Jonathon Swift

Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745 •  Anglo-Irish Dean of St. Patrick’s
•  Author of Gulliver’s Travels, 1726
•  THE great prose satirist of the English language.
•  His tombstone reads, "He has gone where savage indignation can tear his heart no more." A hero’s welcome (parades, church bells ringing, bonfires, the whole enchilada) awaited Jonathan Swift when he arrived in Dublin during the late summer of 1726.  This because—in addition to his success with Gulliver’s Travels—he had rallied public opinion for the cause of Irish economic and political independence in his role as M.B. Drapier of St. Francis Street (an alias).  In his Fourth Drapier Letter, addressed to the “Whole People of Ireland,” he declared that “by the Laws of God, of Nature, of Nations, and of your own Country, you are and ought to be as Free a People as your brethren in England.”
Strangely enough, this was the same man who referred to Ireland as “the most miserable country upon earth” and wrote “I do suppose nobody hates and despises this kingdom more than myself” and described the trip from England to Ireland as “a passage to the land I hate.”  Instead of the “fat deanery or lean bishopric” he so assiduously but vainly sought near his literary friends in England, he returned to Ireland for good in 1713 as Dean of St. Patrick’s, to make this “wretched Dublin in Ireland” his permanent home, “a poisoned rate in a hole,” as he vividly describes his situation to his friend Bolingbroke.  However, he was constantly role-playing and he just as often praised Ireland and the quality of his own life there