The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and near-contemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of literature. The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage Series present a record of this early criticism. The search for eighteenth-century Swift criticism is a rather frustrating one, and in this volume some comments by early-nineteenth-century writers have been included, to suggest that slowly a certain detachment from the political and personal events of Swift's life was enabling critics to turn their attention to the works. This volume makes available much material which would otherwise be difficult of access, and it is hoped that the modern reader will be thereby helped towards an informed understanding of the ways in which literature has been read and judged. - General editor's preface.