Jonathan Swift and Swiftiana
at Columbia

ROBERT HALSBAND

JONATHAN Swift, one of the greatest Anglo-Irish writ¬
ers, is at last represented in the Columbia Libraries by
manuscripts as well as by a piece of silver; these liave
recently been presented by Dr. Dallas Pratt. Each of the three
items is relevant to an important aspect of Swift's life and works.

In the controversy between the Ancients and the Moderns
that agitated intellectuals in France and England at the end of
the seventeenth century. Swift was firmly on tlie side of the
Ancients. For him, as for many of his contemporaries, the
classical writers had an impact that w as so immediate and sym¬
pathetic that they seemed contemporary; distances of time and
place were dissolved. Alexander Pope, one of Swift's close
friends, could "imitate" Horace's satires so successfully because
he saw Augustan Rome and Georgian England as comparable
(though far from equal). Swift's familiarity—one can almost
say intimacy—with the classical poets can be seen in his trans¬
lations, imitations, and adaptations as printed in Harold Wil¬
liams's superb edition of his poems.

Gains Valerius Catullus, who is classified by his Loeb Library
translator as "not lower than third on the roll of Roman poets,"
is most famous for his series of lyrics addressed to Lesbia, the
name he gave his faithless and lasci\'ious mistress. It is one of
these—beginning "Lesbia mi dicet semper male"—that Swift
translates in the manuscript given by Columbia; he easily
captures the elegantly jaunty tone of the original Latin. His
final couplet in the eight-line lyric reads:

I curse her ev'ry hour sincerely;
Yet, hang me, but I love her dearly.

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