SWEYN I

(d. 1014), king of Denmark; s. of King Harold Bluetooth; forced Ethelred the Unready to pay tribute, 994; avenged Ma acre of St. Brice’s Day, 1002, by ravaging England till his death. Brit. satirist, novelist, e ayist, pamphleteer; greatest prose-writer of XVIII. cent.; received livings of Laracor and Rathbeggin, Meath. During visits to London he met Add is on, Steele, and other Whigs; his Di ensions of Athens and Rome, a pamphlet, defended Whig. ministers, 1701. In allegorical Tale of @ Tub—pub. 1704, with Batile of the Books, written 1697, a brilliant mock heroic prose epic on quarrel of Ancients fashion the shams and exce es of ee Churches of Rome, England, an Scotland (Peter, Martin, and Jack). Leaving Whigs for Tories, 1710, S. raked his former political friends with telling pamphlets (e. g.) Conduct of the Allies, 1711; Public Spirit Whigs, 1714, and received Deanery of St. Patrick’s, 1713,.instead of expected bishopric. On fall of Tories, 1714, S. returned to Ireland, hopele ly embittered. Here he married ‘Stella’ (Esther Johnson), whom he had met at Temple’s and to whom his remarkable Journal was addre ed. A disappointed admirer was Esther Vanhomrigh, the ‘Vane a’ of S.’s poem (Cadenus and Vane a). By Drapier’s Letters, 1724, he saved Ireland from ‘Wood’s halfpence’ and became a national champion. Gulliver’s Travels, his best-known work, appeared - 1726, anonymously, like almost all his writings. His last years were darkened by insanity.