Borges uses two incisive metaphors to create the effect of some Irish writing on English letters.

‘(Irish writers) … made deep incursions into the territory of English letters, pruning all rhetorical exuberance with frank impiety.  Jonathan Swift acted like a corrosive acid on the elation of human hope.’

Source: Jorge Luis Borges, On Writing, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010, p. 11