An ill-tempered candle or, counting ten right

A group of book critics gathered together :

Critic 1 : Isit atale ? Isit atub ? Isit abuc ?

Critic 2 : Itfli es.

Critic  3 :Hau do es it flei?

Critic 2 : Uei, threu theair!

Critic 4 : Uair ? I si it not.

Critic 1 : It is .  . . in vi si ble.

Critic 2 : Itfle is threu thier, an disinvi si ble –

Critic 3 : itcud bieni uaer, aenith ing.

Critic 2 : Gen tel men, lae dies, it do es not flei threu aeras such : it trans mits threu the aether . . .

Critic 4 : uat, it is as pri te ? Aphant um ? hau canui  teth erit ?

Critic 2 : Nos pri te, bu tuerd sa plen ti. Uerds, in vi si blefl eiing, uca not si it, ietit com uni cates –

Critic 4: Pah ! Tis all bosh - u meic moc offmi, I uill ha ve no ne offit !

(Throws inkpot at offending object and leaves precipitately through a neaby portal.)

Critics 1, 2 &3 : Haha, now that he is gone, let us gather round to read the rest of it . .

(Can you guess what it is yet ?)

Not that it matters much, it was more a test run in Swiftian nonsense Latin, which was quite fun (mutters: Only where did I leave Mr Swift's dictionary . . .hurries off after vanishing coat tails)

An original example from his Consultation of Four Physicians upon a Lord that was Dying :

“First Doctor. Is his Honor sick ? Prae laetus felis
pulse. It do es beat veris loto de.

Second Doctor. No notis as qui cassi e ver feltu
metri it. Inde edit is as fastas an alarum ora fire
bellat nite.

Third Doctor. It is veri hei !”

Translated :

“First Doctor. Is his honour sick ? Pray let us feel his pulse.
It does beat very slow to-day.

Second Doctor. No, no, 'tis as quick as I ever felt ; you may
try it. Indeed, it is as fast as an alarum, or a fire-bell at night

Third Doctor. It is very high.”

How did he fit it all in ? When it wasn't made up words and languages, far-flung imaginary countries, social satire and essays, it was pamphlets, poetry and polemics on top of carrying out his duties as clergyman (though exactly how much time was expended on this last could be viewed with some pardonable doubt). All of this in spite of growing deafness, tinnitus, vertigo and general discomfort, all symptoms of a condition that has since been diagnosed as Mernière’s Disease.

His reputation presents something of a kaleidoscope : held in low regard by Dr Johnson(‘Swift has told what he had to tell distinctly enough, but that is all. He had to count ten, and he counted right’), admired by Byron(‘His wit . . . unmatch’d by all), championed by Hazlitt as a poet rather than prose writer, referring to Swift’s ‘serious, saturnine and practical wit’ as compared to Rabelais’s sense of the fantastical;  Coleridge perhaps offers the most incisive of succinct comments :  ‘Swift was . . . the soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place’.

These and many other conflicting comments on Swift suggest the high complexity he represented, the difficulty of pigeon-holing him into any one convenient category. Hoorah. I don't care for pigeon-holing. Convenient, yes - but thereby lies a rub, too. It can become too convenient, even complacent by over-ease of use. This was the wit who never laughed, the cynical clergyman, the boiling, seething volcano contained within a weakly human frame given to fits of dizziness and nausea, a compendium of opposites.

An excellent character portrait of this contradictory man who gave such a lot of brilliant nonsense to the world can be found in Victoria Glendinning's  biography:

Intimate, social as opposed to political, it draws on his private correspondence to paint a portrait of a witty man who never laughed, a ‘cultivated heathen . . in a world of confusion and falshood’ (Thomas Carlyle, Lectures on English Literary History)

Other links of related interest :

http://www.gulliver.cc/gulliver/index.htm

http://newlilliput.com/

Ref  (Swift’s Health) :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1296961/pdf/jrsocmed00019-0046.pdf

“ . . . Written on purpose, with much study to no end, plentifully stored with want of wit, learning, Judgement, Rime and Reason, and may seeme very fitly for the vnderstanding of Nobody.

“To Nobody.”

My thoughts exactly.

“Newes from no place by Sir Gregory Nonsence.”

Now, with some mild adjustment here and there, that might just apply. Nonsense as a surname would suit me down to the ground. Lady Bustles instead of Sir Gregory, though.

“UPON a Christmas Even, somewhat nigh

Easter, anon after Whitsuntide, walking in

a Coach from London to Lambeth by

water, I overtook a man that met me in the morning

before Sunset, the wind being in Capricorn, the

Sign Southwest . . .”

I never did have much sense of direction.

“ . . . with silence I demanded many

questions of him, and he with much pensiveness did

answer me merrily to the full, with such ample and

empty replications, that both our understandings

being equally satisfied, we contentiously agreed to

- finish and prosecute the narration of the Unknown

Knight Sir Gregory Nonsence,” (and here insert Lady Bustles Nonsense again, please)

“so sitting down upon our shoulders, resting uneasily on a bank of Sycamores, under a tree of Odoriferous and contagious Camomile, . .” (I always believe in sitting comfortably myself) “ . .  after three sighs, smilingly uttered in the Hebrew Character, two groans from the Chaldean Dialect, five sobs from the Arabian Cinquapace, six dumps from the German Idiom, nine Moods of melancholy from the Italian tongue, With one hub bub from the Hibernian outcry. And last he laughed in the Cambrian tongue, and began to declare in the Utopian speech, what I have here with most diligent negligence Translated into the English Language . . .”

Well, I am glad that got sorted.

No, really, I am.

I don’t know how long it took Mr Taylor to translate his great work ‘Newes from no place’ through quite so many languages (I suspect Utopian to have been an invention, indeed I hardly believed that bit, as the Bishop said of Mr Gulliver’s Travels . . .) but I am happy to say I had far less trouble converting the Tales of the Great Alabaskar into readable form(http://www.wix.com/artscribe/tales). There were not nearly so many languages to get through, for a start.

I suppose I should like to know how he came to write it all down in the first place, for he must have been a very busy man, fitting it all in between the ferrying and fighting (see links below on his set-to with Coryate) as well as the  travelling – Cadiz, Hamburg and even Prague. When he wasn’t doing that, he was engaged in publishing his own work.; his audience was delighted by his observant eye and wit – which helped enormously when it came to collecting subscriptions for his book.

All in all, he was an expert at social networking and creating his own brand, and wielded his pen over a wide scope of subject matter – on begging, hanging, swearing and laughter to mention but a few. His career lasted over 50 years; he produced over 150 works; he became something of a national institution and continued to travel right up to the end of his days – in addition to a third career as alehouse owner. 

In the end though, after all that, I revel in his sheer silliness, in the mind that could produce ‘Newes from no place’ and devise a paper boat to sail the Thames in. A touch of Edward Lear about that, I think. . .

 

For more detailed discourse on the life of John Taylor, two excellent sites : http://thedabbler.co.uk/2011/08/greens-heroes-of-slang-5-john-taylor-the-water-poet/

http://www.beggarsbush.org.uk/john-taylor-the-praise-antiquity-and-commodity-of-beggary-beggars-begging-etc-1621/

Complete biographies :

Bernard Capp, The World of John Taylor the Water-Poet, 1578–1653 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994) – the first full-length biography : http://amzn.to/rorUBm

John H Chandler (ed.) Travels through Stuart Britain : the adventures of John Taylor, the water poet  (Stroud, Sutton, 1999)  : http://amzn.to/pdc0TZ

And on making a paper boat to sail the Thames : http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/timeteam/2006_queen_cameo.html