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CELT document E700001-005

Character of an Irish Squire

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Jonathan Swift

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 p.193

Character Of An Irish Squire 1 

Every Squire, almost to a man, is an oppressor of the clergy, a racker of his tenants, a jobber of all public works, very proud, and generally illiterate. Two neighbouring squires, although they be intimate friends, relations, or allies, if one of them want two hundred foot of the other's land contiguous to his own, which would make any building square, or his garden uniform, (without the least inconveniency to the other,) he shall be absolutely refused; or (as the utmost mark of friendship) shall be forced to pay for it twenty times more than the value. This they call paying for your conveniency; which is directly contrary to the very letter of an ancient heathen maxim in morality—That whatever benefit we can confer upon another, without injuring ourselves, we are bound to do it to a perfect stranger. The Esquires take the titles of great men, with as little ceremony as Alexander or Caesar. For instance, the great Conolly, 2  the great Wesley, 3  the great Damer. 4 

A fellow, whose father was a butcher, desiring a lawyer to be a referee in some little brangle between him and his neighbour, complained that the lawyer excused himself in the following manner:

“Sir, I am your most humble servant, but dare not venture to interfere in the quarrels of you great men.” Which I take to be just a piece with Harlequin's swearing upon his honour. Jealousies, quarrels, and other ruptures, are as p.194 frequent between neighbouring squires, and from the same motives; the former wrangling about their meres and bounds as the others do about their frontiers. The detestable tyranny and oppression of landlords are visible in every part of the kingdom.

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Title statement

Title (uniform): Character of an Irish Squire

Author: Jonathan Swift

Responsibility statement

Electronic edition compiled by: Benjamin Hazard

Funded by: University College, Cork and The Higher Education Authority via the CELT Project.

Edition statement

2. Second draft.

Extent: 1131 words

Publication statement

Publisher: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College Cork.

Address: College Road, Cork, Ireland—http://www.ucc.ie/celt

Date: 2004

Date: 2008

Distributor: CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.

CELT document ID: E700001-005

Availability: Available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of academic research and teaching only.

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Editions and secondary literature

  1. An excellent bibliography covering many aspects of Jonathan Swift's Life, his writings, and criticism, compiled by Lee Jaffe, is available at http://www.jaffebros.com/lee/gulliver/bib/index.html.
  2. J. Bowles Daly (ed.), Ireland in the days of Dean Swift, Irish tracts 1720–1734. (London 1887).
  3. Frederick Ryland (ed.), Swift's Journal to Stella, A.D. 1710–1713. (London 1897).
  4. Temple Scott (ed.), A tale of a tub, and other early works. (London 1897).
  5. Frederick Falkiner, Essays on the portraits of Swift: Swift and Stella. (London 1908).
  6. C. M. Webster, Swift's Tale of a Tub compared with Earlier Satires of the Puritans. Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 47/1 (March 1932) 171–178.
  7. Stephen L. Gwynn, The life and friendships of Dean Swift. (London 1933).
  8. Stanley Lane-Poole (ed.), Selections from the prose writings of Jonathan Swift with a preface and notes. (London 1933).
  9. Ricardo Quintana, The mind and art of Jonathan Swift. (Oxford 1936).
  10. Louis A. Landa, Swift's Economic Views and Mercantilism, English Literary History 10/4 (December 1943) 310–335.
  11. R. Wyse Jackson, Swift and his circle. (Dublin 1945).
  12. Herbert Davis, The Satire of Jonathan Swift (New York 1947).
  13. Martin Price, Swift's rhetorical art. (New York 1953).
  14. Robert C. Elliott, Swift and Dr Eachard. Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 69/5 (December 1954) 1250–1257.
  15. John Middleton Murry, Jonathan Swift: A Critical Biography. (London 1954).
  16. John Middleton Murry, Swift. (London: Published for the British Council and the National Book League 1955).
  17. Kathleen Williams, Swift and the age of compromise. (London 1959).
  18. John M. Bullitt, Jonathan Swift and the anatomy of satire: a study of satiric technique. (Harvard 1961).
  19. Harold Williams (ed.), The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift. (Oxford 1963–65).
  20. Herbert J. Davis (ed.), Jonathan Swift: essays on his satire and other studies. (New York 1964).
  21. Herbert J. Davis (ed.), Gulliver's Travels. [based on the Faulkner edition, Dublin 1735] (Oxford 1965).
  22. Herbert J. Davis (ed.), Swift: poetical works. (New York 1967).
  23. R. B. McDowell, 'Swift as a political thinker'. In: Roger Joseph McHugh and Philip Edwards, Jonathan Swift: 1667–1967, a Dublin tercentenary tribute (Dublin 1967). 176–186.
  24. Brian Vickers (ed.), The world of Jonathan Swift: essays for the tercentenary. (Oxford 1968).
  25. Kathleen Williams, Jonathan Swift. (London 1968).
  26. Morris Golden, The self observed: Swift, Johnson, Wordsworth. (Baltimore 1972.)
  27. Jane M. Snyder, The meaning of 'Musaeo contingens cuncta lepore', Lucretius 1.934, Classical World 66 (1973) 330–334.
  28. Claude Julien Rawson, Gulliver and the gentle reader: studies in Swift and our time. (London and Boston 1973).
  29. A. L. Rowse, Jonathan Swift, major prophet. (London 1975).
  30. Alexander Norman Jeffares, Jonathan Swift. (London 1976).
  31. Clive T. Probyn, Jonathan Swift: the contemporary background. (Manchester 1978).
  32. Clive T. Probyn (ed.), The art of Jonathan Swift. (London 1978).
  33. Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The man, his works, and the age (three volumes). (London 1962–83).
  34. David M. Vieth (ed.), Essential articles for the study of Jonathan Swift's poetry. (Hamden 1984).
  35. James A. Downie, Jonathan Swift, political writer. (London 1985).
  36. Frederik N. Smith (ed.), The genres of Gulliver's travels. (London 1990).
  37. James Kelly, 'Jonathan Swift and the Irish Economy in the 1720s', Eighteenth-century Ireland: Iris an dá chultúr 6 (1991) 7–36.
  38. Joseph McMinn (ed.), Swift's Irish pamphlets. (Gerrards Cross 1991).
  39. Robert Mahony, Jonathan Swift: the Irish identity. (Yale 1995).
  40. Christopher Fox, Walking Naboth's vineyards: new studies of Swift (University of Notre Dame Ward-Philips lectures in English language and literature, Vol. 13). (Notre Dame/Indiana 1995).
  41. Claude Rawson (ed.), Jonathan Swift: a collection of critical essays. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jeresey, 1995).
  42. Michael Stanley, Famous Dubliners: W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Wolfe Tone, Oscar Wilde, Edward Carson. (Dublin 1996).
  43. Daniel Carey, 'Swift among the freethinkers'. Eighteenth-century Ireland: Iris an dá chultúr, 12 (1997) 89–99.
  44. Victoria Glendinning, Jonathan Swift. (London 1998).
  45. Aileen Douglas; Patrick Kelly; Ian Campbell Ross, (eds.). Locating Swift: essays from Dublin on the 250th anniversary of the death of Jonathan Swift, 1667–1745. (Dublin 1998).
  46. Bruce Arnold, Swift: an illustrated life. (Dublin 1999).
  47. Nigel Wood (ed.), Jonathan Swift. (London and New York 1999).
  48. Christopher J. Fauske, Jonathan Swift and the Church of Ireland, 1710–24 (Portland/Oregon 2001).
  49. David George Boyce; Robert Eccleshall; Vincent Geoghegan (eds.), Political discourse in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ireland. (Basingstoke and New York 2001).
  50. Ann Cline Kelly, Jonathan Swift and popular culture: myth, media and the man. Basingstoke 2002.
  51. Dirk F. Passmann and Heinz J. Vienken, The library and reading of Jonathan Swift: a bio-bibliographical handbook. 4 vols. (Frankfurt 2003).
  52. Mark McDayter, 'The haunting of St James's Library: librarians, literature, and The Battle of the Books'. Huntington Library Quarterly, 66:1–2 (2003) 1–26.
  53. Frank T. Boyle, 'Jonathan Swift' [A companion to satire]. In: Ruben Quintero (ed.), A companion to satire (Oxford 2007) 196–211.
  54. Harry Whitaker, C. U. M. Smith and Stanley Finger (eds.), Explorations of the Brain, Mind and Medicine in the Writings of Jonathan Swift. Springer (US) 2007.
  55. Leo Damrosch, Jonathan Swift: his life and his world. Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History. New Haven: Yale University Press [2013].

The edition used in the digital edition

‘Character of an Irish Squire’ (1907). In: The prose works of Jonathan Swift D. D.‍ Ed. by Temple Scott. Vol. 11: Literary essays. London: George Bell and Sons, pp. 191–195.

You can add this reference to your bibliographic database by copying or downloading the following:

@incollection{E700001-005,
  editor 	 = {Temple Scott},
  title 	 = {Character of an Irish Squire},
  booktitle 	 = {The prose works of Jonathan Swift D. D.},
  editor 	 = {Temple Scott},
  address 	 = {London},
  publisher 	 = {George Bell and Sons},
  date 	 = {1907},
  volume 	 = {11: Literary essays},
  pages 	 = {191–195}
}

 E700001-005.bib
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Encoding description

Project description: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts

Sampling declarations

The text covers pages 191–195.

Editorial declarations

Correction: Text has been proof-read twice.

Normalization: The electronic text represents the edited text. Editorial notes are tagged note type="auth" n="".

Quotation: Direct speech is marked q.

Hyphenation: The editorial practice of the hard-copy editor has been retained.

Segmentation: div0=the satire. Paragraphs are marked; page-breaks are marked pb n="".

Interpretation: Names of persons are not tagged. Terms for cultural and social roles are not tagged.

Reference declaration

The n attribute of each text in this corpus carries a unique identifying number for the whole text. The title of the text is held as the first head element within each text.

div0 is reserved for the text (whether in one volume or many).

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Profile description

Creation: By Jonathan Swift between 1710 and 1725(?)

Language usage

  • The text is in English. (en)

Keywords: political; prose; satire; 18c

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Revision description

(Most recent first)

  1. 2008-09-23: Keywords added; file validated. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
  2. 2008-07-24: Value of div0 "type" attribute modified, additions to bibliography made, content of 'langUsage' revised; minor modifications made to header. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
  3. 2005-08-25: Normalised language codes and edited langUsage for XML conversion (ed. Julianne Nyhan)
  4. 2005-08-04T14:20:17+0100: Converted to XML (ed. Peter Flynn)
  5. 2004-03-05: Minor modifications to header/file; HTML file created. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
  6. 2004-03-01: File parsed. (ed. Benjamin Hazard)
  7. 2004-02-28: Header constructed; bibliography compiled, structural mark-up inserted and verified, text proofed. (ed. Benjamin Hazard)
  8. 2004-02-17: Text scanned and checked. (Text capture Benjamin Hazard)

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  1. In the third volume of Hawkesworth's edition (1767) of Swift's Letters, the following piece is given as Letter CCCCX, and noted thus: “By Dr. Swift; but when or to whom written is uncertain.” Hawkesworth does not state why he includes it as a letter, nor does he print the usual opening with which letters are begun. Nichols, in his notes on the piece, gives no explanation either, and follows Hawkesworth in spelling "Wellesley" as Wesley. Scott makes no comment whatever, but gives it the title: Character of an Irish Squire. 🢀

  2. Speaker of the House of Commons of Ireland. See vol. vi., p. 18, note. 🢀

  3. Garret Wellesley, Esq., who left a very large estate to his first cousin Richard Colley, Esq., upon his taking the name of Wellesley, and bearing his arms. 🢀

  4. J. Damer, Esq. of Tipperary County. 🢀

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