ABSTRACT
As the years passed, England remained for Swift the arena of memorable deeds. To be forgotten there was to be lost to greatness. In his imagination he clung to England. It embodied his ideals and illusions. It meant society, civilization—above all, language. For a man with literary ambitions, Ireland meant a double exile. One might as well be dead as be unknown to English readers. Swift avoided Irishisms in his own speech and condemned their use by others. 1 The purity of his expression was to some extent the purity of an alien fastidiousness seeking the most idiomatic strains of the speech he admired.
