The Proverbs in Swift's "Polite Conversation"

Abstract

POLITE CONVERSATION consists of three dialogues and an introduction in which the author;' Simon Wagstaff, tells how he has labored for thirty-six years to gather from select society the flowers of wit and eloquence which the dialogues contain: always kept a large table-book in my pocket; and as soon as I left the company, I immediately entered the choicest expressions that passed during the visit; which, returning home, I transcribed in a fair hand, but somewhat enlarged'' Most of the recent comment on Conversation, including that of Wyld, Davis, and Price,2 has assumed that Wagstaff's statement is a fairly accurate account of Swift's own method: that is, that the dialogues are Swift's own assemblage of the cliches and small-talk formulas of his day, drawn from direct observation. George Mayhew has lately reinforced this opinion with the evidence furnished by a pocket notebook of Swift's now in the Huntington Library. Most of the notebook, which Mayhew dates from 1734 to I736, is in Swift's Anglo-Latin; the single page in English is headed Polite and contains twenty-one entries, six or seven of which appear in Conversoation. On the basis of this page Mayhew states: It may reasonably be concluded that Wagstaff's methods and Swift's were the same; that this page of manuscript represents portions of actual conversations which Swift overheard in Dublin drawing rooms and recorded in briefest form, hot as he heard them, later to be written out fair, and amplified3