ABSTRACT
We think of Swift as a solitary hero, finding out dragons and running them through with his single spear. This idea fits many of his labours for the public. He produced Some Free Thoughts without consulting his friends. He worked alone when he wrote the Proposal for Irish Manufacture and when he condemned the bill to weaken bishops’ leases. By the time he was fifty-five, I suspect, he liked to imagine he was emulating Cato or Thomas More, and devoting his life to preserve a people on the edge of ruin.
