But it was not long before an attack on Swift was mounted. It began with A Letter from a Clergyman to His Friend, With an Account of the Travels of Capt. Lemuel Gulliver: And a Character of the Author. To Which is Added, The True Reasons Why a Certain Doctor Was Made a Dean (1726)—the first substantial attack on Swift resulting from the publication of his most celebrated work. The identity of the author is unknown. Steele, Swift's implacable political enemy, had retired to the country at this time and was soon to die. Because of the numerous references to Swift's treacherous disloyalty to Steele's friendship, we could speculate on a connection between the anonymous author and Steele and infer that it was a friendly relationship.
The long and breathless title underlines the malicious content of this polemical pamphlet, a pungent libel on Swift's character that includes cutting observations on Swift's chief fiction as well. Obviously, the author's intent is to vilify Swift in retaliation for attacks on the writer's friends. Inspired by the publication of the Travels, he presents a crudely defamatory "Character of the Author." He claims an acquaintance with Swift "in publick and private Life" (p. [4]) but offers no evidence to substantiate this claim. Drawing from common knowledge, he simply cites the well-known negative evidence of A Tale of a Tub, in which Swift, he indignantly asserts like Swift's former enemy William Wotton, "levelled his Jests at Almighty God; banter'd and ridiculed Religion," thereby offending Queen Anne and blocking his own church preferment (p. [19]). Except for "some gross Words, and lewd Descriptions, and had the Inventor's Intention been innocent" (p. [6] [note the suspicion of Swift's political and religious bias]), the author is mildly pleased with the first three voyages. But he finds intolerable the satire on human nature in the last, here echoing Addison's criticism of the demoralizing effect of a satire on mankind (Spectator 249, 5 December 1711).
However, Swift's "Intention" in the first three voyages is, he angrily declares, tinctured by his poisonous malice and envy, the result of twelve years of exile. He is positive of the identity of the vicious person behind the mask of the imaginary memoirist:
Here, Sir, you may see a reverend Divine, a dignify'd Member of the Church unbosoming himself, unloading his Breast, discovering the true Temper of his Soul, drawing his own Picture to the Life; here's no Disguise, none could have done it so well as himself.... (p. [8])
He detects envy in what he believes is the incendiary narrator of the Travels, and insists that by siding with the enemies of the nation, meaning France, Swift was "endeavouring to ruin the British Constitution, set aside the Hanover Succession, and bring in a [tyrannical] Popish Pretender," and, of course, "destroy our Church Establishment" (pp. [14], [8-9]). Thereupon, he furiously threatens Swift with punishment for his pernicious attack on the government, that is, the present political administration. Clearly motivated by politico-religious fears, this Whig militantly defends not only the Protestant succession but also the ministry of Sir Robert Walpole—which the numerous allusions to the "Great Man" and "the greatest Man this Nation ever produced" (p. [15]) confirm. Swift's mean character of Flimnap, the Lilliputian Prime Minister, stung badly: "With what Indignation must every one that has had the Honour to be admitted to this Great Man, review the Doctor's charging him with being morose" (p. [15]). He counters Swift's insulting reduction of the Great Man to a petty little man with an egregiously fulsome panegyric that magnifies the virtues of Sir Robert's public and private character, and concludes with abuse of Swift's character as an Irish dean disaffected from the government—hence deserving of permanent exile in Ireland.[[1]]
The author of the fiery Letter focuses on Swift's impiety—pointing to his wickedness, the sneering tone of his sacrilegious satire, his indiscreet joking about religion, all of which Swift's enemies were quick to emphasize as the outstanding features of A Tale of a Tub, as well as portions of the Travels. For example, even Gay, in the letter to Swift quoted above (17 November 1726) also noted that those "who frequent the Church, say his [Gulliver's] design is impious, and that it is an insult on Providence, by depreciating the works of the Creator,"—a line of attack soon to be pursued by Edward Young, James Beattie, and others who were not in the least charmed by Swift's satire. But Swift's friends were not idle; for it was precisely this bitter onslaught on Swift's religion in the Letter that brought another writer to the defense in the ironically entitled Gulliver Decypher'd: or Remarks on a Late Book, Intitled, Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World, Vindicating the Reverend Dean on Whom it is Maliciously Father'd, With Some Conjectures Concerning the Real Author (1726).[[2]]
This writer, probably John Arbuthnot, may be considered one of the earliest defenders of the religious orthodoxy of the Travels. He extracts passages from Swift's work, such as the Lilliputian quarrel over breaking eggs, the satire on corrupt bishops, and the affirmation of the principle of limited toleration for religious dissent in Brobdingnag as evidences of his belief, presented ironically, that "the Reverend Dean" could not possibly have fathered the work because the author of the Travels did not have religious ideals in mind. One of the passages that this defender cites demonstrates that only a person like the religious dean could have made this observation about the concern for religious instruction by the Lilliputians before their fall from original perfection:
... we cannot think, but that the courteous Reader is fully satisfied, that the Reverend D—— we are vindicating, cannot possibly be the Author of this part of the Book that is maliciously ascrib'd to him; which is so very trifling, that it is not to be imagined that a serious D—n, who has Religion, and the good of Souls so much at heart, could act so contrary to the Dignity of his Character merely to gratify a little Party Malice, or to oblige a Set of People who are never likely to have it in their Power to serve him or any of their Adherents. Doubtless he, good Man, employs his Time to more sacred Purposes than in writing Satyrs and Libels upon his Superiors, or in composing Grub-street Pamphlets to divert the Vulgar of all Denominations.[[3]]
Consider also his defense of Swift's exposure of the corrupt bishops, the "holy Persons" in the House of Lords (Travels, II, vi). Believing that Swift's pungent satire on the church hierarchy is good and true, he makes the dean himself the target of a playful bit of raillery, a type of irony for which Swift and Arbuthnot were both notorious:
Being slavish prostitute Chaplains is certainly a good step towards becoming an Holy Lord; but it does not always succeed, as some Folks very well know by Experience; for the same Degree of Iniquity that can raise one Man to an Archbishoprick, cannot lift another above a Deanery.[[4]]