This chapter considers Swift’s scepticism of the written and printed word from the perspective of his fear of Dissenting Protestant scriptural exegesis and the putative transparency of print culture. Sola scriptura is the Protestant doctrine, embraced most by evangelical Christians like the Dissenters, that texts alone convey meaning without interpretation (what we call ‘textualism’ in legal interpretation and literary criticism). This essay examines his close personal and intellectual relationship with the Catholic poet Alexander Pope, who was also of the Church most sceptical of sola scriptura, and their joint attack with the rest of the Scriblerus Club against the Whig ideology of textualism and the cult of scientific empiricism (often referred to by critics as ‘naïve empiricism’). This chapter offers both a historical and contemporary perspective on literature and technology, examining Swift’s doubts concerning the printing press as the new information technology of the time and extending this vein of criticism to new digital humanities platforms for Swift’s texts.

Chapter 10 studies the broad contours of Plutarch’s place in political argument in English and Irish thinkers of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This includes the significance of the translation headed by John Dryden (1631–1700) and the work of Jonathan Swift (1667–1745).

London publication still held apparent advantages that Dublin could not reliably offer (legally secured copyrights, high-quality printwork, effective distribution and assistance from the established contacts of Swift’s London years). After the Drapier affair, there was a brief period when the Dublin-based Swift once more centred his publications in London, arguably to the benefit of Swift in print, though not in the end to the satisfaction of Swift himself. Now that Tooke was dead, Swift sold the copy of his Travels to his successor, Benjamin Motte the younger, and provided Pope with material for a joint set of London Miscellanies. Later, enraged by the selection and censorship they had exercised, Swift responded by conniving at the appearance of authorial revisions in Dublin reprints – even while entrusting Irish friends with more poems to carry to press in London.