Life
?1746-1815; b. Dublin; son of a Rev. Deane Swift (1707-1783), grandson of another Deane Swift (d.1713) [q.v.], father of Deane Swift (b. ?1770 [q.v.]); grad. Oxford, 1767; Middle Temple, 1774; English bar; twelve months imprisonment arising from quarrel with TCD fellows for not honouring his son, ‘the cleverest fellow in all Ireland’, Burrowes getting six months for a libel on him, two unhappily sharing the only comfortable chambers in the Marshalsea, reached an accommodation and passed their time amiable; The Gamblers (1777), a poem, and other works; part editor of the Patriot newspaper; The Accomplished Quack: A Treatise on Political Charlatanis (Dublin 1811); erroneously set down as author of Metropolis by Carmichael; also Cutcha-cutchoo, prob. by J. W. Croker; also Touchstones of Truth, an attack on Dr Dobbin for obstructing the marriage of Miss Dobbin to Rev. Mr Le Fanu, father of J. S. Le Fanu; part editor of The Patriot; his Animadversions of the Fellows of TCD (1794) includes Latin poems by his son Deane in evidence of his wit; supplied Sir Walter Scott with anecdotes for his Life of Swift (1814); prob. he and not his son Edmund was the author of an opera The Five Lovers (q.d.). ODNB PI
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Works
[Anon,] The Gamblers: A Poem (1777); The Temple of Folly, in four cantos (1787); The Female Parliament: A Poem (1789); The Monster at Large (1791); An Essay on Rime (in Transactions of the RIA, 1810); The Accomplished Quack: A Treatise on Political Charlatanism, an Advice to Literary Empirics and Nostrums to Make Great Men (Dublin 1811).
A letter by Theophilus Swift is printed in Charles Henry Wilson, ed., Swiftiana, 2 vols. in 1 (London: R. Phillips 1804) [also a life of Jonathan Swift]. He is also the author of “The Utility of Union illustrated and set forth in a Variety of Statements”, by Thepohilus Swift, Esq.", in Tracts on the Subject of an Union, between Great Britain and Ireland (Dublin: Milliken 1800).
Commentary
David A. Webb, ed., TCD: An Anthology, 1845-1945 (Tralee: Kerryman [1945]), incls. ‘Eminent Trinitymen: Edmund Swift’ (No.IV), pp.5-7 [prev. in TCD Miscellany, 8 June 1933]. Webb quotes Theophilus Swift: ‘I seldom deliberate: my feelings are my only guide. They have never yet deceived me’; notes his challenge to Duke of Richmond, whom he had never met, and his defence of a criminal so degraded that the whole of the Irish bar declined the brief; recounts that he considered his son Edmund [sic] to be the finest scholar outside of Dr. Barrett, and thought by him to be the object of malevolence from Dr. Burrows; Edmund Swift entered TCD from Eton, July 1792; disparaged by Dr. Hall who said of him that ‘he possessed neither skill nor learning for Latin verse was nothing but a “knack”’; Theophilus charged his son with writing a Latin epigram against Hall, which his elder brother translated into portentous English; distributed by the father to all the Fellows; Edmund ‘plucked’ at examinations next term by Dr. Burrows, as being deficient in Locke and Euclid; quitted college; Theophilus Swift searched up the Statures; Dr. Burrows besought the students from the pulpit not to heed any libel of the Fellows; Animadversions on the Fellows of Trinity College (oct. 1794), 180pp., confused and agitated, with an appendix containing specimens of his son’s verse; called the Fellows ‘literary buffoons’ who ‘filled their young pupils with narrow notions’; the college was called ‘the Silent Sister’, held under ‘the bondage of Monkery; proposed a new university at Armagh with lower salaries for the Fellows, who would not, like those in TCD, be won’t to ‘chambering without the walls, and misleading their pupils from the paths of knowledge and virtue; accused the Fellows of perjury and fornication since many had married ‘Int he face of Queen Elizabeth and the Holy Evangelists’; united to women not legally their wives; information granted against Swift for libel; spent 12 months in Newgate; Burrows published denunciation of Swift, also libellous, resulting in a suit by Swift, and a term of 6 months for Burrows; Swift publishes a further pamphlet; Dr. Burrows forced to share a double room with Swift; calls Edmund’s move to Oxford unremarkable; passed life as Keeper of Crown Jewels, d. 28 Dec. 1875.
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References
Dictionary of National Biography , gives dates positively as 1746-1815; Irish writer, son of Deane Swift (1707-1783), collateral descendent of Jonathan Swift; BA Oxon., 1767; Middle Temple, 1744; noted eccentric in Dublin; a duel with Charles Lennox [later Duke of Richmond], 1789; abused the fellows of TCD because his son was not awarded distinctions; his Animadversions (1794), charges the fellows with not keeping their celibacy undertakings; he was sentence to 12 months imprisonment for libel, while Dr. Burrowes received a lesser imposition; notes that Deane Swift’s Monks harps on the same theme. [article by D. J. O’Donoghue].
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Notes
W. J. McCormack, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland (1991 edn.) makes mention of Theophilus Swift, ‘an old lawyer’ who issued The Touchstone of Truth (1811), a pamphlet assailing Emma Dobbins for broken marital promises at the date of her engagement to Thomas Le Fanu, f. of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. (McCormack, p.4.)
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