GULLIVERS TRAVELS: THE POLITICS OF THE TEXT

The Politics of Gullivers Travels. By F. P. Lock. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1980. [XI + 156pp. f7.50. In 1719 John Matthews was executed for printing the pamphlet Vox Populi, Vox Dei. Two years later Jonathan Swift revealed that he was now writing a History of my Travells, and he subsequently promised to let the world have them when the world shall deserve them, or rather when a Printer shall be found brave enough to venture his Eares. He wanted to publish Gullivers Travels without hurting [his] own person or Fortune, and when he finally made preparations to do so in 1726 on his first visit to England since the death of Queen Anne, Swift was careful to cover his tracks. He used a new bookseller, Benjamin Motte, and wrote to him in the guise of Lemuel Gulli- vers cousin, Richard Sympson. He even had John Gay copy out the letter rather than write it in his own hand. But after the books publication on 28 October 1726 Pope rallied Swift on his caution:

I find no considerable man very angry at the book: some indeed think it rather too bold, and too general a Satire: but none that I hear of accuse it of particular reflections [. . ,] so that you needed not to have been so secret upon this head. Motte receivd the copy (he tells me) he knew not from whence, nor from whom, droppd at his house in the dark, from a Hackney-coach [. . .] after you left England [. . . 1.

Such as they are, these are the facts surrounding the publication of Gullivers Travels. F. P. Lock, however, chooses to interpret them rather differently. He ignores the dangers facing the authors, printers, and publishers of dangerous or controversial books, and questions the accuracy of Sir Charles Firths suggestion that in Swifts time it was dangerous to write plainly about public affairs, or to criticize public men with any f r e e d ~ m . ~ He observes that this statement needs, at the least, serious qualification (p.72). As far as Lock is concerned, Swift was merely playing an elaborate game. The clandestine comedy with which Swift surrounded the actual publication of Gulliver is well known, he acknowledges; It was partly due to Swifts desire to preserve his anonymity and partly out of his love of a good joke (p.70). Lock is surprised that scholars have taken his joke so seriously (p.71).

Part of the joke, according to Lock, involved the insinuation that Motte had censored the text of Gullivers Travels prior to publication. A month after the books appearance, Swift wrote to Pope:4

I read the Book over, and in the second volume observe several passages which appear to be patched and altered, and the style of a different sort (unless I am much mistaken) [. . .] the general opinion is, that reflections on particular persons are most to be blamed [. . .] Let me add, that if I were Gullivers friend, I would desire all my acquaintance to give out that his copy was basely mangled, and abused, and added to, and blotted out by the printer; for so to me it seems, in the second volume particularly.

88 J . A . Downie

Of course if this were simply a game, Pope, having been in on the secret of Gullivers Travels in London, would know how to interpret Swifts words. But the complaint was repeated in a letter to Swifts Irish friend, Knightley Chetwode, who had played no part in the subterfuge surrounding the books appearance. In my judgement I should think it hath been mangled in the press, for in some parts it doth not seem of a piece, Swift wrote on 14 February 1727, but I shall hear more when I am in England. And over six years later, when Gullivers Travels was being revised as part of Faulkners edition of Swifts Works, he once again drew attention to Mottes conduct, writing to Charles Ford, his closest friend, on 9 October 1733:6 Now, you may please to remember how much I complained of Motts suffering some friend of his (I suppose it was M Took a Clergy-man now dead) not onely to blot out some things that he thought might give offence, but to insert a good deal of trash contrary to the Authors manner and Style, and Intention. I think you had a Gulliver interleaved and set right in those mangled and murdered Pages [. . .] I wish you would please to let me know, whether You have such an interleaved GuIliver; and where and how I could get [it]; For to say the truth, I cannot with patience endure that mingld and mangled manner, as it came from Mottes hands [. . .]. Yet, in the teeth of all these professions from Swift himself, Lock insists that the first edition of Gullivers Travels represents Swifts original intentions.

The textual problem is of fundamental importance to Locks reading of the politics of Gullivers Travels. His principal point is that the accumulated weight of personal and particular allusions that has been read into the book by modern criticism (p.3) must be rejected. I have no objection to his dismissal of the theory that there is a sustained political allegory running through the book, having previously shown how tenuous most of the alleged characteriza- tions are when examined closely. Nor have I any complaint about his broade- ning of the scope of the satire to offer a general reading. But when Lock elects to exclude contemporary political relevance almost entirely I wonder once more at Swifts observation that reflections on particular persons are most to be blamed. Lock is right to point out that a re-examination of the textual problem proves unexpectedly relevant to the books politics (p.3). Unfortunately such a re-examination does not bear out Locks thesis: it contradicts it.

Let me briefly outline what happened. Swift arrived in London in March 1726 after his victory over Walpole and the English government over Woods halfpence, and in the wake of his friend Atterburys trial and banishment for Jacobite activities. He carried with him the manuscript of Gullivers Travels. He had interviews with Walpole in April and again in July where he put forward the case for a review of the governments Irish policy. Not surprisingly, he got nowhere. Before leaving for Ireland he made arrangements for the printing of Gullivers Travels, one of the most remarkable and virulent satires ever to be written against W a l p ~ l e . ~ Of course it was much more than that. But the indictment of the Robinocracy in Gullivers conversations with the King of Brobdingnag9 was followed by a satire of the governments handling both of the Irish problem and of the Atterbury affair in A Voyage to Laputa. The particular person Swift aimed at was Walpole, and he was rightly worried

Gullivers Travels 89

about the Great Mans reaction to this attack on his person and policies. Hence the precautions.

Motte, too, was worried about the astringency of some of the comments on the system of Walpole. He got Andrew Tooke to remove some of the sting from passages in Book 111. On publication Swift was relieved to find that he needed not to have been so secret about the appearance of Gullivers Travels, but was annoyed to find that Motte had dared to censor his text. With time, his annoyance grew to indignation. Charles Fords interleaved Gulliver, preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum Library, shows, among other things, that Swifts original words on the subject of the rebellion of Lindalino and the kingdom of Tribnia, by the Natives called Langden, where the Bulk of the People consisted wholly of Discoverers, Witnesses, Informers, were much more biting - and much more specific in their allusions. Motte censored the text because he feared government prosecution, which may have been inefficient and inconsistent, but which, seven years earlier, had resulted in a printers execution.

However, F. P. Lock ignores the context of Swifts visit to England in 1726. The evidence for censorship, he remarks, reveals Swift (plausibly enough) caught up in 1726 in the heady world of English politics to which he had so long been a stranger and making some ill-advised last-minute alterations of plan and content to Gullivers Travels (p.3). There is no evidence of a change of mind on Swifts part, nor of any textual emendation during his stay in England. It is unnecessary to invent any to subscribe to the view that Motte tampered with Swifts text. Swift nursed grievances, and his resentment had been growing deeper and stronger since the death of Queen Anne. The Drapiers Letters had been both symptomatic and therapeutic in this respect. Gullivers Travels filled a similar need. The satire was indeed wide-ranging; it has a timeless quality, to be sure. But it was also, at times, stridently contempo- rary, and dangerously specific. That is why Motte deemed it prudent to censor the manuscript. In doing so he altered Swifts original intention. Dr Locks textual thesis is simply unconvincing . I 1 Worse, it is seriously misleading.

J. A. Downie University of London, Goldsmiths College

1.

2. Ibid., 111, 181. 3 .

4. Correspondence, 111, 189-90. 5 . Ibid., p.198. 6. Ibid., IV, 197-98. 7.

8.

The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, edited by Harold Williams (Oxford, 1963-1965; con. edn., 1965-1972), 11, 381; 111, 102.

Sir Charles Firth, The Political Significance of Gullivers Travels, Essays Historical and Literary (Oxford, 1938), p.210.

J. A. Downie, Political Characterization in Gullivers Travels, Yearbook ofEnglish Studies,

J. H. Plumb, Sir Robert Walpole: The Kings Minister (London, 1960), p.104. VII (1977), 108-20.

90 J . A . Downie

9. See Downie, op.cit., pp.118-20. 10.

11.

The Prose Writings ofJonathan Swiff, edited by Herbert Davis (Oxford, 1939-1975), XI, 191. The thesis that Swift was playing a game in disguising his revisions and improvements as restorations is repeated in F. P. Lock, The Text of Gullivers Travels, Modern Language Review, LXXVI (1981), 513-33. Cf. The Scriblerian, XV (1982-83), 19.