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Swift and Dr. Eachard
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Source-hunting notoriously has its perils. The warnings of Harold Williams to Swift scholars are thoroughly salutary. “A Tale of a Tub,” he writes, “offers no great opportunities for the ingenious hunter of source books… .” And of Gulliver's Travels: “The eager search in hidden corners for similarities of phrase or narrative may easily become a mistaken pastime.” The fact remains, however, that when one does encounter similarities of phrase or of theme, or even extensive similarities of tone, one pricks up one's ears.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1954
References
1 Dean Swift's Library (Cambridge, 1932), pp. 88-89.
2 “An Apology For the, &c.,” A Tale of a Tub To which is added The Battle of the Books and the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, ed. A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nichol Smith (Oxford, 1920), pp. 12-13. This ed. is the source of all refs. to the Tale and to the Mechanical Operation.
3 Introd., A Tale of a Tub, pp. xl, lvi, lvii.
4 John Eachard, D. D. (1636?-97), was master of Catharine Hall, Cambridge, and later vice-chancellor of the University. His principal works are as follows:
The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion Enquired into (1670)—cited hereafter as Contempt of the Clergy;
Some Observations upon the Answer to an Enquiry into the Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy (1671)—cited hereafter as Observations upon the Answer;
Mr. Hobbs's State of Nature Considered; In a Dialogue Between Philautus and Timothy. To which are Added Five Letters From the Author of … the Contempt of the Clergy (1672)—cited hereafter as A Dialogue;
Some Opinions of Mr. Hobbs Considered in a Second Dialogue Between Philautus and Timothy (1673)—cited hereafter as A Second Dialogue.
Page refs., except as noted, are to the 1-vol. ed. of Eachard's Works printed for J. Phillips in 1705.
5 “The Attack on Pulpit Eloquence in the Restoration,” JEGP, xxx (1931), 217; reprinted in R. F. Jones et al., The Seventeenth Century (Stanford, 1951), p. 142. Jones writes: “No single work in the whole movement [the reformation of pulpit eloquence] did so much toward bringing the problem of style before the public or provoked so many replies … . No one before Eachard had ever argued so earnestly for the study of the mother tongue, or attributed such dire results to its neglect” (JEGP, pp. 196-198; The Seventeenth Century, p. 120).
6 Davies acknowledged help on the Life from Mr. Farmer of Emanuel College and from “a gentleman of the greatest eminence in the learned world”; Alexander Chalmers, and others after him, identify the gentleman as Dr. Johnson. A New and General Biographical Dictionary (1814 ed.), “John Eachard.”
7 In his ed. of Pope, Works (London, 1797), vi, 323, n.
8 A Biographical History of England, 5th ed. (London, 1824), v, 38, n.
9 John Bowie has a chapter of summary and appreciation of Eachard's writing in Hobbes and his Critics (London, 1951).
10 Eachard, Observations upon the Answer, p. 75.
11 “Banter in English Controversial Prose after the Restoration,” Essays and Studies by Members of the English Assn., 1946, xxxii (Oxford, 1947), 21-39.
12 For example, the author of A Vindication of the Clergy, From the Contempt imposed upon them by the Author of The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy … (London, 1672) writes in “To the Reader”: “For first; there is no proportion at all betwixt the Dignity of the Subject, and the manner of handling it: betwixt the solemnity of the Pretence; and the licentious Freedom of the Stile: which runs altogether in a vein of Popular Humour, and Drollery… .”
13 See Eachard, Observations upon the Answer, pp. 68 ff., and the “Dedications” preceding the two Dialogues. There is an interesting record of attacks on Eachard on other grounds (the date is 1678-79): “Mr Cotes son … being of Katherin-hall in Cambridg, told me Mr Eachard was his tutour who writ that scurrilous book of Reasons of the Contempt of the Clergy, a man of great parts, but an Atheist or Hobbist, he had no bible in his study or chamber, it was a jest that the Leviathan was his bible, he vindicated the notion largely of matter and motion, &c… . Serious fellows and schollars were flouted and born down. At such a passe of prodigious debauchery and profane[ne]s was the university grown and is, that it would make one tremble at it.” The Rev. Oliver Heywood, His Autobiography, Diaries, Anecdote and Event Books, ed. J. Horsfall Turner (Brighouse, 1881), ii, 258.
14 A Dialogue, pp. 21-22.
15 A Second Dialogue is not included in the 1705 Works. My quotations are from the 1st ed., printed in London for Walter Kettilby, 1673.
16 Although Eachard's satire on the Dissenters in Observations upon the Answer is similar in tone and method to some of Swift's satire in A Tale of a Tub, both men are in a well-established tradition, and the similarity probably has little significance. For an account of the tradition, see Clarence M. Webster's articles, PMLA, xlvii, xlviii, l (1932, 1933, 1935).
17 See Swift, Prose Works, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford, 1939), ii, 26-39, esp. 27-28.
18 A Dialogue, p. 46.
19 Compare Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, p. 265; A Tale of a Tub, pp. 30, 54, 183.
20 Observations upon the Answer, p. 78; cf. A Tale of a Tub, pp. 206-207. Swift specifically refers here to the Histoire de M. Constance (1690). It matters little whether Swift picked up this notion from Père d'Orléans or from Eachard; what is interesting is that Swift and Eachard should be so close on these matters.
21 A Dialogue, p. 43.
22 A Tale of a Tub, p. 128; A Dialogue, p. 75.
23 “A Letter to B.O. the Publisher of Mr. Herbert's Country Parson,” pp. 13-14 (included in Works [1705]).
24 Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1812), vi, 426, n. It is difficult to understand J. E. Spingarn's characterization of Eachard's work; he speaks of “rough and unsparing invective” and calls Eachard “the Jeremy Collier of the corrupt rhetoric of the pulpit.” Introd., Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1908), i, xliv.
25 “Life of Lucian,” Works, ed. Scott-Saintsbury (London, 1893), xviii, 76-77.
26 “Some Account of the Life … of … Eachard,” Works, i, 15.
27 It should be noted that no work of Eachard is listed in the records of Swift's library. See Williams, Dean Swift's Library.