A Modest Defence of Punning

Summary

Headnote

Composed 1716; published by Davis; copy text SwJ 445 (see Textual Account).

This is an unpublished reply to God's Revenge against Punning (1716), a satirical parody modelled on such pious denunciations as John Reynolds's The Triumphs of Gods Revenege [sic], against the Crying, and Execrable Sinne of Murther (1621). God's Revenge against Punning, apparently written by Pope (possibly in collaboration with Gay), was published on 7 November 1716. It includes a reference to a riding accident that Gay had suffered in that year, which Pope had reported in a letter to Teresa Blount; and the pamphlet was signed as by ‘J. Baker, Knight’, to whom Pope had attributed one of his own poems in A Key to the Lock. By this time Swift had returned to Ireland, and it is not even clear that he would have known, in 1716, who had written God's Revenge. In his reply to God's Revenge, Swift adopts the persona of one of the Cambridge punsters whom it had accused of Toryism (and, by implication, of disaffection to the Hanoverian succession), devoting his penultimate paragraph to a rebuttal of this slur. Davis speculates on the possible circumstances of composition, suggests some identifications (but for difficulties in identifying the first two of the trio of noblemen, see below), and points out that Frowde, Budgell, Button and the young Earl of Warwick were all associated withWhig literary circles.

‘A Modest Defence of Punning’ comes down to us in Swift's autograph fair copy (see Textual Account). He also shared the joke with ArchdeaconWalls, instigating transcription and circulation to other friends in Ireland; and a copy reached the Harleian circle. Frustratingly, he promised Walls that ‘because You will not understand some things in the Letter (that are known well enough in London) I will explain them to You’; but in the absence of Swift's explanation, some references remain obscure. The question of why so polished a piece was never published is explored by Davis, bringing into prominence the likely involvement of Swift's friend Charles Ford, with whose papers Swift's fair copy descended into the collection of Sir Andrew Fountaine, and thence to the Pierpont Morgan Library.