Right from the gate, Swift emerged as an original. He shocked, amused, perplexed, and outraged his first readers just as he has three centuries of readers since. Swift desired the lasting fame that even his earliest writings secured, but he originally addressed these works to specific people in specific historical circumstances that they might change. Although Swift often despaired of satire's efficacy, no satirist more forcefully provokes in his audience an embarrassed discomfort with the world as it is. The sharp aggression in Swift's writing speaks of the writer's deeply held beliefs about the true and the good and his outrage at their violation. And yet even in this conviction Swift betrays an equally deep vein of skepticism. From this volatile mixture of faith and distrust, Swift's early writing usually confronts us not with clear affirmation but with irony and unsettling contradiction - a particularly dangerous tack for a reformer to take. Swift's perilous strategy effectively puts his readers off balance, and that is precisely where the satirist wants us.