Swift in Ireland

REVIEWS It is possible that Mr. Grube's deprecation of the tendency of the Christian commentators to read their. own doctrine of God into the Timaeus has led him to a view which is even less tenable, namely, that there is no theistic conception in the dialogue at all. To continue on this critical note is to give but a poor idea of the general excellence of this book, and· it is perhaps hardly necessary to say that I have selected some few points for 1 criticism because 1 have nothing but praise for the volume as a whole. The author indeed is to be congratulated on having written a work which should command the attention of all Platonic scholars. He 'uses his own translation of Plato throughout. These are always clear and relevant if ·occasionally a little cumbersome. On two main points· only I may comment. The translation of the Greek O.p1-1ovla. as "harmony" is at least ambiguous, and why is ro guwv translated as "right" when the word has a definite meaning of religious duty? There are four appe_ndices on special points of interpretation of four of the Dialogues, the Phaedo, Sophist, Politicus, and Philebus. SWIFT IN IRELAND* Lours A. LANDA In Professor Herbert Davis's edition of the Drapier Letters the student of Swift and of Irish history .will find a complete view of the controversy which raged around the letters patent granted to that "low mechanic," William Wood, Esquire, of Woolverhampton, for the coining of halfpence and farthings for the people of Ireland. When news of the "vile project" reached Ireland in July of 1722, where, as usual, no one had been consulted as to the wisdom or necessity of the proceeding, there was a surge of feeling and rhetoric that increased in volume over a period of two years and that subsided only when the patent was withdrawn. Swift's part in the quarrel as pamphleteer extraordinary is easily accessible to posterity *Th~ Drapi~r's L~tters to tlu Ptoplt of Ireland against reuioi11g Wood's Haljp ~nce, by Jonathan Swift, edited by Herbert Davis, Professor of English, University College, Toronto, Clarc:ndon.Press. Th~ Lmtrs of Jo11alhan Swift to Charlts Ford, edited by David Nichol Smith, Clarendon Press. 295 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY in the form of the seven letters that he wrote under the name of M. B. Drapier. It is these letters that Professor Davis has editedfive of them published during the controversy and two later-along with certain supplementary documents necessary for an understanding of the Wood incident. In addition 'to the admirable Introduction, in which he traces fully the progress of the controversy and orientates it in Irish history, Professor Davis has su.pplied a richly informative assortment of notes and four appendices which present an account of the later activities of the Drapier and a bibliographical list of pamphlets, broadsides, and verses relating to the affair. Not the least valuable result of Professor Davis's work is that. it tends to correct the somewhat distorted perspective which students of Swift have of the controversy. Too often they conceive of it as an interesting incident in the life of Swift instead of what it actually was, a pyrotechnical display of nationalism in Irish history, a display that would have occurred even if Swift had-not been on the scene. This is not to minimize Swift's importance in the affair as both leader and catalytic agent; one merely needs to have emphasized for him, as Professor Davis emphasizes in the Introduction , two aspects of the situation: first, the resentment over thepatent -to Wood before Swift became interested; secondly, the necessity of viewing the affair, not as an isolated incident, but as one of a series whose net result was to bring disquiet and tension into the political and economic relations of England and Ireland. Indeed, much had happened before the first Drapier Lette,r was circulated in March, -1723/24, and the fervent emotions exhibited over Wood's coinage must be explained, at least partially, as the result of accumulated slights of Ireland by England. The humiliations and injustices which Ireland suffered as a dependency were...