Yes, that Jonathan Swift, Gulliver and his Travels, A Modest Proposal etc. Like Defoe who we've visited a dozen times for his thoughts on the South Sea Bubble (and fake news, pump-n-dumps and plague) Swift was a keen observer of the action of that amazing year, 1720:
THE bold encroachers on the deep,
Gain by degrees huge tracts of land,
Till Neptune, with one general sweep,
Turns all again to barren strand.
The multitude's capricious pranks,
Are said to represent the seas;
Which, breaking bankers and the banks,
Resume their own whene'er they please.
Money, the life-blood of the nation,
Corrupts and stagnates in the veins,
Unless a proper circulation,
Its motion and its heat maintains.
Because 'tis lordly not to pay,
Quakers and aldermen in state,
Like peers, have levees every day
Of duns attending at their gate.
We want our money on the nail;
The banker's ruin'd if he pays:
They seem to act an ancient tale;
The birds are met to strip the jays....
Swift lost money in the stock and the next year wrote a very bitter poem:
YE wise philosophers, explain
What magick makes our money rise,
When dropt into the Southern main;
Or do these jugglers cheat our eyes?
Put in your money fairly told;
Presto! be gone — 'Tis here again:
Ladies and gentlemen, behold,
Here's every piece as big as ten.
Thus in a basin drop a shilling,
Then fill the vessel to the brim;
You shall observe, as you are filling,
The ponderous metal seems to swim:
It rises both in bulk and height,
Behold it swelling like a sop;
The liquid medium cheats your sight;
Behold it mounted to the top!
In stock three hundred thousand pounds;
I have in view a lord's estate;
My manors all contiguous round;
A coach and six, and serv'd in plate!
Thus, the deluded bankrupt raves;
Puts all upon a desperate bet;
Then plunges in the Southern waves,
Dipt over head and ears — in debt....
—The South Sea Project, 1721
