In an effort to educate myself, I am reading The Oxford Book of Essays, chosen and edited by John Gross. [copies for sale here] There’s 142 of the blighters, so it will take me all year. To make this “stick” I am going to blog each essay.
This essay is online
Who was the author:
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish[1] writer, essayist, satirist, and Anglican cleric. He was the author of the satirical prose novel Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and the creator of the fictional island of Lilliput. He is regarded by many as the greatest satirist of the Georgian era and one of the foremost prose authors in the history of English and world literature.[2][3][4]
What happened the year they were born (and the C02 ppm): 1667
The Big Events they were alive for: A lot! Battle of the Boyne, Glorious Revolution, Jacobites etc
What happened in the year they died (and the C02 ppm): 1745
My awareness of/appreciation of this author (if any): Well, I’ve read Gulliver’s Travels and a Modest Proposal
What’s the essay?
The essay is called “A Meditation Upon a Broom-Stick.” It’s 1 page long. For me, the key take-aways were that Swift liked a good piss-take (we knew this!) and this is mocking Robert Boyle’s meditations.
According to Wikipedia
The satire’s origins lie in Swift’s time at Moor Park, Surrey, when he acted as Secretary to William Temple. While in the household, Swift would read passages from Robert Boyle‘s Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects (1665) for the young Esther Johnson (“Stella” to Swift).
Boyle’s Reflections took the form of meditations on everyday subjects, where they were likened to religious themes. Boyle would consider a fire, or house cleaning, and see in it a reflection of God’s relationship to man, or man to his soul. These reflections were very popular in the Temple household. One day, Swift, being bored with the predictability of Boyle’s points, wrote his own Meditation[1] and put it into the book. When the time came to read for the day, he read, instead of Boyle, his own Meditation Upon a Broomstick. The ladies of the house did not catch on until near the end of the meditation that it was absurd.
Swift later wrote up the one-page Meditation in a more formal manner.[2]
Meditation Upon a Broomstick – Wikipedia
Best line(s)
till the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk
Partial judges that we are of our own excellencies, and other men’s defaults!
and pray what is man but a topsy-turvy creature? His animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational; his head where his heels should be, grovelling on the earth.
Stuff I had to look up
Word – besom
A besom (/ˈbiːzəm/) is a broom, a household implement used for sweeping. The term is mostly reserved for a traditional broom constructed from a bundle of twigs tied to a stout pole. The twigs used could be broom (i.e. Genista, from which comes the modern name “broom” for the tool), heather or similar. The song “Buy Broom Buzzems” from Northern England refers to both types of twig. From the phrase broom besom the more common broom comes. In Scotland and Bulgaria, besoms are still occasionally to be found at the edge of forests where they are stacked for use in early response to an outbreak of fire.
Stuff worth thinking about.
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Stuff to look up
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Connects to (watch this space – if there are later essays that resonate with this one, I’ll come back and add a link to the post for that essay).
marchudson.net 
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