SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

Swift's sermon of 1715, "On False Witness," is, compared to previous homilies on "sins of the tongue" (by Isaac Barrow, Robert South, Ezekiel, Hopkins, Peter Newcome), unique in focusing on government informers, in addressing its "Hearers" not as potential liars but as potential victims of lying, and in offering the congregation advice on how to avoid entrapment by spies. This choice of focus, determined by Swift's immediate aim of protecting his neighbors from the flourishing post-Succession "trade in carrying stories to the government," is relevant to Gulliver's Travels. Alternately victim and perpetrator of false witness, Gulliver exposes the unreliability of those who "inform" on the basis of individual observation, rather than speaking for, and from within, a neighborly community.