Definition for Swift, Jonathan
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Swift, Jonathan (1667 to 1745): Clergyman and satirist, born in Ireland. He studied at Dublin, then moved to England. During a visit to Ireland, he was ordained in the Anglican Church (1695). He wrote several poems, then turned to satire, exposing religious and intellectual complacency in A Tale of a Tub (1704), and produced a wide range of political and religious essays and pamphlets. His world-famous satire, Gulliver's Travels, appeared in 1726. Despite declining mental powers in his dotage, he preserved enough (non-) sense to leave a provision in his will for a hospital for “idiotes and lunaticks” in Ireland, for, as he wrote, “no other nation wanted it so much.”
