His first writings, however, were of no im portance. Falling under the influence of Cow ley, he produced his first extant poem in May 1689, a very stilted Pindaric Ode to Dr. William Sancroft, and the seven lcnown poems, chiefly odes, which he wrote before 1698 are of no better quality; it was the fourth, 'To the Athe nian Society) (1691) that, according to John son, caused Dryden's damaging remark, "Cou sin Swift, you will never be a poet') His vein then suddenly changed, and in
Far more striking are the two works which opened his career as a prose writer. Among a probably large amount of writing now lost, he composed, in 1696, 'The Battle of the Books' and 'A Tale of a Tub,' both of which remained unpublished untd 1704. The year 1696 may be taken as the date when Swift abandoned his efforts to imitate the writing of other men, and leaped, full-armed, into his own peculiar and inimitable possession, satire_ 'The Battle of the Books,' the one piece now read in a once famous controversy, in which Temple had en gaged, as to the relative merit of the Ancients and the Moderns, is famous for its satire of affectation, pedantry and obtuseness and for its lively burlesque of the heroic manner. The other book, a much more elaborate affair, by many regarded as Swift's masterpiece, is in its narrative parts a satire against religious abuses and schism, in the persons of Peter, the Church of Rome, Martin, the Anglican Church,. and Jack, the Presbyterian sect. This narrative, however, comprises no more than a third of the book; the remainder is taken up with dedica tions, prefaces and digressions, which variously satirize the vanity, conventionality and affecta tion of authors, the irreverence and scurrility of the wits of the day, the pedantry, the cheap ness and superficiality of contemporary learn ing, and, in general, fanaticism, unreasonable ness, vanity and emptiness. In these two boolcs, written before he was 30, Swift showed himself to be an unrivaled master of irony, burlesque and satire.
In the summer of 1694 Swift became secre tary and chaplain to Lord Berkeley, one of the lord justices of Ireland. Disappointed in his efforts to obtain the deanship of Ilberry, he was made in February 1700 vicar of Laracor, Agher and Rathbeggan, in County Meath, Ireland, livings worth about #200 a year. On the recall of Berkeley in 1701, he went with the latter to London and published his first political pam phlet, 'The Dissensions in Athens and in Rome,) an attempt to show the need of harmony in poli tics. Though• the pamphlet gained the good will of the Whigs, Swift's work for the next nine years was wholly in behalf of the Irish clergy. Four journeys to London, of an aver age duration of over six months apiece, were undertaken chiefly with a view to obtaining re mission of the taxes on the Irish livings, and during the same period Swift wrote a number of able pamphlets in support of the established church, of which the masterly piece of irony, 'An Argument to Prove that the Abolishing of Christianity' in England may, as things now stand, be attended with some inconvenience, and perhaps not produce those many good ef fects proposed thereby' (1708), and
mission, however, came to nothing; he was put off by the Whig lords, and, personally dis appointed because of his failure, owing perhaps to the impression created by 'A Tale of a Tub,) to gain preferment in the Church, he gave his services to the Tory ministry which came into power in 1710.
During the next four years Swift wrote an extraordinary number of political pamphlets; few political writers have ever done a larger amount of brilliant and powerful work. Swift's task was threefold: to show that the cause of the Tory ministry, its desire to obtain a peace with France, was a just cause, and that its members were worthy men; to cast ridicule on the principals and persons of the Whigs; and to restrain the more violent Tories from ex treme measures. His first work, after a caustic 'Short Character of Thonuts, Earl of Wharton> (1710), was the conduct of the Examiner, the Tory weekly, for which he did all the writing between 2 Nov. 1710 and 14 June 1711, contrib uting a series of varied and able arguments and satires. His position, maintained with singular adroitness, was that the country was crying for a peace and happiness which could be more readily obtained from the Tories than from the Whigs, especially while Marlborough and Whar ton were influential. In Conduct of the Allies and of the Late Ministry in Beginning and . Carrying on the Present War' (Novem ber 1711), commonly regarded as his master piece among the writings in support of the Har ley administration, his object was to strip the war of its glamor and to render it unpopular by showing that the Allies, with the connivance of the Whigs, had been systematically exploit ing England. "After ten years of war with per petual successes,') he says in his preface, "to tell us that it is impossible to have a good peace is truly surprising— [and] it is natural to inquire into our present condition; how long we shall be able to go on at this rate; what the conse quences may be on the present and future ages; and whether a peace, without that impracticable point which some people do so much insist on, be really ruinous in itself, or equally so with the continuance of the war?) Other important tracts were Importance of the Guardian Considered' (1713), a merciless, but not un provoked attack on Steele, and the savage and fairer answer to Steele's (Crisis,' the very skil ful Publick Spirit of the Whigs.> Besides his political writing, Swift published many pieces of a miscellaneous kind, including several papers for Steele's Taller, at least one for the Spectator, some controversial satires on religious subjects, his historically interesting but philologically unsound for Cor recting, Improving, and Ascertaining the Eng lish Tongue' (1712), and the well-known (Jour nal to Stella.' He had made the acquaintance of Esther Johnson, then a child of eight, during his first residence at Sir William Temple's, and had been the tutor to this ward of his pa tron. When he got his livings in 1700, she, with her companion, Mrs. Dingley, went to Ireland to live near him, and during his residence in England remained in Ireland. The 'Journal' Extends from 2 Sept. 1710 to 6 June 1713, with scarcely a break. The letters, which were dis patched every two or three weeks with an en try for nearly every day, are chiefly the bare narrative, expressed in simple, intimate terms, of what Swift was doing in a social way, and are singularly free from discussion of the poli tics of the time. They are important as a rec ord of the life and character of a busy and in fluential man of the time.