'A Tender-Hearted Operator'

Sir David Dalrymple (1726-92) was a Scottish lawyer, judge and historian, friend to both Boswell and Johnson. He seems to have been well-read and broadly cultured. Dr. Johnson described Dalrymple’s personal library as “the most learned room in Europe.” In July 1763, in a letter to Boswell, Dalrymple writes: 

“It gives me pleasure to think that you have obtained the friendship of Mr. Samuel Johnson. He is one of the best moral writers which England has produced. At the same time, I envy you the free and undisguised converse with such a man.”

 

Johnson was already acknowledged as a literary “celebrity,” author of the great Dictionary. Dalrymple’s appreciation went deeper:

 

“May I beg you to present my best respects to him, and to assure him of the veneration which I entertain for the authour of the Rambler and of Rasselas? Let me recommend this last work to you; with the Rambler you certainly are acquainted. In Rasselas you will see a tender-hearted operator, who probes the wound only to heal it. Swift, on the contrary, mangles human nature. He cuts and slashes, as if he took pleasure in the operation, like the tyrant who said, Ita feri ut se sentiat emori.”

 

The Latin tag is drawn from Suetonius’ “Life of Caligula”: “Strike so that he may feel that he is dying.” It is apt. Swift was given to savagery in verse and prose. I recalled Dalrymple's letter, included by Boswell in his Life of Johnson, when reading Stephen Shivone’s introduction to J.V. Cunningham’s The Exclusions of a Rhyme, recently republished by Wiseblood Books – a rare affirmation of literary worth in publishing today. Shivone writes of Cunningham’s work:

 

“There is something almost fierce and wild, as of a barely tamable animal, in his verse, which the form seems to be struggling to keep at bay; and the very strength needed to control the wild emotion somehow manifests its power.”

 

Cunningham wrote “With a Copy of Swift’s Works” in 1944. It was originally published in The Judge is Fury (1947) and is included in the newly published volume:

 

“Underneath this pretty cover

Lies Vanessa’s, Stella’s lover.

You that undertake this story

For his life nor death be sorry

Who the Absolute so loved

Motion to its zero moved,

Till, immobile in that chill,

Fury hardened in the will,

And the trivial, bestial flesh

In its jacket ceased to thresh,

And the soul none dare forgive

Quiet lay, and ceased to live.”