Life
?1746-1815; b. Dublin; grad. Oxford, 1767; Middle Temple, 1774; English bar; twelve months imprisonment arising from quarrel with TCD fellows for not honouring his son, ‘the cleverest fellow in all Ireland’, Burrowes getting six months for a libel on him, two unhappily sharing the only comfortable chambers in the Marshalsea, reached an accommodation and passed their time amiable; The Gamblers (1777), a poem, and other works; son of a Rev. Deane Swift (1707-1783), grandson of another Deane Swift (d.1713), and father of Deane Swift (b. ?1770); part editor of the Patriot newspaper; The Accomplished Quack: A Treatise on Political Charlatanis (Dublin 1811); erroneously set down as author of Metropolis by Carmichael; also Cutcha-cutchoo, prob. by J. W. Croker; also Touchstones of Truth, an attack on Dr Dobbin for obstructing the marriage of Miss Dobbin to Rev. Mr Le Fanu, father of J. S. Le Fanu; part editor of The Patriot; his Animadversions of the Fellows of TCD (1794) includes Latin poems by his son Deane’s in evidence of his wit; supplied Sir Walter Scott with anecdotes for his Life of Swift (1814); prob. he and not his son Edmund was the author of an opera The Five Lovers (q.d.). ODNB PI
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Works
[Anon,] The Gamblers: A Poem (1777); The Temple of Folly, in four cantos (1787); The Female Parliament: A Poem (1789); The Monster at Large (1791); An Essay on Rime (in Transactions of the RIA, 1810); The Accomplished Quack: A Treatise on Political Charlatanism, an Advice to Literary Empirics and Nostrums to Make Great Men (Dublin 1811). A letter by Theophilus Swift is printed in Charles Henry Wilson, ed., Swiftiana, 2 vols. in 1 (London: R. Phillips 1804) [also a life of Jonathan Swift].
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References
Dictionary of National Biography , gives dates positively as 1746-1815; Irish writer, son of Deane Swift (1707-1783), collateral descendent of Jonathan Swift; BA Oxon., 1767; Middle Temple, 1744; noted eccentric in Dublin; a duel with Charles Lennox [later Duke of Richmond], 1789; abused the fellows of TCD because his son was not awarded distinctions; his Animadversions (1794), charges the fellows with not keeping their celibacy undertakings; he was sentence to 12 months imprisonment for libel, while Dr. Burrowes received a lesser imposition; notes that Deane Swift’s Monks harps on the same theme. [article by D. J. O’Donoghue].
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Notes
W. J. McCormack, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland (1991 edn.) makes mention of Theophilus Swift, ‘an old lawyer’ who issued The Touchstone of Truth (1811), a pamphlet assailing Emma Dobbins for broken marital promises at the date of her engagement to Thomas Le Fanu, f. of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. (McCormack, p.4.)
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