A Modest Proposal Scorned by Thomas Sheridan
edited from the surviving transcripts of Nona Throworth by Hugh Maxton, but now
An Abandoned Work.
Lucus a non lucendo
The Argument For writing 'On the Day of Judgement', the famous dean of Saint Patrick's Cathedral was condemned to wander the earth, living into remote and disputatious futures, but promised final release into the mere professorship of a papistical hedge-school of the same name. Near the close of his peregrination, he was witness to a contention among modern bards which almost drove his wits astray. The matter at issue concerned statements of poetics, disguised as bad poems and inscribed on menu-cards, toilet-paper and other textual commestibles. Wise to these trivia, the dean nevertheless misjudged the attitudes and morals of a young spectator, inviting her to join him in a repast. Stunned by her response, he was caught up in the Walpurgisnacht of an episco-academic trial in which improper setting he essayed a defence. In this, however, he failed to recognise his altered surroundings and continued to address the muse instead of the toothless predators on the bench before him. Attempting to extricate himself from these difficulties, he almost recovered his former powers, but was loudly condemned by a cabal of colleagues. In the end he was less condemned by the new androgyny.
The Prologue Specific
Brothers Montague and Capulet
Invade whatever map you get,
Wherever barricades are raised
To save a town where Art is praised
And Poetry is crowned in peace
They infiltrate just as they please.
And so where Harmony's intended
Rival muses are defended:
One sect purrs, "the tops is Juliet,
And I crave to be her coolie." Yet (10)
Another opts for Romeo
(Reproduced by hand and roneo.)
Ego-roused, all scorn conveners
Who offer coffee, fees, and dinners.
These troubles also thrive in Theory
Of which we'll not be unco leery
In fairness to ideal students
Will in hot pursuit of Prudence.
For readings once ensconced in bars
Sublimate as seminars (20)
On irony and wit and rhyme
And then in turn the paradigm
Turns writing in écriture
(Which few believe is French for hoor)
Until it falls to higher discourse
Under the motto "Be the Force".
Unaltered in its last iotas
(Despite fast talk of fast toyotas)
This philosophic tale's set out
Faithfully, without a doubt: - (30)
The Prologue General
The signifier and signified
Are inescapably allied;
The one may not go on parole
Or else a great prince lies in gaol.
Reinscribed the proposition
Tells how, by an inquisition,
Accusers and their co-accused
Are in justice like abused.
We'll hear much more of plain Ms Justice
Who names the readers' auspices, (40)
A goddess who (like Cupid) blindfold
Herds her goats towards the penfold.
Contention Among the Bards
'Twas in the land of Portugal
Where writers joined in high cabal,
It happened that an Irish dean
Happened on the foreign scene
Bus-touring by the mild Mondego
For the cure of his lumbago,
Reading deeply, ditto drinking,
Eyes a-sparkle, maybe winking, (50)
Celebrating all forsooth
His appointment to Maynooth.
The din of battle reached his ear
As he sank his seventh beer
At the faculty reception
Where poet, don, and student rep shone.
(His chaser was a dry Martini
Which he termed his evil genie.)
"Is this another Dublin frolic,
Feminist and diabolic (60)
All at once, like Doctor Vibes?
Or is it something like the kibes
Picked up earlier on my travels
At Abbey riots, field-day revels?
He thought about the frights he'd seen
The parliament in College Green,
B-Specials roaring drunk, and Guards
With poitin makers playing cards;
Fiction and the rise of factions,
Ballots, bottles for elections, (70)
Party leaders buying ranches,
Yahoos voting in the branches.
Returning to the present then
He found it bright and nearly clean.
Half in jest he spoke up freely,
"I'm damned if that's not Bishop Creeley,
Suffragan in pagan parts
And suffraget of fagin arts.
And the voice who answers to him
Belongs I'd swear to Tom of Tuam." (80)
At that moment one contender
Breaking rank went on a bender,
Swore he'd stand no more evasion
From the truths of his persuasion:
"As I said to Joey Campbell
'Poetry is breath, not symbol.' "
Another sprang up and declared:
"Designer Stalinists are scared
To meet in discourse and . . . androgyny
The bastards keep on dodging me, (90)
Setting David Lodge on me
Who has me tenured in a novel
Where I proudly learn to grovel,
Mince my words and blend with bards,
Bilinguals and other blowhards."
A lodge of furies then arose
Proclaiming they could purr in prose.
One of these was relict of
The dukes of Alva and Pavlov.
She rang her bell and foamed on cue, (100)
A smith who hammered with her shoe
And tramped across her moral lowland
Rebuking Billy in the Bowl and
Prating like a pope from Poland:
"On the panel not a woman!
Jaysus, dean, you have it coming."
The dean, much shocked, did then observe
An ancient poet rise and swerve
Away towards his native tongue
Which wasn't known to all the throng; (110)
His words were clear, he was no letcher
For all he wrote like Cyril Fletcher:
The ancient bard took forty minutes
Trying Patience to her limits.
But as he ceased, young Brother Raworth,
Whose face can make the dullest day worth
Forty carnivals, commenced
His reply, sincere, unfenced:
"A man's a man's a manuscript
And nothing more." Then he quipped, (120)
"Archive-retentive paper chains
Will only do to wipe our brains.
And what you say is Aimis, Rosa,
Though in fairness I suppose a
Better answer's not on tap
To wash away Augean crap
From the one-ox town of Buffalo
Where calf-love cowboys huff and blow."
Mistaking Rosa for the lassie
Who hovered near his silver tassie, (130)
The dean deplored these words of wrath,
Checked his fly and sallied forth
To offer comfort to the victim
Commencing with unsolemn dictum:
"Hey, hen! methinks a healthy bite
Would take your mind off any slight.
I suggest heroic cutlets
Dressed and smeared in jellied drupelets.
So take my arm and let us sup . . ."
Which she, we fear, misheard for tup; (140)
For she landed such a kick
As left him sitting on his prick.
(An Interlude in Which the Philistines
Kill Jonathan, or Think So)
In Plato's cave the clerks of treason
Muffle every rhyme with reason,
For every bull-frog sees the joke
Just as he's about to croak.
So from the graves of academe
The nearly dead unleashed a scream
Protesting at this new arrival
Who (though felled) might prove a rival. (150)
Postulant and prelate too
Began to make a potent brew
Of innuendo and outlandish
Rumours of a dean who'd brandish
Notions well beyond the reach
Of what the brothers learned to teach,
Throwing in a pinch of malice
Nodded through from Patrick's Palace.
Seventeen of Peter's pensers -
The poor are never Sit-on-Fencers (160)
When it comes to pushing chaps
Religiously who touch their caps -
Seventeen scholastic thinkers
In thirty-four bifocal blinkers
With brother bishops in attendance
To bless their donnish independence -
These seventeen were of one mind
(Apart from some were left behind
To lunch at leisure shucking oysters
From their cells and holy cloisters) (170)
To condemn the name before them
Without ado or doubt of quoram.
So the dean who dared was done down
Surely as he had been gunned down.
In his place the seventeen
(More and fewer as we've seen
Depending on their appetite,
Stomach for the Christian fight,
Ache in ankle, knee or toe,
Whatever makes a trustee slow (180)
To trust advice from those who know)
Blessed themselves and then preferred
The wan still voice that all have heard
Whose word's worth every alpine echo
For the few who've had a dekko
At its pages - frail and rare -
Scored with pupils' leaden care
To praise its pious self-sufficiency
Ably aiding Art's efficiency.
The Dean Replies to Fair Justice
Concussed, confused (or so he sensed) (190)
The villain-victim then commenced:
"You see . . . I feel . . . or . . . shall we say
I do insist I have my way
With you as partner, rather guest.
Lean on the dean, who knows best
Your bosom's buoyant, hams are girly,
Teeth stroke merkin pearly / curly;
Add to this the verbs and nouns
Corinna's lover took for gowns
And you have an a la carte (200)
Of every charm that feeds my heart.
I'm thrilled to have you on my books.
Poach my eyes in saucy looks!
It's no ambition with gallants
To tell the panter from the pants.
Emotion in a micro-wave
Bastes my heart. Who can save
My liver, kidney, other parts
That Fancy fancies Celia farts
Whenever she sits down and darts (210)
A glance behind her own behind?
- But Prudence dear, be not unkind.
If you'd help me off the floor
We'll sidle forth to have a splore.
MacDonald's is the place to eat,
Childerburgers, minors' meat.
Jack Ketchup slides across the table
To dish a slut from downtown Babel.
Paper mats are all the rage
With food for thought on every page; (220)
You'll love it, love; a girl of gumption
Eats her fill of grilled consumption.
But Patience, now, these looks of grief?
You'd think I was a Turk or thief!
And why the black cap on your head?
By cripes . . . I see . . . I know . . . I'm dead.
Scupper, Stella, plans for lunch
Should they smack of hint or hunch
That pussy-footing stoops to folly
Behind the drinks- or dessert-trolly! (230)
I never think of sex as jolly.
The body boggles year by year
A little more, and then is near
That detumescence of the soul
Which Shelley thought a fading coal.
(It is in fact re-heated rissole.)
Could hopes of mine declining spark
A final vision in the dark
Of love responded to with love,
Forgiveness from the man above, (240)
Knowledge then with beauty wed
(A bookshelf serving as their bed?)
Or even just a tiny blessing
Earned while angels were undressing?
No! Sorry, Joy. Pray, let me add
I'm twice as old as your granddad
And hardly ever raise a laugh
And never raise my flagging staff.
With love conthrive in lust's reverse
To turn the full rhyme of your arse (250)
Into a formal, normal verse?
Again I fall. I am contrite.
The trouble is I cannot write
For ballyhoo of wind and theory“
'Twould make an honest sinner weary
Hearing how arcane symbolics
Nobble hard-boiled alcoholics.
Look'd here, it's all me ballox.
The third fall that, like Christ divine?
I merely am an empty sign, (260)
A one-arm scare-crow loudly clapping,
Or blinder pilgrim proudly mapping,
Man excluded from mankind,
Condemned to roam and yet confined
Within the future history
Of sex and gender's mystery,
The subject of three tasteless lapses,
Can't tell an abbot from an abscess
Or save himself to save himself,
Yet sees his soul in naked pelf (270)
Each time he speaks and recognises
Turds for words in their disguises.
And yet I plead I could be worse,
Though even shriving's here a curse
Itself like satire's detail
That only betters other people.
I could however drive five cars
Through six plate-windows, seven bars;
Could rent a lad a night on plastic
(And can on laws relaxed, elastic.) (280)
These doings secret, silent, heinous
Rend the heart if not the anus.
To appeal your dread decision -
I grant indeed you have good reason
To sentence me and all carousers
Who talk of buts while seeing trousers.
Confusion of the death-bed over,
Then every doggerel's in clover;
The body and the cloth converse
But not before they leave the hearse. (290)
So men who praise your lips, your eyes,
I only can their quips despise,
(And in addition whips detect
Amidst the fallen and elect.)
Ideal beauty walks among
The light and air where you belong
(Wherever these may pulse and throng.)
My tongue though forked is not the devil's:
Like death it hurts, and heals, and levels.
So come to breakfast, stay for supper, (300)
With no one down, no one upper.
The dean's a decent stick in short
As long as he's allowed cavort."
Her Judgement
"Offending race of human kind
By nature, custom, learning blind;
Your specimen before the bench
Would make my lord of Galway blench.
I'd gag on language from the gutters
Before I'd take the guff he utters.
Things he said about John of Cloyne, (310)
Who fought at Aughrim and the Boyne!
You couldn't swallow without puking
Up his trash of false rebuking.
And yet a judge is bound to pry
Into the wherefore and the why
Informing such bizarre behaviour,
Salacious mention of the Saviour,
Confusion of the good with food
By quiet natures understood.
And what in God's name is a pinfold? (320)
Save us from the views men hold!
The letters littered by this . . . ghost,
He really does deserve to roast!
I know the clergy are outrageous
And faults forgiven prove contagious.
Whoever judges sin must risk it
But this one surely takes the biscuit.
For every bucko of his kind
Another fodder springs to mind:
Fang of Whorf and toe of Sapir, (330)
That'll choke the pompous Drapier
Who cannot tell his pelt from pelf
And dumped his dolly on the shelf
To lie instead in every paper
Prepared to print his latest caper.
In vengeance for that star's eclipse,
I'll cook his goose, he's had his chips.
But what if system had him planned
From the start, gendered and unmanned,
Lead by the tongue and not the nose? (340)
For all he says, he never knows?
This fashion to elide the subject
May have a far from awesome object;
It's better - so disc jockeys say -
To give the muzak one more play
Even if the syncopation
Puts in sudden liquidation
Half the hot cats unrewarded
When the rubbish was recorded.
And so the jockeys dodge a libel (350)
In hum-bug homage to the bible;
Playing tossers with no dice
They spare the name and spoil the vice.
'Let Tybalt be . . . there's no harm in him . . .
Or call him just a barmy Houyhnhnm . . .
Perhaps a little dagger-happy,
Not violent but merely snappy
Faced with teague or prod or yid . . .
There's really nothing better said?'
Or - 'What's the point of pointing fingers . . . (360)
The body politic malingers! '
I'll not endure such tommy rot
Pulls sugar daddies from a hat,
Adds might to the almighty mitre
While leaving truth a lonely blighter.
I can't believe the dean of Patrick's
Merely is the spawn of hat-tricks.
And yet this after-life's a stage
Where worldly champions disengage;
And party hats and mortar-boards (370)
Are tossed aside like wooden swords.
The rival clans of old Verona
Were actors only, each persona
Swore his oaths and did his killing
To earn a bent or honest shilling.
I fear the character before us
Won't die on stage, then rise and bore us.
This real soul is flawed and dowsed,
Dimmer than the light of Faust,
Diogenes without a lamp (380)
Fallen in the sulphurous damp.
Could be a truly last audition
Would cast him into vile perdition.
But so the mummer has me vexed
I'd nearly cry out, cry out - 'Next'!
I've searched the prophets and the poets
From Boston Bay to John O'Groats,
North and east and west and south;
In none I found so foul a mouth.
The Greeks (of whom I'm one myself), (390)
The Cosa Nostra and the Guelph
Could not produce a viler tongue.
How I wish that he had swung
In pitch and chains like any croppy.
For now we're left with just a copy
Of one who peed and effed and swore;
The dean himself is swift no more.
And by the same, he's all pallaver,
Passive as a pale cadavre,
Speaking only of the sinners (400)
From whom he stole a thousand dinners,
Conscience-gazing when he might
Be better off for acting right.
So gross a ghost offends decorum
Demanding nectar by the jorum,
Pathetic in his late belief
That earthly wrongs can find relief
Before the final bang and whimper
Makes his cock-crow even limper;
Condemned to life, to rant and rave (410)
Before he may recant and save
His image from its icon body,
And then address whatever God he
Realises in the silence
Breaking when he late relents.
In fragrant pieces may his soul
Achieve a bliss denied the whole.
In fragments too his self entire
Be safer than a house afire."
Narrative Near Conclusion
Her eyes enshrouded, next the goddess (420)
Drew an arrow from his bodice,
Fletched its groove, then launched the shaft,
Watched it fly, and mildly laughed.
Her victim made as if to speak
For all his wound had left her weak.
Before the balm took flight, a snort
Of denimed venom filled the court.
A Protest from the Colleagues
Carrickmacross and Crossmaglen
Breed more rogues than honest men,
Smiths who forge their own opinions, (430)
Bullies to some, to others scullions.
While in the town of Coolahan
Abstention re-elects its man.
Meeting every distant challenge
With antiphons of threat and whinge,
Their schemes run deep and irrigate
A score of scams they propagate,
Short-changing members of the jury
Or helping fellows out of Newry.
Alarmed by rumours of acquittal (440)
The hedge-school rowdies downed their spittle,
Swallowed pride and hollared loud:
"Believing deans is not allowed,
And as for giving jobs on merit
The system simply couldn't bear it.
Let's hear no talk of just rewards
For writing half a million words
Or rhyming or reviewing well
A just reviewer is - just - Hell!
Assess us no assessors' verdict (450)
We have our own Barabbas picked."
The glenside dimmed because groves bright
Are named for their excluding light
(Or flaring up again when beaten
Like blazing gorse or nobs at Eton;)
And likewise so because groves dull
Are dedicated to annul
All that might give Art a nature
Mirrored in a brother creature,
County scholars from the downside (460)
Who never publish out of pride,
Yet find it sometimes fine and dandy
To damn a better man as randy,
Assist the halt and halt the best
By making age the early test
If, by such an antiphrasis,
They shoot their buddies to high places.
And then up flew a den of ninnies,
Sterile mules and barren hinnies,
Henpecked husbands with their peckers, (470)
H Dip Eds correcting ekkers,
Lecturers professing hope
As they maul the greasy rope,
Telling beads and telling lies,
Ejaculating pious sighs;
Cleric, classicist and crony,
Realist and social phoney,
Brother who advances brother
Bishop who can tell no other,
Come-And-Kiss-Me, Lips-Are-Sealed, (480)
Jesus' flowers of the field,
Jeremiah in the traffic
Laying down the law with graphic
Details of a holy show
Fellows of the cloth won't know.
The air was thick with fallen bards
Whose cause was lost among the shards
Of Vinho Verde bottles flying
Thick and fast like martyrs dying.
Not since Satan and Parnell (490)
Had such a fall begun so well.
Disciples mustered far behind
The leader they had yet to blind
So to gently dump and ditch
Beatitudes they loudly preached.
An avalanche of whited souls
Sizzled over pallid coals,
Spirits velvety and rough
Rained downward through the air like dandruff.
Footnotes fell from sleeping hands (500)
Across the mean unpleasant lands
Where Baron Beef rides smoothly over
Comely maidens in the clover.
Unwritten laws, unwritten books
Sang in harmony like rooks.
It was the day when petty sins
Showed the high the style that wins.
It was the afternoon when style
Withered under kiss and smile.
It was the evening when a kiss (510)
Chose (uber alles) 'Doctor' Judas
Who so became the Lord's apppointed
'Twas blessed to be disappointed.
Throughout the last judgmental tumble
Naught was heard of rhyme or symbol;
Killaloe and Down and Connor
Echoed loudly to their honour
Statements made by some who cant well
From Aberdark to bright Freemantle.
All shouted down the learned pleas (520)
In favour of the dean, who sees
Even in his hour of judgment
Humour in the closing lodgment
Dropped by birds of prey and passage,
Pidgins that forget the message,
Doves that dare not speak their name,
Loves that always love the same,
Dippers, waders, Kelly-ites,
And some who feed on inner lights,
Preachers from below Athy (530)
And reachers for the bird on high,
Romantic swifts quite out of season,
Migrants from the nest of reason,
Refugees from the Baroque
Or swallows that would make you choke,
Feathered mongrels closely reading
Penguins of the oddest breeding.
Every freak that Nature knew
Uncrossable - and Culture too -
Mendicants in borrowed volvos, (540)
Prelates, primates, para-provos,
(What? Sons that have left their Holmes
To lie about inciting poems?)
Wheedled round the bishops' bench,
Made depositions and a stench.
Their ganger (an augustan martin)
Sang a virtuoso part in
Faintly praising the accused,
Flounced his wings, then dropped to roost.
Eternal Credit
Fair Justice smiled, not on him, (550)
But on our prisoner looking grim.
Patiently he stood the fall,
Waiting in the outer hall
Throughout the mock apocalypse
With bated breath and praying lips.
Of drink and sex he thought no more
Than he had done the day before.
While all around were saving face
He aimed instead to hide his grace.
His sins were scarlet, not his robes, (560)
And in dejection sowed a hope.
If humour taints his scholarship
One lash the more will speed his trip.
If honour mars his enterprise
Then going naked takes the prize.
If wish to serve becomes ambition
He brooks no clerical tuition.
If pangs of work have wracked his frame
Happily he takes the blame.
When good days bring too fine a luncheon (570)
(With body straining every function,)
Extremely he refuses unction.
The bench that let him down will bear
Bigger rumps before the year
Is over and another rumpus
Rips the sail and cracks the compass.
The benchers (who are trenchers too)
Know they've made a right ragout,
Fricasse and ruddy mess
When all they had to say was 'yes'. (580)
But pleased as punch with such a deal
The Gallilean pilates steal
Forty winks like old apostles
Safely locked inside their hostels.
Cosily they re-digest
Having eaten second-best,
Dreaming all the whole to spy on
Dirty films - The Life of Brian,
Madonna, Christ of Montreal.
They happily forget it all (590)
Cruising on the ship of state
That underserves the underweight.
Their faculties have long succumbed
To toast the deck-show they had mummed:
A peer group peered and now reports:
Nothing untoward aborts,
Girl overboard or grimmer lay
Of childish rape or piracy.
So anchored off the hot Algarve
They watch the captain stab and carve (600)
Princely servings, beef and mammon
Crusted with a wig of lemon.
Fragmence
Thus came the courtroom to be empty
That Justice still might have her say;
Alone at last and on her tod
She called on no all-knowing God;
But warned the dean that Providence
Can't be bought with Peter's pence.
"Laugh and seem to swing the lead with
None a saint would go to bed with! (610)
Smile and smile, and use the X-word
(And mind you mind those Boys of Wexford.)
Sky-pilot if you must, but found
Your simple faith on solid ground.
Buy a Porsche or Sunbeam coupe,
Cap your baldness with a toupee:
A hypocrite reversed can sport
And never hide from Cupid's dart.
Work by stealth, admit your age
Enlivens each increasing page. (620)
Your gout inflicts an extra pang
On gurriers your wit would hang.
The silver in your beard will turn
Platinum-gold before you burn.
To win redemption on the nonce
Delay and gratify at once!"
Dismissing any swift reproof
With "Hold your tongue and let me love,"
The archer further smiled and said:
"It's hard to pardon one who's dead (630)
Except to banish you in truth
To longer exile from Maynooth.
And now I'll have that dry vermouth."
A Note on the Text of "A Modest Proposal Scorned"
It is clear from internal evidence that the poem dates essentially from the last years of Jonathan Swift's life. However, subsequent editors have used it as a vehicle for their own advancement, with a consequent and all too obvious cluster of references to events occurring in the 1790s and even (as in the Byronic epigraph, no doubt an interpolation) later. Given this doubled context, its anticipations of postmodern are still striking and must give scholars cause to reconsider the entire episode of the quarelle between the Antients and Moderns as it bears upon Swift's career as a poet. Allusions to "Romeo and Juliet" may constitute vestigial evidence of a wider pattern of Shakespearean reference in the original poem. Recurrent mention of Portugal also suggests that attitudes to the Treaty of Methuen, by which Britain cemented an important alliance in Europe, require further attention.
On the other hand, the poem flaunts an indifference to the ordinary decencies of political correctness which would have been as risky under Walpole as it is today. These features of the work might be interpreted as tending to date it post 1742 (when the duchess of Oxford ceased to be prime minister) though this very late dating is complicated by questions of the author's mental condition. The neologism "fragmence", used at the title for the final section, is evidently a compound of "fragrance" and "fragments" and may as readily be seen as a postmodern device or a trademark of the schizophrenic. The ever-shifting pattern of proper names defies all attempts at consistent identification in familiar eighteenth-century terms, while the break-down of Swiftian christian names (Celia, Stella etc.) into transparent tags (egg. Prudence, Joy) points to the posthumous (and lamentable) influence of an ethical imperative which is most obtrusive in persistent relating of sexuality and ingestion.
This edition is prepared from a rare copy of the Salzburg printing, once the property of George III (founder of the institution alluded to in the spurious interpolations), and now preserved in the College library here. It is offered to the public for two reasons - first its technical features in the employment of rhyme, and second its coy revelation of moral exchanges between the world of letters and what was then a virtually an established church. It may be that the original poem expressed a philosophical or even spiritual outlook which can only be detected now under cover of textual corruption.
N.T. Belial College.