Swift and Pope: Satirizing Death in Enlightenment Poetry

Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope mastered satire as a primary means of poetic communication. Swift's "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" is essentially his self-written obituary. With candid self-insight, Swift admits his flaws, his jealousies, his insecurities, and his egotism. His characteristic tongue-in-cheek style belies the weight of the subject matter; he knew his death was imminent and, at the most basic level, wanted to pen something that displayed how he hoped to be remembered.

Swift's friend Alexander Pope did not copy him. However, Pope's "Epistle to Arbuthnot" is the obituary of his dear friend John Arbuthnot, who also happened to be a friend of Swift's. The "Epistle to Arbuthnot" is similar in tone and style to "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift." Both poems are brash, humorous, sarcastic, and brutally honest. Although morbid in theme, the poems serve distinct literary functions. Pope and Swift mock death while they are still alive, and they do so fearlessly and with the same lack of compunction the authors reveal throughout the rest of their literary canon.

Mocking death is the final frontier for both Swift and Pope. After taking jabs at social and political issues throughout their careers, Swift and Pope tackle a more existential issue: mortality. Both poets confront their own deaths with aplomb. As Pope writes about the death of his friend, he does so with the understanding that it is his own mortality he contemplates. For instance, lines 302 and 303 of "Epistle to Arbuthnot" provide an example of how Pope writes himself into his friend's eulogy: "Make satire a lampoon, and fiction, lie / A lash like mine no honest man shall dread." His roast of his friend is as much a reflection of his own temperament as Swift's self-eulogy.

The motivations for writing an autobiographical obituary and an obituary of a friend include the willingness, desire, and need to satirize one of the heaviest matters in human experience: death. For artists and creative figures like Swift and Pope, death entails the need to reassess one's legacy. In doing so, Swift and Pope reach the climax of their work. Their reassessment becomes something that is far from self-indulgent, even as they write about themselves.

There are also deeply personal reasons for penning their respective morbid poems. Swift controls how he is remembered; his death is not the end of his life but the beginning of a timeless legacy. Writing his obituary gives him a sense of control over his destiny. The self-reflection is remarkably personal, yet paradoxically detached.

In "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift," Swift makes fun of his egotistical motivations and his need to be remembered and appreciated. "What Poet would not grieve to see, / His Brethren write as well as he? / But rather than they should excel, / He'd wish his Rivals all in Hell." He makes fun of the insecurities that plague writers and artists. Like all others concerned about their legacy, Swift writes about "ambition," "envy," and "pride" in overt and joyous displays of honesty.

Likewise, Pope probes questions like "Why did I write? what sin to me unknown / Dipp'd me in ink, my parents', or my own? / As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame," (lines 125–127). Pope's "Epistle to Arbuthnot" was, in his own words, a work of several years "wherein the question is stated, what were and are my Motives of writing, the objections to them and my answers" (Lancashire, 2009). It is as if Pope uses Dr. Arbuthnot's impending death to write a poem that had already been brewing inside of him. He loves his friends; of that there is no doubt. Yet the epistle is not necessarily written on the fly for the specific occasion of Dr. Arbuthnot's passing. Rather, Pope understands that he needs to dig deep, channeling grief and mourning into something eternal and timeless.

Swift, too, understands that he needs to seize the opportunity to invest possibly one last time in his writing. Faced with his own death, Swift channels his fears and anxiety into what he does best: writing. The motivation for penning his own eulogy is to empower the poet.

Pope mentions Swift, and Swift mentions Pope, indicating that their respective motivations for writing poems about death certainly hinge on their deep and lasting friendships. In "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift," Swift mentions his friend Pope with sheer adoration: "In Pope, I cannot read a Line, / But with a Sigh, I wish it mine: / When he can in one Couplet fix / More Sense than I can do in Six." Just as Pope eulogizes his friend and in doing so says a great deal about himself, Swift eulogizes himself and by doing so says a great deal about his friend. He admits his kindhearted feelings of jealousy born of his admiration of Pope's wit.

Therefore, Swift's "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" is in part undertaken to let his friends know how he truly feels about them. Both poets use the opportunity to write extensively about how they feel about their friends, their contemporaries, and their critics. They write about how they perceive themselves and how they wish they were perceived. "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" and "Epistle to Arbuthnot" are poems that encapsulate writing careers and permit the poets to have control over how they are remembered.

Motivations for compiling and publishing poems like these also include honoring the tight circle of friends that Pope and Swift belonged to. The importance of friendship within Enlightenment literary circles becomes clear, as Swift also mentions Arbuthnot in his "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift." These men shared political passions and genuinely wanted to use the power of the pen to raise awareness about prevailing social concerns. Swift writes, "Arbuthnot is no more my Friend, / Who dares to Irony pretend; / Which I was born to introduce, / Refin'd it first, and shew'd its Use."

Pope even goes so far as to use Arbuthnot's eulogy as a way to draw attention to himself. For instance, Pope compares himself to Homer: "And when I die, be sure you let me know / Great Homer died three thousand years ago," (line 123). Ironically, their understanding of their own power never becomes arrogance. They understand their egotism, and in this acknowledgement, egotism becomes elevated and distilled into confident intelligence and wisdom.