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Swift and Some Earlier Satirists of Puritan Enthusiasm

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

C. M. Webster
C. M. Webster*
Affiliation:
University of Tennessee
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Extract

The present writer pointed out that many of the themes of satire which constitute Swift's attack on the Puritan, Jack, had been used by earlier seventeenth-century satirists; and the statement was made that part of his real contribution was to be found in his analysis of the zeal and fervor which made all men irrational. This paper will endeavor to show that many of the observations on enthusiasm and zeal which are found in A Tale of a Tub and the Discourse on the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit were not new or original. Some effort will be made to show that Swift knew the principal satirists mentioned, but more to ascertain how Swift's remarks on enthusiasm would have been understood by those Englishmen of the early eighteenth century who were thoroughly conversant with the earlier satires of enthusiasts.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , December 1933 , pp. 1141 - 1153
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1933

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References

1 “Swift's Tale of a Tub compared with Earlier Satires of the Puritans,” PMLA, xlvii (1932), 171–178.

2 M. Emile Pons, Swift Les Années De Jeunesse El Le “Conte Du Tonneau,” p. 369, says: “L'anatomie de la Mélancolie de Burton, à laquelle Swift a fait des emprunts certains accordait une grande place aux vapeurs et à leurs mouvements ascensionnels.” M. Pons does not cite the passages he mentions, and one must confess that it is impossible to prove that Swift read Burton. But to suppose that he was not conversant with this very well-known writer would be contrary to probability.

3 See Bartholomew Fair, iii, 1.

4 The author fully realizes that a play full of ridicule of Puritans must be far livelier than a monograph on religious pathology, and he is ready to admit that Middleton and Jonson were clever scoffers at the Saints, but he must assert that such men did not seek for the causes of zeal.

5 The Puritan is infected “if of meaner sort by stupidity, canonical obedience, blind zeal, etc.” The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Rev. A. R. Shilleto (1913), iii, 391.

6 “If of better note, by pride, ambition, popularity, vain-glory. If of the Clergy and more eminent, of better parts than the rest, more learned, eloquent, he [some hypothetical zealot] puffs them up with a vain conceit of their own worth, scientia inflati, they begin to swell and scorn all the world in respect of themselves, and thereupon turn heretics, schismaticks, broach new doctrines, frame new crochets, and the like; or else out of too much learning become mad … or out of presumption of their holiness and good gifts, inspirations, become Prophets, Enthusiasts and what not.” Ibid., iii, 391.

7 “Never any strange illusions of devils amongst hermits, anchorites, never any visions, phantasms, apparitions, Enthusiasms, Prophets, any revelations, but immoderate fasting, bad diet, sickness, melancholy, solitariness, or some such things were the precedent causes, the forerunners or concomitants of them.” Ibid., iii, 393.

8 Burton saw zeal and sex abnormalities to be closely related,—an idea rather indirectly indicated in such a play as The Family of Love, although here Middleton pictures mere lust rather than any suppression and its consequent results.

9 Ibid., iii, 397.

10 “And though the Familists, Libertines and Anabaptists stand in opposition to Baptists, yet the great fowler of souls catcheth them all with the same foule bird-lime of impure lusts.” “Remarkable Observations Concerning The Sect of Anabaptists,” published with The Dippers Dipt (Seventh ed. 1660), p. 246.

11 In speaking of the common people, who are much influenced by their “appetite, that is, the irrational and brutal part of their soule,” he said: “their individual imperfections being great, they are moreover enlarged by their aggregation, and being erroneous in their single members, once huddled together they will be errour itself, for being a confusion of knaves and fooles, and a farragenous concurrence of all conditions, tempers, sex and ages, it is but natural if their determination be monstrous, and many wayes inconsistent with truth.”

12 In Notes & Queries (June 6, 1931), 405, I published a very brief note calling attention to the fact that Casaubon was admired and read by Sir William Temple, and suggesting that Sir William very probably sent Swift to this Treatise.

13 The italics are mine. A Treatise concerning Enthusiasme, as it is an Effect of Nature but is mistaken by many for either Divine Inspiration, or Diabolical Possession. By Meric Casaubon, D. D. London, Printed by R. D. and are to be sold by Tho. Johnson at the Golden Key in S. Paul's church-yard, 1655, p. 17.

14 Ibid., 163.

15 Of divination, Casaubon says: “If a man examine all those wayes of enthusiastick Divination that have been heretofore in use, which were not a few in number, and in many circumstances very different, he may observe in some of the chiefest, a manifest concurrence of some natural causes preparing or disposing the bodies for such impressions and operations; if no more.” Ibid., p. 31.

16 “The lowest of those Faculties, of whose present operation we have any Perception, are the Outward Senses, which upon the pertingency of the object to the Sensitive Organ cannot fail to act, that is, the Soul cannot fail to be affected thereby, nor is it in her power to suspend her Perception, or at least very hardly in her power. From whence it is plain, that the Soul is of that nature, that she sometimes may awake fatally and necessarily into Phantasmes and Perceptions, without any will or consent of her own.”—A Collection of several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More (1712), sec. 4, p. 3.

17 Ibid., sec. 17, p. 12.

18 The suffering enthusiast had a “strong conceit of being inspired, and consequently of his cause being infallibly good: For this tends naturally to the making of him invincible in his Sufferings, he being conscious to himself of the firm goodness of his cause, as he conceives, and of the indespensableness of this duty in adhering thereto. To which you may add the certain expectation of future glory and happiness for his Martyrdom.”—Ibid. Sec. 60, p. 42.

19 Sec. 24, p. 17.

20 Sec. 52, p. 37.

21 “Moreover, for those Rapturous and Enthusiasticall affections even in them that are truly good and pious, it cannot be deny'd but that the fewel of them is usually natural or contracted Melancholy.” Sec. 64, p. 46.

22 The unknown author stressed the point that “discontented wives, melancholy widows or stale maids” abandon the World for the cloister, if Catholic, and for the conventicle leaders if Protestant.

23 A Tale of A Tub, T. Scott ed., p. 106.

24 “Lastly, whosoever pleases to look into the fountains of enthusiasm, from whence, in all ages, have eternally proceeded such fattening streams, will find the spring-head to have been as troubled and muddy as the current; of such great emolument is a tincture of this vapour, which the world calls madness, …” Ibid., p. 117.

25 “And whereas the mind of man, when he gives the spur and bridle to his thoughts, doth never stop, but naturally sallies out into both extremes, of high and low, of good and evil; his first flight of fancy commonly transports him to ideas of what is most perfect, finished, and exalted, till, having soared out of his own reach and sight, not well perceiving how near the frontiers of height and depth border upon each other; with the same course and wing, he falls down plumb into the lowest bottom of things, …” Ibid., pp. 110–111.

26 Discourse on the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, T. Scott ed., pp. 193–194.

27 Ibid., p. 194.

28 Ibid., p. 195.

29 Ibid., p. 195.

30 Ibid., p. 195. The italics are mine.

31 Ibid., p. 196.

32 “The senses, in men are so many avenues to the fort of reason, which, in this operation, is wholly blocked up. All endeavours must be therefore used, either to divert, bind up, stupify, fluster, and amuse the senses, or else jostle them out of their stations, and, while they are absent, or otherwise employed, or engaged in a civil war against each other, the spirit enters, and performs its part.”—Ibid., p. 196.

33 The Puritan of tradition turned up his eyes. See Family of Love; iii, 3, 93.

34 Ibid., p. 200. This quotation is found in Section 2, but Swift had been using this idea in the earlier section.

35 Hudibras, Pt. 1, Canto 1, 483–484. Joseph Caryl's Peters Pattern, 1659.

36 A reference to this volume occurs in the “Apology” to the 1710 edition of the Tale. (p. 16, T. Scott ed.) There is another reference in Thoughts on Various Subjects. It seems obvious that Swift knew the volume well.

37 “… to make people sigh and cry by mere repetition of Scripture words, when perhaps there is little further sign of sense, than shaking of the heads, and wringing of hands, has much more in it of popular deceit, than popular Rhetorick. … This gyfted sort of preaching, that pretends more than ordinary to come from above, has as little in it of difficulty or miracle, as of profit. … So in like manner, it is very well if they [preachers] would not altogether judge of the blessedness of their endeavours by the tumult running after them, or because they find from experience, that they can force from people tears and sighs, and such outward signs of the hearts seeming to be affected, for all this and much more may be done without either sense, oratory or religion; long sentences rattled forth as fast and furiously as may be, with Christ, Scripture or the Soul, every line; together with hands, shoulders and head devotionally manag'd, may be easily conceived to make weak and silly people gaze more, wet more and wipe oftener, than anything our Saviour himself or any of his Apostles ever said.”

38 Eachard asserted that he could take a “thin, pale-faced Hec. as rank a one as can be got in this town, that shares his time between swearing and cursing, and he shall be taught a long prayer, with all the villanies that have been committed on this side the line since the flood, and well fill'd also with such phrases and words as they delight in; and being double cap'd [see ”quilted caps“ of Swift's Puritan], and having well learnt his tone and gestures, a meeting of these Spirit discerners shall be call'd, and if this very small Saint thus accomplisht (supposing he does not put in an oath instead of ‘O Lord‘) does not wet as many handkerchiefs, and draw forth as deep and as many groans, as any of their greatest pretenders to illumination, then will I never hear Common Prayer again.”

39 “However, it is a sketch of human vanity, for the individual to imagine the whole universe is interested in his meanest concern. If he hath got cleanly over a kennel, some angel unseen descended on purpose to help him by the hand, if he hath knocked his head against a post, it was the devil, let loose from hell, on purpose to buffet him. Who, that sees a little paltry mortal, droning, and dreaming, and drivelling to a multitude, can think it agreeable to common good sense, that either Heaven or Hell should be put the trouble of influence or inspection upon what he is about?”—Disc. Mech. Oper. Spirit., p. 200.

40 See Notes & Queries (Aug. 8, 1931), clxi, 99, 100, for an article by the present author, discussing the possible source of the details.

41 Burton and More discussed the Munster anabaptists. Mention or fuller histories can be found in A Warning for England, 1642; Mock-Majesty, or, the Seige of Munster, 1644, and The Dippers Dipt, 1645.

42 Discourse, pp. 208–209.

43 Discourse, pp. 209–210.

44 More is mentioned twice on pp. 177–178. Prose Works (ed. Temple Scott), iii & on p. 6, vol. 9, Works. The reference on p. 177 is probably to More's Psycho-zoia or the Life of the Soul.

In the Tale (p. 129) Swift cites Eugenius Philalethes, the pen-name of Thomas Vaughan, whose Anthroposophia Theomagica was written in answer to a work by More. Swift seems conversant with the work of More, and we are apparently justified in adding the Enthusiasmus Triumphatus to the list of works which influenced Swift. This suggestion, or assertion, is made more upon the strength of analogy of themes between the work of More and Swift than upon absolute proof of Swift's indebtedness. In taking such a position, one is supported by the words of M. Emile Pons, who, in discussing the influence of Dekker on Swift, said: “Rien ne prouve, bien entendu, que Swift ait lu cet uuvrage [The Gull's Horn Booke]: jamais il ne mentionne Dekker, ni dans ses écrits, ni dans ses lettres. Mais nous savons aussi que ce silence ne prouverait pas davantage que Swift l'ait ignoré. Notre rapprochement n'a d'autre raison d'être, ici, que l'analogie curieuse des thèmes.” Pons, Emile, Swift—Les Amnées De Jeunesse Et Le “Conte Du Tonneau,” p. 314, note 2.