in Tuveson, E. (ed.), Swift. A Collection of Critical Essays (New Jersey, 1964), p. 31.Google Scholar

³⁸ In his Battle of the Books Swift referred to Paracelsus as the leader of ‘a squadron of stink-pot-flingers’, p. 236.

³⁹ Daumas, M., ‘The Chemistry of Principles’, in Taton, R. (ed.), The Beginnings of Modern Science. From 1450 to 1800 (London, 1964), pp. 322–5.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Hargrave, J., The Life and Soul of Paracelsus, p. 97.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Ibid. p. 98.

⁴² E.g. ‘This unpleasant obsession about excrement remains difficult to explain’, Wilson, T. G., ‘Swift's Personality’, in Fair Liberty Was All His Cry, p. 25;Google Scholar ‘He has certainly a strong, perhaps an abnormally strong, dislike of what is unclean or diseased’, Williams, K. M., ‘Animal Rationis Capax’, in Fair Liberty Was All His Cry, p. 138;Google Scholar ‘Any reader of Jonathan Swift knows that in his analysis of human nature there is an emphasis on, and attitude towards, the anal function that is unique in Western literature’, Brown, N. O., ‘The Excremental Vision’, in Swift. A Collection of Critical Essays, p. 31.Google Scholar

⁴³ Wilson, T. G., ‘Swift's Personality’, in Fair Liberty Was All His Cry, p. 23.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Harth, P., Swift and Anglican Rationalism, p. 59,Google Scholar recognizes the difference, though he dismisses the beliefs of the Aeolians as ‘occultism’: ‘Swift describes their system of belief (that of the Aeolians) entirely in terms which are associated, not with Puritanism, but with occultism’.

⁴⁵ First published in 1936. It is the London 1953 edition that is employed here, p. 53.

⁴⁶ Williams, K., Jonathan Swift and the Age of Compromise, p. ii.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ For a more thorough analysis of the scientific origins and philosophical entailments of these ‘scientific extremes’ (realism and subjectivism in science) refer to the present author's Science and the Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France (Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1968), pp. 21–46.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Gulliver's Travels, Works, xi, 210.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Correspondence, i, 117.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ The Sentiments of a Church of England Man with Respect to Religion and Government, Works, ii, 17.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ibid. p. 18.

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ A Project for the Advancement of Religion and the Reformation of Manners, Works, II, 44.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Gasking, E. B., Scientific Investigation of Generation 1650–1910 (London, 1967), pp. 62–136.Google Scholar This material is re-worked here. Farber, E., ‘Variants of Preformation Theory in the History of Chemistry’, lsis, LIV (1963), 443–60.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Potter, G. R., ‘Swift and Natural Science’, Philological Quarterly, xx (1941), 106:Google Scholar ‘Swift does not, as far as I am aware, mention the theory of preformation.’ My own investigations support this assertion.

⁵⁶ Poetical Works, ed. Davis, H. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 578.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Potter, G. R., ‘Swift and Natural Science’, p. 105.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Gulliver's Travels, Works, xi, 271.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Ibid. p. 272.

⁶⁰ Ibid. p. 137.

⁶¹ Wasiolek, E., ‘Relativity in Gulliver's Travels’, Philological Quarterly, XXXVII (1958), 115.Google Scholar

⁶² Correspondence, i, 128.Google Scholar

⁶³ Gulliver's Travels, Works, xi, 63.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Ibid. p. 116.

⁶⁵ Ibid. pp. 111–12.

⁶⁶ Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us, that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison’, Gulliver's Travels, Works, xi, 96.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Case, A. E., Four Essays on Gulliver's Travels (Princeton, 1945), pp. 50–68,Google Scholar argues for the logic of Swift's cartography. The alternative point of view, that Swift's cartography is faulty, is put by Moore, J. R. in ‘The Geography of Gulliver's Travels’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XL (1941), 214–18,Google Scholar who posed three possible explanations: ‘(1) that Swift intended an extravagant burlesque in the voyages, or (2) that he was ignorant of geography, or (3) that he intended a burlesque and knew too little to carry it out accurately.’ While Moore wavers between the second and third explanations, the argument of this paper comes closest to the first position outlined by Moore: in Swift's view nature is changing all the time so that it is a hopeless task for a cartographer to give anything more than general directions which even then can be only temporarily correct.

⁶⁸ Gulliver's Travels, Works, xi, 296.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ E.g. Moog, F., ‘Gulliver was a Bad Biologist’, Scientific American, CLXXIX (1948), 52–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁰ W. B. Carnochan itemizes four possible interpretations of Gulliver's spectacles: ‘a sign of his moral myopia’; ‘the loss of man's original faculties at the Fall’; ‘they also reinforce his role as scientific observer’; ‘he is still looking outside himself, not within’; ‘Gulliver's Travels’, Modern Language Quarterly, xxv (1967), 8, 9.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Even his Anglicanism represented a compromise between two extremes: ‘He laid down principles… which form an important contribution to Anglican thought on the relations of Church and State, and might have guided the Church into a middle way between the fantastic unrealities of the Non-jurors and the blank erastianism of the Hanoverian bishops’, Becket, J. C., ‘Swift as an Ecclesiastical Statesman’, in Fair Liberty Was All His Cry, p. 165Google Scholar