ABSTRACT
A Political Biography of Jonathan Swift Courting the Favour of the Great Following Sir William Temple's death, Swift scrambled for a position while publishing Temple's works, a demanding but modestly lucrative enterprise that allowed him to call attention to himself as the protege of a respected and uncommonly well connected former patron. Swift attributes the current broil not to a clash of political principles but to the leaders of the House, who act 'upon the Score of personal Piques or as a method for Advancement. Self-aggrandizing private men who exploit civil dissension are not soldiers but scavengers who exploit the ruin left when public men, the natural governors of society, fail to act for the common good. The analogy between a church corrupted from its primitive purity and the corruption of classical scholarship supplies A Tale of a Tub with its organizing principle or, more accurately perhaps, its principle of disorganization.
