Jonathan Swift’s Hoax of 1722 upon Ebenezor Elliston

Abstract

While examining some Dublin newspapers from the period 1719–22 I lately came upon additional information which may be useful to readers of Dr. Daniel L. McCue’s recent scholarly account of ‘A Newly Discovered Broadsheet of Swift’s Last Speech and Dying Words of Ebenezor Elliston’.1 In addition to Swift’s parody, the three other sources of information about Ebenezor Elliston, the victim of Swift’s hoax of 1722, have hitherto been: ‘The Last Farewell of Ebenezer Elliston To This Transitory World’, an autobiographical Dublin broadsheet of 1722 preserved now in Archbishop Marsh’s Library, Dublin, and printed by Professor Herbert Davis as an appendix (pp. 363–7) to volume IX of his edition of Swift’s Prose Works; 2 George Faulkner’s headnote to Swift’s broadsheet as published in the 1735 Dublin edition of Swift’s Works;3 and a note appended to the same piece by Thomas Sheridan, the younger, in his 1784 edition of Swift’s Works.4 These last two pieces of information were accepted without question and have been merely paraphrased or summarized by such later editors of Swift’s works as John Nichols, who mistakenly attributed Sheridan’s note to Faulkner, by Sir Walter Scott, and by Temple Scott.5