A Tale Of A Tub

The narrator contemplates how a philosopher or speaker can be heard in a crowd. If the orator is placed to high up, the audience might not be able to hear or see him. Inclement weather might also destroy a platform. He describes three methods for oratorical presentation: “the Pulpit, the Ladder, and the Stage-itinerant” (34). The pulpit is well known and of a perfect size for public speaking. He recommends a specific pulpit that is best. Ladders also function well for “ascending orators” (36)m and the Stage-itinerant is flexible and can be erected at any time. It all depends on the preferences of the speaker. However, it is ultimately important that the person talking be placed in a position above the crowd. This is because words are heavy, as are bodies, and they leave a weighty mark on the observers. If the orator is not up high, the words “will neither carry a good aim nor fall down with a sufficient force” (37). This has to do with the core of nature itself, with the science of sound and gravity. 

The Pulpit, Ladder, and Stage-itinerant are also symbolic. The Pulpit is the place where famous British writers, or “modern saints” (39), relate their works to the masses, though they have to be careful of the rotting wood of their dais and the worms in the cavities—perhaps representative of false logic or writers who are being influenced by outside forces. The Ladder represents poetry because it is a place for convincing the audience with a song, and it allows the speaker to climb slowly and not go all the way to the top. The Stage-itinerant category includes short pieces of prose and theatre made by the writers from Grub Street (a street that housed many small-time publishers and writers). The narrator states that his own treatise falls into this Stage-itinerant class, as Grub Street has adopted him as one of their own. This may be facetious, as Grub Street was not considered a purveyor of highbrow literature. 

In fact, the narrator mentions a dispute between Grub Street and Gresham and Will’s. Gresham refers to the Royal Society, a group of men interested in science, and Will’s refers to a coffee house where men interested in letters gathered. There is conflict between these entities because the writers of Grub Street are seen to be more interested in quantity than quality and do not write pieces concerned with being high art. Gresham and Will’s have challenged Grub Street to compare the weight and quantity of books produced. Grub Street suggests that an impartial person judge which society can claim the pamphlets, books, and treatises of which writer. Indeed, Gresham and Will’s are already becoming more popular, with writers defecting from Grub Street to join their ranks, as if they were ashamed to have been considered Grub Street hacks.

The narrator writes that he will now discuss annotations of great works that he has been urged to complete. The titles are a collection of real works like the tale “Tom Thumb” and “The Hind and Panther,” the latter a poem by John Dryden that details his conversion to Catholicism. His conversion was coincident with the Catholic James II’s rise to the throne and was decried by many Protestants of the day. Swift calls the author of “Tom Thumb” a “Pythagorean philosopher,” and his annotation of Dryden’s work as “intended for a complete abstract of sixteen thousand schoolmen from Scotus to Bellarmine” (44). Here, he uses satire to both make light of and deride the authors of the works, while also highlighting Dryden’s hypocrisy.

The annotations of these works better serve the public and the writer, the narrator notes, than the narrator wasting away his life in the service of his nation by discussing the vagaries of government bills and plots. He has written “[f]ourscore and eleven pamphlets […] under three reigns, and for the service of six-and-thirty factions” (45-46). However, finding that the State does not want him to be its voice any longer, he has decided to become a philosopher. 

After deciding what he will write about and what type of thinker he is, the narrator must come up with a title for his work. He reasons that it is in vogue to have a long title, and a work being like a child, why not give it a long Christian name. He again takes a jab at Dryden, who has used a lot of outside influences in his work. Therefore, he jokes that he has split this treatise into 40 sections.