Another Swiftian Tidbit to Tide You Through the Day
This is from his prose work. Two works everyone seems well acquainted with are Gulliver's Travels and "A Modest Proposal." But Swift was as inveterate satirists (there are those that would call him "Bitter." Well, they're probably right, but who can tell. Maybe "accurate" for his time is a better description.) As with all good Satire, Swift did not usually target a person but an attitude or a general approach to things. Here is his insight from "Abolishing of Christianity in England."
from "Abolishing of Christianity in England" Jonathan Swift Therefore I freely own, that all appearances are against me. The system of the Gospel, after the fate of other systems, is generally antiquated and exploded, and the mass or body of the common people, among whom it seems to have had its latest credit, are now grown as much ashamed of it as their betters; opinions, like fashions, always descending from those of quality to the middle sort, and thence to the vulgar, where at length they are dropped and vanish.
