Saturday, January the 3rd, 2004
back to: title, date or indexes
Patrick Delany was an 18th century Irish clergyman, a friend of Jonathan Swift, who—among other writings—produced fifteen issues of a weekly entitled The Humanist in 1757. Among topics addressed in its pages were: the renouncing of docked tails for horses; the lawfulness of eating blood; the procreation of man after the Flood; and the advantages of polygamy.
Was The Humanist a forerunner of Hooting Yard? I think it was! Here is Delany announcing his intentions in the first issue: the paper “would interest itself in all the concerns of human nature … which means not only amusement … but likewise something more than mere amusement … being calculated to convey some little useful and entertaining knowledge of various kinds, historical, classical, natural, moral, and now and then a little religion”.
One other note about Delany: he was highly ambitious and lived extravagantly beyond his means. At his parish outside Dublin, he decided to improve the grounds, and the few acres of land were subjected to an attempt to show how “the obdurate and straight line of the Dutch might he softened into a curve, the terrace melted into a swelling bank, and the walks opened to catch the vicinal country.”
In An Epistle Upon An Epistle (1730), Swift recounted his follies:
But you, forsooth, your all must squander
On that poor spot, call'd Dell-ville, yonder;
And when you've been at vast expenses
In whims, parterres, canals and fences,
Your assets fail, and cash is wanting;
Nor farther buildings, farther planting;
No wonder when you raise and level,
Think this wall low, and that wall bevel.
Here a convenient box you found,
Which you demolish'd to the ground;
Then built, then took up with your arbour,
And set the house to Rupert Barber.