A History of Poetry

Summary

Headnote

Published 1726; copy text 1726 (see Textual Account).

For grounds of attribution, and probable origin as an April Fool for Sheridan in 1722, see Textual Account. The selection is typically sparse for the time in its representation of poetry from before 1600: there is nothing from the fourteenth century (apart from Chaucer), or from the fifteenth century; and the sixteenth century is remembered principally for its dramatic poetry. For the sixteenth and earlier seventeenth century, Swift's list shares a core selection with other late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century accounts. In translating Boileau's L’Art poetique in the early 1680s, Dryden and Sir William Soame (c. 1644–86) had singled out four of the poets that Swift would include in his list: Spenser was cited for pastoral, Butler was commended for ‘buffooning grace’, Davenant's ‘haughty’ but badly received ambition was described as a warning to his successors, and Waller was eulogised as ‘the first whose art / Just weight and measure did to verse impart’. In reviewing the English poetic tradition in his Preface to Fables (1700), Dryden gave pride of place to Chaucer, Spenser, Milton and Waller, all included in Swift's list, but also praised the translators George Sandys (1578–1644) and Edward Fairfax (1568?–1632?), whom Swift does not include. Closer in time to Swift's piece, Ozell's translation of Boileau's L’Art poetique (1711–12) substituted Chaucer, Spenser, Davenant and Waller for the French examples cited by Boileau: all four are included in Swift's selection. Swift, however, sets himself the challenge of punning his way through a much more extensive survey, concluding with friends and contemporaries who were still very much alive. (Cf. Giles Jacob's alphabetically organised 1719–20 Poetical Register, which also included living poets.)The politically minded reader of the timemight also have discerned significance in Swift's emphasis on the turn to burlesque under the Commonwealth, and the apparent decline of poetry at the Revolution.

The history of English poetry was at this date far from an established prose genre: in a classic essay from 1949, Osborn notes earlier compilations of author biographies, but identifies a sketch in French by Joseph Spence, probably from the early 1730s, as ‘The First History of English Poetry’.