James Arbuckle (c.1700-1742), poet and essayist, was born in Belfast to
a Presbyterian merchant family of Scottish origin and educated at
Glasgow University (1717-1723). In Glasgow, his poetry, influenced by
Pope and the Latin classics, won praise from leading members of
Scotland's literary and political establishment, including Allan Ramsay.
In 1723 he moved to Dublin, producing under the name "Hibernicus"
Ireland's first literary journal, in collaboration with a group of young
Whig intellectuals forming the "Molesworth circle". He aimed at first to
avoid politics, but in the highly politicized Dublin of Dean Swift that
proved impossible. He was satirized by members of Swift's circle and
responded with the ironic Panegyric on the Rev Dean Swift. His later
work, especially The Tribune, developed a radical and anticlerical
critique of contemporary Ireland, in which Swift was represented more as
Church Tory than Irish patriot. Arbuckle was well-known in his day, but
his work has not been published since the end of the eighteenth century.
He has often been discussed in modern scholarly work across a range of
disciplines: on Swift and Pope; Scottish poetry and especially Allan
Ramsay; Francis Hutcheson and the early Scottish Enlightenment; the
background to the United Irishmen of 1798; the history of Irish
presbyterians. Arbuckle himself has not been the focus of detailed
scholarly inquiry until now. This edition presents an annotated
selection of Arbuckle's work in poetry and prose. It begins with a
substantial introduction dealing with his biography and political and
literary context. It is then divided into three parts. The first, on his
Scottish period, includes the annotated texts of his two principal
poems, Snuff and Glotta. The second presents a selection of the
"Hibernicus" essays, grouped by four themes: literary (which will
include a selection of his Horace translations); philosophical
(responding principally to Francis Hutcheson); political (placing him in
the contemporary varieties of Whiggism, and especially the dispute
between Walpole and "Opposition" Whigs); religious (the focus here is on
his writing on toleration). The final section deals with his response to
Swift's Irish writing, as demonstrated in selected essays from The
Tribune and in A Panegyric.
