;»jvl(^ .,T7 ^3; fi «ff( \ !•#;•? '■#■■• pT^y \w^ OF THE ^ UNIVERSITY J ON A Til A N THE LIFE OP JONATHAN SWIFT By JOHJSr FORSTER VOLUME THE FIRST 1667—1711 NEW YORK IIAKPErw & BROTIIEllS, PUBLISHERS r R A >' K L I N SQUARE ISTG r* . OB' _^ V. u -' jzr6> O PREFACE. The subject of this book has been in my thoughts for many years, and to the collection of materials for illustration of it I have given much labor and time. The rule of measuring what is knowable of a famous man by the inverse ratio of what has been said about him, is applicable to Swift in a marked degree. Few men who have been talked about so much are known so little. Ilis writings and his life are connected so closely, that to judge of either fairly with an imperfect knowledge of the other is not possible ; and only thus can be excused what Jef- frey hardily said, and many have too readily believed — that he was an apostate in politics, iniidel or indifferent in religion, a defamer of humanity, the slanderer of statesmen who had served him, and destroyer of the women who loved him. Belief in this, or any part of it, may be pardonable where the life is known insufficiently, and the writings not at all ; but to a competent acquaintance with either or both it is monstrous as well as incredible. ^fcSwift's later time, when he was governing Ireland as well as his ^Sanery, and the world was tilled with the fame of Gulliver, is broad- ly and intelligibly written. rBut as to all the rest, his life is a work unfinished ; to which no one has brought the minute examination indispensably required, where the whole of a career has to be consid- ered to get at the proper comprehension of single parts of it. The writers accepted as authorities for the obscurer portion are found to be practically worthless, and the defect is not supplied by the later, and greater biographers. Johnson did him no kind of justice be- cause of too little liking for him; and Scott, with much hearty liking as well as a generous admiration, had too much other work [is- PREFACE. to do. Thus, notwithstanding noble passages in both memoirs, an Scott's pervading tone of healthy, manly wisdom, it is left to an in ferior hand to attempt to complete the tribute begun by those dis- tinguished men. Some such preface seemed necessary to so full an account Swift's least important years as the present volume contains; and its minuteness of detail, in the fifth and sixth books more especially, must be left to the explanation its successors w^ill supply. Here is laid the ground-work for the graver time w^hich is to occupy exclu- sively the rest of the biography ; and, excepting for illustration of the individual career, there will be no introduction of history. Though the original materials thus far employed in the story w^ill speak for themselves, it may be expected that the principal of them, as well as of other new matter to be used in the two remaining vol- umes that will complete the work, should have mention in this place. When the task was undertaken, Mr. Murray confided to the writer nearly fifty unpublished letters addressed by Swift to Archdeacon Walls after he w^as Dean of St. Patrick's ; and this incentive to far- ther research led to many richer acquisitions. More than a hundred and fifty new letters have been placed at my disposal. The value of the results yielded by collation of the later portions of the " Journal to Stella " with the original manuscript, can be judged only partially by the use of them in this volume. To later passages of the life their contribution will be extremely important. Some special blanks in the printed journal, on which Scott remarks, are filled up by them. By the courtesy of a descendant of Archbishop Cobbe, some addi- tions are made to the fragment of autobiography first printed by Mr. Deane Swift ; and questions raised by that fragment in connec- tion with Swift's university career, are settled by one of the rolls of Trinity College which fell accidentally into my hands. Two original letters written from Moor Park clear up that story of the Kilroot living which has been the theme of extravagant misstate ment. Unpublished letters in the palace at Armagh, obtained through my friend, the late Sir James Emerson Tennent, show clear- PREFACE. ly Swift's course as to questions which led to his separation from the whigs. Others of the same date place it beyond doubt that Lord Somers, as early as the close of ITOT, had urged his appointment to the see of Waterford. . At the dispersion of the library of Mr. Monck Mason, of Dublin, I became the purchaser of Swift's note-books and books of account ; of his letters of ordination ; of a large number of unpublished pieces in prose and verse interchanged between himself and Sheridan ; of several important unprinted letters ; and of a series of contempora- ry printed tracts for illustration of the life in Ireland, wdiich I was afterward able to complete by the whole of the now extremely rare Wood Broadsides. At Mr. Mitford's sale there came into my posses- sion the Life by Ilawdvesw^orth which Malone had given to Lord Sun- derlin, enriched with those MS. notes by Dr. Lyon, who had charge of Swift's person in his last illness, on wdiich Nichols and Malone, who partially used them, had placed the highest value. By subsequent arrangement, much favored ^j the courtesy of Mr. Edmund Lenthal Swif te, transfer w^as made to me of the papers given by Mrs. White- way to Mr. Deane Swift, altogether more than thirty pieces of con- siderable interest ; comprising several of Swift's important writings in his own manuscript, and, among transcripts of other pieces with corrections by liimself, a copy of the Directions to Servants, with hu- morous addition. To Mr. Andrew Fountaine, of ]N"arford, descendant of Swift's friend, my warmest thanks are due. Mr. Fountaine opened to me the manuscript collections at his family seat, where, amidst much oth- er matter of a very attractive kind, I found unpublished poems and letters of much importance. Afterward I became the possessor of letters relating to Gulliver; of some to Stopford, and some to Ar- buthnot of peculiar value ; and of an unpublished journal, also in Swift's handwriting, singular in its character and of extraordinary interest, written on his way back to Dublin amidst grave anxiety for Esther Johnson, then dangerously ill. My friend, the Eev. Dr. Todd, late the senior fellow of Dublin University, procured for me this re- markable piece ; and to the late Duke of Bedford I was indebted for 6 PREFACE. the loan of a volume from the library at Wobiirn containing poems by Swift copied in the handwriting of Stella, which was given to the fourth duke by Sir Archibald Acheson, to whose father it had been given by Swift. For the use of a very striking uiiprinted letter to Delany, written from London during Walpole's ministry, I have to thank Lord Houghton. The most rare of all my acquisitions, obtained from the late Mr. Booth, the book-seller, by whom it had been purchased at Malone's sale, remains to be mentioned. It is the large-paper copy of the first edition of Giilliver which belonged to the friend (Charles Ford) who carried Swift's manuscript w^itli so much mystery to Benjamin Motte, the publisher, interleaved for alterations and additions by the author, and containing, besides all the changes, erasures, and substi- tutions adopted in the latter editions, several interesting passages, mostly in the Yoyage to Laputa, which have never yet been given to the world. Leaving to be named as they occur in the biography other illus- trative pieces (among them some valuable unprinted marginalia of Swift's readings in Baronius, and other books in the Marsh and Christchurcli libraries, for w^hich I had the ready service of my friend Mr. Percy Fitzgerald), I prefix to my last acknowledgment some sentences from an unpublished letter of Sir Walter Scott to Lady Charlotte Bawdon, written from his " wilderness " of Ashestiel by Selkirk in the autumn of 1808, when he had just undertaken his edition of Swift. She had recommended him, hearing of tlie de- sign, to apply for assistance to a distinguished L-isli clergyman, him- self a man of letters, the Bev. Edward Berwick ; and thus (after promising, if she will visit him at Ashestiel, to " make up for nar- now lodgings and sorry cheer by old ballads, family legends of feud and battle, and tales of ghosts and fairies without measure or limit ") lie thanks her for her suggestion. " Mr. Berwick has behaved to- ward me in the kindest way possible, and, what was still more fiat- tering, has taught me to ascribe a great part of his civility to the in- terest your ladyship bestows on my undertaking. Every person to whom I have applied joins in representing him as most deeply skill- PREFACE. eel in all tliat relates to tlie interesting object of my present re- searches. In short, Go to Berwick lias not been more frequently called for in a ball-room tlian it was returned in answer to all my inquiries about Swift. So I went to Berwick accordingly, and have every hope of profiting by my journey. I am only afraid of weary- j^- his kindness by the multiplicity of my demands." I^JWith not inconsiderable success I may also claim to have gone to Berwick. The son of Scott's friend, the president of Galway Col- lege, is an old friend of my own ; and through him, among services to this w^ork w^iicli will have other mention, I succeeded in getting access to the correspondence of Swift with his friend, Knightley Chetwode, of Woodbrooke, during the seventeen years (ITli-'Sl) which followed his appointment to the deanery of St. Patrick's. Of these letters, the ricliest addition to the correspondence of this most masterly of English letter-waiters since it w^as first collected, more does not need to be said here ; but of the late representative of the Chetwode family I crave permission to add a w^ord. His rare talents and taste suffered from his delicate health and fastidious temperament, but in my life I have seen few things more delightful than his pride in the connection of his race and name with the com- panionship of Swift. Such was the jealous care with which he pre- served the letters, treasuring them as an heir-loom of honor, that he would never allow them to be moved from his family seat; and when wdth his own hand he had made careful transcript of them for me, I had to visit him at Woodbrooke to collate his copy with the originals. There I walked with him through avenues of trees which Swift was said to have planted, and was w^itness to his romantic in- terest in every minutest memory of the immortal Dean. A part of this interest he w^as so friendly as to transfer to the work in Avliich I had engaged ; and it is no common grief to me to include, in the list of those now dead who encouraged the enterprise, Mr. Edward Wil- mot Chetw^ode. J.F. Palace Gate House, Kensington, Jwne, 1875. TABLE OF CONTENTS. I'AGE Preface 3 BOOK riEST. ANECDOTES AND EARLIEST YEARS. 1^ 1667-1688. ^T. 1-21. ■^» Pages 17-G3. I. Anecdotes of his Family and Himself, 17-31. / Mr. Deane Swift's Essay 17 Additions to Anecdotes 18 Swift's Ancestors 19 Family Arms 20 An "Eminent Sufferer" 21 Favorite Ancestor 22 Grandfather Thomas 23 Uncle Godwin 21 Swift's Father 25 Temple and King Wilhara 27 With the King 28 Swift's Ordination 29 Addition to Fragment 30 Its Illustrations of Character 31 II. CiiiLDHOOD, School, and College, «2-63. Jonathan Swift of King's Inns 32 Early Death, and Widow's Troubles. ... 33 Petitions for Help 34 Yorkshire and Herefordshire Swifts , 35 Intermarriage with Drydens 36 Connection with the Temples 37 Swift's Birthplace 38 Child and Nurse 39 A Famous School-fellow 40 Stories of School-days 41 PAGE At College 41 Earliest Writers on Swift 43 ^^ Orrery and Delany 43 Deane Swift, Esq 44 Hawkesworth, Johnson, and Sheridan. . 44, 45 Barrett's Essay 46 Richardson's Libel 46 Thomas or Jonathan? 48 Not proven 49 Adventures of a Literary Relic 50 College Examination in 1685 50 Fac-simile of Portion of a College-roll. . 52 Swift compared with other Students. ... 53 The Hero of the Roll 53 Point missed by Malone 54 Specialis Gratia 55 Scholarship of Swift 56 A Difficult Time 57 Uncle Adam and Cousin Willoughby..58,59 A Sailor "ex machina" 60 Habits of Economy 60 Two Life-long Enemies 61 Swift driven from College 63 BOOK SECOND. UNDER SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE'S ROOF. 1689-1699. ^T. 23-32. Pages 67-117. I. FiHST Residence at ]\Ioor Park, 67-86. Swift's Visits to his Mother 67 Observation of Common Life 68 10 TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAOE Betty Jones GO Two Periods in First Temple Kesidence 70 Temple's Letter to Secretary Southwell 71 Second Period of First Kesidence 72 Oxford Degree 73 First Attempts in Verse 74 Temple and Swift at Moor Park 75 Inmates of Temple's House 70 Occupations of Swift 7G Pindaric and other Flights _77 Self-portraiture 78 Swift and the King 80 Dryden's Harsh Sentence 81 Swift's Retaliation 81 Poem to Congreve 82 Kesolution to enter the Chu rch.. .J 84 (Jfiices then Open to Clergymen 84 Misundei-standing with Temple 85 IL In Orders and at Kilroot, 86-98. At Leicester with his Mother 80 Results of Temple Residence 88 Certificate for Ordination y ^. 8 9 Alleged Penitential Letter 90 The Varina Courtship 90 Invited back to Moor Park 92 ] )eparture from Kilroot 93 Absurd Inventions 93 The Tnie Story told 94 Directions as to Books and Papers 90 Hopes as to Future Career 97 III. Second Residence with Tem- ple, 98-11 7. Esther Johnson 98 Statements without Evidence 100 False under Color of True 100 Terms with Temple 101 Love of Moor Park 103 Swift in State 104 Controversy of Ancients and Modems. 104 An Ideal of Criticism 100 The Battle of the Books 100 Exploits of Homer and Virgil 107 Sweetness and Light 108 Beginnings of the Greater Satire 109 Posthumous Fame 110 Other Moor Park Employments 112 I'AGE Revision of Temple's Writings 112 One Year's Readings at Moor Park 113 Strenuous Exercise 114: Death of Temple iio "When I come to be Old" IIG Fac-simile of Paper of Resolutions 117 BOOK THIRD. VICAR OF LARACOR. 1699-1705. ^T. 32-38. Pafjes 121-1S9. I. Chaplain at Dublin Castle, 121-138. Esther Johnson and Swift 121 "i Moor Park Memories 122 Present Disappointments 123 Loss of Deny Deanery 124 Vicarage of Laracor 125 Earliest Poems of Humor 120 Petition of Mrs. Francis Harris 127 ' Other Scenes opening 128. Sequel to the Varina Story 128 v Dismal but True Picture 130 Swift's Income from his Livings 130 Marriage of his Sister 132 Misstatements corrected 133 Taking Possession at Laracor 133 Restoration and Improvements 135 Condition of Laracor in 1875 130 Stipulations of Swift's Will 137 , Doctor of Divinity 138 IL London Life, 138-1.j4. Recall of Lord Berkeley 138 Determining Events in Life 139 Esther Johnson settles in Ireland 139 \( Arrangements with Swift 140 First Political Tract 141 Authorship avowed 143 Oratoi-s and Writers 144 Conditions of Party Service 144 The Queen and the Mmlboroughs 140 Whig Vicissitudes 147 Correspondence with Tisdall 147 Occasional Conformity Bill I'^'-^i TABLE OF CONTENTS. 11 PAGE Tisdall's Suit to Esther Johnson 150 Swift's Comment thereon 151 "In all other Eyes but Mine " 151 Honest Advice in a Difficult Case 152 Surrender and Equivalent 153 Publication of the Tale 154: III. Tale of a Tub, 155-171. ^ Book-seller's Explanation 155 Delay in Publication accounted for 155 How far a Dunce will go 156 The Three Brothers and their Coats.... 157 Peter's Lies and Misconduct 159 ]\rartin's and Jack's Reform 159 How it struck Contemporaries 161 Wotton's Onslaught 161 Charges of Irreligion 162 Mistakes of Dullness 163 Coarseness of Language 164 Dedication to Lord Somers 166 How Time deals with "Eirst-rate" Poets 166 Origin of Martinus Scriblerus 168 Proposed Utilization of Bedlam 169 Wit's Disadvantages 170 Tributes to the Tale 170 Touching Incident 171 IV. Baucis and Philemon, 171-189. Addison's Senate 171 Noctes Coenceque Deorum 172 Addison's Inscription to Swift, and same in Fac-simile 173 Swift at the St. James's 174 Poem on Vanbrugh's House 175 Swift Manuscripts at Narford 176 Unprinted Poem on Vanbrugh 176 Original Manuscript of Baucis and Philemon 177 How Swift took Advice 179 Original and Alteration compared 180 Opening as first Written 181 Superiority of Original Version 182 Extracts from Narford Manuscript 183 Inferiority of Printed Poem 184 Addison's Alterations 185 What becomes of Philemon 186 How both Parties then treated Par- sons 187 A Picture of Lord Peterborough 188 BOOK FOUKTII. IRELAND AND ENGLAND. 1706-1709. ^T. 39-42. Pages 193-267. I. Life in Laracor and Dublin, 193-318. PAGE With Duke of Ormond's Family...-. 193 Primate and Archbishop 194 As to Government of Ireland 195 Irish Tenants and Landlords 195 Whigs and Tories imported 196 Gardening and Fishing 197, 198 Joe Beaumont and Parvisol 199 Vicar Raymond and his Wife 200 The Dublin Ladies' Club 201 Archdeacon Walls and his Wife 202 The Brothers Ashe and Fountaine 203 Dean Sterne and Bishop of Clogher.. 203, 204 Lord Pembroke and his Secretary . . 204, 205 Vicar and Viceroy 205 Puns by Swift....' 206 Dublin Castle Dialogue 207 ' ' Castilian " from Narford MSS 208 Puns for the Ladies 209, 210 Punning at Lord Berkeley's 211 The Journal for Esther Johnson 212 Games and Blunders at Cards 213 Morning Picture 214 I November Walk 214 Ride in June 215 Common Interest and Ways 216 Three Wishes .' 218 i j II. Waiting and Working in i LoNTDON, 218-267. , Recall of Lord Pembroke 218 i Swift at Leicester 218 { Business of First-fruits 219 Party Agitations 220 Unpublished Letters to Archbishop King 221 Famous Triflers 223 Swift named for a Bishopric 223 The Man who got it 224 Letters to Ambrose Philips 225 Origin of two Famous Tracts 226 Inconvenience of abolishing Christianity 227 Churches vs. Theatres 228 Project for Religion and Manners 229 12 TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE Unpunished Social Crimes 230 Advice to Clergymen 231 Meditation on a Broomstick 232 Anthony Henley and Colonel Hunter.. 233 Social Gatherings... 234 Astrologer Partridge 23a -* Mr. Bickerstaff's Predictions 236 Mr. Partridge disputes his Death 237 All the Wits take Part 238 Steele describes Swift 239 Jei'vas paints Swift 240 Original Poem from Narford MSS 241 Mrs. Barton and Mrs. Long 242 The Vanhomrighs 243 Esther Johnson iu London 244 Sentiments ofaChurch-of-England Man 245 Advice to Whigs and Tories 246 Extremes meeting 247 Unpublished Swift Letters 248, 249 A New World 249 Desires to be Secretary at Vienna 250 Failure of Vienna Project 251 Addison and Swift of each Other 252 What was and what might have been... 253 With Somers and Godolphin 254 Maxim of the Great 255 How Not to do it 256 Attempted Bargaining 257 Swift and Lord Wharton 258 Original Letter to Archbishop King. ... 258 Tract against Repeal of Test 260 X Character of Scotch Settlers in Ireland. 260 y>A Fault outweighing All Virtues 261 Ups and Downs of Non-conformity 263 Occupations and Amusements 264 Swift's Gain from the Wrings 265 Fac-simile of a Page from Account- books 266 Touching Entries from Note-books 267 BOOK FIFTH. WniGS AND TORIES: 1709-1710. ^T. 42^3. Pngcs 271-373. I. Power changing Hands, 271-287. Swift's last Visit to his Mother 271 Apology for the Tale .272 PAUB Desire for England 273 Correspondence with Halifax 274 Unpublished Letter to Pembroke 275 Attentions of Addison 276 False Imputations 277 Aloof from Wharton 278 Addison and Esther Johnson 279 Exciting English News 280 Test Question revived 281 Swift's Mother's Death 282 Letters written and Letters received.... 282 Losings and Winnings at Cards 283, 284 Overthrow of the Whigs, and Tlioughts of Another Book 284 Uncertain as to Future Course 286 Embarks for England 287 II. Old Friends and New, 287- 305. Ride to Chester 288 Begins his Journals 289 Reception by Friends "289 Interview with Somers 291 With Addison and Steele 291 Great Ministers deposed 293 Party Vicissitudes 293 Whig Entertainments 294 Dining and Lampooning 295 At Hampton Court with Halifax 296 A Westminster Election 297 One Exception to the Whig Rout 299 Up to the Top of St. Paul's 299 Intei-posing for Steele 300 Addison's Sister 301 ^wift among his Cousins 303 Whig Wits and Poets 303 Unexpected Attack 305 in. Esther Johnson, 30G-328. What Swift's Journals represented 306 The Journals as printed 307 The "Little Language" 308 Her First Letter , 309 Injunctions to Him 310 Esther's Mother and Sister 311 New London Lodging 312 What he says of his Journals 31 3 Ilis Life put into them 314 Is Fortune with him at last? 315 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 13 Page Joys and Disappointments 316 What he has been Publishing ..a 317 Harley's Treatment of Him 318 f'iist Mention of the Vanhomrighs 319 Ciiacknowledged Pieces 320 A Letter from Esther Johnson 321 Fancy to "go mad "for China 322 Fit of Giddiness 323 Tlie Queen and the Tory Lords 324 Writing in Bed 325 Poetical Uses of a London Lodging 326 Keasoning Wrong at First Thinking — 327 IV. A Long-desired Object Gained, 328-336. Scoundrel and Prince 328 Ilarley and Swift Alone 329 Thinks of the ' ' Tale of a Tub " 330 Esther's Opinion of "Sid Hamet" 331 State Visit to the Minister 332 111 News for Good News 333 *'So goes the World " 334 First-fruits finally remitted 335 Difficult and Wary Walking 336 V. Robert Harley and Henry St. John, 336-373. Getting into Harness 336 The Charge of Ratting 337 Harley's Career 338 ^Atthe Summit 339 / St. John and Marlborough 339 The Duke's Great Failing 341 The Examiner set on Foot 342 Swift takes it up 342 ^^His First Contribution 344 ^wift's Political Writing 345 Personalities 346 Tiiinking of Temple 347 Prior and Dartmouth 348 A Madman in Pall Mall 349 The Queen's Speech 350 Explanations with Harley 351 Thomas, Lord Wharton 352 A Libel cried as Swift's 353 Lord Rivers and the Duke's Officers.... 353 >-" Plain Honest Stuff" 355 Curiosity to hear Swift preach 355 j Page Addison's Trap for Swift 356 Peterborough's Predictions 357 Arrival of Marlborough 358 Politics at a Barber's 359 Tories plaguing their Party 361 Reward for a Pamphleteer 362 Too Hard on the Duke 363 Dangers foreseen by Swift 363 " School-boys on a Holiday " 365 Grossnessea of Language 366 Ministers in the Midst of Trouble 366 At Revel till Two in the Morning 367 " L-repressible " Whigs 369 Promises not kept 369 The Minister out of Favor 370 The Queen not Manageable 372 Future Foretold 373 BOOK SIXTH. (appendix.) BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES FROM SWIFT'S LETTERS TO ESTHER JOHNSON; AND PASSAGES IN THE LETTERS CORRECT- ED AND RESTORED FROM THE ORIGI- NAL MANUSCRIPT. Pages 377-4T3. I. Biographical Notes, 377-420. Of Money Matters — Esther's, her Mother's, and his Own 377-378 Of an Old Friend and a Christen- ing, witli Cromwell's Daughter for Godmother 378-379 Of the New Irish Viceroy 379 A Purchase Useful for Lilliput 379-380 Arrival of Esther Johnson's Sixth Letter 380-381 Visit to London of the Vicar of Trim 381-382 Lish Opinions of his Writings 382-383 Answers Esther's Sixth Letter 383-385 Rogue Steele .• 385 An Evening at Home 386 Coffee-house Adventures and a tu quoque 386-387 Arrival of Esther's Seventh Letter 387 Patrick locks up his Master's Work. 387-388 14 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Old Whig Connections Answers Esther's Seventh Letter... Postscript of Things Reraemberable. Illness of Sir Andrew Fountaine. ... Lord Herbert and Anthony Henley. New Tatler with "Little" Hanison for Editor Incident on Christmas-eve Christmas and New-year's Economies and Domesticities The Missing Box Charles Ford and Addison Patrick and his Linnet The Archdeacon's Wife Waiting for a Letter Enjoyment of what Esther writes.. Laughs at her Answers, and de- scribes his Own Page 888-389 389-391 391-393 393-395 395-39G 39G-397 398 398-400 400-401 401-402 402-403 403-404 404 404-406 40G-407 407 Page Invention of Old Proverbs and Rhymes..- 407-408 Sickness after St. John's Revel 408-409 Waiting in Bed 409-410 Living Wits, and a Dead One 410 Answers Esther's Tenth Letter 410-411 The Winter of 1710-11 412-414 Change at Last 414-415 Walking for Health's Sake 415-41(5 A Comfort in Sickness and Health 41G Old Scenes and Friends recalled.... 41G-418 The Vanhomrighs 418-420 II. Publication of the Letters con- taining THE Journal to Stel- la, 420-424. ' III. Unprinted and Misprinted Jour- nals, 425-473. INDEX 475-4^^ FAC-SIMILES. Portion or Examination Roll at Trinity College, Easter, 1G85 52 Resolutions "When I comb to be Old," 1G99 117 Addison's Inscription to Swift 173 A Page from Swift's Account-book, December, 1708 266 BOOK FIRST ANECDOTES AND EAELIEST YEAES. 166T-1688. ^T. 1-21. I. Anecdotes of his Family and Himself. II. Childhood, School, and College. FOU^"^^' THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. 30th November, 16C7 — 19th October, 1745. ANECDOTES OF HIS FxiMILY AND HIMSELF. " He'll treat me as he does my betters, Tublish my Will, my Life, my Letters." In tlie same year when Swift, playful in his bitter and kinclly moods alike, so described a punishment then just invented, and inflicted ever since on famous men, he was doing his best to abate in some degree his own share of its penalties and pains. Tlie anecdotes of his family and him- self were begun at the time, as portion of an autobiogra- phy. They were laid aside and never finished ; but such of them as he did complete are the highest authority for the matters to w^hich they relate, and find their fitting place upon the opening page of the Life of Jonathan Swift. Essay, Bathurst the book-seller published in 1755 Mr. Dean e Swift's Mr.Deane Essay upon the Life, Writings, and Character of Dr. Jonathan Swift's Swift, containing, as the title-page expressed, "That Sketch of Dr. Swift's Life, w^ritten by the Doctor himself, which was lately " (23d of July, 1753) "presented by the Author of this Essay to the University of Dublin." The Sketch had been given to him by " his old, faithful friend, and cousin-german, Mrs. Whiteway," Swift's nurse and last companion, whose daughter by her first husband Mr. Deane Swift had married ; and from whom he de- rived the farther information that it was written "about six or eigh^ and twenty years ago, as an introduction to his Life, which YoL. I.— 2 18 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. the AneC' dotes. lie had reason to apprehend would some time or other become a topic of general conversation." To this very valuable relic I am so fortunate as to be able to contribute several corrections, and Additions to a few not unimportant additions, undoubtedly authentic. Some years aft^r the original was written, Swift permitted the then bishop of Kildare and dean of Christchurch (it was not until later years tliat the dean of St. Patrick's was also dean of the sister cathedral). Dr. Charles Cobbe, afterward archbishop of Dublin, to transcribe it ; and this copy, already differing in some points from its predecessor, doubtless by suggestions made at the time when the copy was taken, appears to have been used by Dr. John Lyon, in or about the year 1738, for the insertion of corrections and ad- ditions manifestly derived from, and occasionally entered in the hand-writing of. Swift himself, at wliose request Dr. Lyon was then engaged [Scott, i., 504) in biographical researches connected with liis family. So it has remained, unused by any of Swift's bi- ographers, in the possession of the bishop's descendants ; and by their representative, Thomas Cobbe, Esq., of Newbridge, Donabate, Malahide, it was obligingly lent to me a fcAv years ago, for the purposes of this work. The points in which it differs from Mr. Deane Swift's publication (which I have myself carefully collated in Trinity College with the manuscript in Swift's hand), as well as the variations from the original text of the copy as printed by Mr. Deane Swift, are noted at the bottom of the page ; and the additions, all of which are indicated by inverted commas, will be remarked upon in their proper place in the biography. Collation of the MS. Fragment ok autoiu- oguapiiy: 1CG7-1699. The family of the Swifts are(') ancient in Yorkshire. From them deseendedf^) a noted person, who passed under the name of Cavaliero Swift, a man of wit and luimor. He was created(^) an Irish Peer by King Charles the First, 20th March 1627,(0 with the title of Yisconnt(0 of Carlingford, but never w^as in that kingdom. Many tra- ditional pleasant stories are related of him, which the fam- ily planted in Ireland liath(') received from their parents. This lord died without issue male; and liis(') heiress, whether of the first or second descent,(') was married to Kobert Fielding, Esq., commonly called handsome Field- ing.C) She brought him a considerable estate in York- shire, which he squandered away, but had no chilli-en. O "Was": D. S. O D. S. inserts in a note " Bamani Swift, Esq." C) "Made": 1). S. (*) D. S, inserts "or King James." C) "Baron": D. S. (") Incorrectly printed "had "in modern copies. C) "Danghter, Lady Margaret, an " inserted and erased. C) " Whether of the first or second descent" erased and restored. (°) Dr. Lyon suhstitntes, "memhcr ofparliamentfor (lowran Co., Kilken- ny, afterward pardoned, and died 12ih May, 1712." I '.] ANECDOTES OF HIS FAMILY AND HIMSELF. 19 The Earl of Eglinton married another co-heiress of the same familj.(') Another of the same family was Sir Edward Swift, well known in the times of the great Rebellion and Usm^pa- tion, but I am ignorant whether he left heirs or no. Of the other branch, whereof the greatest part settled in Ireland, the founder was William Swift, prebendary of Canterbury,(^) toward the last years of Queen Elizabeth, and during the reign of King James the Eirst. He was a divine of some distinction. There is a sermon of his ex- tant, and the title is to be seen in the catalogue of the Bodleian Library, but I never could get a copy, and I sup- pose it would now be of little value.Q This William married the heiress of Philpot, I suppose a Yorkshire(*) gentleman, by whom he got a very consid- erable estate, which, however, she kept in her own power, I know not by what artifice.Q She was a capricious, ill- natured, and passionate woman, of which tliereQ liave been told several instances. And it hath been a continual tra- dition in the family, that she absolutely disinherited her only son, Thomas, for no greater crime than that of rob- bing an orchard when he was a boy. And thus much is certain, that Thomas never enjoyed more than one hun- dred pounds a year, which was all at Goodrich, in Hertford- shire, whereof not above one-half is now in tiie possession of a great - great - grandson, except aQ church or chapter lease which was not renewed. Fragment OF Autobi- ography : 1GG7-1699. Swift's an- cestors. O "As lie hath often told me" written in and erased by Swift after the word "family." (^) In a note to this passage Mr. Deane Swift corrects his illustrions kinsman. "Had Doctor Swift," he says, " read the dedication of William Swift's sermon, it would have set him right. In that dedication we find that Thomas Swift, the father of William, was presented in the year 1569 to the parish of St. Andrew in the city of Canterbury: and, moreover, that upon the decease of Thomas, William Swifr, in the year 1591, succeeded his fsi- ther." The same error leads to the description, in \h?, next following sen- tence, of "Philpot" as a Yorkshire gentleman. It was not William Swift, but his father, who first moved from Yorkshire to Canterbury. " I do not," adds Mr. Deane Swift, " find the name of William Swift in the list of the prebendaries of Canterbury ; I sup- pose the Doctor took it for granted that the parish of St. Andrew's was one of the prebends belonging to that cathedral." (^) It is described as "On the 8th Rom. verse 18 : printed London, 1G22." (*) D. S. corrects to "Kent." Q) "I know not by what artifice" omitted by D. S. C) "I": D.S. (") This sentence is differently ar- ranged, but substantially the same. Scott incorrectly prints " great-great- j grandson" as "great-grandson;" con- founding Mr. Deane Swift, who is so referred to, witli his grandfather, Mr. Godwin Swift, named in the next sen- tence. 20 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. Fragment OF Autobi- ography : 1GG7-1699. Family arms. His original picture \vas(*) in the hands of Godwin Swift, of DubUn, Esq., his great-grandson ; as well as that of his wife, who seems to have a good deal of the shrew in her countenance ; w^hose arms asQ an heiress are joined with his ow^n ; and by the last he seems to have been a person somewhat fantastic ; for he altered the family coat of arms, and gives as his own deviceQ a Dolphin (in those days called a Swift) twisted about an anchor, w^ith this motto, Festina lente. There is likewise a seal with the same coat of arms (his, not joined with the(*) wife's), which the said William com- monly made use of ; and this w^as(') also in the possession of Godwin Swift above mentioned. Ilis eldest son, Thomas, seems to have been a clergyman before his father's death.(*) He was vicar of Goodrich, in Herefordshire, within a mile or two of Ross : he had like- wise another church living, with about one hundred pounds a year in land (part whereof w^as by church leases),(') as I have already mentioned. Pie built a liouse on his own land in the village of Goodrich,(*) w^hich by the architect- (') "Is now" erased by Swifr, and "was" substituted. In first publish- ing the original Mr. Deane Swift de- scribed these portraits as "in tlie hands of Mrs. Elizabeth Swift, relict of Godwin Swifr, late of Swiftsheath, in the county of Kilkenny, Esq. His picture was drawn in the year 1623, aatatis sua? 57 : his wife's picture was drawn in the same year, aitatis suaj 54." O "Of" erased and "as" substi- tuted by Swift. (') "For these he gives as his de- vice": D. S. O Incorrectly "his" in D. S. and modern copies. (^) " Is also now " erased, and " was also " substituted, by Swift. C) Mr. Deane Swift explains this fact as made obvious by " the drapery in his picture, which was drawn at the same time with his father's, in the year 1023, ictatis sua; 28." Upon tlie statement in the next sentence " with- in a mile or two of Hoss " his remark that it should have been "within four" would not be worth subjoining but that Scott, in copying it, has un- consciously left us an amusing illus- tration of his too hasty editorship. He probably made the memorandum " it should be four " when his eye first rested on Deane Swift's note, and he seems to have forgotten, when he came to use it, what it referred to. But finding allusion in a following ])ara- graph to "certain pieces of iron with three spikes" he gravely appended thereto (and so it still stands i)i both his editions) the ridiculous correction "it should be four." (') The words inclosed are inter- lined in Swift's hand in the original in Trinity College. They are not in the copy as printed by ]\Ir. Deane Swift. (®) Deane Swift describes it as not in the village, but in the parish of Goodrich, and as a house of the odd- est kind that certainly ever was built. " It has three floors, containing about twelve or foiuteen rooms, besides vaults and garrets. The whole seems §!•] ANECDOTES OF HIS FAMILY AND HIMSELF. 21 I Fragment OF Autobi- ography : 1667-1699- iire denotes the builder to have been somewhat whimsical and singular, and very much toward a projector. The house is above an hundred years old and still in good re- pair, inhabited bj a tenant of the female line ; but the landlord, a young gentleman,(') lives upon his own estate in Ireland. This Thomas wds much(') distinguished by his courage, as well as his loyalty to King Charles the First, and the sufferings he underwent for that prince, more than any person of his condition in England. Some historians(^) of those times relate several particulars of what he acted, and what hardships he underwent for the person and cause of An "emi- that(*) martyr'd prince. He was plundered by the Eound- "^f,* '^"^*^'^- heads six and thirty, some say above fifty, tinies.(^) " The author of Mercurius Rusticus dates the beginning of his sufferings so early as October, 1642. The Earl of Stamford, who had the command of the Parliament army in those parts, loaded him at first with very heavy exac- tions ; and afterward at different times robbed him of all his books and household furniture, and took away from the family even their wearing apparel ; wdth some other to be three single houses all joining in one central point. Undoubtedly there never was, nor ever will be, such an- other building to the end of the world. However, it is a very good house, and perhaps calculated to stand as long as any house in England. It was built, according to the date of one of the pillars, in the year 173G." He adds, with reference to the subsequent men- tion of the " tennnt of the female line," that " she hath been dead these many years." Of course the "young gen- tleman" in the text was Mr. Deane Swift himself, from the information of whose son, Theophilus Swift, Scott tells us he derived the note he has substituted for the above : which note, however, here subjoined, is only a paraphrase of what Mr. Deane Swift had said in his "Essay (Appendix, 21). "This house, now the property of Mr. Theophilus Swift, is still standing. A vault is shewn beneath the kitchen, accessible only by raising one of the flagstones. Here were concealed the provisions of bread and milk, which supported the lives of the family after they had been plundered b}' the Par- liamentary soldiers. The vicar was in those days considered as a conjur- er, especially when, his neighbors be- ing discharged from assisting him, and all his provisions destroyed, he still continued to subsist his family. This vault is probably one of the peculiar- ities of architecture noticed by the Dean." (•) "Who" erased. OD. S. omits "much." C) To the original MS. Swift him- self subjoined, but Mr. Deane Swift did not print, the following note : " See a book called Mercurius Rus- ticus, and another in folio called The Lives of those who suffered Persecu- tion for K. Ch. I." O "Blessed": D. S. The word is erased by Swift from before " mar- tyr'd." C) What follows this sentence is in Swift's hand in margin. 22 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. Fragment circumstances of cruelty too tedious to relate at large in ^!.t yjr^f " tliis place. The Earl bein^ asked why he committed these 1067-1699. barbarities, my author says ' he gave two reasons lor it : ' iirst, because he (Mr. Swiit) had bought arms and convey- ed them into Monmouthshire, which, under his lordship's good favor, was not so ; and, secondly, because, not long before, he preached a sermon in Ross upon the text Give unto CfBsar the things that are Caesar's, in which his lord- ship said he had spoken treason in endeavoring to give Caesar more than his due. These two crimes cost Mr. Swift no less than £300.' "(') About that tiine(^) he engaged his small estate, and, hav- ing quilted all the money he could get in his waistcoat,(*) got off to a town held for the king : where, being asked by the Governor, who knew him well, w^hat he could do for his Majesty, Mr. Swift said he would give the King his Swift's fa- coat, and stripping it off, presented it to the Governor ; who vonte aiices- observing it to be worth little, Mr. Swift said. Then take my waistcoat, andf*) bid the Governor weigh it in his hand ; who, ordering it to be unripped,(') found it lined with three hundred broad pieces of gold, which as it proved a season- able relief, must be allowed an extraordinary supply from a private clergyman(^) of a small estate, so often plundered, and soon after turned out of his livings in the church. At another time being informed that three hundred horse of the Rebel party intended in a w^eek to pass over a certain river, upon an attempt against the cavaliers, Mr. Swift having a head mechanically turned, he contrived cer- tain pieces of iron with three spikes, whereof one must always be with the point upward ; he placed them over night in the ford, wliere he received notice that the Reb- els would pass early the next morning, which they accord- ingly did, and lost two hundred of their men, who were drowned or trod to death by the falling of their horses, or torn by the spikes. His sons,(') whereof four(^) were settled in Ireland (') The passage within inverted commas inserted by Swift. O So the original. (^) As printed by Mr. Deane Swift, the passage runs *'and gathered all the money he could get, quilted it in his waistcoat, got off," etc., etc. C) "He": 1). S. O "Ripped": D. S. (") "With ten children" written and erased bv Swift. C) To this passage, in the MS. I am using, the following note is sub- joined : "Tho. Swift married Eliza- beth, daughter of Jonathan Dryden of Northamptonshire, gent, by whom he had six sons, viz. Godwin, Dryden, Thomas, "William, Jonathan, and Adam. As also four daughters ; Emily, Elizabeth, Sarah, and Kathe- rine. — Heralds' OjJice, Dublin." (") Mr. Deane Swift remarks (Aj^p. I § L] ANECDOTES OF IIIS FAMILY AND HIMSELF. 23 (driven thither by their sufferings, and by the death of Fragmknt their father), related many other passages, which they ^^^utobi- learned either from their father himself, or from what had i667-i69i). been told them by the most credible persons of Hereford- shire, and some neighboring counties : and which some of oraucifather those sons often told to their children ; many of which are Thomas, still remembered, but many more forgot. " In 1646 "(') he was deprived of both his church liv- ings sooner than most other loyal clergymen, upon account of his superior zeal for the King's cause, and his estate sequestered. His preferments, at least that of Goodrich, were given "at first to one Giles Eawlins, and after to William Tringham "(^) a fanatical saint, who scrupled not however to conform upon the Restoration, and lived many years,(^) I think till after the Revolution. (*) " The Committees of Hereford had kept Thomas Swift a close prisoner for a long time in Ragland Castle before they ordered his ejectment for scandal and delinquency (as they termed it), and for being in actual service against the Parliament. On the 5tli July, 1646, they ordered the profits of Gotheridge (Goodrich) into the hands of Jonath : Dryden, minister, until about Christmas following ; and on 21tli March they inducted Giles Rawlins into this par- ish : who in 1654 was succeeded by Tringham. His otlier living of Bridstow underwent the same fate. For he was ejected from this on 25th Sept., 1646, and it was given to tlie curate, one Jonath : Smith, w^hom they liked better, and ordered to be inducted into his Rector's cure. What became of him afterward I know not, but in 1654 one John Somers got this living."(^) The Lord-Treasurer Oxford told the Dean " of St. Pat- rick's, the grandson of this eminent sufferer,"(^) that he had among his father's (Sir Edward Harley's) papers, sev- eral letters from Mr. Thomas Swift writ in those times, to Essay 25) that he should have said | Goodrich, who knew and told me his five, "I suppose he forgot Dryden name, which I can not now remem- Swift, who died very young and a ber," erased by Swift, evidently upon batclielor, soon after he had come over his obtaining the two names, and to Ireland with his brothers. He i ascertaining what he proceeds to recollects his name, however, in one of the subsequent paragraphs." (1) " In 1646 " omitted by D. S. state. (^) All within inverted commas in- serted by Swift, the last line and a Q Words within inverted commas | half in his own hand. Dr. Lyon had interlined by Swift. supplied the other facts. See Scott, (^) The two names put in a note by i. 504, 507. D. S. I (^) Words within Inverted commas (*) " I have seen many persons at , inserted by Swift. 24: THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. Fragment OF Autobi- ography: 1667-1699. Uncle God- win. wliicli he promised to give to the Dean ;(') but never going to his house in Herefordshire while he was Treasurer, and Queen Anne's(') death happening in three days after his removal, the Dean went to Ireland, and the "Earl being tried for his life, and dying w^iile the Dean was in Ire- land, he could never get them.(^) Mr. Thomas Swift died ^' May 2d,"0 1658, and in the " 63d "(^) year of his age. His body lies under the altar at Goodrich, with a short inscription. He died^) before the return of King Charles the Second, who by the recom- mendationsQ of some prelates had promised, if ever God should restore him, that he would promote Mr. Swift in the church, and other ways reward his family for his ex- traordinary services,(*) zeal, and persecutions in the royal cause. But Mr. Swift's merit died w^ith himself. He left ten sons and three or four daughters, most of which lived to be men and women. His eldest son God- win Swift, of " Goodridge Co. Hereford, Esq., one of the Society of Gray's Inn "Q (so stiled by Guillym in his Iler- aldry)("') was(") called to tlie bar before the Restoration. He married a relation of the old Marchioness of Ormond, and upon that account, as well as his father's loyalty, the old Duke of Ormond made him his Attorney General in the palatinate of Tipperary. He had four wives, one of which, to the great oifense of his family, was co-heiress('") to Admiral Deane, who was one of the Regicides. " She was Godwin's third w^ife. Her name was Hannah, daugh- ter of Major Richard Deane, by whom he had issue Deane Swift, and several other children."('^) Tliis('*) Godwin left several children, who have all es- (') " Dean "substituted for "grand- son, whose life I am now writing." O " The queen's " : D. S. O Strictly speaking, this paragraph ought not to have been imported by Mr. Deane Swift into the text of the Anecdotes. It startds, in the Trinity College MS., as in that which I am quoting, as a marginal note in Swift's hand. (*) "May 2d "substituted by Swift for "in the year." (') A blank in the Trinity College MS., a year having been inserted and struck out, (■) "About two years "erased by Swift. C) Plural in both MSS. Printed in the singular by Mr. Deane Swift. («) "And "erased by Swift. (") Words within inverted commas substituted for "the Inner Temple, Esq." (*") "In his Heraldry" substituted for " the Herald, in whose book the family is described at large," (") " I think " erased by Swift. (") Mr. Deane Swift more correct- ly suggests "sole heiress." (") Words in inverted commas in- serted by Swift. ('♦) "This" inserted by Swift, and new paragraph begun. ANECDOTES OF HIS FAMILY AND HIMSELF. 25 Fragment OF Autobi- ography ; 1667-1699. Uncle Thomas. Other uncles. tates. He was an ill pleader, but perhaps a little too dex- terous in the subtle parts of tlie law.(') The second son of Mr. Thomas Swift was called by the same name, was bred at Oxford, and took orders. He married the(^) daughter of Sir William D'Avenant, but died young, and left only one son, who was also called Thomas, and is now rector of Putenham in Surrey. His widow lived long, was extremely poor, and in part support- ed by the famous Dr. South, who had been her husband's intimate friend. The rest of his sons, as far as I can call to mind, were Mr. Dryden Swift (called so after the name of his mother, who was a near relation(^) to Mr. Dryden the poet), Wil- liam, Jonathan, and Adam, who all lived and died in Ire- land. But none of them left male issue, except Jonathan, who besides a daughter left one son, born seven months after his father's death ; of whose life I intend to write a few memorials. Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Divinity, and Dean of(*) St. Father. Patrick's, was the only son of Jonathan Swift, who was the seventh or eighth son of Mr. Thomas Swift above mentioned, so eminent for his loyalty and his sufferings. His father died young, about two years after his mar- riage : he had some employments and agencies ; his death was much lamented on account of his reputation for in- tegrity, with a tolerable good understanding. (^) He mar- ried Mrs. Abigail Erick, of Leicestershire, descended from the most ancient family of the Ericks,Q who derive their lineage from Erick the forester, a great commander, who raised an army to oppose the invasion of William the Con- queror, by whom he was vanquished, but afterward em- ployed to command that prince's forces ; and in his old age retired to his house in Leicestershire, where his family (^) The second sentence of this par- agraph, after having been inserted from the original into the MS. from ■which I qnote, is struck through with a pen. Mr. Deane Swift remarks that the words "perhaps a little too" appear, from the different shade of the ink, to have been interlined in the Trinity College MS. some time after it was first written. O "Eldest" erased by Swiff. C) Mr, Deane Swift incorrectly ex- plains, "aunt." See post, 35. C) In the Trinity College MS. the initials only are given — " J. S. D. D. and D. of St. P ." C) In the Trinity College MS. a fresh paragraph is here begun. C) "The family of Erick, which has produced many eminent men, is still represented by two respectable branches, the Heyricks of Leicester town, and the Herricks of Beaumanor. Of both these branches, distinct pedi- grees and many curious historical an- ecdotes are given in the History of Leicestershire, ii., 215; iii., 148." — Scott, I, 500. 26 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. Fragment liatli continued ever since, but declining every age, ofAutobi- ^j.g ^^^^ ^^^ ^j^g condition of very private gentlemen, y This marriatre was on both sides very indiscreet and ography: 1667-1699. wife 30th Novem- ber, 1G67. ^t.; brought her for his fortune, and his liusband little or no death happening so suddenly(') before he could make a sufficient establishment for his family,(^) his son (not then born) hath often been heard to say, that he felt the conse- quences of that marriage not only through the whole course of his education, but during the greatest part of his life. lie was born in Dublin, on St. Andrew's day, " in the year 1667 ;"Q and when he was a year old, an event hap- pened to him that seems very unusual ; for his nurse, who was a woman of Whitehaven, being under an absolute necessity of seeing one of her relations, w^ho was(*) then extremely sick, and from whom she expected a legacy, and being " at the same time "(^) extremely fond of the infant, she stole him on shipboard unknown to his mother and un- cle, and carried him with her to Whitehaven, where he con- tinued for almost three years. For, when the matter was discovered, his mother sent orders by all means not to haz- ard a second voyage, till he could be better able to bear it. The nurse Avas so careful of him, that before he returned he had learned to spell; and by the time that he was tliree(^) years old he could read any chapter in the Bible. After his return to Ireland, he was sent at six years old to the school of Kilkenny, from whence at fourteen he was admitted into the university at Dublin, " a pensioner,, on the 24th April, 1682 ;"(') where, by the ill treatment of his nearest relations, he was so(^) discouraged and sunk in his spirits that he too much neglected his academic studies ; for " some parts of "(^) which he had no great relish by nature, and turned himself to reading history and poetry : so that wlien the time came for taking his degree of bach- elor of artsC"), although he Jiad lived with great regularity and due observance of the statutes, he was stopped of his degree for dulness and insufficiency; and at last hardly Q) Mr. Deane Swift tells us he was about twenty-five years old. O " That " erased. O Words within inverted commas inserted. (*) Suhstituted for "being." (*) "At the same time" is in both MSS., but was omitted from Mr. Deane Swift's copy. (") "Three" is in both MSS., and so printed by Mr. Deane Swift ; but Ilawkesworth changed it to five, and Scott copied him. Swift first had written "two" years, for which he substituted "almost three," afterward erasing "almost." C) Words within inverted commas inserted. (") " Much " erased. (') Words in inverted commas in- serted by D. S. in previous line. (•") "Degrees of bachelor:" D. S. §1.] ANECDOTES OF HIS FAMILY AND HIMSELF. 27 Fragment OF Autobi- ography : 1G67-1699. admitted in a manner, little to his credit, wliicli is called " in that college "(*) speclali gratia " on the 15th February, 1685, with four more on the same foothig :'\^) and this discreditable mark, " as I am told,"(^) stands upon record in their college registry. The troubles then breaking out, he, went to his mother, who lived in Leicester ; and after continuing there some months, he was received by Sir AVilliam Temple, whose sirwniia father had been a great friend to the family, and who was Temple. now retired to his house called Moor Park, near Farnhani in Surrey ; where he continued for about two years. For he happened before twenty years old, by a surfeit of fruit to contract a giddiness and coldness of stomach, that almost brought him to his grave ; and this disorder pursued him with intermissions of two or three years to the end of his life. Upon this occasion he returned to Ireland, "in 1690,"(') by advice of physicians, who weakly imagined that his native air might be of some use to recover his health : but growing worse, he soon went back to Sir Wil- liam Temple ; with whom growing into some confidence, he was often trusted with matters of great importance. King William had a high esteem for Sir William Tem- ple, by a long acquaintance, while that gentleman was am- bassador and mediator of a general peace at Ximeguen. ■ QTlie King, soon after his expedition to England, visited King his old friend often at Sheen, and took his advice in affairs wiiiiam. of greatest consequence. But Sir William Temple, weary of living so near London, and resolving' to retire to a more private scene, bought an estate near Farnham in Surrey, of about £100 a year, where Mr. Swift accompanied him.(^) About that time a bill was brought into the House of Commons for triennial parliaments ; against which the King, who was a stranger to our constitution, was very averse, by the advice of some weak people, who persuaded the Earl of Portland that King Charles the First lost his crown and life by consenting to pass such a bill. The Earl, who was a weak man, came down to Moor Park by his majesty's orders to have Sir William Temple's advice, w^ho said much to show^ him the mistake. But he continued (*) "In that college" erased by D. S. (') Words within inverted commas inserted. O "As I am told " interlined. O " In 1690 " inserted by Swift. (^) A new paragraph begins here, in the MS. I am nsing. O The words "lived with him some time" had been substituted for "accompanied him" in the second MS., but were afterward erased by Swift, and the reading of the Trinity College MS. restored. 28 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. Fragment OF Autobi- ography : 1667-1699. Swift with the King. still to advise the King against passing the bill. Where- upon Mr. Swift was sent to Kensington with the whole ac- count of the(') matter in writing to convince the King and the Earl how ill they were informed, lie told the Earl, to wdiom he was referred by his majesty (and gave it in w^riting), that the ruin of King Charles the First was not owing to his passing the triennial bill, which did not hin- der him from dissolving any parliament, but to the passing of Q another bill, which put it out of his power to dissolve the parliament then in being, without the consent of the house. Mr. Swift, who was well versed in English history, although he was(^) under twenty -one years old, gave the King a short account of the matter, but a more large one to the Earl of Portland ; but all in vain. For the King by ill advisers was prevailed upon to refuse passing the bill. This was the iirst time that Mr. Swift had ever(*) any converse w^ith courts, and he told his friends it was the first incident that helped to cure him of vanity. (yriie consequence of this w^rong step in his majesty w^as very unhappy ; for it put that prince under a neces- sity of introducing those people called Whigs into power and employments, in order to pacify them. For, although it be held a part of the King's prerogative to refuse pass- ing a bill, yet the learned in the law think otherwise, from that expression used at the coronation, wherein the prince obligeth himself to consent to all laws, quas vidgiis elegerit. Mr. Swift havingQ lived with(') Sir William Temple some time, and(®) resolving to settle himself in some way of living, was inclined to take orders. " But iirst com- menced M.A. in Oxford as a student of Hart Hall on 5th July, 1692. "C*) However, although his fortune was very small, he had a scruple of entering into the church merely for support, and Sir WillianijC") tlien being Master of the Eolls in Ireland, offered him an employ of about £120 a year in that office ; wdiereupon Mr. Swift told him, that since he had now an opportunity of living without being driven into the churcli for a maintenance, "he was re- O '*That": D. S. O "Of "omitted: D. S. (") " Then " omitted by Swift. A mark is also liere attached in the MS. I am using, as if a correction were meant to be made : and in the Trinity College MS. the passage appears to have been written originally by Swift, and afterward erased, "under three and twenty yeare old." This would be the more correct date. O "Ever" erased: D. S. (^) A new paragraph begins here, in the MS. I am using. (•) "Having" omitted: D. S. O "Him": D. S. O "But": D.S. (") "Words within inverted commas inserted. ("*) "Temple" inserted: D.S. §1.] ANECDOTES OF HIS FAMILY AND HIMSELF. 29 solved to go to Ireland, and take lioly orders, (') In the Fragment year 1694 lie was admitted into deacon's and priest's orders ofAutoki- by Dr. William Moreton,Q bisliop of Kildare, who or- ig67-1699. dained him priest at Christ Church the 13th January that ^^.^^.^ ^ -t year."(^) He was recommended to the Lord Capel, then nation. Lord Deputy, who gave him a prebend in the north worth « about £100 a year, '' called the Prebend of Ivilroot in the Cathedral of Connor,"('') of which growing weary in a few months he returned to England, resigned his living in favor of a friend " who was reckoned a man of sense and piety, and was besides encumbered with a large family. After which lie"(') continued in Sir William Temple's house till the death of that great man, who beside a leg- acy(^) left him the care, and trust, and advantage of pub- lishing his posthumous writings. Upon this ev^ent Mr. Swift removed to London, and ap- plied by petition to King William upon the claim of a promise his majesty had made to Sir William Temple, that he would give Mr. Swift a prebend of Canterbury or AVest- minster. " Col. Henry Sidney, lately created "Q Earl of Romney, who professed much friendship for him, " and w^as now in some credit at court, on account of his early services to the King in Holland before the Revolution, for which he was made Master-General of the Ordnance, Constable of Dover Castle, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and one of the Lords of the Council,"^ promised to second Mr. Swift' s(^) petition ; but('") said not a word to the King. And Mr. Swift, " having totally relied on this lord's honor, and having neglected to use any other (') Up to the word "orders " Deane Swift prints tlie passage correctly. Scott makes nonsense of it by omit- ting every thing from the word "main- tenance" to " he was recommended." — Works, 1., 50. C^) Swift knew of this insertion, bnt his orders both of dean and priest were nndoubtedly conferred by King, then Bishop of Derry. The original parchments came into the hands of Mr. Monck Mason, at whose sale I bought them many years ago, and fthey are still in my possession. O Words within inverted commas inserted by Dr. Lyon. C) Words within inverted commas inserted bv Swift. (*) Words within inverted commas inserted by Swift. "And continued:" D. S. (®) After "legncy" in the Trinity College MS. Swift inserts "of a 100 lb." subsequently crossed through with a pen. (^) "The" erased: words within inverted commas inserted. (**) Words within inverted commas inserted. 0"His" erased: "Mr. Swift's" inserted by Swift. ('") "As he was an old, vicious, illiterate rake, without any sense of truth or honor," inserted by Swift, and erased. They are retained by D. S. 30 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. Fragment ofAutobi- OGRAPHY : 1667-1G99. Promises broken. Additions TO Frag- ment : 1700-1114. instrument of reminding liis majesty of the promise made to Sir William Temple,"(0 after long attendance in vain, thought it better to comply with an invitation, given him by the Earl of Berkeley, to attend him to Ireland, as his chaplain and private secretary ; his lordship having been appointed one of the Lords Justices of that kingdom, " with the Duke of Bolton and the Earl of Galway on the 29th June, 1699."0 He attended his lordship, who landed near Waterf ord ; and Mr. Swift acted as secretary(^) the whole journey to Dublin. But another person had so far insinuated himself into the earl's favor, by telling him that the post of secretary was not j^roper for a clergyman, nor would be of any advantage to one who aimed only at church preferments, that his lordship after a poor apology gave that office to the other. In some months the Deanery of DeiTy fell vacant ; and it was the Earl of Berkeley's turn to dispose of it. Yet things were so ordered that the Secretary having received a bribe, the Deanery was disposed of to another, and Mr. Swift was put off with some other church livings not w^orth above a third part of that rich Deanery ; and at this present time,(*) not a sixth : '' namely, the Kectory of Agher, and the Vicarage of Laracor and Bathbeggan in the Diocess of Meath ; for which his letters patent bear date the 24:th February following."(') The excuse pre- tended was his being too young, although he were then thirty years old. (')" The next year, in 1700, his grace Narcissus Lord Archbishop of Dublin was pleased to confer upon Mr. Swift the Prebend of Dunlaven in the Cathedral of St. Patrick's, by an instrument of institution and collation dated the 28th of September. And on the 22d of Octo- ber after, he took his seat in the Chapter. " From this time he continued in Ireland ; and on the 16th of February, 1701, he took his degree of Doctor of Divinity in the University of Dublin. After which he went to England about the beginning of April, and spent near a year there. (*) Words within inverted commas inserted by Swift. C) Words within inverted eommiis inserted, O Mr. Denne Swift liere ])rints *' during," but the word is not in ei- ther MS, (*) "Time" inserted. (') Words within inverted commas inserted. (") All tlint follows, to tlie end, in- serted. As with all the other addi-' tions or insertions, indicated in these notes, it is placed within inverted com- mas. I MENT 1700-1714. § I.] ANECDOTES OF HIS FAMILY AND HIMSELF. 31 "He appeared at the Dean's visitation on tlie lltli of Additions January, 1702 ; at a chapter held the loth of April ; and '^^^^^^^^ at the visitation on the 10th of January, 1703. He at- tended a chapter on the 9th of August, and the visitation of 8th of January, 1704. He was at two chapters held the 2d of February and the 2d of March following, and at the visitation the 7th of January, 1705. Also in April, Au- gust, and January, 1706 ; and in April, June, July, and August, 1707. Set sail for England 28th of November, 1707 ; landed at Dai-pool ; next day rode to Parkgate ; and so went to Leicester first. "He was excused at the visitation in 1707 and 1708; and c^ the 9th of January, 1709, expected at the visita- tion, but did not come. He spent 1708 in England, and set sail from Darpool for Ireland 29th of June, 1709, and landed at Ringsend next day, and went straight to Lara- cor. Was often giddy and had tits this year. "He attended a chapter held the loth February, 1709; also at a chapter 29tli July and 11th August, 1710. Ex- cused at the visitation 8tli of January, 1710. He was not in Ireland after this till his instalment as Dean on the 13th of June, 1713. On the 27tli of August he nomi- nated Dr. Edward Synge to act in his absence as sub- dean ; and came no more to Ireland until after the Queen's death. He set out to Ireland from Letcomb in Berkshire August the 16th, 1714 ; landed in Dublin the 24th of the same month; and held a chapter on the 15th of Septem- ber, 1714." To these Anecdotes reference will have to be made as occasion requires. Imperfect as they are, they are found to illustrate Swift's career. They show not alone the sense of worldly disadvantage that even during childhood and at school marred his enjoyment and chilled exertion, but the temperament which at later times fitted him as little innstrations to receive obligation as to endure dependence. They ex- hibit disappointments such as fall to few men so endowed, and an eagerness to resent disappointments such as few ! men on earth are spared. There is in them also, especial- ly, a kind of family pride which he never more than half confessed, but which always strongly overruled him. Com- paring his claims on the side of both his parents with the imprudence of the marriage that had brought them to- of character. 32 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. 1G67-1688. getlier, lie believed misfortune to have anticipated life, and — ' that the world had been made bitter for him even before he opened his eyes in it. Swift's father. Steward of Eiug's Inus. II. CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 1667-1688. ^T. 1-21. On the 25th of January, 1665-'6, the Benchers of the King's Inns, Dublin, were met to consider a petition pre- sented to them on the 14th of the previous IS^ovember by a young Englishman who had been admitted an at- torney and member of the society in Hilary term of the year preceding. It humbly set forth that the steward- ship of the King's Inns was become void by the death of Thomas Wale ; that the petitioner, Jonathan Swift, his father, and their whole family, had always been very loyal and faithful to his majesty King Charles the Second and his royal father, and had been very great sufferers on that acccount ; that for six or seven years last past the said petitioner had been much conversant about the inns, and was well acquainted with the steward's duty and employ- ment, having assisted Wale in entering of their honors' orders ; and that he therefore humbly prayed their honors to be pleased to make him steward. The decision of the Benchers was favorable ; and their direction, bearing date that day, admitted Jonathan Swift to be steward of the King's Inns. Before this time he appears to have had no settled means of support. With what his son calls a reputation for in- tegrity and a tolerable good understanding, he had come over to Ireland, drawn by the success of his elder brother, on the final break-up of his father's liouse two years be- fore the restoration; but though lie obtained some em- ployments and agencies connected with forfeited lands, he had no certain income, and, returning to England from time to time, was still wavering between such chances of CEIILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 33 a livelihood as either country presented, when a marriage 1667-1G88. contracted with Abigail Erick^ (or Ilerrick), a Leicester- — ^' '" " shire girl of old family but no fortune, determined hun to Abigail settle finally to what had mostly occupied him since his ^"^^' father's death, and, having qualified himself in Hilary term 1664-' 5 by membership of the inns, he had served as as- sistant in the steward's and under-treasurer's office until the date of his own appointment. Yery brief was his enjoyment of this humble piece of fortune. He had held it little more than a year when there came under consideration of the Benchers another petition. On the 15th of April, 1667, the humble prayer of Abigail Swift, widow, was presented to them : setting forth that it had pleased God to take away unexpectedly Dies before her husband, the late steward of their honorable society ; that, being left a disconsolate widow, she could not with- out their honors' assistance get in a debt of about six-score pounds sterling due to her husband's estate for commons and cost commons from members of the inns, several of whom, on being applied to by her brother-in-law, Mr. Wil- liam Swift, had denied him on pretense of his having no authority to receive the money ; and she therefore petition- ed for an order to give him such authority. On the same day her petition was complied with, but her desire was as far as ever from fulfillment. As the days passed into months, her troubles and fears increased. She had been left with an infant daughter, but she carried another child widow's unborn ; and she had scarcely, in the seventh month of her widowhood, laid down that burden, when from her sick-room again the wail of poverty and anguish went up to the masters of the bench. Their new steward had been pressing her, even then, for payment of twelve pounds eighteen shillings and elevenpence, alleged to be owing from her dead husband. There was also another debt claimed by the doctors for his last illness, and his funeral * He settled npon her, at the mar- riage, an annuity of £20, purchased in England, and this was all she is YoL. L— 3 known to have possessed afterward in her own light. /V >, ^ OB^ ^^^ W. ?>4- THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. 1067-1088. expenses remained unpaid. But liow, slie implored their ^' honors, were these debts to be discharged, while a hundred heip.'° ^ pounds of arrears due to his estate were still withheld from her? The reply was characteristic rather than mu- nilicent. As to the twelve pounds and shillings, their honors were content to balance it against an equal sum from their late steward's arrears ; and as to the hundred of arrears, of which three-fourths were for commons actu- ally served at their own bench table, they made order that " William Swift should exert his diligence " to recover it. Whether the diligence so re-exerted had that result, there is no evidence to inform us.^ The infant whose misfortunes thus began, upon the principle of Mr. Shandy's reckoning, eight months before he saw the light, and who at last had opened his eyes upon a world in which want and dependence were grim- ly awaiting him, lived beyond man's allotted term, and while conscious of any thing is alleged never to have omit- ted, as surely as his birthday came round, to repeat the words of Job in which he wished the day to have perished wherein he was born, and the night in which it was said there was a man-child conceived. Allowance is in this to be made for exaggeration, as in many other like things said of him. A man does not socially celebrate what he is always savagely denouncing ; and Swift not only kept his birthday with unusual regularity, but rejoiced when those who loved him remembered it in his absence. " O, then, you kept Pdfr's httle birthday : would to God I had been with you !" He had indeed a habit of reading on the day the third chapter of Job ; and " Wliat's here, now ?" he writes of a letter from Esther Johnson reproaching him for not recollecting the proper date. " Yes, faith, I lamented my birthday two days later, that's all !" The habit grew upon him as years and disappointments grew, until at last the day became indeed an anniversary of un- mitigable sadness. "It is a day you seem to regard, ♦ The fjicts stated in the text are I printed in Duhigg's History of the derived from tlic original documents I King's Inns, Dublin (1806, p. 216). Jonathan's birthdny. § IL] CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 35 tliougli I detest it," he wrote to Mrs. Whiteway three years igg7-1688. before darkness closed upon his mind, "and I read the ^' ~ ' third chapter of Job this morning." It was his way of job. '"°^ ° expressing, what more or less he doubtless felt all his life, that with his birth had come inheritance of evil incurable by philosopher or physician ; but, beyond, there was also much he was well content should be otherwise expressed, and to show how far this counterbalanced the bitter disad- vantage must be the task of his biographer. Before the story is begun, some further notice of the Swift family, with brief recapitulation of the principal points of his own sketch, will explain both the kind of help the widow and her children were to receive, and what it was that in- disposed them to receive it gratefully. The first notorious person of the name had been also Yorkshire the first to connect the name with Ireland. Barnam Swift, representative of the elder branch of an old English fam- ily which had long been settled in Yorkshire, and T\'ho for his gallantry and jovial humor passed among his friends as the Cavaliero, became one of Charles the First's Irish peers under the title of Yiscount Carlingf ord ; but, dying without male issue, this branch became extinct, and the whole of the Yorkshire estates passed through the female line by the marriage of his daughters, co-heiresses, one to that Eobert Fielding known as the Beau or Handsome Fielding, who had for his second wife the famous or in- famous Duchess of Cleveland, and the other to the Earl of Eglinton. It was, however, from a younger branch of the same family, through a representative equally but less fortunately devoted to the Stuarts, in whose service he re- ceived nothing and sacrificed every thing, that the great- est of the name was directly descended. The Eeverend Thomas Swift, whose father, also a divine of good repute nercford- in the church, had wedded an heiress of whose lands in " ^'^^ ^'^'^"^ * Herefordshire only a very small portion descended to her son, possessed in the same county, besides that temporal estate increased by an inheritance from his father, the vic- arage of Goodrich and cure of Bridstow, and lost them all 36 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. Intermar- riage with the Drydens. Godwin, Thomas, and Jonathan. 16G7-1G88. for his loyalty. In 1646 Lotli lands and livings were se- — ' questered ; and at tlie close of that year, when Hereford had been taken by the forces of the parliament, he was a prisoner in Eagland Castle. It has been seen how exult- ingly his famous grandson dwells npon these losses and sufferings in the cause of the king. Thomas Swift had in early life married Elizabeth Dry- den, daughter of Sir Erasmus Dryden's brother, - who bore him ten sons and four daughters ; and it is a family tradi- tion that, shortly after his sixth son, Jonathan, was born, the soldiers of the parliament made forcible entrance into his vicarage and stripped it, not merely of the last loaf left in the kitchen, but of the very clothes of the infant lying in the cradle. Up to manhood, poor Jonathan the elder seems to have had the same ill fortune ; for when his father died in 1658, he was one of the sons already grown to man's estate w^ho were left without a profession, or any apparent dependence except on the elder brothers. Of the latter, Godwin and Thomas had certainly received advantages, while yet their father lived, not extended to the rest. Thomas, who w^as bred for the church, obtained an English living; and bettered his prospects, after the Restoration, by marriage with the eldest daughter of Dav- enant, the poet. In earlier years his brother Godwin, the eldest of the family, called to the bar at Gray's Inn while yet the civil war was raging, had become favorably known in the courts during the Protectorate, and had improved his fortunes also by marriage, after the example generally of his race. The iirst of his four wives was a cousin of the old Marchioness of Ormond ; through the third he be- came possessed of a portion of the family estate which had been forfeited by her father. Admiral Deane, the reg- icide ; the last was sister to Sir John Meade ; and though lie had wedded his second and only undowered wife, Mrs. Uncle God- win's four Mives. * Sir Erasmus was the poet's grand- father, and the nnme of Jonathan was taken by the Swifts from the Drvden family, Jonathan Diyden, Mr. Thomas Swift's brother-in-law, having received the profits of the Goodrich living upon its forfeiture by Thomas Swift in 1G4G. — See Malone's Dryden, i.,17. §11.] CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 37 Catherine "Webster, before tlie restoration, his favor with 1G67-1688. the Ormonds so far survived that new alliance as to secure ^' ^~^^\ for him, after the event, upon the first duke assuming his brief tenure of the government of Ireland, the office of Attorney-general for the palatinate of Tipperary. There connection is evidence also that he was on friendly and confidential Temples. footing with the Master of the KoUs, Sir John Temple, father of the more famous Sir William. By all his marriages Godwin Swift had issue ; fifteen sons and three daughters survived him ; his brothers had also representatives ; and to his nephew Jonathan may be forgiven an alleged reproach, that when reputation and power were his he would not recognize, in all this crowd of cousinhood,* other title to notice than that of bearing a name made famous only by himself. But with the fami- ly increase Godwin's worldly successes kept pace, and at the date of his brother Jonathan's death he was undoubt- edly a prosperous gentleman. It was the sunsliine of his fortune at this time which had brought wdthin its reach not alone that brother, but three others, Dryden, William, and Adam, who believed they might profit by its w^armth in making Ireland their home. To him, then, as to the The widow's acknowledged head of the family, Jonathan's widow had ^^^" ^^^^' tm'ned naturally in her trouble. With exception of the small annuity of twenty pounds which her husband had been enabled to purchase at their marriage, she w^as whol- ly dependent on this supposed wealthy relative ; and ob- serving the circumstances in vhich her second child was born, and the privations of which she not unreasonably * "I dined to-day with Patty Rolt at my coz Leach's, with a pox, in the city: he is a printer, and prints the Postman, oh ! oh ! and is my cousin, God knows how, and he mamied Mrs. Baby Aires of Leicester, and my coz Tompson was with us." — Journal, 26th Oct., 1710. " Did you ever hear of Dryden Leach ? — he acted Oroono- ko — he is in love with Miss Cross." (17th Jan., 1710-11.) Again, on a later day: "I went to-day into the city to see Pat Rolt, Avho lodges with a city cousin, a daughter of coz Cleve (you are much the wiser). I had nev- er been at her house before. My he- coz Tompson the butcher is dead or dying." (2d March, 1712-'13.) Pat- ty Rolt afterward married one Lance- lot, whom Swift did his best to serve, being, he says, fond of Patty, as we shall see. A crowd of cousins. 38 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. 1667-1688. ^T. 1-21. Swift's birthplace. complained, one sees wliat must liave been tlie imj^ression ineffaceablj stamped upon Swift in his cliildliood, and imbittering every later experience of his uncle Godwin's bounty. The case is not altered by saying that the ex- pectations disappointed were not such as it was entirely fair to entertain. In a small court in Dublin adjoining the Castle inclos- ure, on St. Andrew's Day (30th of November), 1667, Jon- athan Swdft was born."^^" Portions of this "• Iloey's Court " are still standing; but the only house possessing interest in it, fonnerly numbered 7, and occupied within living memory by small dealers in rags, earthenware, and such- like merchandise, was fallen into so ruinous a state a few years ago that it had to be pulled down, and the site was then taken into the Castle grounds. The principal houses now in the court are on the side opposite to that where Swift's mother lived ; and, judging from the look of those still left on the side w^here number 7 stood, were probably of later date and of greater pretensions. How long she continued here after her son's birth, is not exactly known. She seems at all times to have made regular visits to her friends in Leicestershire, and Swift declared that at the time of his birth she was about to return there ;t but it is * Mr. Deane Swift says in his Es- say (22), and in a letter to Mr. Nich- ols, which I will here quote, that the birth took place in Godwin's house. Writing nearly a hundred years after the event, he speaks of it with a mi- nute particularity which will be always found to characterize his alleged facts in the exact ratio of their unlikeli- hood, or (if likely) of the impossibili- ty of their being known to him. *'Her husband having died a very young man about the time of the Spryig Assizes in the year 1067, she was invited to my grandfather Counselor Swift's house in Dublin. And as I have been told, and believe it to be true, she was then so young with child, that jjroperly speak- ing she was not aware of it ; and the Doctor was born at my grandfather's house the 30th of November follow- ing." It would not be worth advert- ing to this if it had not imposed on Nichols and others, and if it were not an illustration of the entire untrust- worthiness of all Mr. Deane Swift's family flourishes. It found a place in Joseph Spence's biographical sketch (printed in Notes and Queries of Jan- uary, 1861), but no careful inquirer has adopted it. Spence's sketch is worth- less. t "As to my native country," he wrote to Mr. Francis Grant (2iJd March, 1733-'4), " 1 happened indeed by a perfect accident to be born here, my mother being left here from return- ing to her house at Leicester, and 1 § II.] CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 39 at least certain that there is no trace of her in Dublin aft- 1G67-1688. er Jonathan's school-dajs began. - — ^ — :l^ Before the beginning of even these, however, or of the second year of the little fellow's existence, an incident had occurred claiming mention in his history. To the English chiui carried nurse who had charge of him he had so endeared himself, ° ^ °"^''®* that, upon the occasion of a relative's death calling her sud- denly to her native place of Whitehaven, she carried off with her the child w^iom she could not bear to part from ; " stole him on shipboard, unknown to his mother and uncle," says Swift himself ; and did not take him back to Ireland for more than two years. Her care of him had not slept in the interval. Before his return he had learned to spell ; and " by the time that he w^as three years old,"* jel s. his fragment of autobiography has told us, " he could read any chapter in the Bible." He had no pride of birth in the country to which he was thus taken back, and with which his name is eternally associated. lie never called himself, nor permitted others to call him, an Irishman. He was an Englishman settled in Ireland. He was in the habit of saying frequently to others what he wrote to the second Lord Oxford in 1T3T. He happened to be dropped No piifie in there ; was one year old when he left it first ; and to his sorrow did not die before he went to it again. He had a sickly childhood ; and it was his mother's fear that a second sea voyage might be dangerous to him which led her to consent that he should stay so long with the woman who had shown him so strong an attachment. Abigail Swift depended mainly at this time on her hus- was a year old before I was sent to 1 wished to interest hira in a fishery Enghind ; and thus I am a Teague, or scheme. an Irisliman, or what people please, although the best part of my life was in England. What I did for this coun- try was from perfect hatred of tyran- ny and oppression I believe the people of Lapland or the Hottentots are not so miserable a people as we." Grant was a London merchant, who * "Almost three" is the first ex- pression of Swifi, altered by hira to "three;" and this followed the era- sure of "two years," which at first he had written. Mr, Deane Swift print- ed "three" correctly; but Hawkes- worth altered the word to "five, "and was copied by Scott. 40 THE LIFE OE JONATHAN SWIET. [Book I. 1667-1688. band's eldest brother for help in her widowhood ; and it -_r ^ was because he stinted, not what he gave, but the kindness with which lie might have given it, that the bread of de- pendence was made very bitter to her. Godwin had the reputation of being wealthier than the sequel showed him to be ; and, though a cold, unsjmpathizing man, there is no ground for thinking him an unjust one. "He gave me the education of a dog," said Swift ; who thought, perhaps justly, that, but for his uncle's connection by marriage with the Ormond family, he w^ould not have been taken from his mother's side at the early age of six years, and At Kilkenny placed, Under the care of a Mr. Eyder, in the foundation- school of the Ormonds at Kilkenny. Whether at the same age the assistance was withdrawn which until now enabled the child's mother to continue her residence in Ireland, there are no means of ascertaining ; but shortly after her boy had thus been taken from her care, she is found to be School- living among her own relatives in Leicester. Kilkenny school, however, had some repute in those days ; and here, where a youth named Stratford well known to him in his famous time was in the same class with him, he was joined, after a couple of years, by his cousin Thomas, son of his Oxford uncle of that name ; and he had for a later school- wiiiiam f ellow a lad named William Congreve, two years his junior, son of a younger brother of a good English family, whose father was then managing Lord Burlington's Irish estate, who entered Trinity College under the same tutor as Swift two years later, and was to achieve a reputation only less famous than his own. Swift remained till he was fourteen ; but, except his name cut by himself on the sideboard of the seat of his class, no trace of him survived in the school. He told Doc- tor Lyon that the first Latin words which struck his child- ish fancy soon after entering it, " Mi dux et amasti lux," had touched him more durably than the graver teaching ; for with them began his whimsical taste for the rhymed Latin-English indulged largely in his later years. There is also a hint in one of his letters to Pope and Bolingbroke § II.] CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 41 that other pursuits tlian of Latin or English may have oc- 1G67-1688. cupied him at Kilkenny, and we know with certainty that — IiJT" JL what he mentions here was among his subsequent amuse- ments at Laracor.^ " I remember, when I was a little boy, I felt a great fish at the end of my line, which I drew up almost on the ground; but it dropped in, and the disap- pointment vexes me to this very day, and I believe it was Atypeoftho the type of all my future disappointments." Another school recollection, of less certain authenticity, appears in some personal experiences with which he is al- leged to have enforced an argument on the improvidence of marriage where means were scant and health indifferent, addressed to one of the many young clergymen helped by him when Dean of St. Patrick's. " When I was a school- story of boy at Kilkenny, and in the lower form, I longed very much to have a horse of my own to ride on. One day I saw a poor man leading a very mangy, lean horse out of the town to kill him for the skin. I asked the man if he would sell him, which he readily consented to upon my offering him somewhat more than the price of the hide, which was all the money I had in the world. I immediate- ly got on him, to the great envy of some of my school-fel- lows and to the ridicule of others, and rode him about the town. The horse soon tired, and lay down. As I had no stable to put him into, nor any money to pay for his sus- tenance, I began to find out what a foolish bargain I had made, and cried heartily for the loss of my cash ; but the horse dying soon after on the spot gave me some relief." An extract from the senior lecturer's book in Dublin University exhibits the next step in Swift's career. It in- forms us that on the 24:tli of April, 1682, from the school of Mr. Ryder at Kilkenny, there were admitted into the college as pensioners,* under the tuition of St. George Asha (who became afterward bishop of Clogher), " Thomas Swift, son of Thomas, aejed fifteen years, born in Oxfordshire ;'' . ' ^ J ? ' Enters col- and " Jonathan SAvif t, son of Jonathan, aged fourteen years, lege. * Stratford had been admitted under another tutor some months earlier. 42 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. Duration of residence. 1667-1688. born ill the county of Dublin." For neai-lj seven years „ :_Z"_;_ Jonathan remained here, taking his bachelor s degree in February, 1685-6, and passing the three following years also in the college, which he did not quit until the " break- ing-out of the troubles " at the opening of 1689. That is his own expression ; and of all that has been written on his university career, including a volume by a learned vice- provost of the college,* there is hardly any thing really authentic excepting what was written by himself. Famous men may suffer quite as much by excess as by want of curiosity about them, and more would certainly now have been known of Swift if less had been written respecting him in the half -century following his death. His own anecdotes, in a passage it will be well here to reproduce, inform us that by the ill-treatment of his near- est relations, in other words the insufficiency of the help afforded him by his uncle Godwin, " he was so discouraged and sunk in his spirits, that he too much neglected his ac- ademic studies, for some parts of which he had no great relish by nature, and turned himself to reading history and poetry ; so that when the time came for taking his degree of bachelor of arts, although he had lived with great regu- larity and due observance of the statutes, he was stopped of his degree for dullness and insufficiency, and at last hard- ly admitted in a manner, little to his credit, which is called in that college speciali gratia. And this discreditable mark, as I am told, stands upon record in their college reg- istry.'' Here the truth substantially is related, no doubt ; but with coloring from the ironical tone which he so often gave to his mention of the Irish college in the days when it was written. Famous as he was then, any discredit from the special grace would go to the giv^er ; and while its im- port may have been harmless enough, as will shortly be seen, Swift preferred to tell the world that Trinity College had thought him too dull for a degree. But this is not the His degree by special grace. * An Essay on the Earlier Par/ 1 John Barrett, I). 1)., Vice-Provost of of the Life of Swift. By tlie Kev. I Trinity College, Dublin. 1808. § IL] CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 43 view that lias found favor with commentators and critics. 1667-1688. 7p"rn ■1_9"! They have made a very serious business of it indeed; '- 1^"^ though the matter would hardly have been worth even writers ou brief illustration, but for the light it throws on the claim ^'^^^^' to authenticity of the four earliest writers who have been accepted as original authorities for the Life of Swift. First came, seven years after the death, the Remm'hs of Lord orrery. Lord Orrery, who knew Swift only during his last six or seven years of consciousness, who had been shown by Mrs. Whiteway the anecdotes given by her afterward to her son-in-law, Mr. Deane Swift, and to whom the latter had told sundry stories of his kinsman's last illness. In the Remarlcs it is declared that Swift's sole occupation at the university had been to turn all its studies into ridicule except history and poetry ; that on his appearing for a de- gree he was set aside for insufficiency, obtaining it only in a manner that was dishonorable ; and that when, on pre- senting himself at Oxford for an ad eundein^ he handed in his Irish degree speciali gratia^ the English Dons took the Avords to signify a reward, not a reproach, and Swift never tried to undeceive them. Of the source as well as truth of this anecdote the reader will shortly be able to judge. Two years after the Remarks^ Doctor Delany published Doctor De- his Observations^ in which he confirmed Lord Orrery's ac- ^^^^' count of the degree, " which Swift hath been often heard to say was owing to his being a dunce ;" and added that the disgrace of it had nevertheless a happy effect, for it made him immediately turn his thoughts to useful learn- ing. His mistake at his outset in Trinity College, Doctor Delany stated, he had himself frequently explained to be " that he looked upon the study of Greek and Latin to be downright pedantry and beneath a gentleman ; for that poetry, and plays, and novels were the only polite accom- plishments." We shall soon see how near this is like to have been to the truth; and of the four authorities un- der illustration, Delany is undoubtedly the most to be esteemed. A year after came Mr. Deane Swift, grandson of God- 44 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. 1667-1688. ^T. 1-21. Mr. Deaue Swift. Hawkes- worth. Collection of the works. win by liis marriage into the family of Deane the regicide, who published his Essay ten years after the deatli of his great kinsman; whom he personally knew only on the eve of that event, in his last year or two of consciousness ; but of whom he speaks like one familiar with liis prime, and says he took an opportunity of telling him that he cer- tainly must have been idle in his college days. " But he assured me to the contrary ; declared that he could never understand logic, physics, metaphysics, natural philosophy, mathematics, or any thing of that sort ; but I will tell you, said he, the best part of it all w^as, when I produced my testimonials at Oxford in order to be admitted ad eundem^ they mistook speciali gratia for some particular strain of compliment which I had received from the University of Dublin on account of my superior merit, and 1 leave you to guess Avhether it was my business to undeceive them." The reader who thus sees the origin of Lord Orrery's story, may appreciate also the value of such statements by con- sulting Mr. Deane Swift's own volume for the very copy of the Trinity College degree on which the Oxford ad eundem was granted.* The special grace does not appear in it. The proceeding speciali gratia w^as, in short, any thing but uncommon, and the degree thus granted-, being as good as any other, was of course entered like any other. Ilawkesworth's memoir appeared in 1755, but he had merely copied his predecessors ; though ten years later he did excellent service, with Mr. Bowyer, Mr. JS^ichols, Mr. Willves, Mr. Deane Swift and Doctor Birch, in helping toward the gradual collection of the works, and addition thereto of the bulk of the correspondence, including the * "Nos pra^positns sociique seni- ores Collegii Sacrosanctic et IndivU duse Triintutis juxta Dublin testamur Jonathan Swift die decimo quinto Februarii 1685 gradum bacoalainea- tfts in artibus snsci|)isse, pnvstito prius fidelitater erga regiam magistatem juramento : quod de pra;dicto testi- monium snbscriptis singulorum no- minibus et collegii sigillo quo in liisce utimur confirmandum curavimus. Da- tum die tertio Maii 16*J2. Kob, Hun- tington, Pra^pos, L.S. St. George Ashe, Kith. Keader, Geo. Brown, Ben. Scroggs." For Mr.Deane Swift's attempt to explain the contradiction, see Essay, 44-46. II.] CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 45 several parts of what is called the " Journal to Stella/'"^ 1667-1G88. Ilawkesworth was followed in 1780 bj Johnson, who con- — ^^*:_^^ tributed some solid reflection, but neither novelty in the johus^on. way of facts, nor, happily, any pretense to it. Then, in 1784, came the edition with a Life by Sheridan, to which the habit of confounding tlie writer with his father, and its adoption by Is ichols, who prefixed it to his valuable editions of 1801 and 1808, has given a factitious impor- tance. A life by Swift's old friend would have been price- less ; but this was a life, written fifty years after the death of Swift's friend, by Sheridan's son, the actor and author Sheridan, of the dictionary, himself not bom until 1721, who was not nineteen in the year when Swift's mind was gone, who was little over sixteen when all personal knowledge or access had been closed by his father's death,f who had been three years on the stage when Swift died, but who nevertheless, like all the rest, speaks of him as a familiar and equal, and whose minutely elaborate statements, supported by no bet- ter authority than flighty histrionic inferences from de- tached fragments of letters and poems, are still accepted to explain the most disputed passages in Swift's life. " lie told me that he had made many efforts, upon his entering the college, to read some of the old treatises on logic writ by Smeglesius, Keckermannus, Burgersdicius, etc., and that Fancy pict- he never had patience to go through three pages of any ^^^q/ of them, he was so disgusted at the stupidity of the work. When he was urged by his tutor to make himself master of this branch, then in high estimation, and held essentially necessary to the taking of a degree. Swift asked him what , it was he was to learn from those books ? His tutor told him, the art of reasoning. Swift said that he found no want of any such art ; that he could reason very well with- * For the times and manner of pub- lication of this, the most important of all the illustrations of Swift's life, see post, 420-24. t Of whom we can not but recall, too, Johnson's description, which, whatever in other respects its humor- ous exaggeration may be, describes only too faithfully the book about Swift. "Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull: but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an ex- cess of stupidity, sir, is not in nature." 46 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. 1667-1688. out it ;" and so fortli. " In going through the usual forms ' "" ' of disputation for liis degree, he told me he was utterly un- acquainted even with the logical terms, and answered the arguments of his opponents in his own manner, which the proctor put into proper form. There Avas one circumstance Swift before in the account which he gave of this, that surprised me ers.^^'^"^^*^* with regard to his memory ; for he told me the several questions on which he disputed, and repeated all the argu- ments used by his opponents in syllogistic form, together with his answers." Sui-prising indeed to a raw lad of six- teen ! and still more sui-prising that a youth thus privi- leged to hear how Swift, when quite as young himself, had unsparingly handled the trained scholars of the college, should yet sum up and dispose of his Dublin-University career in these half-dozen words: "By scholars he was esteemed a blockhead." Such was the amount of information possessed by the public concerning Swift at college when Kichols had com- pleted in 1801 his collected edition ; and he was on the eve of publishing the second impression of that important book in 1808, when Edmond Malone, who helped him with it, having heard, through an intimate acquaintance high Dr. Barrett's ill the College who became afterward an Irish bishop, of ^^^^^' researches for trace of Swift's student days on which the vice-provost of the college. Doctor Barrett, had been some time en2:ao:ed, obtained the use of them for his friend. The vice-provost had been moved to his inquiries by a published samnei letter of Samucl Eichardson, written to Lady Bradshaugh SnSei. on the appearance of Orrery's Bemarl^s^ in wliicli, with other palpable misstatements, to be noticed in their place hereafter, he says : "I am told my lord is mistaken in some of his facts : for instance, in that wherein he asserto that Swift's learning was a late acquirement. I am very well warranted by the son of an eminent divine, aprehite, who " — that is, the prelate—" was for three years what is called his chum, in tlie following account of that fact. Dr. Swift made as great a progress in his learning at the Uni- versity of Dublin in his youth as any of his contempora- § II.] CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 47 ries ; but was so very ill-natured and tronblesome, that lie 1667-1G88. was made Terrse Filius, on pui-pose to have a pretext to ^' "" * expel him. He raked up all the scandal against the heads of that university that a severe inquirer, and a still severer temper, could get together into his harangue. lie was ex- pelled in consequence of his abuse ; and having his disces- sit, afterward got admitted at Oxford to his degree." Seiz- ing on this clue, Doctor Barrett set to work with such eager Barrett's re- desire to identify Swift as the expelled Terrse Filius, that, '=^'^'^^^' though he could not discover that he ever played that part of scholastic lord of misrule, or was ever at any time ex- pelled, he gave him all the benefit of a discovery that both these things (substituting six days' degradation for expul- sion) had occurred to a fellow - student named Jones, in whose offending "harangue," consisting of nonsense and filth in about equal portions, he so elaborately stated his belief that Swift must have taken part, because of prepos- terous alleged resemblances to the Tale of a Tidf and Gulliver, that Nichols, and Scott after him (though not without misgiving in Scott's case), were induced to ad- mit it into their editions. I have vainly attempted, in two careful readings, to discover in it any thing that shoidd re- call Swift, however distantly. It is simply an outrage on his memory to call it his. N^or is the small residue of Doctor Barrett's research Ten-re riiins entitled to graver attention. The most important fact es- jnly^i^s. tablished by his " rakings " in the college books and regis- tries, namely, that Swift's cousin and senior remained in the college during all the time that Swift remained, in- volves in quite hopeless confusion his attempts to identify either student satisfactorily with the rewards or the punish- ments he exhibits. lie says that Swift senior (Thomas) ob- Two sir tained a scholarship, but supports it by no better reasoning than is used for establishing that Swift junior (Jonathan) had no scholarship : the presumption being that without a scholarship Jonathan could hardly, in his circumstances, have remained after his degree. He confirms Swift's own statement that up to the time of the degree (13th of Feb- 48 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. 1667-1688. ruarj, 1685-6), lie had lived witli great regularity and due — ^' observance of the statutes, for he declares that tlie at- tempt to find any earlier censures on him in the registries had entirely failed. But he makes up for this by pro- ducing a most astonishing number of unfavorable entries from the buttery books, besides two public censures from the college registry, subsequent to that date ; with all of which he discredits Swift junior, it must be said on the most indifferent grounds. There is such a medley of sen- ior and junior books ; such a want of either, or both, at critical points in the evidence ; and a confusion between Thomas or the two Sir Swifts (Christian names being never employ- Jonathan? ^^^ ^^ hopeless of settlement except when both are together on the scene ; that the only safe conclusion is, whatever the increase at the latter time of Swift's discontents may have been, to believe in no such violent change of his hab- its before and after his degree as Doctor Barrett attempts to present to us. Tlie just course might probably be to divide between the two cousins the not very large amount College flues of moral blame involved in the numerous lines and pun- snrer" isliments ; and in this view^ it is noticeable that both cous- ins appear in the first of the two public censures, of which the date is a year after the degree : " Mr. Warren, Sir Swift senior, Sir Swift junior, Web, Bredy, Series, and Johnson the pensioner, for notorious neglect of duties, and frequenting the town, w^ere admonished." On the other hand, nothing is established by the second and graver censure, which bears date on the day, two years later, when Jonathan Swift completed his twenty -iirst year, except that it applied to one of the two Swifts. The offense was contumacious and contemptuous conduct to the junior dean, whereby dissension was created in the col- lege; and for this "Sir Web, Sir Sergeant, Sir Swift, Maynard, Spencer, and Fisher," were to be suspended ; the principal oft'enders, " Sir Swift and Sir Sergeant," be- ing directed publicly on their knees to beg pardon of the dean. The suspension lasted for a month. There is no means of knowing if the public pardon was asked ; and §n.] CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 49 whether Thomas or Jonathan was the offender, the evi- 1667-1688. TPt 1 —'•'1 dence does not in any way settle. Jones had been Terrse — '- — ^^ Filius five months before ; and the attempt to fix upon '^ P^'^^en. Jonathan the later degrading punishment by connecting it with an alleged earlier offense of having had part in Jones's filthy and slanderous harangue, fails quite absurd- ly. The buttery-book entries remain, and Jonathan may accept his full share of them. It is more than likely he irreguiari- was a frequent offender in neglecting to attend the college il^eiy? '^"" chapel, in missing night-rolls or halls, and in haunting the town streets."^ The strano^e thins: is, that all Doctor Barrett's most mi- nute searches, with every university record accessible to him, should have " raked up " nothing better than punish- ments or fines, and that from them no scrap of paper or other document should be forthcoming to indicate Swift's place in the college examinations relatively to his cousin and other students of his time. 'No such thing appears, and no surprise or regret is expressed at its absence. But it seems to have become matter of talk in the college ; and the well-informed historian of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Mr. Monck Mason, makes the following statement in his elab- orate chapter on Swift : " The learned Dr. Barrett, vice- provost of Trinity College, Dublin, informed me that he was present at a meeting of the board when the late Bish- op of Ossory, at that time a senior fellow " (Doctor Kear- ney, subsequently provost), " discovered among some loose Rijiht cine „ . . -, found and papers a record oi the pidgments given at a quarterly ex- lost. amination of this period. The name of Jonathan Swift * "Most of his punishments," says Dr. Barrett, "tire for non-attendance in chapel. The amount is £1 19s. 4d. confirmed, and 19s. and lOd. taken off. For surplice (that is, for non- attendance in chapel at those times when surplices are required to be worn), lis. 4d. confirmed, and 6s. 6d. taken off. Of his other punis'h- ments, those for lectures appear all confii-med ; and are, for catechism, YoL. I.— 4 3s. ; Greek lecture, 9d. ; Hebrew lec- ture, 8d. ; mathematic lecture, is. lOd. ; and those for missing night- rolls, or town haunting (that is, for halls)" in other words, not being in the college- hall every night at nine when the students' names were called over, " amount to 3s. 4d., but are all taken off, the admonition being sub- stituted in their place." — Essay, 11, 12. 60 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. 1667-1688. was discovered among the students; and upon liis per- — ' formance in some brandies (but wliich, the learned doctor could not recollect) the very opprobrious censures of ' pes- sime ' and ' tacet ' were pronounced — judgments which are now rarely if ever given : that of ' vix mediocriter ' calling forth what is emphatically styled ' a caution ' from the nil- ers of that seminary of learning. I have endeavored to obtain a sight of this valuable literary relic, but the repre- sentatives of the learned bishop have not been, hitherto, successful in their search for it." It has been reserved to the present writer, after this long interval of years, to ex- Adventures plain w^hy. The relic had been sent by the bishop to his reifc.^^^^*'^^ friend in England, Edmond Malone ; and was found by me, only a very few years ago, in a copy of Doctor Bar- rett's book which belonged to Malone ; in which were many notes in his handwriting, with a packet of letters addressed to him by the author ; and which was said to have lain undisturbed, since Malone's death, on the shelves of the London book-seller from whom it was purchased by my- self. The value of this remarkable discovery is as great as its interest. It gives Swift an ascertained place among the students at college with him, and it shows on what in- sufficient grounds later inmates of the college connected " pessime " and " tacet " with his name. J^either word is attached to it in the college-roll. This contains 175 names, and those of the cousins Swift stand together, twelfth and thirteenth. Christian names are not in theirs or in any case given ; but the order as well of ad- mission into the college as of seniority in age, which I have quoted from the senior lecturer's book, iixes it be- yond the possibility of dispute that Thomas stands before Jonathan. The internal evidence presented by this most interesting roll is not less decisive. Its judgments, the re- sult of one of the last important quarterly examinations in foiie^e ex- Easter Term, 1G85, which preceded the bachelor's degree ami_nationof .^ February, 1685-'6, not alone confirm Swift's own ac- count of his studies, but apply otherwise with a perfect exactness to what is known of the characters of himself § II.] CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 51 and his cousin. In the fac-simile here made of the first 16G7-1688. twenty-one names, the reader will of course understand ^' ^''^^' that Ph., G L., and Th. signify respectively Philosophy, ty-one^^^^" Greek and Latin, and Theology. The first is, in all the ^,^^^'^^^^ old university schemes, the general appellation for logic, metaphysics, and morality. It means mental philosophy, or the science of reasoning ; it appears also in the roll as Log., or logic, other entries presenting the contrast of Puts., or natural philosophy ; and in it are comprised those sub- jects of college study which Swift says he had too much .neglected, having no great relish for them by nature. How far he had neglected others ; whether, as Lord Or- Test of rery tells us, he turned into ridicule every thing but histo- gtudy.^ ry and poetry, or, as Doctor Delany says, he looked upon the study of Greek and Latin to be downright pedantry, or, as Sheridan avers, he was by scholars esteemed a blockhead ; here are the means of determining. He was ill in philos- ophy ; good in Greek and Latin ; and negligent in theolo- gy. His cousin Thomas was mediocre in all. The pictures The cousina are life-like. What Jonathan was to be, and Thomas was to remain, are to be read off in- them quite easily. But can it be said, of the twenty-one names, that any Swift's posi- one of them stands really higher in the examination than roiL that of Jonathan Swift ? Wade and Blany have the slidit advantage of doing indifferently w^hat he did badly, but in every thing else he compares favorably with the best ; and " male " or " negligenter " is not the worst censure, though " bene " is the highest praise. There is " pessime," under which, in a later part of the roll not here presented. Ser- geant, Cardiffe, and Sheridan fall, in the same branch of study where Swift was deficient ; and in theology, where "negligenter" follows his name, "male negligenter" fol- lows Yandeleur, Willson, and several others. With the exceptions stated, he is highest in the portion of the roll before the reader, where the first dozen names are of high- er standing than his own ; he beats his school and class fellow, Stratford ; and some notes from its later portions, taken with the same impartiality, will show his position 52 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. 1GG7-1G88. JEt. 1-21. taUXky^^^€A^^*y^ 6^ >fi»Kt ^4 J ■' ^^/{pi^ ^ vix p>i:^^m^ ^,2.y;,^ PAfi^: /ff 'V^" XM^H^IM§>^ ; t^Jr. 44^ pni<^ '55^ /^ » § II.] CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 53 relatively to tlie rest of the students who took part in this 1G67-1688. examination. Of the 175 npon the list, 56 were not ex- ^' ^~^^' amined at all ; and out of 68 of the later students on whom wuKher judgment is passed in the same three subjects as the ear- ^^"'^^'^^s. lier, there are only 7 who have " bene " put twice to their names."^ All the rest are under one or other of these sev- eral heads : " Bene, med^, med'^ ; — med'^, vix med*", med"^ ; — med'", med'*, male neglig'^; — male, med'^, male neglige ; — med'",med'',male; — med^'jmale, vix bene; — med'",med'^,bene; — med'", bene, med'^ ;" nor is any thing more observable than the infrequency of any laudatory judgment, as in the two specially cited, for Latin and Greek. With those excep- tions, there are only sixf besides Swift that get a '' bene " for tliose studies ; and in the two other subjects f' medioc- riter " is the judgment on the whole six. Where the clas- sification divides Latin and Greek, there is no instance of " bene " put to both. Mongumry and Pliipps have " bene " for Latin and " mediocriter " for Greek, while for Travers and Mullan the epithets are transposed. Where the clas- sification takes in four subjects (Log., Phy., G L., and Th.), the name of Tovey, abeady cited, is the only exception from the " male," " mediocriter," " vix mediocriter," and " male," applied exclusively to those examined in them. Finally, there is an ominous and comprehensive " medioc- Deeps and riter in omnibus" which swallows up 53 ; and leaves two ^^^^'^ ^^^^^ for the yet lower deep of " vix mediocriter in omnibus." The names need not be mentioned ; but there is one claim- ing remembrance for its contrast to the undistinguish- ed crowd, the morsel of solid bread to those dozens of thin sack, standing solitary and apart from all the rest. Thewles alone, of the hundred and nineteen examined. Hero of the receives a " bene in omnibus." He was a junior fellow before Swift left the college, and has not been heard of since. Malone too evidently had not scrutinized this valuable * Donavan, Alcock, Briom, Quin, I f Goodlett, Beecher, Pim, Garner, Tovey, Touse, and Luther. I Williams, and Downing. 54 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. 1667-1G88. roll. Ea^er after the false run started by Doctor Barrett, JEt 1-21 . t/ 7 — '- — ^-^ lie missed the scent to which he was so close; thought only of the Terrae Filius; and employed for the mere authentication of Eichardson's worthless letter, what was worthy of so much higher use. Across the pages of Bar- rett^s Essay (82 and 83) between which I found the roll, and in which remark is made by Barrett that notwithstand- ing the ambiguity of Eichardson's phrase it may be safely supposed that what was meant to be asserted was, that his information was ''originally" derived from a prelate who had been chmn or chamber-fellow with Swift, there is this Comment by note in the handwriting of Malone : " This certainly was the meaning ; and the prelate from whom the information originally came was the Eev. Doctor Edward Chandler (as Dr. Barrett afterward discovered), who was Bishop of Dur- ham from 1730 to 1750, when he died. He was bred in the college of Dublin, was in the same class with Swift, and stands next to him on a college-roll of Easter Term, 1685, containing a list of the students then examined, with their several judgments. It is now before me. Eichard- son's informer was this prelate's second son, who was a member of parliament. He died about the year 1760., The Bishop of Durham was in the same chamber with Swift under St. George Ashe. He was in the college of Dublin from 1682 to May, 1688." It would have better justified Malone's sagacity, as well as his taste and love for letters, if he had pointed out the extreme improbability of any part of a story being true, of which the two leading assertions, the appointment as Terrae Filius and the sub- sequent expulsion, had been clearly disproved ; and if he had sho\\Ti, by the remarkable evidence before him of the " several judgments " of 1685, that, in the university ex- amination then held. Swift had taken higher place than the prelate so eager after more than sixty years to say an ill word of his old companion.* The point .mi;SEed. * The reader is now in a position to estimate the historical and critical value of the opening of that portion of M. Taine's History of English Lit- erature which relates to Swift. *' In 1G8."), in the great hall of Dublin Uni- §11.] CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 00 1667-1G88. ^T. 1-21. Swift's bitter time in the college came doubtless after his degree ; but there is no ground for connecting it with the manner in which the degree was granted, or with any thing but considerations altogether personal. Two days after Thomas Swift proceeded bachelor in the ordinary manner, on the 13th of February, 1685-6, Jonathan re- ceived his degree by " special grace " with Xathaniel Jones, John Jones, Michael Yandeleur, and William Brereton; but in the several cases the amount of reproach incurred would be likely to differ widely with the differing circum- stances. The specialis gratia took its origin from the ne- cessity of providing, that w^hat was substantially merited should not be refused because of a failure in some require- ment of the statutes ; upon that, abuses crept in ; but enough has been said to show that Swift's case could not have been one of those in which it was used to give semblance of worth to the unworthy. What folloAved it, appears to be hardly more clearly understood. Lord Orrery remarks that so full of indignation was Swift at his treatment in Dublin, that he at once transferred his studies to Oxford, what follow- Yery nearly to the same effect, Delany says that such prep- eior's^de-^ ' aration as he made for a mastership of arts was with a view ^^'^^' Specialis gratia. versity, the professors engaged in ex- amining for the bachelor's degree en- joyed a singular spectacle: A poor scholar, odd, awkward, with hard blue eyes, an orphan, friendless, poorly sup- ported by the charity of an uncle, hav- ing failed once before to take his de- gree on account of his ignorance of logic, had come up again without hav- ing condescended to read logic. To no purpose his tutor set before him the most respectable folios — Smegle- sius, Keckermannus, Burgersdicius. He turned over a few pages, and shut them directly. When the argumen- tation came on, the proctor was obliged to ' reduce his replies into syllogisms.' He was asked how he could reason well without rules ; he replied that he did reason pretty well without them. This folly shocked them ; yet he was received, though barely, speciali gra- tia, says the register, and the profess- ors went away, doubtless with pitj-- ing smiles, lamenting the feeble brain of Jonathan Swift. This was his first humiliation and his first rebellion. His whole life was like this moment, overwhelmed and made wretched by sorrows and hatred." I quote the careful translation of Mr. Van Laun (ii., llG-'7), one of the masters of the Edinburgh Academy, and will again indulge the hope wliich I have had occasion to express in a former work, that the students of English literature in that academy have safer guidance than the brilliant but too often base- less fancies of M. Taine. Dangerous guide. 56 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. 1667-1688. JEt. 1-21. Sayings of Johnson. Scholarship of Swift. to Oxford exclusively ; Hawkeswortli, copying Delany, re- lates that such was his dread of the repetition of his dis- grace, that from the date of his Dublin degree he studied eight hours a day for seven years ; and finally Dr. Barrett, taking an opposite view, taxes all his energies to establish that after his bachelorship Swift became reckless of hall or lecture-room, violent and quarrelsome, a stranger to the chapel, a lounger in the town, and forever falling under tine or censure. Walter Scott not inaptly remembered, when he came to this picture by Barrett, hoAV Johnson de- scribed his Oxford life to Boswell. "Ah, sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness that they mistook for frolic. I was miserably poor, and thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit ; so I disregarded all power and all authority." But there was a written sentence of Johnson's more nobly applicable both to Swift and to himself, when, in the life of the Dean, he said that the years of labor by wliich studies li^d been retrieved which were alleged to liave been recklessly or negligently lost, " afforded useful admonition and powerful encouragement to men whose abilities have been made for a time useless by their pas- sions or pleasures, and who, having lost one part of life in idleness, are tempted to throw away the remainder in de- spair." Amidst all these varying accounts of opportunities lost and retrieved, one thing can yet be said with certainty, that before he left the college Swift had qualified himself for a master^s degree, and that he did not leave it without a more than competent acquirement in learning. He was never a profound scholar, nor perhaps entitled to the praise of a very exact one ; but as early as in his first two years after quitting Dublin, he showed easy and varied knowl- edge of the principal classical writers, could use fluently the Latin language, was accomj^lished in French, and had a mass of general reading, in nearly every department of philosophy and letters, seldom equaled in its range and extent, perhaps never in the penetrating insight with which its leading subjects were mnsfcrrd. He wrote The Battle § IL] CHILDHOOD, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE. 57 of the Books in 1696, and in that year had abeadj designed 1667-1688. the great satire which was to expose the corruptions of re- — ^' ""^ ' ligion and learning. A foregone conclusion rises out of this, but we have otherwise no clue to the time or mode of the acquirement of what was then turned to such extraor- dinary use. It was as little Swift's habit in any part of his life to talk of his readings as of his writings, and it was Eeadings in oiily for the power or pleasure derived from them to him- ^^"^^ ' seK that he ever valued either. But, in even such scant allusion as he made in his later to the reading of his young- er days, one may observe a taste and turn of thought very far from common. When the Dean of St. Patrick's was resisting the misgovernment of Ireland by England, he declared that he did not frequently quote poets ; but he re- membered there was in some of Mr. Cowley's love-verses cowiey's a strain which he thought extraordinary when a lad of fif- teen, but had since come to think might express very well the relation that England desired Ireland to hold to her. '' Forbid it. Heaven, my life should be Weigh'd with her least conveniency !" He was not much older when an- other kind of strain attracted him, and he did not hesitate afterward to say, in his Advice to a clergyman entering into Holy Orders, that he had been better entertained, and more informed, by a few pages in the Pilgrhnh Progr^ess, Pilgrim's than by long discourses upon the will and the intellect, and simple or complex ideas. Let it be finally assumed, then, that the truth of this portion of Swift's college life will be found between the two extremes of the accounts respecting it. He was a lit- tle over eighteen when he commenced bachelor, and his purpose in remaining afterward in the college was to quali- fy for a mastership ill the same university. A passage in a letter of Sir "William Temple, first published twenty years ago,^' places it beyond doubt that Swift meant to a difficult have taken his master's degree at Dublin when the rebell- * To be shortly quoted. The state- 1 gree at Oxford immediately following ment is confirmed by the master's de- 1 the ad eundem. 58 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book I. ir.C7-1688. ^T. 1-21. ion nearly emptied tlie college. But tliougli he pursued liis studies, lie Avas " miserably poor ;" and for so high a spirit this was a greater trial in the graduate than in the under-graduate days. What in the one had but barely supported him, had almost wholly ceased to be available in the other : though the lethargy which fell on Godwin Swift did not close in death until a few months before his nephew quitted the college, his estate had been so crippled some time before as to leave at that event a provision al- together inadequate for the sons and daughters who sur- vived him ; and but for "William Swift, the only one of his uncles beside Godwin who had a settled residence in Dubhn, Jonathan must have been nearly destitute. He long remembered as well the help thus received as the kindness that accompanied it, and he calls this kinsman " the best "* of his uncles. The house was open to him as long as his uncle lived or his aunt survived him ; and on the walls hung the portrait of his favorite ancestor.f Uncle Adam. There w^as another uncle, Adam, who seems to have thriv- en in the world, for he and Lowndes, a man high in the "Best" of his uucles. * Letter of November 29th, 1692 : written to his uncle from Moor Park (first printetT in Deane Swift's Essay, 5G): in which he says: "My sister told me you were pleased, when she was here, to wonder I did so seldom write to you. I hope you have been so kind to impute it neither to ill- manners nor want of respect I al- ways .thought that sufficient from one who has always been but too troublesome to you I am sorry my fortune should fling me so far from the best of my relations, but hope that I shall have the happiness to see you some time or other. Pray, my hum- ble service to my good aunt." t "O pray, now I think of it, be so kind as to step to my aunt, and take notice of my great-graodfather's pict- ure; you know he has a ring on his finger, with a seal of an anchor and dolphin about it ; but I think there is besides, at the bottom of the picture, the same coat of arms quartered with another, which I suppose was my great- grandmother's. If this be so, it is a stronger argument than the seal. And ' pray see whether you think that coat of arms was drawn at the same time with the picture, or whether it be of a later hand; and ask my aunt what she knows about it. But perhaps there is no such coat of arms on the picture, and I only dream- ed it. My reason is, because I would ask some herald here whether I should choose that coat, or one in Giiillim's large folio of heraldry, where my un- cle Godwin is named with another coat of arms of three stags. This is sad stuflf to write." — Swift to Esther Johnson, Feb. 29;\tl myself indebted to Sir SwifttoLord William for recommending me to the late King, although 29th Jan., without success, and to his choice of me to take care of his ^'^^" posthumous writings. But I hope you will not charge my living in his family as an obligation, for I was educated to little purpose if I retired to his house on any other motive than the benefit of his conversation and advice, and the opportunity of pursuing my studies. For, being born to no fortune, I was at his death as far to seek as ever, and perhaps you will allow that I was of some use to him." Thus to repel altogether the sense of obligation, was in other words to say that he gave more than he received; and taking as a whole his intercourse with Temple, from the date of its resumption after the brief interval of ab- sence at the close of 1690, there is every presumption that he was entitled to say so. A particular kindness now rendered is mentioned by nemarks.iT. Lord Orrery, who says that Temple " most generously " stepped in to Swift's assistance in the matter of his Ox- ford mastership of arts ; and though he a little overpraises it as " uncommonly magnificent," moving thereby much wrath in Mr. Deane Swift, it was at least a timely service. "Writing a few weeks afterward to thank his uncle Wil- and parted." — oth December, 1710. Jack was the younger son of Temple's brother, Sir John. His elder broth- er, AVilliam, was afterward created Baron Temple Viscount Palmerston in the Irish peerage on the 12th of March, 1722, the year of his aunt Giffard's death. 74: THE LIFE OF JOXATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. 1689-1G94. ^T. 22-27. Oxford ad eundem. Treatment at English university. Earliest piece of verse. M. A., Hart- ford Collejre. The King and Sir Wil- liam Tem- ple. liam for his care in sending him tlie certificate of his Dub- lin degree required for his ad eundein at Hart Hall, as Hartford College was then called, Swift remarks that he never was more satisfied than in the behavior of the Uni- versity of Oxford to him. He had, he says, all the civili- ties he could wish for, and so many favors that he was ashamed to have been more obliged in a few weeks to strangers than ever he was in seven years to Dublin Col- lege. It is his first known success, and much that is not with exactness known may have dated from it. If he did not now first break into verse, it is certain that he wrote at this time his earliest piece that has survived ; and some of the lines of his eighteenth ode of the second book of Horace (of which a similar paraphrase is by far the most pleasing effort of Pope's boyhood) may possibly have been meant to involve an application to liimseK. He declares that he is content with what the gods have given him, and is unskilled to raise himself by unworthy arts. Thomas Swift obtained his master's degree at Balliol concurrently with his cousin Jonathan at Hart Hall, and, a little later, was for a time Temple's chaplain. Jonathan told his un- cle William that he was not himself to take orders till the King gave him a prebendary. The remark is sufficiently decisive of the altered foot- ing on w^hich he now stood at Moor Park. Of that dwell- ing and its celebrated master not much needs here be said. Temple's part in public affairs was played out before Charles the Second's death ; and through the tragedy of disaster which closed in the Eevolution he was only a looker-on. But it was natural that the Prince of Orange, on his landing in England, should have turned to the au- thor of the Triple Alliance, of the treaty that ended the second Dutch war, and, above all, of the marriage that had placed himself on the steps of tlie English throne, as one of the first Englishmen from whom it behooved him to ask counsel. Temple had been on familiar terms with liim at The Hague ; and though he declined to be Secretary of State, he gave his advice freely. He then lived at Sheen, § I.] FIRST RESIDENCE AT MOOR PARK. 75 near Richmond, where, sajs Swift, to whom that earlier 1689-1694. residence was also personally known,^ the King visited his ^' ""~"— old friend often, and took his advice " in affairs of great- est consequence." There was additional attraction for the King when Temple finally changed Sheen for Moor Park, Temple at a place better suited to retirement, where, amidst the heath and furze of one of the loneliest parts of Surrey, he had created what might have been the retreat of a Dutch burg- omaster, with terrace and canal, clipped trees and grounds and flower-beds, laid out with quaint precision. If moral- ists ever helped themselves. Swift might have profited be- times by the moral he was wise enough to draw thus ear- ly, in a very good couplet, from such a close to a life so busy and aspiring. *'You strove to cultivate a barren Court in vain, Your Garden's better worth your nobler pain." Macaulay's essay on Sir William Temple mentions the fact of his sister, Lady Giffard, living here with Temple and his wife after their son's melancholy death, and adds that there were others " to whom a far higher interest be- longs. An eccentric, uncouth, disagreeable young Irish- swift at man, who had narrowly escaped plucking at Dublin, at- ^MTcaufaJ). tended Sir William as an amanuensis for board and twenty pounds a year, dined at the secofid table, wrote bad verses in praise of his employer, and made love to a very pretty, dark-eyed young girl who waited on Lady Giffard. Little did Temple imagine that the coarse exterior of his depend- ent concealed a genius equally suited to politics and to let- ters, a genius destined to shake great kingdoms, to stir the laughter and the rage of millions, and to leave to posterity memorials which can perish only with the English language. Little did he think that the flirtation in his servants' hall, which he perhaps scarcely deigned to make the subject of a jest, was the beginning of a long, unprosperous love, which was to be as widely famed as the passion of Petrarch * See a note bv Nichols in his second edition of the Works, i., 31. 76 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. 1689-1694. ^T. 22-27. Macanlay's insufficient authority. Inmates of Temple's house. Occupatious ofSwifU or of Abelard. Sir William's secretary was Jonathan Swift. Lady Giffard's waiting -maid was poor Stella." What John Temple said, at the close of his life, of the man with whom his family had bitterly quarreled, is the sole authority for the opening lines of this description, though even that does not justify the " second," or serv- ants', table ; and a date will dispose of its closing state-j. ment, as far as relates to the first residence. When Swift went to Moor Park, Esther Johnson was little over seven years old. He spoke of her afterward as only six, which w^as the old impression about her always in his mind ; but she was really in her eighth year. Her mother was some- thing more than waiting-woman, having rather the charac- ter of governess or companion (" friend and companion " Scott believed her to have been) to Lady Giffard, with whom she remained so connected until that lady's death, and long after Swift had reached his highest fame. Two daughters, " Hetty " and a younger sister, Ann, whose at- tractive appearance and modest manners find mention in the Journal to Esther, lived with her in the house ; and there is no evidence of either of them having "waited" on any body but herself. Proof is equally wanting that any thing " eccentric " had yet shown itself in Swift. At no time can it fairly have been said of him that he was " uncouth." And " disagreeable " as he doubtless had the power to be, his not less remarkable power of making him- self agreeable was more likely to have impressed itself on the persons named, at the time the description refers to. If he had little help from fortune, he had from nature a supreme gift, a charm in personal intercourse that none could resist, and which attracted to him in especial the favor and desire of women. But if he was really making love at this time, it was not to " Stella ;" and it was. rather his misfortune than his fault to be writing bad verses. Of Hetty Johnson he became first the playfellow and soon the volunteer teacher, and remembered long how he had guided the little hand in writing, and how his mind had given to hers its first impress. '' I met Mr. TIarley in § I.] FIRST EESIDENCE AT MOOR PARK. 77 the Court of Requests," lie wrote to her when great minis- iG89-i69-t. ters were his obedient servants, "and he asked me how '^- -'--'• long I had learned tlie trick of waiting to mvself . He had seen your letter through the glass case at the coffee-house, and would swear it was my hand ; and Mr. Ford, who took and sent it me, was of the same mind. I remember oth- ers have formerly said so too. I think I was little MD's writing-master?" Xot less was he trying to be agree- Hetty's writ- able to his employer if he wrote verses to him, however ^""""^^^^^'• indifferent; and the poetical eulogy of Temple has at least this much value for us, angry as poor Swift would have been to think that any one should connect it with his memory. Xo doubt it is bad, as are other things of the kind then also written. An Ode to Bancroft, on the aich- bisliop becoming a non- juror; an Ode to the King, on Earliest his reduction of Ireland to obedience ; and an Ode to the J^^^^""^^' " Athenian Society, on Dunton, the book-seller, setting up in a corner of his shop that now forgotten rival to the Royal Society, are all of them productions which he seems to have had no part in preserving or publishing. Poetry at first is of necessity imitative ; and it was Swift's misfortune to have turned from the strong to the weak side of Cowley. "Forgot his Epic, his Pindaric art, But still we love his language of the heart." It was his language of tlie heart Swift had been studying at the age of fifteen, as we have noticed ; but now a sug- gestion from those he desired most to please had directed him to Cowley's odes, and under encouragement from Sir "William and Lady Temple he attempted his Pindaric Pindaric flights.* He would hardly otherwise have permitted Dun- ^'°^^^* * "The undertaking," says Scott, been written in his later time with "On the speaking of the Pindaric odes, "is Temple, I can not bring myself im- Burning of said to have been pressed upon him plicitly to believe in, Scott received ^ ^ ^ • by Sir William and Lady Temple, it from an executor of Dr. Lyon, Mr. who were admirers of Cowley." An- Thomas Steele (O'Connell's friend), other poem, "On the Burning of with some undoubtedly genuine letters Whitehall" (1697), alleged to have and pieces by Swift, and printed it as 78 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. 1689-1694. ton to advertise him among the wits as an inmate of Moor -^ — 1—1 Park and a friend of its master. That notorious person printed what was sent him with a letter signed Jonathan Swift, which described the writer's having heard of the so- ciety as he passed through Oxford, and his having " a while after come to this place upon a visit to Sir William Tem- ple." Such a letter from a man living in the servants' hall on a wage of twenty pounds a year might indeed en- title him to be called " eccentric." Three days before its date he had replied to some advice sent him by a clergyman of Leicester whom he calls his good cousin, in regard to some former love-making witli one of his female acquaintance there ; and the letter ex- A letter from hibits liis character, and touches some points in his life. Jan!!i6?2. ^J^i'- Kendall having heard of an improvement in his j)ros- pects, seems to have thought there was danger of his get- ting into a marriage entanglement in ignorance of rumors that were abroad about the lady. The people is a ly- Swif».'s reply, ing sort of beast, says Swift as to this, and particularly in Leicester; yet they seldom talk without some glimpse of reason. But as to marriage, he does not belong to the kind of persons, of whom he has known a great number, that ruin themselves by it. A thousand household thoughts always drive matrimony out of his mind whenever it chances to come there ; and his own cold temper and un- coniined humor are of themselves a greater hinderance than any fear of that which is the subject of his friend's letter. " I am naturally temperate ; and never engaged in the contrary, which usually produces those effects." At Self-por- traiture. found " in his handwriting and with his corrections ;" but he does not say that he saw the MS. himself, and its two allusions to Charles the First ap- pear to me to be decisive against it. There is nothing in Swift's expressed opinions at any period of his life to render conceivahly his a description of that king's death as "fifty tyrants executing one'' amidst "eternal ac- clamations." I should otherwise have rejoiced to give Swift the credit of such vigorous verse as this : *' Down come the lofty rooft?, the cedar burns, The blended metal to a torrent turns. The carvings crackle aud the marbles rive, The paintinsrs shrink ; vainly the Hen- ries strive, Propt by {Treat Holbein's pencil ; down they fall. [all." The flery deluire sweeps and swallows § I.] FIRST RESIDENCE AT :M00R PARK. 79 the same time he admits he has failings that might lead i689-iG9-t. people, in regard to such matters, to suppose him serious ^' ~"~' * while he had no design other than to entertain himself when idle, or when something went amiss in his affairs : a thing indeed so common with him that he could remember twenty women in his life to whom he had behaved him- self just the same way. " I shall speak plainly to you," he added. And then came words that certainly foreshadow, r if they do not make intelligible, the fate that was to join I^Bhis name so strangely, through all future time, to that of her who then lived under the same roof with him, a child of ten years old. " The very ordinary observations I made views as to with going half a mile beyond the university have taught ™^"^'^^^' me experience enough not to think of marriage, till I set- ktle my fortune in the world, which I am sure will not be in some years : and even then I am so hard to please my- self that I suppose I shall put it off to the other world." As to what Mr. Kendall said of his " great prospects of making his fortune," it was a kindness that had " only looked on the best side." He was busily engaged, but not to much purpose. He found that he must be employed. Necessity for for when he was alone there was something that for want ment."'^^ *^^' of practice turned all into speculation and thought : "in- somuch that, in these seven weeks I have been here, I have writ, and burned and WTit again, upon almost all manner of subjects, more, perhaps, than any man in En- gland." lie closes, however, by telling his friend that w^henever the time came for taking sober resolutions, such as that he now intended, of entering into the church, he should not find it hard to " put off this kind of folly at the porch." That was at the beginning of 1692 ; and in the first months of 1693 the time for soberness of resolution, and for any kind of greatness of fortune, might seem to have suddenly come. He was on his way to the palace at Ken- on his way sington, charged with a letter and message from Sir Wil- ^^^ paiacf' liam Temple, which he was himself to explain to the King, and to enforce by illustrations from the English history. 80 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. 1089-1694. ^T. 22-27. Sent by Temple to the Kiug. History, vi., 2S2-'3. Swift known to William. Advice given nnd not taken. The proposed Triennial Bill having alarmed William, he had sent the Earl of Portland for advice to Moor Park; and Temple, after doing his best with Portland to remove the King's fears, had a misgiving that his argument might not be safe in the Earl's hands, and, being unable himself to attend the King, resolved to send Swift to him. " The secretary," says William's noble historian, "was a poor scholar of four or live and twenty, under wdiose plain garb and ungainly deportment w^ere concealed some of the choicest gifts that have ever been bestow^ed on any of the children of men,* rare powders of observation, brilliant wdt, grotesque invention, humor of the most austere flavor, yet exquisitely delicious, eloquence singularly pure, manly, and perspicuous. ... To William he was already slightly known. At Moor Park the King had sometimes, when his host was confined by gout to an easy-chair, been at- tended by the secretary about the grounds. His majesty had condescended to teach his companion the Dutch way of cutting and eating asparagus, and had graciously asked whether Mr. Swift would like to have a captain's commis- sion in a cavalry regiment.f But now for the first time the young man was to stand in the royal presence as a counselor." The sequel may be told by Swift himself. What had weighed heavily with William Avas that Charles the First had passed such a bill. But Swift explained that Charles's ruin was not owning to his passing a bill which did not hinder him from dissolving any parliament, but to the passing another bill which put it out of his power to dissolve the parliament then in being w^ithout its own consent. " Mr. Swift, who was well versed in English his- tory, . . . gave the King a short account of the matter, and ♦ A phrase taken by Macaulay from Swift himself, who characterizes Bo- lingbroke (in the Enquiry, 1715) as "adorned with the choicest gifts that God hath yet thought fit to bestow on the chiUiren of men." t Mr. Deane Swift is tlie authority. "The King, as I have heard from the Doctor's own mouth, offered to make him a captain of horse, and gave him instructions, so great was the freedom of their conversation, liow to cut as- paragus (a vegetable his majesty was extremely fond of) in the Dutch man- ner." — Essay, 108. § I.] FIRST RESIDENCE AT MOOR PARK. 81 a more large one to the Earl of Portland, but all in vain : 1689-1G94:. for tlie King, by ill advisers, was prevailed upon to refuse "r- — --'• passing the bill. Tliis was the first time that Mr. Swift First experi- had ever any converse with courts, and he told his friends courts.^ bit was the first incident that helped to cure him of vani- ty." One may guess, from this, the confidence in himself ^ with wliich the young scholar had stepped into the closet .^—^of the King. I^P But to the cure of his vanity the ill-success of his argu- ^^ment was not the only help administered. I^ow was the time when some disputes with Temple himself appear to have begun, and when, from an unexpected quarter, the literary aspiration most encom-aged by Temple received a other disap- check. Dryden, deposed from the laureateship, still ruled P^i"^™^"^^- at the Eose in Covent-garden ; and young Swift, already well known to the chief of the rising men, Congreve, and with the double claim on Dryden of brotlier-craf tsman and kinsman, had found his way to that resort of the wits. " I heard my father say," Joseph Warton tells us, in his Essay u., 312. on Pojpe^ " that Mr. Elijah Fenton, who was his intimate friend, and had been his master, informed him that Dry- den, upon seeing some of Swift's earliest verses, said to him, '- Young man, you will never be a poet !' " Johnson also reports Dry den's sentence, " Cousin Swift, you will Dryden 's never be a poet !" and says that Swift never ceased to re- teuce. ^ sent it. Tlie contempt would not be felt less bitterly be- cause of praise from the same quarter lately lavished on his school- fellow, Congreve ; but it is seldom that such per- emptory sayings are in any case wise. Equal disadvan- tages followed here from the hasty judgment and from the anger it provoked. A famous poet had to suffer, not a little, for too sharply handling a young kinsman who was able to strike back as heavy a blow ; and resentment swift's retai- at the greatest satirist in English verse proved to be no ^^''^°"' help to one having like ambition whom it indisposed to profit by his highest example. There can hardly be a doubt that the war Swift afterward waged with the triplet was no real distaste for it, but only part of his quarrel with YoL. I.— 6 82 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. No more odes proper. 1689- 1G94. its most Consummate master: for in the poem shown to -^l^Ll Drjden, as well as in that w^hieli he addressed to Bancroft, there were some that might have saved it from contempt. The ode to the de23rived archbishop has a note intimating that it was written at the request of the Bishop of Ely. Turner was deprived in 1690, the vear following its al- leged date ; and if such a request was made, we must as- sume that Swift saw this bishop soon after he first went to Moor Park. But w^hether it was Turner or Temple who put him first upon the writing of odes, there can be no doubt who it was that brought to an end the too daring entei'prise. After Drjden's verdict he wrote no more. The close of the year w^hen he went with Temple's mes- sage to the King is the time when he addressed to Con- greve a poem in the heroic metre, which is one of the two best of his uncollected pieces. The tory Rose was now become the whig WilPs coifee-house ; and in the chair so lately filled by Dryden sat the young whig wit and dram- atist, who by his comedies of The Old Bachelor and The Double Dealer, produced a couple of years before, had sprung into that highest seat. None could have rejoiced at this more than Swift, who told Pope truly, twenty-five years later, that he had loved Congreve from his youth. They had been familiar both in school and college, and Swift ncAxr forgot his old companion when occasions came that he could serve him. But this is not yet ; for, though Congreve is two years the younger, he is far above Swift in fame and influence. Swift nevertheless addresses him as " my Congreve," and has the boldness to tell him that it will also be his mission some day to " make sin and fol- ly bleed." The lines, which forecast his later life and have the ring of it in them, occur in his description of the career of a dunce and fop of the lobbies, traced from its beginning " just here at Farnham school ;" of which the ease and mastery relish rather of days when he was dis- secting knaves with Arbuthnot, or fools with Pope, than of those he passed in difficult dependence and unsatisfied desire. Congreve and Swift. Poem to Consrreve. §1.] FIRST RESIDENCE AT MOOR PARK. 83 1689-1694. JEt. 22-27. Not Irish rhymes : see Pope. k ■ He, in his idiom vile, with GrayVinn grace, Squander'd his noisy talents to my face ; Named every player on his fingers' ends, Swore all the wits were his peculiar friends ; Talk'd with that saucy and familiar ease Of Wycherley, and you, and Mr. Bayes ; Said, how a late report your friends had vex'd, Who heard you meant to write heroics next ; Eor tragedy, he knew, would lose you quite, And told you so at Will's hut t' other night." The Mourning Bride, Congreve's next production and Ins greatest success, was not played till more than two years later ; but it is a fair inference from tliese lines that the writer already knew of such an effort impending.* To the same date belongs also the strongest expression ever given by Swift to discontents in connection with Moor Park. This is, in the other of the two poems named as Poems ou of special worth, written on Temple's recovery from the ues"? illness that disabled him from waiting on the King ; but the fault found in it is rather with liimseK than with oth- ers. He praises Temple. Lady Temple he thinks "the best companion for the best of men." Even Lady Giffard is " peaceful, wise, and great." Not so his own muse : *' Malignant goddess! bane to my repose, Thou universal cause of all my woes ! " In other words, himself ; and perhaps no clearer light could be thrown on his present disputes with Temple than is afforded by these lines. It would be less than just to seif-discon- him to call it restlessness, that he should wish to escape * In a remarkable passage of one of his earlier prose pieces (on conver- sation) we have not only allusion to the coffee-houses thus frequented in his youth, but evidence of the clear insight brought even in those days to the detection of ' ' false idols " of every kind, and the exposure of pretense or unreality. "The worst conversation I ever remember to have heard in my life was that at Will's coffee - house, where the wits (as they were called) used formerly to assemble attend- ed with an humble audience of young students from the inns of court, or the universities ; who, at due distance, listened to these oracles, and returned home with great contempt for their law and philosophy, and their heads filled with trash, under the name of politeness, criticism, and belles-let- tres." 84 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. 1 689-1 G94. from dependence ; but defects of temper and manner are - ^' '"'" ' sufficiently indicated. "To thee I owe that fatal bent of mind, Still to unhappy restless thoughts inclined ; To thee, what oft I vainly strive to hide, That scorn of fools, by fools mistook for pride ; From thee whatever virtue takes its rise Grows a misfortune, or becomes a vice." As he had risen by his services into favor with his pa- tron, Temple's desire to retain them was on his part as nat- ural as his own w^ish now to employ them for himself. He had reached his twenty -seventh year; and had passed so many of them in acquisition of a degree, as little qualify- ing him for medicine or law as for the King's first offer of a commission in a cavalry regiment, that the church was become really his only refuge. IS^or did it then necessarily shut out from its ministers the chances of public employ- ment. His later quarrel with the whigs, on the ground of their indifference to him, turned strongly on his own be- lief that it was easier to provide for ten men in the church than one in a civil employment.* The first chaplaincy he held, he only consented to take for the chance of a political secretaryship which he believed would accompany it ; and he kept it afterward through two Irish viceroyalties, be- cause political influences came to be blended with its per- sonal considerations and duty. Important diplomatic serv- ice was still rendered by churchmen ; secretary's places were often at their disposal ; a bishop held a cabinet office in the succeeding reign ; and when the rumor went abroad during Anne's last ministry that St. John was going to Holland, Swift was generally named to accompany him in that employment. These observations may help also to Resolution to enter the church. Offices then open to a clergyman. * " The ministry know by this time ] effect, in Macaulay's paper on Addi- whether I am worth keeping ; and it I son, to explain the fact that while the is easier to provide for ten men in the whig statesmen loaded Addison with church than one in a civil employ- solid benefits, they only praised Swift, ment." — Swift to Lord Peterborough, j asked him to dinner, and did nothing ith May, 1711. Compare tliis with , more, what is said directlv to tiie contnuv §!•] FIRST RESIDENCE AT MOOR PARK. 85 explain the direction taken by his hie^h-church views. He 1689-1694. ^ ./ n ^T. 22-27. High-church views. would have increased her political power without enlarg- ing her domination over conscience. His churchmanship was neither intolerant nor tantivy ; and he had as little real sympathy with Atterbury as with Sacheverell, much s he admired the one and despised the other. How far he had thus early settled his own beliefs, no one can as- sume to say ; and most certainly there is no later evidence on which to found charges of disbelief. His respect for the ordinances of the Eef ormed Church, his careful observ- ance of her usages and ritual, and his sense of what the world had gained by Christianity, there is no reason to Belief, doubt or bring in question at any time of his life.* What is said in his Anecdotes of the feeling with which his thoughts first turned to the profession of a clergyman in these early years, will be accepted also as evidence in fa- vor of his sincerity in all that mainly concerns this weighty matter. He had so decided a view, he says, of what the sacred calling should be, small as its esteem was in those days, as to shrink from resorting to it in mere despair of other means of livelihood. Eut upon the King repeating his offer of help in the acceptable form of a prebendary, he became eager to enter into orders. Temple had been Misunder- f or delay, as we have seen, until what the King proffered ^uh Tem- was actually given ; but, writes Swift to his uncle, " though ^^^' he promises me the certainty of it, yet he is less forward than I could wish, because I suppose he believes I shall leave him, and upon some accounts he thinks me a little necessary to him." This was written some months before the verses to his patron, and it is easy to understand in what way angry words arose afterward between them. * Describing his impressive manner in the pulpit, Hawkesworth adds that "even in that transient act of adora- tion which is called saying grace, and which generally consists only in a mutter and a bow in which the speak- er appears to compliment the com- pany and the company each other, Swift always used the fewest words that could be uttered on the occasion, but pronounced them with an empha- sis and fervor which every one around him saw and felt, with his hands clasped in each other and lifted to his breast."—!*. 15. 86 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. 1689-1694. What the one was become eager to apply for himself, the T. 22-27. ^|-|^gj, ^yaiited more and more for his own service ; and ev- ery fresh display of his young kinsman's talents indisposed the old statesman to let him go. The position taken at last by Temple appears to have been, that whatever help toward the church he might hereafter be induced to give on continued good deserving, he would then pledge him- self to nothing ; but Swift might take, if he pleased, a clerkship of £120 a year in the Irish Rolls. The reply is in the Anecdotes : "Although his fortune was very small " (a remark that seems to show he had thus far been able to save something) "he had a scruple of entering into the church merely for support ; and Sir William Temple, then Declines being Master of the Rolls in Ireland, offered him an em- ilSh KoUs? ploy of about £120 a year in that office. Whereupon Mr. Swift told him, that since he had now an opportunity of living without being driven into the church for a mainte- Leaves Moor nauce, he was resolved to go to Ireland and take holy or- '^"■^ ders."* And so they parted. II. IN ORDERS AND AT KILROOT. 1694-'96. ^T. 27-29. " 1694-1696. On the verge of the step that was to determine finally ^T. 27-297 his future life. Swift showed no misgiving. After leav- At Leicester iug Moor Park he again went to Leicester ; and Mr. Deane mother.' Swif t f ound among the papers of his father, who was now at Lisbon employed in the mercantile house of his half- brother Willougliby,t a letter of Jonathan's written on * Scott, in the reprint of the Anec- dotes, in both his editions, omits the last eleven words, and goes on with the next member of the sentence, as if Temple had recommended him to Lord Capel ; which, indeed, is implied t The same whose timely service to Swift in college has been told. In this letter warm thanks are repeated. " I had designed a letter to my consin "NVilloughby, and the last favor he has done me recpiires a great deal of ac- in his text.— i., 38, 511. | knowledgment ; but the thought of §11.] IX ORDERS AND AT KILROOT. 87 the 3d of June, 1691, from his mother's house. " I forgot iG9-t-i69G. to tell you," he adds, " I left Sh- AYilliam Temple a month Letter to Cousin Deaue. ago, just as I foretold it to you ; and every thing happened thereupon, exactly as I guessed. He was extremely an- gry when I left him, and yet would not oblige himself any further than upon my good behavior, nor would promise any thing firmly to me at all : so that every body judged I did best to leave him. I design to be ordained Septem- ber next, and make what endeavors I can for something I^K-ln the church. I wish it may ever lie in my cousin's way ^^^ or yours to bring me in chaplain of the factory." Though he has now only his own endeavors to trust to, there is no hesitation, and he is even ready to go to Lisbon as chaplain to the English factory. The small immediate profit he would doubtless be glad of, but a greater ultimate gain by some experience of a foreign country was perhaps the interest ir stronger motive with him. His letter otherwise shows his couutries. interest in this direction. He says what a pleasure it is to himself to learn that his cousin sallies out of his road and takes notice of what is curious ; and he points out to him what the advantages are to "so good an observer as you may easily be." His correspondent appears to have written with some horror of priestly displays in Lisbon streets, by way of holy intercession for rain or fine weather : to which Swift replies that he does not utterly dislike them, trifling as they are ; since they yet may have some good effects, and at least the rabble get from them " a gaping devotion." But the priests had also been burning an old Avoman, and this, Jonathan adds, " unless she were a duenna, I shall never be reconciled to ; though it is easily observed that my sending so many before, has made me believe it better to trust you with delivering my best thanks to him, and that you will endeavor to persuade l»4in how extremely sensible of his goodness and generosity I am. My mother desires her best love to him and to you, with both our services to my cousin his wife." There is also a letter of later date to the elder Deane Swift, in which Jonathan's mother writes: "Pray be pleased to present my best services to my good nephew AVilloughby, and tell him I always bear in my heart a grateful re- membrance of all the kindness he was pleased to show my sou." 88 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. 1694-1G96. nations wliieli liave most gallantry to the youns^ are ever JET. 27-29. fe J ^8 Superstition ixud trade. Eesnlts of residence with Tem- ple. yb5-^ Acqnisition of what W!is most want- ed. tlie severest upon the old." lie is nevertheless sorry, and surprised too, at so much superstition in a country so given to trade, for he half used to think that commerce and su- perstition were incompatible.''^ Such remarks are valuable for the character that is in them, and for what they show of the result thus far that had attended Swift's life with Temple. He had become, when he left, too impatient of its disadvantages to remem- ber perfectly his gains by it. Viewing the case impar- tially, the common conclusion respecting it can hardly be right. There may be a question for discussion hereafter upon the wisdom of making the church his profession; but the question whether, at his leaving the university, a college living or fellowship would have been as happily interposed as the intercourse with Temple and the leisure in Temple's library to qualify him for the work he was best fitted to do, can be answered only in one way. In all the compassion awakened by what has seemed to be the harder destiny, the circumstance is overlooked that what fate was to fashion out of this raw material was not a plump possessor of thriving benefice or bishopric, but a genius unrivaled for political controversy, and the greatest satirist and humorist that the world had known. Macaulay thinks that but for Moor Park influences it would not be credible that Swift should have written political tracts, as he did within a year after Temple's death, not like a mere man of letters, but like a man who had passed his life in the midst of public business, and to whom the most im- portant affairs of state were as familiar as his weekly bills. The remark applies equally to opportunities of stud}^, as well in the literature of the ancients, and of the sciences and philosophy, as in that of humor and satire in his own and other languages, which may be traced in his notes of ♦ Swift kept up his correspondence with this cousin, though very little of it has survived. "Writing to Esther Johnson on the 28th of March, 1712, he tells her he has heen "writing to cousin Deane, in answer to one of his four months old, that I sjjied hy chance routing anjong my papers." § II.] IN ORDERS AND AT KILROOT. 89 books then read; and to his frao^ments of adventure hi iG9-t-i696. JEiT ^7—29 the " kingdom of absurdity," which already he had written. 7-^^^^^ — '- In that kingdom he had found bells of glass with iron domofab- clappers, houses of gunpowder with fires in them, and '^^^^^^^-'^ monstrous usages it would have been the easiest thing in the world to destroy. ^'Ask the reason why they do not, and they say it was their ancestors' custom of old." The interval before the time of applying for ordination was passed in Dublin, and upon its arrival a difficulty arose. Having been so long absent from Ireland, the bish- ops required from him a certificate of behavior during his certificate absence. His application was in September, as he told his ordSion.'^ cousin it would be ; and the " two or three " bishops that told him this were '^acquaintance of our family." His difference witli Temple made him naturally reluctant to ask a favor from him, and the intervening month before his renewed application in October was passed in a fruit- less effort to evade the necessity. But the Archbishop of Dublin (Narcissus Marsh) having then declared that noth- ing would serve but a certificate from Temple, Swift wrote to him on the following day. He had been all the while trying to avoid, he said, what had proved necessary at last. He begins, " May it please your honor ;" admits that he Applies for must have fallen low in his " honor's " thoughts ; and re- go^i w-d. peats the phrase more than once. It is yet necessary to remind those who call this the language of a lackey or beggar, that it w^as not then unusual between persons of the respective ranks of Swift and Temple ; and that, to go no farther for an instance, when Dr. Wotton, a few years later, assailed the Tale of a Tuh in a letter to his wealthy acquaintance, Anthony Hammond, " honored sir " and " your honor " are his modes of address. AYith other kindly consideration, too, the letter should be read. A man can have no harder task in the world than to ask a superior wdth whom he has quarreled to do him a favor ; and Swift's reflection since he left Moor Park had per- haps whispered something to him of advantages underval- ued, and anger unbecomingly indulged. " I shall stand in 90 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. 1694-1096. ^T. 27-29. Alleged "peniten- tial " letter. Errors re- specting it. Living of Kilruot. The Waring family at Belfast. need of all your goodness to excuse my many weaknesses and follies^^ and oversights, nmcli more to say any thing to my advantage." He thinks he can not reproach him- self with more than '^ iniirinities ;" but all is left to his honor's mercy. This, from which I have thus taken its most submissive phrases, is Lady Giffard's "penitential" letter ; and Scott, following and followed by all commen- tators since, declares it to have been only written after five months' agonized delay. The simple truth respecting it has been stated here. Swift first knew what was re- quired at the beginning of September ; and finding, on the 5tli of October, that there was but one way of com- pliance, he wrote on the 6th to Sir William Temple, re- questing that the certificate might be in time for the or- dination " appointed by the archbishop for the beginning of November." It reached him earlier. His deacon's orders bear date the 28th of October, 1694 ; his priest's orders are dated the 13th of January, 1691— '5; and into both he was ordained by King, Bishop of Deny, afterward Archbisliop of Dublin. He had meanwhile been recom- mended by some family friends to Lord Capel, then Lord Deputy, who gave him the small prebendary of Kilroot, in the north of Ireland. His patent of presentation is en- rolled under date of the 28th of January, 1691— '5. Kilroot was a living somewhat over £100 a year, and the new incumbent became very weary there after not many months ; the most memorable incident of his con- nection with it having had for its scene, not the small par- sonage, which, with the poor little church, has long fallen to ruin, but the neighboring post-town of Belfast. Here lived his old college chum, Waring ; and Swift, having no other sufficient occupation for his thoughts, did what he fonnerly described himself as then prone to do, and made love to his friend's sister. He changed her name of War- ing to the more poetical Varina ; two letters, with an in- terval of three years between tliem, tell the love - story ; ♦ And follies is restored by me on I which the letter originally wns printed, collation with the transcrij)t from iThe original has never been accessible. §n.] IN ORDERS AND AT KILROOT. 91 and the calm contents of the second will be found to con- iGO-l-iGOG. trast not a little with the passionate phrases of the first. _Zi_Zl:U. The lady had a small fortune (a hundred a year, it seems to have been), but of that Swift desires nothing ; he only w^ants to marry her. She is less eager, and a reason for her coldness appears to be suspected by him. After say- Letter to ing that all the miseries of a man's life are beaten out on (Variua).^ " 1^^ his own anvil, he gives her an apologue of a poor poet and ^B a rich beggar, which seems to imply some jealousy on his part of a man who with himself has access to the Donegal family and who writes execrable verses, but, being dunce enough to be worth five thousand a year, has all the quali- fication to recommend himself to a woman. After which he goes off into the wildest protestations, wishing to God she had scorned him from the beginning; and declaring that if he left the kingdom before she was his, he would endure the utmost indignities of fortune rather than re- turn, though the King should send him back as his deputy. "And it is so, then ? In One fortnight I must take eternal farewell of Yarina ; and (I wonder) will she weep at part- ing, a little to justify her poor pretenses of some affection to me ? and will my friends still continue reproaching me for the want of gallantry, and neglecting a close siege ?" E^ay, he asks, w^ould^ the friends of both, knowing well her circumstances and his, be so anxious to get them married, if it were likely to cross her happiness? On the other hand, in a passionate burst of eloquent entreaty, he tells her' what she will forfeit by preferring the little disguises and affected contradictions of her sex to the prospect of a rapture so innocent and so exalted ; and he warns her to remember that if she still refuses to be his, she will quick- ly lose, forever lose, him that is resolved to die as he has lived, all hers.* * First printed in Monck Berkeley's Literary Relics (1789), of whicli I possess the copy that belonged to Ed- mond Malone, whose careful MS, col- lation of the letter with the original gives it special value. INlalone pre- fixes this MS. note : "I have com- pared this letter with the original, now in the hands of the Earl of Macartney ; and all the corrections in the margin are taken from them. Some of them are of importance. — 92 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. 1G94-1G96. ^T. 27-29. Invited back to Moor Park. There is yet notliing to show that he had lived "all hers" for any thing like the full period of his twelve months' residence at Ivilroot ; a length of time, which, taken with tlie comment of this letter, would seem hardly to justify the alleged reproach of friends that he had not made close enough siege. He is to leave for England, moreover, in a fortnight ; she is to make up her mind be- fore he goes ; and the sober facts that thus stand out from the exalted rhapsody are found to be all it contains tliat has any kind of importance for us. He had been absent from Moor Park little more than a year and a half; its master had written to have him back again ; and he is re- solved to go. " Sir William Temple," Swift's sister wrote afterward from Ireland, " was so fond of my brother that he made him give up his living in this country, and prom- ised to get him one in England." This gives reality and meaning to the only passage in the letter to Miss Waring that appears to have either : " My Lady Donegal tells me that 'tis feared my lord deputy will not live many days ; and if that be so, 'tis possible I may take shipping from hence, otherwise I shall set out on Monday fortnight for Publin, and, after one visit of leave to his excellency, liasten to England ; and how far you will stretch the point of your unreasonable scruples to keep me here will de- pend upon the strength of the love you pretend for me. In short, madam, I am once more offered the advantage to have the same acquaintance with greatness that I formerly enjoyed, and with better prospect of interest. I here sol- emnly offer to forego it all for your sake. I desire noth- ing of your fortune. You shall live where and with whom you please till my affairs are settled to your desire ; and in E. M., Feb. 17th, 1804." Br. Lyon says, in his MS. corrections and ad- ditions to Hawkeswortli's Lite, that three other letters, now lost, were directed to INIiss Waring at Belfast : 20th J)eceniber, lG9/>, from Dublin ; 29th June, 1(;90, and 28th August, 1G97, from Moor I'ark : hut for this no authority is mentioned. I shall have occasion to make inij)ortant use of other notes in this curious volume, given by Mr. Nichols to Malone and by the latter to his brother, Lord Sun- derlin, and which i)asscd into my jws- session on the sale of Mr. Mitford's librarv. m § II.] IN ORDERS AND AT KILROOT. 93 the mean time I will piisli my advancement with all the ig94-109G. eagerness and courage imaginable, and do not doubt to sue- — -JLlni ceed." Whether he obtained the interview is not known ; but he certainly departed for England, and nothing more Departure is heard of Yarina until after Temple's death, when the root! ^ ' second letter turns the. tables on the first, and the lady is supposed to be impatient for a marriage which the gentle- man more prudently declines. That it was a sudden departure, and upon recpiest from Departure Moor Park, is manifest from his letter as well as from his for.^'^" ^ sister's ; and much talk, among his own and Miss Waring's friends, followed naturally enough. Two stories explain- g it, and his later surrender of the prebend, opposed to each other in every thing but extravagance, found their way into the biographies. According to one, he was seized y a sudden desire to befriend an aged curate with eight children and forty pounds a year, borrowed his black mare (the curate being richer than himself in that particular), rode off to Dublin, resigned the prebend, and obtained the old gentleman a grant of it then and there. The other, traceable to a time when incredible scurrilities assailed him, accounted for his resigning by his having been exam- Absurd in- ined before a magistrate named Dobbs for a criminal at- "^^"^'°"'^- tempt on a farmer's daughter : its one grain of reality be- ing that a Mr. Dobbs lived near him, and they used to lend one another books. The first romance Scott gravely ad- mits into his text as "highly characteristic of Swift's ex- alted benevolence ;" and in a note disposes of the second as the invention of a mad parson who afterward held the prebend. The circumstance as it actually occurred has in it nothing sensational ; but it is extremely interesting, and Swift himself has related it, in letters addressed to the clergyman in whose favor he resigned, and who was col- lated to the living in Mai'ch, 169T-'8. Mr. Winder, w^hose acquaintance he had made at Hart Hall (the second letter remincls him of " our chapel at Ox- The tmth ford "), being in the l^orth of Ireland when his application ggif. ^ ^^"^' for absence was made to Bishop Walkington, undertook 94: THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. 1G94-1G96. the duty of tlie prebend until the prebendary should re- _ J^__I1_: turn ; but that there was strong probability he might not return, and that in such case he would do his best to get the prebend for his friend, appears to have been not only said at their parting, but repeated in kind and friendly let- ters. At a break in the correspondence, Winder, who had the anxieties and " fastenings to the world " of a wife and children, was afraid he should be blamed as its author ; to •which Swift at once replied that, as he had "never in his life entertained one single ill thought" of him, he did not impute his silence to any bad cause, but to a custom that broke off commerce between abundance of people liking Correspond- eacli Other very well. "At first one omits writing for a successor ^^^ little wliile, and then one stays a while longer to consider (MS.). Qf excuses, and at last it grows desperate, and one does not write at all." (Are there any who have not had the expe- rience thus expressed with his exquisite common sense?) A remark followed more flattering to Mr. Winder than complimentary to Miss Waring : " I believe, liad I been assured of your neighborhood, I should not liave been so unsatisfied with the region I was planted in." Theresoitt- Thcso expressions lead us to the resolve taken a year S.*'' '^' and a half after the return to Moor Park. Shortly before, Winder had sent him some intimation from the bishop about the prebend, but without any hint at a resignation, so that the reply inclosing one gave great surprise, and set all the gossips busily to work. Swift had surrendered Kil- root, they said, because of the Miss Waring affair ; and AVinder had artfully intrigued for it by passing himself off for what he was not. The resignation meanwhile steadily went on ; was completed by obtaining the succes- sion for Winder ; and then, from Moor Park on the 1st of Letter to Mr. April, 1698, Swift wrote him a letter delightful for its il- AprM608*' lustration of his own character, and for what otherwise it (MS.). reveals at this early time : "Since the resignation of my living and the noise it made among you, I have had, at least, three or four very wise letters, unsubscril>e^ottou's rific onslaught in the Battle, he affected to have been " as- ^^^'^' sured" that the satire was a mere copy from a foreign piece " entitled Combat des Livres, if I misremember not." " Whicli is to call me at a venture," retorted Swift, " a plagiary, than which I know nothing more contemptible." He meets it with the emphatic assertion that it is a false- hood ; and that through the w^hole book he had not bor- rowed one single hint from any writer in the world. Johnson nevertheless rejected the denial and repeated the charge, though too evidently as little acquainted as Wot- charge of ton with the alleged original ; and Scott, taking his infor- ^ ''^siarism. mation from Mcliols,* produced by way of countenance to Wotton's attack, Coutray's exact title, which at the same time he showed to be all he knew of Coutray's book, by describing as a poem what was merely a lengthy prose tract contributed to the Fontenelle and Perrault contro- Disproved, versy, which it might as fairly be said to have originated as to have supplied a grain of material to Swift. If Wot- ton had charged him with plagiarizing Homer, Swift with a laugh might have owned it ; for its broadest fun arises from the Homeric burlesque, wdiich is also its most origi- nal feature. Only Wotton could have doubted this ; but des Livres. * Who first gave the title: Histoire \ tie work ; of the contents of wliich, so Coutray's poetique de la Guerre nouvellement I variously criticised by writers who had ^''''"J^^t dezlarh entre les Anciens et les Mo- I never read or seen them, I write with dernes. A prolonged inquiry and tlie advantage of some personal ac- great good fortune enabled me at last quaintance. to obtain a copy of this very rare lit- I 106 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book H. 1G9G-1GG9. JRt. 29-32. Swift's ideal of criticism. Bentley. Temple. Flaw In Temple's armor. of course a writer under sucli an assault as Swift's had no alternative but to try, however feebly, a fall with his as- sailant. ^Yotton figures in the battle of tJie BooJcs as the favor- ite and darling son, by an unknown father of mortal race, of a malignant deity called Criticism ; dwelling in a den on the top of a snowy mountain in Kova Zembla, extend- ed on the spoils of numberless volumes half devoured ; at her right hand, her father Ignorance, blind with rage ; at her left, her mother Pride, dressing her up in the paper scraps torn by herself; her sister Opinion beside her, light of foot, hoodwinked and headstrong, yet giddy and perpetually turning; and her children IS'oise and Impu- dence, Dullness and Yanity, Positiveness, Pedantry, and 111 Manners, playing about her. From this powerful mother Wotton gets a place in the army of the Moderns, under a leader " tall, but without shape or comeliness ; large, but witliout strength or proportion ;" in other words, Bentley ; in armor patched up of a thousand incoherent pieces, of which the sound as he marches is loud and dry, like the fall of a sheet of lead. Together they sally forth to at- tempt some neglected quarter of the Ancients ; and com- ing to the spring of Plelicon, one of the prizes of Parnas- sus for which the battle is raging, they fall in with Tem- ple, " General of the Allies to the Ancients," who, having been educated and long conversed among them, " was of all the Moderns their greatest favorite," and was now re- fresh! nor himself at their foimtain. An incident of this episode, which ends in the transfixing of both the Moderns with one lance and trussing them like a brace of wood- cocks, is characteristic of Swift. Temple receives a " light graze " of which he is wholly unconscious ; and though it has no effect whatever on the fortunes of the day, it serves to intimate that in the opinion Swift had formed of the Phalaris dispute he did not believe the armor of his friends, though " the gift of all the gods," to be entirely unassail- able. The battle meanwhile had been raging witli no doubt- § III.] SECOND RESIDENCE WITH TEMPLE. 107 and of Vir>Ml. fill issue, for the exploits of Homer alone went far to de- 1696-1699. cide tlie day."^ " Mounted on a furious horse, with diffi- — ^'^ ~ "' ■ culty managed by the rider himseK, but which no other Homer: mortal durst approach, he bore down all before him." Isoi here may be written the list of his yictims, beyond remarking as not without significance that such indisputa- ble moderns as Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton are altogether absent ; but his condign execution on the beginners of the fray is part of my narratiye. " He took Perrault by mighty force out of his saddle, then hurled him at Fontenelle, with the same blow dashing out both their brains." Only second to him in efficiency is Yirgil, who, mounted on a dapple-gray steed of the highest met- tle and yigor, busily seeks out objects worthy of his yalor, " when, behold, upon a sorrel gelding of a monstrous size," appears a foe making less speed than noise, " for his horse, old and lean, spent the dregs of his strength in a high trot, which, though it made slow adyances, yet caused a loud clashino^ of his armor terrible to hear." But as the straii- ger comes nearer, lifting his yisor for a parley, what is Yir- giFs disappointment to discoyer his oy>'n translator, " the renowned Dryden," whose head appears situate far in the pryden and hinder part of a helmet nine times too large for it, " eyen like the lady in a lobster, or like a mouse under a canopy of state, or like a shriyeled bean from within the penthouse of a modern periwig." Xear Dryden is Blackmore, who must haye fallen under the lance of Lucan had not Escu- lapius, unseen, turned off the point if which may be taken, Blackmore. * "Swift used often to declare that in his opinion Homer liad more gen- ius than all the rest of the world put together." — Swiftiana, ii., 176. The special authority is not given, but there is certainly no writer for whom Swift expresses so frequently an ex- alted admiration ; and the reader of the Voyage to Laputa will recollect what Gulliver says when, upon desir- mg to see in Gluhbdubdrib the great- est of the writers of the antique world, Aristotle and Homer are presented to him, and he observes the former stoop- ing much and making use of a stafl^ while Homer is taller and comelier, walking very erect for one of his age, and "his eyes the most quick and piercing I ever beheld,"' t The return for this compliment made by Blackmore, who cared less for his physic than his poetrV, was a fierce attack on Swift. 108 TEE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. 1696-1699. jEt. 29-32. Pindar and Cowley. Concen- trated writ- ing. Apologue of Spider and Bee. Sweetness and Light. perhaps, to signify that Swift was some time or other in- debted to the Doctor's skill, ^or in less danger was Cow- ley from Pindar's lance, tinder which Mrs. Behn, "Afra the Amazon," and hosts of others had fallen, when Yeniis in- terposed to save him : by which, wath the adverse comment suggested in a note that " Cowley's Pindarics are mncli preferred to his Mistress," we have both sides of a ques- tion that had interested Swift from his boyhood, and which doubtless had been frequently discussed at Moor Park. There is, in short, not a line in this extraordinary piece of concentrated humor, however seemingly filled with ab- surdity, that does not run over w^ith sense and meaning. If a single word w^eTe to be employed in describing it, applicable alike to its wit and its extravagance, intensity should be chosen. Especially characteristic of these earli- est satires is what generally will be found most aptly de- scriptive of all Swift's writing : namely, that whether the subject be great or small, every thing in it from the first word to the last is essentially part of it ; not an episode or allusion being introduced merely for itself, but every minutest point not only harmonizing or consisting with the whole, but expressly supporting and strengthening it. The apologue of the Spider and the Bee is so marvelous- ly good as almost to cheat one into the belief that there is a question to fight over ; the Spider boasting of his na- tive stock and great genius, displaying his large skill in ar- chitecture and improvement in the mathematics, and attrib- uting it all to the fact that he spins and spits wholly from himself, and scorns to own any obligation from without ; while, on the other hand, the Bee glories in pretending to nothing of his own but his wings and his voice, his flights and his music, which enable him, by infinite labor and search, to range, through every corner of Nature, and to fill his hive, not, like his adversary, with dirt and poison, but with honey and wax, ^' thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are Sweetness and Light." Tlie same argument is in the greater satire which Swift had in hand at the same time ; and proper significance has § III.] SECOND EESIDENCE WITH TEMPLE. 109 never, by any of his biograpliers or critics, been given to 1 696-1 G99. tlie fact tliat the corruptions of religion and the abuses of ^•'' ~ "' learning handled in the Tale of a Tiib are but the contin- satfrrin^ ued pursuit, in another form, of the controversy between ^^"^' the claims of ancients and moderns. Peter, Martin, and Jack do nothing for the first seven years after their father's death (by which are expressed the seven centuries of early Christianity) but carefully observe their father's will ; and, while they travel together, and have a reasonable number of hazardous but victorious adventures, they keep their coats in very good order. It is not until they fall in love with Covetousness, Ambition, and Pride, that, becoming slaves to a then prevailing religion that the Universe is only a large suit of clothes, and Man himself nothing more (what the world calls suits of clothes being really the most refined species of animals), they take to embroidery, fringes, and gold lace, and fall into all their misfortunes. And as with Peligion, so with Learning. At the time cormp- when this befalls the brothers, there has ceased to be any iigk)n"and^' such thing ; and a method of becoming a scholar without ^^^'^"^^s- the fatigue of reading or of thifiking has come into vogue. A book being governed by its index as a fish by its tail, thorough insight into an index is become all the labor nec- essary for mastery of a book ; and it has been found also that books may be served as some men do lords — first study their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance. Xor is there any lack of books for the purpose. The mod- est computation of that "present month of August, 1697," w^as, that nine thousand seven hundred forty and three wits of eu- persons (a stroke of wit lying underneath this number, fcQi. which w^as exactly that of the church livings then in En- gland) were reckoned to be pretty near the current num- ber of wits in the island, and corresponding numbers of books were produced with every revolution of the sun ; though it was unhappily tlie case that books, which, like men, had only one w^ay of coming into the w^orld, had ten thousand ways of going out of it : the business of the last volume being merely to displace the first, and mock the 110 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. Books com pared to clouds. L 1G9G-1G99. lookers-on with a fresli set of titles. " If I should venture in a windy day to affirm tliat there is a large cloud near tlie horizon in the form of a bear, another in the zenith with the head of an ass, a third to the westward with claws like a dragon ; and you should in a few minutes think tit to examine the truth, it is certain they would all be changed in figure and position : new ones would arise, and all we could agree upon would be, that clouds there were, but that I was grossly mistaken in the "zoography and to- pography of them." To this remarkable passage, whose writer must have known perfectly well the famous lines in Anto7iy and Cleopatra,'^ may be added one other which probably took its rise, half jestingly, half sadly, in the com- parison of books to dissolving and dispersing clouds. It is very affecting to me, because it is the only passage in Swift's writings where he seems openly to ask for some foretaste in life of what so often fails to come until life is passed away. " I have a strong inclination, before I leave the world, to taste a blessing which we mysterious Avrit- ers can seldom reach till we have gotten into our graves : whether it be that Fame, being a fruit grafted on the body, can hardly grow, and much less ripen, till the stock is in the earth ; or whether she be a bird of prey, and is lured among the rest, to pursue after the scent of a carcass ; or whether she conceives her trumpet sounds best and far- thest when she stands on a tomb, by the advantage of a rising ground, and the echo of a hollow vault." Yet the man by whom those words were written showed himself so far indifferent to any fame that might arise to him from enriching English literature with its greatest Posthu- mous fame. The Tale not printed for seveu years. '•Sometime we see a cloud that's drag- on ish ; A vapor, sometime, like a bear or lion, A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock, [ry A forked mountain, or bine pnmionlo- With trees upon't, that nod unto the world, And mock our eyes with air : thou hast eeen these signs ; They are black vesper's pageants — That which is now a horse, eveu with a thought The rack dislimns ; and makes it in- distinct, As water is in water."— .4 o^ iv., sc. 12. Swift was very often in liis writings (especially these earlier pieces) figura- tive ill a high degree, aiul fond of im- agery, though Johnson absurdly says of him that "the sly dog never vent- ures ut \\ metaphor." III.] SECOND RESIDENCE WITH TEMPLE. Ill prose satire, that the bulk of it remained in MS. for seven ig96-ig9J). years, and was then alleged to have been printed from a — — — ^' copy in possession of a friend which had not had the ad- vantage of his own final correction. There is some doubt about the story that will have again to be referred to, and Swift studiously refrains from clearing it up. " How the author," he says, " came to be without his papers is a story not proper to be told, and of very little use, being a pri- vate fact ; of which the reader would believe as little, or as much, as he thought good." One thing is certain, that portions of both pieces got into the hands of Thomas Swift, never named by his great kinsman without contempt, but latterly become resident chaplain to Temple ; and this po- sition at Moor Park of the " little parson-cousin," as his great cousin always called him, during the composition of both works, which the bearing that both were meant to have on the Temple controversy would necessarily make him privy to, may hereafter somewhat explain the mystery. What further belongs to the present point of time is the personal description Sw^ift gave, when he undertook the writing of his greater satire, of the qualifications he believed swift's By the as- ig and much conversation. qualifica- tions for satire. himself to possess for discharging such a task, sistance, he said, of some thinkin< he had endeavored to strip himself of as many real preju- dices as he could ; the study, the observation, and the in- vention of several years had yielded as their product what he then wrote. He often blotted out much more than he left ; and if his papers had not been a long time out of his possession, they must have undergone corrections still more severe. "He resolved to proceed in a manner that should Resolve in be altogether new^ the w^orld having been already too long nauseated with endless rej)etitions upon every subject."^ He kept his word : having rare qualifications for keeping it. He was young, his invention at the height, and his reading fresh in his head. Such was Swift during: his second residence w^ith Tem- wiiting it. * He has a pregnant remark on this: "It is reckoned that there is not at the present time a sufficient quantity of new matter left in nature to furnish and adorn any one particu- lar subject to the extent of a volume." 112 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. ] 09G-1699. ^T. 29-32. Other em- ployments at Moor Park. Revision of Temple's writings. A7ite, 90. "A thing in my way." pie ; and of the character of liis employment over Temple's writings when he was not engaged in writing for himself, there is some account in a letter to Lady Giffard of some years' later date, replying to her attack upon him for pub- lishing a third part of her brother's Jfemoirs, which she alleged to have been taken from an "unfaithful copy," containing laudatory notices of Godolphin and Sunderland it had been her brother's intention to omit, and omitting a remark on Sunderland which he meant to have retained. " By particular commands," wrote Swift,* " one thing is understood, and by general ones another. And I might insist upon it that I had particular commands for every thing I did, though more particular for some than others. Your ladyship says, if ever they were designed to be print- ed, it must have been from the original. The first Mem- oirs was from my copy ; so were the second Miscellanea ; so was the Introduction to tlie JEnglish History ; so was every volume of Letter's. They were all copied from tlie originals by Sir William Temple's direction, and corrected all along by his orders ; and it was the same with these last Memoirs ; so that whatever he printed, since I had the honor to know him, was an ' unfaithful copy ' of it, were it to be tried by the original." Then came what has been quoted of his not pretending to share in Tem- ple's confidence above his relatives or commonest friends. " But this was a thing in my way. It was no more than to prefer the advice of a lawyer, or even of a tradesman, before that of his friends, in things that related to their callings. Kobody else had conversed so much with his manuscripts as I ; and since I was not wholly illiterate, I can not imagine whom else he could leave the care of liis writings to. Your nephews say the printed copy differs from the original in forty places as to words and man- ner of expression. I believe it may in a hundred. And that passage about my Lord Sunderland was left out by his consent ; though, to say the truth, at my entreaty ; and * This letter hns not been included in any of the editions of 8wift. It was j)a;tiiilly jjiinted by Mr. Courte- nay in his Life of Temple (10th No- vember, 1709). § III.] SECOND KESIDENCE WITH TEMPLE. 113 I would fain have prevailed to have left out another ig9G-ig91). These Memoirs were printed by a correct copy, exactly I , . 1 1 i 1 1 Temple and after the same manner as the author s other works were, ins editor. He told me a dozen times, upon asking him, that it was his intention they should be printed after his death ; but never fixed any thing about the time. The corrections w^ere all his own ; ordering me, as he always did, to correct in my copy as I read it." He closes by telling her that, knowing her opinion to be against the publication of this particular portion of the Memoirs^ he had published it without her knowledge, on pui*pose to leave her wholly without blame. All this is proof that Swift did not live idle days at Moor Park ; and his own memorandum of one year of his reading, from 7th January, 1696-7, to Tth January, 169 7- 8, shows a strenuous employment of his leisure. He had read the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, Yirgil twice, and one year's an elaborate edition of Horace, eminently a favorite with Mooi°Park. him. Thrice he had read Lucretius, and thrice Lucius Florus, Petronius Arbiter, the first volume of ^lian, Cic- ero's Epistles, and the Characters of Theophrastus. Of English books he had read the folio translation of Thu- cydides by Hobbes, making an abstract of it, which was an excellent habit he had ; and three other folios — Loixi Herbert's Harry the Eighth, Camden's EUzaheth, and Bishop Burnet's Reformation. He had made abstracts of Sleidan's Commentary on the Reformation, of Father Paul's Decrees of the Council of Trent, of Cyprian and Irenaeus, and of Diodorus Siculus. And, in addition to several out-of-the-way voyages and travels, and curious French books,'^ the same year's reading comprised Tem- ple's Memoirs and Introduction to History, Sir John Da- vies On the Soul, two volumes of French Dialogues of the * The memorandum specifies, be- sides those in the text, the following as having been also among his read- ings of that single year: Voiture, Prince Arthur ; Ilistoire de Chypre ; Voyage de Syam ; Mhnoires de Mau- YoL. I.— 8 rier ; Count Gahalis ; Conformite de Religion ; Ilistoire de M. Constance ; Ilistoire d' (Ethiopie ; Voyage de Ma- roc ; Bernier's Grand Mogol, 2 vols. ; (Euvres Melees, 5 vols. ; Vossius de Sibyllinis. lU THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. Strenuous exercise. 169G-1G99. Dead, and two volumes of Essays by Jeremy Collier, with — "" ~ "' whose assault on the indecency of the stage, published in the following year, he expressed always the strongest agreement. Occupied thus in his hours of business or leisure, there is other proof that his relaxations were hardly less active. A hill was long pointed out near the house as the scene of his daily exercise ; and Mr. Deane Swift, professing to correct wdiat Dr. Delany related from Swift himself — that for seven years from the time of taking his Oxford degree he studied at least on the average eight hours a day — de- clares it as a fact known to the family '' that from the time Swift went to Sir W. Temple in 1688 until the death of Sir W. in 1699, he spent ten hours a day, one with an- other, in hard study, abating only the time which he con- sumed in bodily exercise, for every two hours (since we are fond of the most trifling anecdotes) he ran up a hill that was near Sir W. Temple's, and back again to the study : this exercise he performed in about six minutes, backward and forward : it was about half a mile." The anecdote may be believed ; notwithstanding " the family," and the absurdly obstinate particularity, already named as ]\Ir. Deane's never-failing characteristic. All his life long, shai^ exercise w^as essential to Swift, who protested con- tinually that without his w^alk or ride he could not exist at all. He walked to make himself lean, he said, in de- scribing his long walks with Prior a dozen years later, and his fellow-poet walked to try and make himself fat. Irisli- w^omen could not abide walking, he would add, and that w^as w^hy he disliked them. He always cried shame at them, as if their legs w^ere of no use but to be laid aside. It is his flrst and last advice to Esther Johnson never to lose the opportunity of using her legs, and he bought a little horse for her to ride which was called by her name. "At your time of life," he wrote in his declining years to Pope, " I could have leapt over the moon ;" and his " walks like lightning" in the parks, between London and Chel- sea, and in the Windsor avenues, have prominent mention in his journals. TIhm-c also he mentions a design he had, Passion for walkiui;. § III.] SECOND RESIDENCE WITH TEMPLE. 115 on leaving for Ireland after he obtained the deanery, to 1696-1699. " walk it " all the way to Chester, his man and himself, ^^- ^^"^^- by ten miles a day. " It will do my health a great deal of good, and I shall do it in fourteen days." One special walk of his earlier years, also recorded there as if not in- i4th April, . . 1713 frequently taken, deserves a line to itself. It was from Farnham to London, a distance of thirty-eight miles. The death of Sir William Temple in 1698-9 closed cioseofa what without doubt may be called Swift's quietest and ^^e!'^ ^^ happiest time. In the three peaceful years of that sec- ond residence he had made full acquaintance with his own powers, unconscious yet of any thing but felicity and freshness in their exercise ; and the kindliest side of his nature had found growth and encouragement. The soil had favored in an equal degree his intellect and his affec- tions. More than one feeling of this description, we may be sure, contributed its earnestness to his pathetic mention of the day and hour of Temple's death. " He died at one Death of o'clock tins morning, the 2Tth of January, 1698-'9, and ^^'"^'^* with him all that w^as good and amiable among men." There was afterw^ard some natural disappointment at the smallness of the legacy left for editing the writings ; but k though Swift in a not undignified way (as we have seen) referred to this w^hen he repelled Lady Giffard's charges ' against his editorship, it never colored unfavorably any other of his allusions to Temple. The opinion now ex- pressed he never changed. lie continued, speaking rath- er wdth affection than judgment, to characterize him as a statesman who deserved more from his country by his em- inent public services than any man before or since, and as the most accomplished writer of his time. Temple's legacy of money to Swift was in express ac- Legacy of knowledgment of the pains already taken with the writ- wSgs! ings. This is apparent from the date of the codicil, which was executed less than a year before the death, and four years later than the will. But it left also to Swift the emolument derivable from the works so edited, or, as Swift expresses it, " the care, and trust, and advantage, of publishing his posthumous WTitings ;" and, as Temple was 116 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book II. 169G-1699. Mt. 29-32. Promise of the preb- end. never in tlie liabit of undervaluing any part of himself, he may have taken this to represent a larger return in money than Swift would think likely. The amount re- ceived for the live volumes was about £4:0 apiece, which by present money value w^ould be upward of £600. !Nor was Temple otherwise w^ithout fair expectation for his kinsman. Swift himself still believed in the royal pledge for the first prebend that should become vacant at West- minster or Canterbury ; and though he was in his thirty- second year when, upon Temple's death, he removed to London, it could not be said that the future, which then at last seemed to be opening to him, was devoid of reason- able promise. "When I Come to be Old." At this turning-point of his life his paper of resolutions " AYhen I Come to be Old " w^as probably w^ritten. It has the date of 1699, and was found by Mrs. Whiteway at his death. Too much importance may be given to such things, w'hich are just as likely as not to represent a whim or mere passing fancy ; but as the original is in my posses- sion, a fac-simile of it wiU have interest. One can hardly help connecting the first and fifth of the resolutions with what must still be called the mystery of his life, w^hatever the solution offered for it ; and something of a strange and even touching character is suggested by the erasure in the fifth, under which the words originally written are trace- able still. The erasure was not Swift's, but that of the person who in printing it would have shielded his memory from an apparent coldness of nature implied. But may it not bear a moaning other than hard and imfeeling ? " JS^ot to be fond of children, or let them come near me hardly T Such a fondness had begun at Moor Park in his youth, and all that was to follow it he did not yet know ; but if, in the pain of quitting Moor Park, the thought had risen to him not to renew the same kind of intercourse in his age, who wdll say it was harshness that prompted the fancy \ We do not fortify ourselves with resolutions against what we dislike, but against what in our weakness we have rea- Eon to believe we aro onlv too :nnch inclined to. § III.] SECOND KESIDEXCE WITH TEMPLE. 117 :^~u> ^'^^r wa. i^. R^ tft -3-4 6 >Cl^ ^ /^ /C^ c^ ^ cv^ 60 ^ /c^ A;^ Not to marry a young woman. Not to keep young company, unless they reely desire it. Not to be peevish, or morose, or suspicious. Not to scorn present ways, or wits, or fiishions, or men, or war, «&;c. Not to be fond of children, \ot let them come near vie hardly. '\^ Not to tell the same story over and over to the same people. Not to be covetous. Not to neglect decency or cleanli- ness, for fear of falling into nastiness. Not to be over severe with young people, but give allowance for their youthful follies and weaknesses. Not to be influenced by, or give * When I come to be old. 1699. ear to knavish tattling servants, or others. Not to be too free of advice, nor trouble any but those that desire it. To conjure (altered to "desire"') some good fiiends to inform me which of these resolutions I break or neglect, and wherein ; and reform accordingly. Not to talk much, nor of myself. Not to boast of my former beauty, or strength, or favor with ladies, &c. Not to hearken to flatteries, nor conceive I can be beloved by a young woman ; et eos qui hcereditatem cap- tant, odisse ac vitare. Not to be positive or opiniative. Not to set up for observing all these rules, for fear I should observe none. ttrwa, Resolutions for old age. Words in brackets erased in printed copy. BOOK THIRD. YICAE OF LAEACOE. 1699-1705. ^T. 32-38. I. Chaplain at Dublin Castle. III. Tale of a Tub. II. London Life. IV. Baucis and Philemon. I ^ilFOE^^^* I. CHAPLAIN AT DUBLIN CASTLE. 1699-1701. ^T. 32-34. The death of Temple did not alter the position of Lady ig99-1701. Giffard, or the relation to her of Esther Johnson's mother, ^'^' ^^~'^^- who continued to manao^e the house and act as her com- panion.* But Temple's legacy to Esther (" of a lease of some lands I have in Monistown in the county of Wicklow in Ireland ") gave her the means of living independently of his sister ; and, soon after Swift's removal to London, she and her friend, Mrs. Dingley, who had at her disposal Esther a small property of which Swift had undertaken the man- and Mrs. agement for her, were living together in lodgings at Earn- ^^"siey. ham. Mrs. Dingley was older than Swift by two or three years. Esther Johnson, born fourteen years later than Swift, was in her eighteenth year when the second resi- dence closed. He had known her from seven years old ; and his ascer- tained position to her during the whole of the Moor Park life, confirming all that followed on the life breaking up, forbids the possibility of his having ever assumed to her, us far, the pretensions of a lover. There is not the shadow of a ground for assuming it. It was the tenderest Esther and ossible connection, but in no respect that of the mistress d admirer. They were playfellows, as father and child are; they were master and pupil, as the growth of her ind began to interest him ; and in all the attempts to ex- #°: f * At what time Mrs. Bridget John- son became Mrs. Bridget Mose does not exactly appear. Swift calls her "Mrs. Johnson" as late as March, 1710-11 : but this may have been a slip, from old habit. Mose managed the Giftard property after Temple's death, and it seems unlikely that the marriage should iiave been delayed so long. ■ language. 122 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1699-1701. plain the "mystery" of tlieir later connection, sufficient ^' weight has never been given to the character in which re- spectively they thus stood to each other, and to all that Tvas implied in it, at the very outset of her life and the maturity of his. One thing between them, common alike to the later and to these earlier years, is itself a proof of the durability, of such first impressions, and of the diffi- culty of changing the relations they involve. Tliere can not be a doubt that what he afterward called " our own The little little laiigiiage," hitherto all but suppressed by those who have supplied the materials for his biography existing in his Journals, began at Moor Park ; and began in the man's imitation of a child's imperfect speech. The loving play- fulness expressed by it had dated from Esther Johnson's childhood; it in some way satisfied wants of his own nature, or he would not have continued so lavishly to in- dulge it ; and the passion for good-humored trifling, pun- ning, and such innocent indulgences, which attended him all his life and often contrasts so strangely with his great robust intellect, is perhaps mainly due to its influence. During Anne's last ministry he wrote to her of a dis- pute at Bolingbroke's about the house of a Colonel Graham Moor Fark at Bagsliot-lieatli. " Pslia ! I remember it very well, when I used to go for a w^alk to London from Moor Park. What ! I warrant oo don't remember fhe golden farmer neither, Figgarkick Soley." That is a bit of their peculiar language of which the mystery will never be solved ; and abundant addition might be made, from the same source, to the proofs already given of the interest which Moor Park had for them both, and which he seizes every occasion to remind her of. Had she forgotten one Trimnel, whom they saw there on his travels with the lord's son, to whom he was tutor? That was the man who had since become Bishop of Norwich, and had just preached so whiggish a sermon before the commons that the question for thanking him and printing it was negatived. He brings to lier recollec- tion a high-church parson they used to laugh at together — one Savage, who preached at Faniham on Sir William memones. I § I.] CHAPLAIN AT DUBLIN CASTLE. 123 Temple's death — ^vlio liad lately been seen*in Italy in red 1G99-I70i. and yellow, not content with the extrayagance of kissing — '—l — i the pope's toe, but kneeling to him at the Palm-Sundaj cer- emonies. The neighborhood's commonest folks, in those grand days of his, were still viyidly borne in memory. When the Farnham carrier, " Smithers," brings him a let- Faruham ter from her mother, he tells her he has been asking him all about the people at Farnham, and adds, by way of news that will specially interest her, that " Mrs. White " had left off dressino^, beinoj troubled with lameness and seldom stirring out ; but that her old hang-dog husband was as hearty as eyer. What now befell Swift, and the next step to be taken in his life, is the final bit of autobiography told in his frag- ment ; and there are some not unimportant new touches in the yersion I haye been enabled to giye, to which the reader is referred. In substance the relation is ihat Swift, after applying by petition to the King for the promised prebend, had relied, for the support necessary to back it ef- tficiently, upon Lord Eomney, who professed much friend- ship, but said not a word to the King. That haying to- swifi's tally relied on this lord's honor, and haying neglected to present* dfs- iise any other instiiiment of reminding his majesty of the ''PP"i»t- promise made, Mr. Swift, after long attendance in yain, thought it better to comply with an inyitation from Lord Berkeley to attend him to Ireland as chaplain and priyate secretary on his appointment as one of the Lords Justices of that kingdom ; and that he acted as secretary the whole journey to Dublin. On arriyal, howeyer, such arts and in- sinuations w^ere practiced on Lord Berkeley by a, person bent on obtaining the secretaryship for himself, who said it was not proper for a clergyman, and could be of no worth to one w^ho was bent only on church preferments, that the earl, after a poor apology, gaye it to the other man. Upon this Mr. Swift had held himself entitled, and his claim seems to haye been admitted, to the next church preferment that should fall to the Lords Justices. But, upon a deanery falling yacant which it was Lord Berke- 124 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. Lops ofDer ry deauery. 1099-1701. ley's turn to dispose of, again tlie new secretary interfered, — ' having received a bribe of a thousand pounds from a ri- val candidate ; tlie deanery of Derry was given away from Swift ; and lie was " put off " with church livings which the new dean was required to resign for him, " not worth above a third part of that rich deanery, and at this present time not a sixth," the excuse pretended being that he was too young, "although he was then (above) thirty years old.""^ The result of it all was, that, in the summer of 1699, Swift was again resident in Dublin, quartered for a time in the castle with Lord Berkeley's family ; and that in the February following he became Yicar of Laracor. Other evidence amply coniirms this account. The chaplainship had been accepted for the sake of the secretaryship, and it was only in the hope of some imme- diate preferment that the one was retained without the other. The same feeling existed now as at the later time, when, upon a vague hint from Harley while his patent of earldom was preparing, Swift promptly exclaimed, " I will be no man's chaplain." Even with the promise now re- ceived, he would probably not have continued as the Lords Justices' chaplain but for the connection with public af- fairs incident to a residence in the castle, and the liking for him that had at once sprung up (where success never seems to have failed him) among the women of the fami- ily. Then came the incident of the Derry deanery ; his Chaplain at the castle. ♦ What Lord Orrery says of the interference of Bishop Win. King, of Derry, to prevent Swift's acquisition of the deanery would not have been worth mention but for its adoption by the biographers. "I have no ob- jection to Mr. Swift," he represents King saying. "I know him to be a spriglitly, ingenious yoimg man. But instead of residing, I dare say he will be eternally flying backwaid and for- ward to London ; and therefore I en- treat he may be provided for in some other place." — Remarks, p. JiG. This is manifestly sheer invention, suggest- ed by the mention of youth in the frag- ment ; by the fact that King at a later time, when Arclibishop of Dublin, ob- jected to the liabit Swift then had (which certainly he had not exliibit- erise and indignation at liis first 1099-1701. siglit of tlie cliurcli at Laracor may be accepted without - " ' question. A couple of miles from Trim, in a dull farming his chufch." country at the northern extremity of East Meath, with a few huts around it, a parsonage-house too dilapidated for decent residence, and a glebe of one acre, rose the old, plain, barn-like structure with its low belfry, in manifest neglect and decay.* Swift's resolve was taken on the in- stant, that it should not remain so ; though with his nar- ow means he could proceed but slowly in the self imposed duty of repair. The greater part of his first year's income Restoration was expended in making the vicarage tenantable; and gradually, through the next half-dozen years, extraordinary improvements were effected in the church and glebe. An extensive garden was laid out, having for its boundary a small stream, of which he so enlarged the cuiTent and smoothed the banks as to turn it into a canal, in the Dutch style that Moor Park had made pleasant to his memory ; and along the pretty winding walk, formed by the side of it, he planted regular ranks of willows in double rows. Tiiewiii Long before even Scott wrote, the willows had decayed or been cut down, the garden could not be traced, and where and im- provements. planted. the canal had been there was a ditch ; but, in the letters to Esther Johnson, they will continue to live as long as the name of Swift survives with the lano^uao^e he wrote in. Other solider additions to the living I assume still to * Among my papers I find the sub- joined extract from some official reg- ister in the diocese of Meath, dated after Swift's possession of his deanery, and mentioning some of the improve- ments in the original glebe. Unfort- unately, I can not remember where I obtained it : "No. 76, Larachor als Leicor. Jonathan Swift Vic. Stafford Light- burn, Curate. There were originally in this Parish a Kectory & a Vicar- idge ye Rectoiy was appropriated to ye Monastery of St. Thomas Dublin but 12th of Charles ye 1st was grant- ed to ye Vicar under a crown vent of 20 L Irish. " The Church -yard is inclosed part- ly with a stone wall and partly with a ditch. The original glebe belonging to this parish contains about an acre & is exceedingly well inclosed there is a good garden and a neat cabbin made by ye present Incumbent and valued at 60 L tis situated near ye Church. "The Incumbent is resident on his deanery of St Patrick Dublin & serves this parish by a curate who resides in Trim." Notices of Laracor in Swift's time. 136 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1G99-1701. ^T. 32-34. Additions to L'lebe. Condition of Laracor in 1S75. remain as wlien lie left tliem.^ lie increased tlie glebe from one acre to twenty, and endowed the vicarage with tithes which he had himself bought, and which by his will he settled on all future incumbents, subject to one condi- tion. Language more eloquent than mine may be here * The note subjoined is from Scott (1814): "The house appears, from its present ruins, to have been a com- fortable mansion. The present Bish- op of Meath (whom the editor is proud to call his friend), with classic feeling, while pressing upon his clergy, at a late visitation, the duty of re- ]>airing the glebe -houses, addressed himself particularly to the vicar of Laracor, and recommended to him, in the necessary improvements of his mansion, to save, as far as possible, the walls of the house which had been inhabited by his great predecessor." Through the kindness of a friend I have been favored with a statement from the present vicar of Laracor, the Rev, Cliarles Elrington M'Kay, of the existing condition of a place never to be disconnected from Swift's name and memory. The date of this inter- esting communication is the 21st of January, 1875. " (1.) The fragment of the wall of the old vicarage is still standing, and remains in the same condition in which it was on my succeeding to this incumbency in 18G5. 1 have not observed any process of decay in it, nor (as far as I have noticed) does there appear any symptom of that gradual abstraction of stones which frequently takes jjlace from celebrated memorials, l)y the hands of enthusiast- ic tourists. There it remains, gaunt and solitary, a most interesting relic of the abode of an extraordinary man. It is, as you say, all that is left of the 'old vicarage.' " (2.) The church of the Dean is no longer standing: it was taken down in the vear 1850, and a new one built on the old site. As the old site is very inconveniently situated for the majority of the parishioners (being at the extreme verge of a large parish), it was proposed that the new church should be transferred to the centre of the parish. However, the then in- cumbent, thinking that the 'genius loci ' was worth deferring to, had the old site maintained, and consequently the new church stands precisely where the Dean's was, "(3.) There are, unfortunately, no written entries whatever regarding tlie Dean : the parish registries are com- paratively modern. Nor are there any traditions worth relating. Of me- morials there is what is known as 'the Dean's well;' wliich is situated somewhat near the old vicarage gable on the roadside, and which is greatly used by the neighbors. It was of this that tradition says the Dean used the phrase ' that he had a cellar which never went dry.' It is at one end of the small garden attached to the old glebe. "(4.) The place consists now, as far as I can learn, of what it did in his time. There never was a village or county town of Laracor. The church stands at the junction of four cross-roads, where there are four or five scattered cottages. This is the only sign of habitation about. The vicarage in which I reside is about six minutes' walk from the church. The present glebe consists of two distinct portions — one of 20 acres Irish, the other of about one acre. This one acre is detached from the 20, and comprises the old glebe of Dean Swift." As to the last remark, see above. §1.] CHAPLAIN AT DUBLIN CASTLE. 137 interposed. "When Swift was made Yicar of Laracor," in99-i70i. ^ JEt. 32-34. Mr. Glad- stone's refer- euce to Swift iu 1869. 1^ said Mr. Gladstone to the House of Commons in March, 1869, "he went into a glebe-house with one acre, and he left it with twenty acres improved and decorated in many ways. He also endowed the vicarage with tithes pur- chased by him for the purpose of so bequeathing them ; nd I am not aware if it be generally known that a curious question arises on this bequest. This extraordinary man, even at the time when he wrote that the Irish Catholics were so downtrodden and insignificant that no possible change could bring them into a position of importance, appears to have foreseen the day when the ecclesiastical arrangements of Ireland would be called to account ; for he proceeds to provide for a time when the Episcopal re- ligion might be no longer the national religion of the country. By some secret intimation he foresaw the short- ness of its existence as an establishment, and left the property subject to a condition that in such case it should be administered for the benetit of the poor."* K^ot quite Tlie incumbents were to have the tithes for as long as the existing church should be established; and Mr. Gladstone having w^ithdrawn that condition, the living loses the tithes. But it is " whenever any other form of Christian religion shall become the established faith in this kingdom " that the condition arises handing them stipulations over to tJie poor, securing that their profits shall be giv- wiii.^^ en in a weekly proportion " by such other officers as may then liave the powder of distributing charities to the par- ish," and excluding from this benefit Jews, atheists, and infidels. It is a bequest which certainly raises a " curious ques- tion," whether we regard it with Scott as a mere stroke * A similar provision appears in the clause of Esther Johnson's will (which Swift is alleged to have dictated), en- dowing a chaplaincy to Steven's Hos- pital. "And if it shall happen (which God forbid) that at any time hereaft- er the present Established Episcopal Church of this kingdom shall come to be abolished, and be no longer the national Established Church of the said kingdom, I do, in that case, de- clare wholly null and void the bequest above made of," etc., etc. 138 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1699-1701. of Swift's peculiar liumor, or with Mr. Gladstone as a -^ — ^— ^ quasi - foretliouglit for tlie "downtrodden" Irish Catho- lics. Degree of D.D. See letter to Arbp. Kiiis^, Gth Jau., 1709. Shortly after his institution to Laracor, Swift received from the Archbishop of Dublin (then Marsh, the founder of the library) t>lie prebend of Dunlavin in St. Patrick's Cathedral, entitling him to a seat in the chapter ; and a few months later, on the 16th February, 1700-1701, he took his doctor's degree in Dublin University.* At the beginning of April, he set sail w^itli the Berkeleys for En- gland ; where for the present, notwithstanding his profes- sional preferments, the most memorable portion of his life is to be passed. But let the reader disposed to be severe on such abandonment of clerical duties, remember always w^liat the Irish Chm*ch then was, and that w^hen the Yicar of Laracor turned his back on Ireland he left behind him " a parish with an audience of half a score." II. 1701-1705. JEt. 34-38. Impeach- ment of whig lords. LONDON LIFE. 1701-1705. ^T. 34-38. LoED Berkeley had been recalled on the success of the tories in the general election at the close of 1700; and, upon the new^s then also reaching Ii-eland of the tory im- peachment of the four whig lords, Swift had remarked to the earl that the same manner of proceeding, it appeared to him, had ruined the liberties of Athens and Home, and that it might be easy to prove this from history. " Soon after," says Swift, " I went to London ; and in a few weeks drew up a discourse under the title of T/ie Contests and * His account-books sliow tliat in fees and tieat" this degree in divin- ity cost him forty-four pounds and up- ward. § II.] LONDON LIFE. 139 Dissentions of the Nobles and Commons in Athens and 1701-1705. Home, with the consequences they had upon those states. ' - ' ^ -•■ . 'i , ^ .11 Swift's "dis- This discourse 1 sent very privately to the press, with the course." strictest injunctions to conceal the author ; and returned immediately to my residence in Ireland." He had been in England from May to September, visiting Leicester be- fore his return to Dublin. It was not a long visit ; but it contributed to his future existence much that determined its color and character. His public career began with his plunge into politics ; and a visit now made to Esther John- Deteimiuing son at Farnham gave lasting influence to what remained nfe. of his private life. He found her and her friend, Mrs. Dingley, still in the trouble and discomfort that had followed the changes con- sequent on Temple's death. Her fortune at this time, which he reckons to have been in all not above fifteen hundred pounds, and which we should now call nearly treble, he characterizes as but a scanty maintenance in so dear a country for one of her spirit. This fact, and the circumstance that what Temple had bequeathed to her was a leasehold farm in County Wicklow, might of themselves have suggested a removal to Ireland ; but Swift, with per- fect frankness, says more than this. Moved to the advice Advice to he gave, not by those considerations only, but, " indeed MoorVark? very much for my own satisfaction, who had few friends or acquaintance in Ireland, I prevailed with her and her dear friend and companion, the other lady, to draw wdiat money they had into Ireland, a great part of their fort- unes being in annuities upon funds. Money was then ten per cent, in Ireland, besides the advantage of return- ing it, and all necessaries of life at half the price. They complied with my advice, and soon after came over ; but I happening to continue some time longer in England, they were much discouraged to live in Dublin, where they Esther joim- were wholly strangers. But the adventure looked so like ^"giey hf' a frolic, the censure held for some time as if there w^ere iieiand,i70i. a secret history in such a removal : which, however, soon blew off by her excellent conduct. She came over with 140 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. Dnbliu gos- sip. Swift and his Moor Park f lieu d 1701-1705. her friend in tlie year 1700,^' and tliey both lived together — '- — ^— ! until this daj."f The " secret history " that " censure " so readily invent- ed was not blown off so readily ; but remark may confine itself for the present to " the frolic " which thus first set on foot the gossip of Dublin, that two unmarried ladies should come over from England for mere companionship and social intercourse with an unmarried clergyman in Ireland. There was no affectation of concealment. Out of what is said of the discouragement and strangeness of Dublin by which the ladies were met at their arrival, the arrangement probably arose by which, at first. Swift's lodg- ings were opened to them as long as he should be absent ; and among other considerations held to justify its contin- uance for the most part of the subsequent years, we may be sure that a regard to economy had prominent place. The mode of life so adopted was not afterward greatly changed, though it was by no means kept up unalterably. This, however, is certain, that when Swift was in England the ladies used his Dublin residence; and when he re- turned, they went into a lodging of their own. They were always near each other, if not together ; and Swift could very rarely have seen the girl who thus fearlessly linked her name to his, except under the same roof with the woman chosen for her guardian and companion, who w^as some years older than himself. The like arrange- Maiiuer of life. * The circumstances prove it to have been, not 1700, but the first montlis (reckoning the beginning of the year from March 25ti0 of 1701. t Written by Swift on the day of Esther Johnson's death, Sunday, the 28th of January, 1727-8. The " cen- sure" to which he refers, and the character of mucli of the gossip that doubtless long held its ground, may be inferred from a passage in a letter of the "little i)arson-cousin " as late as 1 70(). Thomas there asks " wheth- er Jonathan be married ? or whether he has been able to resist the charms of both those gentlewomen that march- ed quite from Moor Park to Dublin, as they would have marched to the North or anywhere else, with full res- olution to engage him." !Mr. Deane Swift, who first published this letter, has the boldness and bad taste to in- fer from it, in direct contradiction to the statement of his great kinsman, that it was Esther Johnson who pro- posed to go over to Ireland, and liuit her "prime intention was to capti- vate the aft'ections of Dr. Swift." This is the way that lies come to pass them- selves oft' for truth. § 11. ] LONDON LIFE. 141 i — ■ — ■ — ments were made also at Laracor. They were there as iTOi-iTOa. often as they pleased, when Swift was away; and when - — — '. he was in residence, they had lodgings in Trim, or were guests of the vicar. Doctor Raymond, or occupied a little farm -cottage near Knightsbrook - gate, half a mile from ' Laracor, of which the site is now marked with the name of " Stella " on the ordnance survey of Meath. All the reserves were, to outward appearance, scrupulously kept up to the last. " I wonder how you could expect to see Mrs. Johnson in a morning," wrote Sw^ft to Tickell in July, 1726, '' which I, her oldest acquaintance, have not I done these dozen years, except once or twice in a journey." mf.. Swift had an interview with the King before he went Again with back to Dublin, probably to lay before him another vol- ^ ^"^' ume of Temple's remains. " I remember " he afterward said, " when I was last in England, I told the King that the highest tories we had with us in Ireland would make tolerable whigs in England."* The poor great-hearted ,^^ King had found the problem of constitutional government ^^■a very thorny one. What with tory doubts of his title cioseofa ^^ and whig doubts of his prerogative, he passed an unenvia- ^^^'^ ble time ; and one can fancy him repeating to Swift what he had said to the elder Halifax, that between them he could really see no difference except that the tories would cut his throat in the morning and the whigs would let him live till the afternoon. In April of the following year Swift, after a visit to his mother in Leicester, was again in London, and found his position somewhat changed. He had received a foretaste of it before he quitted Dublin, w^hen, being in company, with Bishop Sheridan, of Kilmore, he heard much praise of a new pamphlet that the Bishop of Salisbury had writ- swift-s tract ten, replete with political knowledge. It was the Dissen- Buruet. tio7is in Athens and Rome which had been making a great deal of noise. Was the bishop certain of Burnet's author- ship \ Swift asked : and was told he must be a " positive * Letter on the Sacramental Test. — Scott, viii., SG-i. °r«^\V 14:2 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1701-1705. young man" to doubt it. ]N"eYertheless the doubt was — : — 1_ -1 repeated ; and upon being then more sharply rated as a " very positive young man," Swift was fain to confess that he was himself the writer. The anecdote may be believed* on the authority of Swift's own relation of what he heard and experienced on his return to England. In the tract itself there is nothing that calls for detailed remark. It is chiefly noticeable for its statesman-like use of book-knowledge in the practical affairs of public policy ; but it is right to say that the charges against the author which have been based upon it, of having afterward turned against men whom it had compared and identified with such faultless heroes as Aristides, Themistocles, Pericles, Misde- and Phocion, are simply not true. It has no such strained comparisons, for its applications are in no respect personal. With perfect truth Swift says in it : "I am not conscious that I have forced an example, or put it in any other light than it appeared to me long before I had thought of pro- whnt it was. ducing it." It is an extremely able argument, supported by reasonings and illustrations both dispassionate and ap- posite, to show that states can only be kept free by just balances of power at home as well as abroad; that any conflict between the great authorities in a commonwealth, as in this case between commons and lords, has an ultimate tendency, thi-ough whatever immediate consequence, to anarchy or a single tyranny : and that ancient history was filled with such examples. His parallels are slight, and only meant to give point to the historic application. All Moderns and that is Said of Somers to liken him to Aristides is that he sumpaied.^ was a man of exact justice and knowledge in the law, as well as thoroughly acquainted with the forms of govern- ment ; of the victor of La Ilogue, for likeness to Themisto- cles, that he was a fortunate admiral ; of Halifax, for a parallel to Pericles, tliat he was an able minister, orator, and man of letters ; and of Portland, for a representative in Phocion, that he was renowned for success in treaties as ♦ Johnson tells the story with undoubting faith and evident enjoyment. §n.] LONDON LIFE. 143 well as battles. The subiect-matter of tlie impeacliment 1 701-1705. ^T. 34-38. of tlie modern statesmen receives hardly an allusion ; but there is a pregnant warning of danger in any permitted preponderance of the power of France, and a wise protest against blind and unreasoning subservience to party. Of the effect produced by it, Swift will himself speak : " The book was greedily bought and read ; and charged some time upon my Lord Somers, and some time upon the Bishop of Salisbury ; the latter of whom told me afterward ' that he was forced to disown it in a very public manner, for fear of an impeachment, wherewith he was threatened.' Returning next year for England, and hearing of the great reputation this piece had received (which was the first I ever printed), I must confess the vanity of a young man prevailed with me to let myself be known for the author : upon which my Lords Somers and Halifax " (Charles Mon- tagu), " as well as the bishop above mentioned, desired my acquaintance, with great marks of esteem and professions of kindness — not to mention the Earl of Sunderland, who had been my old acquaintance." (In the Moor Park time.) " They lamented that they were not able to serve me since t!ie death of the King ; and were very liberal in promis- ing me the greatest preferments I could hope for, jf ever it came in their power. I soon grew domestic with Lord Halifax, and w^as as often with Lord Somers as the for- mality of his nature (the only unconversable fault he had) made it agreeable to me."* The last few lines anticipate a little. But from the date of this second visit to En- gland, after Temple's death, there was no more prominent figure than Swift's among the wits and men of letters in London. How formidable a body they had become it hardly influence of needs that I should say. The press, set free by the Revo- oalhe'S lution,f had made itself the most powerful intermediary Swift avows anthorship. Whig over- tures. i press. * Memoirs relating to that change lohich happened in Queen Anne's Ministry in the year 1710. — Scott edition, iii., 186-7. t The censorship of the press ex- pired in 1694, and no man of any party was found to suggest its re- newal. It passed away forever. lU THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1701-1705. ^T. 34-38. Orators and writers. between the coinmonalty and the lower house of legisla- ture, to which the Revolution had at the same time com- mitted the highest authority in the state. At the critical moment when the people were rising into the first impor- tance, men w^ho could best use the pen found themselves best able to influence and persuade them. Speakers to either lords or commons had no such influence, for the reporting of debates was unknown, and their speaking remained within their four walls. What the orator now is, the writer was then, with the world for his audience. Such power was to Swift an irresistible temptation ; hence- forward, for some years, it was to divide the occupations of his life in nearly equal portions between England and Ireland ; and with some confidence it may be said that its fascination to him was far less the help it might avail to give to any special public object, than the unspeakable en- joyment which its exercise gave himself. Though he led the greatest party fight ever fought in England, he was never, strictly speaking, a party man. In Addison's last letter he spoke of him as having so much compass in his character that there was room in it for all sides to admire ; and this was in other words to describe his character as having too much room in it to satisfy one side only. It was at all periods of his life his favorite saying that no one who really valued the church would commit himself to the extremes of w^hig, and that all who cared for the state would avoid the extremes of tory. "What, indeed, was wanting to him as a whig while he was a whig, and what was still more wanting to him as a tory when he went over to Ilarley, will soon be apparent enough ; but he was otherwise as far as possible removedirom the taint of Grub Street. lie had nothing in him of the hired scribe, and was never at any time in any one's pay. The minister he supported had to hold him by other ties. lie might fairly look to future preferment ; but the immedi- ate condition of his party service was to ''grow domestic" with those he served, exacting from them increased per- Avoidance of extremes. Conditions of party service. sonal consideration. His familiar footing with the lead- § II.] LONDON LIFE. 145 iiiir men alike of wlii^: and tory, and his exception to tlie 1701-170"). ... . ^T 34-38 '^ inconversable " Somers, have in this their explanation ; — : : and what in later life he laughingly wrote to Pope was ' not without its gravity of meaning : " I will tell you that all my endeavors, from a boy, to distinguish myself, were only for want of a great title and fortune, that I might be used like a lord by those who have an opinion of my parts ; whether right or wrong is no great matter ; and so the reputation of great learning does the office of a blue ribbon, or of a coach and six horses." Swift's English visit in 1702 closed in October by his visits to En- return to Ireland; and his visit the following year lasted ^''^"*^' from November, 1703, when he arrived at Leicester and traveled thence to London, until May, 1704. This he calls, in his note-books now in my possession, his tenth voyage between the two countries ; and its first and its last day are thus recorded: "'Noy^ 11*^ 1703. Thursd. I went to sea, landed in Eng^ on Saturd. 13^^ 1703. Tuesd. May 29*^ 1701. I went to sea, landed in L-el*^ on Thursd. Jun. 1 1701." Again, in 1705, he was in England, and in the" winter of 1707-8 ; Esther Johnson, who is supposed nev- EstherJohn- er to have recrossed the Channel but once after her settle- don with ^^" ment in Ireland, having also paid short visits (accompanied ^^^^^^• by Mrs. Dingley) in both those years. Swift's entry in his note-book of his English residence, which began in the . w^inter of 1707-8, and extended to June, 1709, will be found to have a special significance. "In suspense I was all this year in England." Great were the changes in those years. For the first half of them, the tories retained the power thrown into their hands by the King's death, and confirmed to them, as they believed, by the bigotry of his successor, Queen Anne, character of But though they had good reason for the belief that her "°^' weak religious fears would place her permanently in the power of the high-church party, they had not yet discov- ered how much the same obstinate feebleness of mind would bind her to a slavery more resistless and abject. Thus far the woman-favorite she had chosen was helping YoL. L— 10 146 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1701-1705. tliem; tlie Marlboronglis being still tory, and Mrs. Free- '-^ '- man not untender to the conscience of her beloved Mrs. Morley.* But the spirit of the great survives tlieni ; and, as the foreign policy which William had bequeathed was Effector carried to its height by Marlborough's transcendent mili- ongh'sTic- tary genius, not he and his wife only, but the chief of the tones. cabinet in which Eochester and Nottingham still sat, be- gan to see the wisdom of making common cause rather with those who exulted in such victories than with those' who viewed them with dismay. The battle of Blenheim, fought in 1704, not only put the seal upon this change, but brought to the front a man who had been silently working, from even before the King's death, to keep in check both the party extremes. It then seemed safe to Marlborough and Godolphin to begin to alter their course in a way as little startling as might be ; and they con- sented to receive as colleagues two yet moderate tories, naiiey joins Robert Ilarley, the ex - Speaker, and his brilliant young Go o p 111. ]ig|^itenant, Henry St. John, not committed to any extreme church policy, and not supposed to have any doubts of that act of settlement and royal title which Blenheim had finally secured against foreign arms. But the effect of Marlborough's triumphs soon began to take wider range. Whigs still The general election of 1705 gave the wliigs a sufficient preponderance in the House of Commons to enable Marl- borough and Godolphin, with less caution than had char- acterized their previous change, to get rid of what re- mained of their high-church colleagues. Cowper became lord chancellor, Somers and Halifax were sworn of the council, and Addison, appointed under-secretary o^ state, had for his chief the son of Swift's old acquaintance, Sun- derland, the most uncompromising of whigs. A year and a half later, though the interval had been marked by many Haiiey strauge alliances, even Ilarley and his friends had to re- tire. He had made the important discovery, that Mrs. * The nnmes under \vliicli the queen and tlie duchess masqueraded in tlicir private apartments. nsin turned out. §11-] LONDON LIFE. 147 Morley (the queen) was growing tired of lier dear Mrs. 1701-1705. Freeman (the dueliess), but he too prematurely made use — ^' ~ ' of his valuable secret.^ Though his Abigail was ready, the Marlboroughs were too powerful, and Ilarley had to bide his time. Then came the general election of 1708 with its decisive w^hig majority. Somers was at last made president of the council, Wharton went- to Ireland, and all Ministry aii further compromise with the church party closed. ^^ ^^'" Whether, with his particular church views, Swift had not a more difficult part to play in the last four than in the first four of these years, when the whigs had obtained power rather than when they were struggling to obtain it, is a question open to considerable doubt. He has himself, however, by hints dropped in his letters, given us some means of forming an opinion upon it ; and a part of his correspondence available for this purpose illustrates also, in a very striking form, his present personal relations with Esther Johnson. A clergyman first known to him when he lived in the con-espond- Xorth, who had been a minister in Belfast, and was now TisdaTiI incumbent of a small Dublin parish, the Rev. William Tisdall, had stepped into some favor at this time by civil- ities to Esther Johnson and her friend ; and we find him in 1703 asking Swift to tell him of public affairs in Lon- don, reporting to him newG of the ladies in Dublin, and confiding some little ambitions he had to try his own hand at writing for the press. Swift replies pleasantly; but with touches of irony in his good-humored regret, that he can not persuade his correspondent of his insignificance so far as to get himself treated with a proper distance and * See Swift's letter to Archbishop King, Feb. 12, 1 707-8. ' ' Mr. Hur- ley had been for some time, with the greatest art imaginable, carrying on an intrigue to alter the ministry, and began Avith no less an enterprise than that of removing the Lord Treasurer, and had nearly effected it, by the help of Mrs. Masham, one of the queen's dressers, \vho was a great and grow- ing favorite, of much industry and in- sinuation He had laid a scheme for an entire new ministry, and the men are named to whom the several employments were to be given. And though his project has miscarried, it is reckoned the greatest piece of court skill that has been acted these many vears." 148 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1701-1705. respect by liim ; which he supposes must arise from tlic — ^1^ 1 credit that is pretended with two ladies who came from A (listin- England. '' I allow indeed the chamber in William Street fodgiug. to be Little England by their influence ; as an ambassa- aor's house, wherever it is, hath all the privileges of his master's dominions ; and therefore, if you wrote the letter in their room, or their company (for in this matter their room is as good as their company), I will indulge you a little." So great the indulgence, that his letters are to be answered, in future, " the first after the ladies ; for. I nev- er write to any other friend or relation till long after ;" Tisdall is, moreover, selected for the privilege of giving messages to her from himself about her investments ; and he is told how, after the new court amusement which all the fashionable folk were mad for, he is to outwit the Atite. young lady by the way of a bite. " You must ask a ban- tering question, or tell some damned lie in a serious man- ner, and then she will answer or speak as if you were in earnest ; and then cry you. Madam, therms a Inter But even his playful messages take the tone which gives its prevailing color and specialty of meaning to his inter- est for tliis young girl. He is mightily afraid that the la- dies are very idle, and don't mind their book, wherefore he prays that Tisdall will put them upon reading, and " be Teacher still, always teaching something to Mrs. Johnson, because she is good at comprehending, remembering, and retaining." His correspondent's literary aspirations he decidedly dis- countenances ; from all meddling with public affairs by the w^ay of writing he strongly dissuades him ; and what on this point he says to Tisdall himself in these friendly days, is exactly what he said later to others, when, after Letter to Dr. thirty ycars, he described him as an honest fellow enougl), who had been unhappily misled all his life by mistaking his talent, which he liad been trying, against all nature, to apply to wit and literature. He tells him now it is a '' ter- rible mistake" to imagine lie can not be enough distin- guished without writing for the public. He is to " preachy preach, preach, preach, preach, preach ;" that, certainly, was Jeuuy, 1732. §11.] LONDON LIFE. 149 Time euough to write. his talent ; and if lie was ever to be a writer, there would 1701-1705. be time for it many years hence. Kothing so bad, in — '- i Swift's judgment, as to be " hasty to write for the world." Tisdall had pleaded his wish to be heard on a leading ques- tion then in agitation. "A pox," cried Swift, '' on the dis- senters and independents. I would as soon trouble my head to write against a louse or a flea. I tell you what : I wrote ao;ainst the bill that was aorainst occasional con- f ormity ; but it came too late by a day, so I would not print it."* The bill against occasional conformity, of which the occasional drift was to disqualify dissenters for all civihemployments, b"i" ^^^m^y had been forced upon Godolphin by his high-church col- leagues, twice passed by the commons, and twice sent back by the lords. The excitement for and against it was ex- traordinary. Party and faction, says Swift, had never run so high. " I observed the dogs in the streets much more contumelious and quarrelsome than usual ; and the very night before the bill went up, a committee of whig and tory cats had a very warm and loud debate upon the roof Dogs and of our house. But why should we wonder at that, when ^.j^xe. the very ladies are split asunder into high church and low, and, out of zeal for religion, have hardly time to say their prayers?" His own position in regard to it had troubled him at first. " The whole body of the clergy " being violent for it, and " some great people " urging him " mightily " to publish his opinion, he w^as at a loss for a time what to do. But observation of what was .passing showed him that the bill was not a wise one, and that re- sistance to it was quite compatible with love for the church and a dislike of presbytery. " I put it close to my Lord swift's Eeterborough, just as the bill was going' up, who assured me in the most solemn manner, that, if he had the least suspicion the rejecting this bill would hurt the church or doubts. * He thus closed his letter: "But you may answer it if you please; for you know you and I are whig and tor}'. And, to cool vour insolence a little, know that the Queen and Court, and House of Lords, and half the Com- mons almost, are whigs, and the num- ber daily increases." 150 THE LIEE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1701-1705. do kindness to the dissenters, lie would lose liis right hand — '- — ^-^ rather than speak against it. The like profession I had from the Bishop of Salisbury, my Lord Somers, and some others ; so that I know not what to think, and therefore shall think no more." It ended in his writing against the bill, and not publishing what he had written. His posi- tion was not unlike that of the queen's husband ; taking one from the view of a churchman, and the other from Non-cou- that of a dissenter. Poor Prince George was himself an priuce. occasional conformist, but the tories laid violent hands on him. With a remark to Wharton which that eminent whig would be likely to think rather foreign than ger- mane to the purpose, " My heart is vid you," he went with his vote into the other lobby. But the Tisdall correspondence was to take another and startling turn. In the letters just quoted, of which the date is February, lT03-'4, Swift had told him that he seemed to be mighty proud (having, indeed, good reason, if it were true) of the part he had in the ladies' good Tisdaii's ad- gi'aces, " especially of her you call the jparty /" and had EsthcTjohn- added, half jocosely, that he was very much concerned to son. know it. Upon this appears to have followed a letter from Tisdall, and a reply to it by Swift, of which all that is known to us is Tisdaii's description of the reply given Swift'srepiy. in Swift's rejoinder of the date of April, 1704. " You have got three epithets for my former letter, which, I be- lieve, are all unjust : you say it was unfriendly^ unkind^ and unaccoimtahle. The two first, I suppose, may pass but for one ; saving (as Captain Fluellin says the phrase is) a little variations. I shall, tlierefore, answer those two as I can ; and for the last, I return it to you again by these presents, assuring you that there is more unaccount- ability in your letter's little finger than in mine's whole body." Then, with sarcastic allusion to " a mystical strain " in his correspondent, as if he had found out in some mar- velous way what others were trying to conceal, the case between them is put with singular simplicity and unre- serve. No one has written of this passage in Swift's life §n.] LONDON LIFE. 151 Ills own in- clinatious. witlioiit imputing to liim a grave disingenuoiisness,'^ but i70i-i7or,, tlie sufficient answer is in these words: "I miglit, witli . — '—^~- ' good pretense enough, talk starelilj and affect ignorance of w^liat you would be at ; but mj conjecture is tliat you tliink I obstructed your inclinations to please my own, and that my intentions were the same with yours ; in an- swer to all which I wdll, upon my conscience and honor, tell you the naked truth. First, I think I have said to you before that, if my fortunes and humor served me to think of that state, I should certainly, among all persons on earth, make your choice ; because I never saw that per- son whose conversation I entirely valued but hers: this was the utmost I ever gave way to. And, secondly, I must assure you sincerely that this regard of mine never once entered into my head to be an impediment to yon, but I A projier couditiou. judged it would perhaps be a clog to your rising in the no bar to world, and I did not conceive you were then rich enough to make yourself and her happy and easy ; but that objec- tion is now quite removed by what you have at present and by the assurances of Eaton's livings. I told you, in- deed, that your authority w^as not sufficient to make over- tures to the mother, withoiit the daughter giving me leave ^under her own or her friend's hand ; which I tliink was a right and prudent step. However, I told the mother im- mediately, and spoke with all the advantages you deserve ; but the objection of your fortune being removed, I declare I have no other; nor shall any consideration of my own misfortune of losing so good a friend and companion as her prevail on me against her interest and settlement in the w^orld, since it is held so necessary and convenient a thing for ladies to marry, and that time takes off from the lustre of virgins in all other eyes but mine. I appeal to my letters to herself whether I was not your friend in the w^liole concern ; though the part I designed to act in it was •'In all other eyes bnt mine." * "From the time of hor arrival in Ireland he seems resolved to keep her in his power ; and therefore liin- dered a match sufficientlv advantii- geons, hy accumulating nnreasonahle demands and prescribing conditions that could not be performed." — John- son. 152 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1701-1705. purely passive, wliicli is tlie utmost I will ever do in things — I 1 of tins nature, to avoid all reproach of any ill consequences that may ensue in the variety of worldly accidents : nay, I went so far to her mother, herself, and, I think, to you, as to think it could not he decently broken ; since I supposed the town had got it in their tongues, and therefore I thought it could not miscarry without some disadvantage to the Esther John- lady's Credit. I have always described her to you in a man- scribed by ner different from those who would be discouraging ; and ^^^^^'' must add that, though it has come in my way to converse with persons of the lirst rank, and of that sex, more than is usual to men of my level and of our function, yet I have nowhere met with a humor, a wit, or conversation so agree- able, a better portion of good sense, or a truer judgment of men and things — I mean here in England, for as to the la- dies in Ireland I am a perfect stranger. As to her fortune, I think you know it already ; and if you resume your de- signs, or would have further intelligence, I shall send you a particular account." Are these expressions capable of other construction than they suggest to an ordinary un- derstanding? Tisdall desired to marry Esther Johnson ; and submit- ted the proposal to Swift as the friend in whom she most trusted, with some misgiving as to what his own views Honest ad- might be. Swift replied that if his fortunes or his humor Stcase.^ led him to marriage, she was, of all persons on earth, the one he would choose ; but as this was not the case, her lover had nothing to apprehend on that score. Ills ad- vice, nevertheless, was against the marriage, on the ground of prudence, and because he judged Tisdall to be not rich enough ; but, upon assurances that removed these objec- tions, he had spoken to the young lady's mother ; where- upon came TisdalFs letter characterizing the advice as un- kind and unaccountable. What had most jarred upon him appears to have been the intimation that Swift could not communicate with the mother unless the young lady un- der her own hand desired him to do so ; and whether such sanction ever was obtained seems open to much doubt. § IL] LONDON LIFE. 153 There is, in fact, no proof whatever that Esther Johnson I70i-1705. had lierself approved of TisdalFs suit. But Swift did not ^-'-^^-^^- really press the objection far. Though he made it the condition on which he would speak to the mother, this was when he imagined Tisdall's means to be inadequate ; and he may have thought it no longer necessary after Tis- ll's reply on that head. He then also went so far as to say, both to Esther Johnson and her mother, that perhaps the affair could not " decently " be broken ; but this was . said on the supposition, which we infer to have been a istake, that there really was an engagement, and the wn might have got it on their tongues. With the letter all direct information ends ; and TisdalFs name is hard- ly again foimd on Swift's lips uncoupled with some epi- thet of scorn. When he wanted a phrase of contempt for Steele, he called him a " Tisdall fellow." ^ But, for the memorable disclosure thus made, Tisdall settie^^nt will always have a niche in Swift's story. Written whoii between Esther Johnson was in her twenty-second year and Sv^ft 1^7he?Johu- in his thirty-sixth, the letter describes w^ith exactness the ^°"- relations that, in the opinion of the present w^Tter, who can find%o evidence of a marriage thai: is at all reasona- bly sufficient, subsisted between {hem at the day of her death ; when she was entering her forty-si:j^th ^\v and he had passed his sixtieth. Even assuiiS^tig it to be less cer- ^y^in than I think it, that she had never gj^'en. the least fa- ^Borable ear to Tisdall's svat, therq -Tfan banio doubt that the result of its^ abrupt termination was to connect her future inalienably with thgit of Swift. The limit as to their in- tercourse expressed by him, if uot before known to her, she had now been 'made aware o^^and it is not open to us to question that she accepted ir with its plainly implied con- ditions, of Affection, not Desire. The words '' in all other eyes but mine " have a touching significance. In all other eyes but his, time would take from her lustre ; her charms ^ would fade ; but to him, through womanhood as in girl- hood, she would continue the same. For what she was Thesnrren- surrendering, then, she knew the equivalent ; and this, al- equivalent. 154 THE LIFE OF JOI^ATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1701-1705. most wholly overlooked in otlier bioffrapliies, will be found JEt 34-38 . . & 1 ? — '- 1 in tlie present to till a large place. Her story lias indeed been .always told witli too nmcli indignation and pity. IS^ot with what depresses or degrades, but rather with what consoles and exalts, we may associate such a life. This young friendless girl, of mean birth and small fortune, chose to play no common part in the world ; and it was not a sorrowful destiny, either for her life or her memory, to be the star to such a man as Swift, the Stella to even such an Astrophel. Tlie words that closed the Tisdall letters had a touch of sadness in them. Giving him joy of his good fortunes, and envying very much his prudence and temper, his love of peace and settlement, Swift adds that the reverse of all Restless tliis had been the great uneasiness of his own life, and was **"^ ' likely to continue so. And what was the result? What was to grow in the fields he had sown ? He found nothing but the good words and wishes of a decayed ministry, whose lives and his own would probably wear out before they could serve either his little hopes or their own ambition. Therefore he w^as resolved suddenly to retire, like a discon- tented courtier, and vent himself in study and speculation, till his own humor, or the scene in London, should change. As he said, he did ; but not till he had given sanction to an act w^hicli proved to be of the deepest moment to him. lie went suddenly to Ireland at the beginning of From June, June ; the battle of Blenheim was fought in August ; be- Aprii,i705. forc Winter was over, the decayed ministry had been built up and strengthened; and before the March' winds ceased. Swift had again crossed the Irish Channel, and was once more in London, in April, 1705. The eve of that fiight to Ireland is the date of one of the most important passages in his life. His title to take higher intellectual rank than any man then living, and his perpetual exclusion from the rank in the churcli whicli in those days rewarded the most common])lace ability and questionable character, were set- tled by the same act. The Tale of a Tub Lad been pub- lished. § IIL] TxVLE OF A TUB. 155 III. TALE OF A TUB. 1704. ^T. 37. I HAVE spoken of the probable origin of tliis famous 1704. production, and of the tone given to it by the time at • '^^ j which the bulk of it was written. Why it should have ^"^^'^^-■♦^• remained incomplete and unprinted so many years, has not been cleared up; but perhaps the "book-sellers" explana- tion, though itself partly intended to mystify, had in it more of the truth than has been supposed. The papers see " Book- came to him in 1698, he says, the year after they were Reader!" written ; and he had delayed to print them until express authority to do so should be given. This he had not re- ceived, owing (he was credibly informed) to the author s having supposed that the papers in his possession were lost Ky " the person since dead " to whom they had been lent ; nd he would not have ventured on the present publica- lon, being indeed ignorant if his copy had received the uthor's last touches, but for having been " lately alarmed rith intelligence of a surreptitious copy wliich a certain "Snrrepti- great wit had new polished and refined." In the "xlpol- ogy " prefixed to the edition of 1710, Swift substantially admits this " book-seller's " explanation to have been his own ; but declares that the copy to be called " surreptitious " was rather that which Mr. Tooke had printed, and that the original remaining in his own hands was "a blotted copy "Blotted which he intended to have writ over with many altera- tions." Putting asi'de from this a very evident device to free himself from direct responsibility for phrases found open to censure, what may fairly be inferred is, that with the transcript of the Battle of the Boohs certainly made for Temple (the " person since dead "), a fair copy had also been made of portions of the greater satire, wliich after tious copy. copy. 15G THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1704. ^T. 37. See letter of Doctor Dav- enaut: Nich- ols's Select Poems, iv., 358. To his pub- lisher: '29th June, 1710. "Contempti- ble " for con- temptuous. Temple's deatli had fallen into Thomas Swift's hands ; and that Jonathan took his sudden resolve to complete and print his own copy because of some foolish brag by his namesake. The "little parson-cousin" certainly induced his uncle Davenant to make interest to procure him a war- chaplaincy on the ground of his having had some hand in the Tale. The same pretense had undoubtedly imposed upon AYotton, who, in his assault upon the Talc in 1705, says that Thomas Swift w^as its author ; and perhaps noth- ing in that effusion so much galled the real author, who afterward referred to it with emphatic contempt, when corresponding with Tooke about the printing of the Apol- ogy, which had been written in the summer of 1709. Re- marking on CurlFs scurrilous Key sent him by Tooke, de- scribing the Tale as "performed by a couple of young clergymen who, having been domestic chaplains to Sir William Temple, thought themselves obliged to take up his quarrel," he ex23resses wonder that the law should al- low any rascal to publish names so boldly; tells Tooke that he shall take a little " contemptible " notice of the thing ; and suspects his " little parson-cousin " to be at the bottom of it. " If he should happen to be in town, and you light on him, I think you ought to tell him gravely that if he he the author he should set his name to the dhe., and rally him a little upon it ; and tell him if he can ex- jplain something^ you will, if he pleases, set his name to the next edition. I should be glad to hear how far the fool- ish impudence of a dunce could go." In the little " con- temptible " notice, printed as a P.S. to the Apology, he wrote to the same effect : " If any person will prove his claim to three lines in the whole book, let him step forth, and tell his name and titles, upon which the book-seller shall have orders to prefix them to the next edition, and the claimant shall, from henceforward, be acknowledged the undisputed author."* Swift never put his own name ♦ The authorship becnine a thing known to nil his intimates, and we shall find him wiiting to Esther John- son of its having helped him to his great successes ; but excepting to her, and to lien. Tooke, no avowal of it § in.] TALE OF A TUB. 157 1704. ^T. 37. to the Tale of a Tub^ but he took sufficient care that no other name should be put to it ; and a few words thrown into Gulliver'' s Travels identified the handiwork of both as one and the same. The earliest of the two greatest prose satires in the En- glish language, remaining with Gulliver^ after the test of nearly two centuries, among the unique books of the unique world, might here have passed without other tribute to its fame, but for its influence on the life of its writer requir- ing a particular description. The description w411 be brief, for it can not deal with all the wonderful wealth of wit and learning that sustains the allegory. Three brothers Three broth- born at a birth, none knowing which was the elder, Peter, coats.*^ Martin, and Jack, have for some time enjoyed from their father each a special legacy of a coat having two miracu- lous virtues— that of lasting all the life with good wear- ing, and that of lengthening and widening of itself so as always to lit the changes of the body. The will of the fa- ther bequeathing these coats had enjoined strict directions for their wearing and management, and the brothers, faith- exists under his hand ; though he so far forgot himself, in drawing up a list of "subjects" for an intended vohime in 1708, as to inchide "Apol- ogy for the Tale, &c." It is yet quite possible tliat he contemplated for it then, not the form it assumed when he wrote it a year later, but one that would less openly have broken the re- serve which he maintained steadily to the closq^of his life. In the only edi- tion of his writings overlooked before publication by himself (Faulkner's first four volumes had, as I believe, this advantage) it did not appear until after his death. Wiien he was near- ly seventy, on his cousin, Mrs. White- way, asking him to give her the book, he excused himself at the moment ; but after a week or two she received it from him with these words on the fly-leaf: "To Mrs. Martlia White- way, a present on her birthday, 20th May, 1735, from her affectionate cousin, Jonath. Swift." "I wish, sir, you had said the gift of the au- thor,'' was the remark of Mrs. White- way, "No, I thank you," was his answer, with a good-humored smile. As I have mentioned Faulkner's edi- tion, I will add a note of Mr. Deane Swift's to his publication of a letter of the second Lord Oxford mention- ing that edition (Aug., 1734). "These were the first four volumes in octavo, which were actually revised and cor- rected by Swift himself, as indeed were afterward the two subsequent volumes printed by Faulkner in the year 1738." The writer was then in the habit of seeing Swift occasionally and Mrs. Whiteway frequently, and spoke for once with competent knowl- edge. Faulkner's editiou. 158 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. iTO-t. fill to that condition, had lived together in friendship for — - — '— the first seven years after their fatlier's death (thus Being expressed the first seven centuries of true because primi- tive Christianity). They carefully observe their father's will, and, while they travel together through several coun- tries, encountering a reasonable quantity of giants and slaying certain dragons, they keep their coats in very de- Expioitsand Cent order. Then unhappily w^orldly temptations come in leinptatious. ^1^^.^, ^^^^_^ Tliey arrive in town, and fall in love with the great ladies, Duchess d' Argent, Madame de Grands Titres, and the Countess d'Orgueil ; in other words, Covetousness, Ambition, and Pride ; and this leads them also to become acquainted with a strange sect who hold the universe to ciothes-wor- be Only a large suit of clothes, and humanity to be noth- ^ '^* ing but its outside covering;^ what the world calls im- properly suits of clothes being in reality the' most refined species of animals. Hence that remarkable sect gave their worship to an idol that created men daily by a kind of manufactory operation ; trimming up a gold chain, red gown, and white rod, into a lord mayor ; placing together furs and ermine for a jndge; and converting lawn and black satin into a bishop. Under this teaching the broth- ers, no longer satisfied with the simplicity of their vest- ments, resort to their father's will for autliority to make Nottotidem cliangcs ; iuto which they plunge accordingly. By call- idem ^syiia- ' iiig in much subtlety of distinction, they adorn themselves ll^mSor" ^^'it^ shoulder-knots; by help of tradition, get themselves t()tidem lit- go] J lace ; they line themselves with flame-colored satin, by a supposed codicil ; cover themselves with silver fringe, by critical erudition ; and embroider their coats aH over with Indian figures, by abandoning the commonplaces of a too literal interpretation. Once dressed up in their slioulder-knots, however, and walking about as fine as lords in their fringes and satins and " the largest gold lace in the parish," Peter somehow conies out first, showing a superior ens, ♦ Of the depth niul range given to | er unci greatest writer of our century, this fancy by the most original think- I it is not necessary that I should sj-cak. § III.] TALE OF A TUB. 159 turn for worldly advancement. He worms himself into I70i. the couhdence of a great lord, installs liimself in comfort- — ^ — 1_ able quarters by turning out his lordship's family, tells Martin and Jack he is their father s eldest and sole heir, orders them no longer to call him brother, and sets himself up as my Lo rd Peter. Then, for support to his grandeur, Peter setsup he launches into a variety of projects to bring in money ; Jer^"^*^^^' turns off his own wife, bundles out the wives of both Mar- tin and Jack, and orders in three strollers from the streets ; curses his brothers in the most dreadful manner if they make the least scruple of believing the huge palpable lies he tells them ; sets a brown loaf before them which he de- clares to be true, good, natural mutton as any in Leaden- liall Market, praying God to conf oimd them, and the devil peter-s lies to broil them, both eternally, if they offer to believe other- (luct™^^^'^"' wise; and in short goes so distracted with knavery and pride that his brotliers resolve to leave him. They had before taken part in locking up their father s will ; but now, having managed to get at a true copy exposing all Peter's lying pretenses, they have dismissed their concu- bines, have sent for their true wives, and are in the act of • Ring a Xewgate attorney who has brought money for a rdon to a thief who was to be hanged next day, that not eter, but only the Sovereign can grant such pardons, when ^jPeter himself interrupts them with a Hie of dragoons, ^Hkicks them both out-of-doors, and would never let them nis brothers ^^fi-ki m ^e >me under his roof from that day to this." Hereupon they of.'doors "^' ike a lodging together, and a resolution to reform their coats into the primitive state enjoined by their father's will. It was high time ; for what with lace, ribbons, fringe, embroidery, and silver-tagged points, hardly a thread of the original vestments remained to be seen. But in pull- ing off these trimmings, differences of temper showed themselves. Martin began rudely enough ; but proceeded Martin and more moderately as he found that parts of the ornamental ^^^^^ ^^ ™ covering, especially the silver-tagged points, could not be got away without damage to the cloth ; and in tlie end he was content to leave whatever was not removable without 160 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. Jack goes too fill". 1704. injury to the substance of tlie stuff. Jack, on tlie other -^^ — '— hand, would have no such compromises. In three minutes he made more dispatch than Martin in as many hours ; and such indeed was his tearing zeal that he rent the main body of his coat from top to bottom, and had to darn it with pack-thread and a skewer. Clumsy by nature as well as impatient of temper, he left even part of Peter's livery upon his own rents and patches ; so that, as it is in the nature of rags to liaA'e a mock resemblance to finery, there were some people that could not distinguish between Jack and Peter."^ His rage against his brother Martin's patience vents itself in a million of scurrilities, and ends at last in a mortal breach. The rest of this portion of the Tale is taken up with the extravagances of Jack, and with those extremes of absurdity in which he and Peter are found to be continually meeting. The victory remains with Martin ; if not of absolute compliance with his fa- ther's will, of the nearest practicable approach to it. r^ The satire had an effect apparently without example in j matters of the kind. The hit was admitted by all who most strongly objected to the book. Congreve, to whom manv strokes in it must have been distasteful, tells a friend Success of the satire. Qnnker'p let- ter to Swift. * " It was among the great misfort- unes of Jack to bear a huge person- al resemblance with his brother Peter the similitude between them fre- quently deceived tlie very disciples and followers of both." Swift knew not only that there were extremes of be- lief in direct inspiration where Quak- erism and some other forms of dissent ran into lloman Catholic neighbor- hood, but that excess of zeal for relig- ious liberty by no means implied a corresponding regard for civil free- dom ; and he was old enough to have witnessed the support given by Wil- liam Penn to James the Second's claim for a dispensing jmwer. But let me add that among his papers at his death which had been treasured by him was found a letter, now in my possession, printed by Scott, with the date of " Chilad " instead of "Philad" (for Philadelphia), 29th March, 1729. "Friend Jonathan Swift, Having been often agreeably amused by thy Tale, and being now loading a small ship for Dublin, I have sent thee a gam- mon, the product of the wilds of Amer- ica, which perhaps may not be unac- ceptable at thy table, since it is de- signed to let thee know that thy wit and parts are here in esteem, at this distance from the place of thy resi- dence. Thou needest ask no questions who this comes from, since I am a j)erfect stranger to thee." "VVe may be very sure that Swift never felt so kindly to !lie Quakers as when he re- ceived this delightful and substantial tribute. § in.] TALE OF A TUB. IGl tliat, thouffli several passao^es had diverted him, he can not 1704. quite think of it as the million do, and he is in the mi- '-^^— nority of "very few" against a "multitude."- Doctor Charles Davenant writes, to his son that it had made as much noise as any book these last hundred years. Atter- bury, after saying that nothing could please more than the Work?, i., book did in London, tells Bishop Trelawny of some fa- mous men at Oxford (among them " Eag " Smith and the author of The Splendid Shilling) charged with the author- ship, but goes on to remark that if he has guessed the man rightly he has reason to continue to conceal himself, be- cause its profane strokes would be more likely to do harm to his " reputation and interest in the world " than its wit could do him good. SmaHridge, afterward Bishop of Bris- now it ,., T p t^ ^ n !• Struck con- tol, replied to a compnment from bacheverell on his su]d- temporaries, posed authorship of it, that not all which they both pos- sessed in the world could have hired him to write it. Sir Kichard Blackmore speaks with horror of such an auda- cious and impious buffoon being caressed and patronized by people of great figure and of all denominations. De Foe characterizes its author, with a happy touch of censure in tlie compliment, as a learned man, an orator in the Latin, a walking index of books, who had all the libraries in Eu- pe in his head, from the Vatican at Rome to the learned llection of Doctor Salmon at Fleet Ditch. Doctor Kine:, works, i., 216 the civilian, prefaced an attack upon it by saying it had ^^0 been bought up by all sorts of people, not only at court but in the city and suburbs. And Wotton justifies his onslaught by declaring that he thought it might be use- wotton's at- f ul, to the many people Vvdio pretended to see no harm in what had been " so greedily bought up and read," to lay * Congreve to Keally, Berkeley's Literary Relics, 340. Of Voltaire's admiration tiiere will be occasion to speak hereafter, but he placed Swift even above his great countryman, the Cure of Meudon. "C'est llabelais perfectionne," he said, in his Steele de Louis Quatorze. For the monstrous YOL. I.— 11 absurdity that ascribed the book to Lords Shrewsbury and Somers, to Lord Shaftesbury and Sir Wm. Tem- ple, see IMaddock's Life of Somers, 34- ; and Cooksey's Life, 21. It pairs off with Harley's alleged authorship of Robinson Cr iisoe ! 162 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 170^. open tlie miscliief of the ludicrous allegory. Open lie laid ^:: — '— it accordingly, by illustrating its several recondite allusions with elaborate explanation of the subtleties and mysteries turned to referred to ; and what thereupon was done by Swift com- svdft.^^ pletely turned the tables upon him. lie printed these il- lustrations as notes contributed to the elucidation of its text by the worthy and ingenious Mr. Wotton, bachelor of divinity ; and its most envenomed assailant has thus, in countless editions since, figured as its friendly illustrator. Poor Mr. Wotton has been the slave in the victor's chariot, swelling the triumph he had so desperately fought against. He might nevertheless, unpleasant as this was, think it better than to be wholly forgotten w^ith the other assail- ants of the Tale. Already, said Swift finely, while ex- tracting Wotton's venom, "such treatises as have been written against the ensuing discourse are sunk into waste paper and oblivion, after the usual fate of common an- Assaiiaiitsof swcrors to books which are allowed to have any merit, good books, 'j'ljgy c^YQ iii^Q annuals that grow about a young tree, and seem to vie with it for a summer, but fall and die with the leaves in autumn, and are never heard of more." The charge Imputations, nevertheless, survived which Swift strong- ' o are igion. ^_^ ^^^^^ Charges of irreverence and irreligion came from quarters to which he fairly might have looked for protec- tion. Scott says the Tale had been written with a view to the interests of the high-church party ; but unreserved adoption of that epithet would be misleading. As a church- man. Swift was only high in the sense of a vigilant regard to church interests in state matters, and of a stout resist- ance, to the extremes, on either hand, of popery and dissent- ing non-conformity. It is the English Reformed Church which the satire exalts at the expense of her rivals ; and Scott ti-uly says that it rendered her the most important . service, " for what is so important to a party, whether in church or state, as to gain the laughers to their side f ' offcnee in Ihit the Satire went too deep. It readied the truth on too eervice."^' many sides, and what it was written to keep aloof it was thought likely to encourage. As it is the seamen's prac- I § in.] TALE OF A TUB. 163 tice to flino- overboard a tub to turn a wliale from mis- 1704. JEt 37 chief, ^ Swift liad thrown out the Tale to divert danger- : — 1_ ous assailants from objects that invited attack in church and state. But the clergy understood their portion of the dano^er in another sense, and preferred the mischief to his High-church remedy. They would rather the whale should swallow them than have such a diversion. A powerful section of them were now making head in the Eef ormed Church who were high in another sense than Swift's, to whom gold lace and silver tagging w^ere as dear as to Peter himself, and from whose pulpits had been heard not only approval of auricular confession, sacerdotal absolution, and prayers for the dead, but express teaching of the real presence, and of the claim of the church to stand above the state. The men most clamorous against toleration, said De Foe, and most eager for more power to ecclesiastics, are that part of the clergy w^ho have made most manifest advances to Rome. These men understood the satire too well ; a majority of the rest of the clergy w^ould not be likely in the least to understand it, and all were ready to join against the Tale of a Ttb. It w^as a parallel case to De Foe's. The dis- senters gave up their stoutest champion because his ban- ter was unintelligible to them ; and for a similar reason Swift was thrown over by the party in the church whom e had most materially served.f The one was pilloried Mistakes of i l;hrice, and the other punished for life. Yet he could I hardly have been quite unprepared for this defection of is professional brethren. He quietly remarks in his Originating, doubtless, in this ractice, the title cho'sen by Swift had passed into a common phrase, and had already been used by two men before him of whom Englishmen are proud. "Why, this is a Tale of a Tub I " exclaimed Sir Thomas More, at an incoherent speech in his court by an attorney named Tubbe; and the title was given by Ben Jonson to an early comedy, of which his hero was one "Squire Tub," into which he afterward introduced some satire against Inigo Jones. t When Gulliver in Lilliput extin- guished the flames that would have consumed the royal palace, his man- ner of doing it offended the queen mortally. All evils have some com- pensation, however ; and but for her majesty's persistent hostility on this point, Captain Gulliver might never have left Lilliput. 1G4 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book IIL 1704. Mt. 37. Ill-judf?raeut of clergy iu church af- fairs. Blame well- founded. Coarseness of language. Apology the very frequent observation lie liacl made (wliicli Lord Clarendon made before liim), that that rev- erend body were not always very nice in distinguishing between their enemies and their friends ; he declares his belief that if he had written a book to expose the abuses in law or physic, the learned professors in either faculty would have been so far from resenting it as to have given him thanks for his pains; of the book he had actually written he challenges its assailants to show that it had ad- vanced any opinion wliich the discipline and doctrine of the Church of England rejected, or condemned any which they received ; and he offers to forfeit his life if any one opinion could be fairly deduced from it contrary to relig- ion or morality. So much, which he said after he knew that the plea had availed to exclude him from the highest dignity of his calling, he was thoroughly entitled to say. But there was a grave objection on which the enemies of the Tale, with more show of justice, had also fastened, and which remain- ed the unhappy peculiarity of Swift's writing in later days than these. If to owe nothing to other men is to be original, a more original man than Swift never lived ; but, with the wonderful subtlety of thought so rarely joined to the same robustness of intellect wliich placed his wit and philosophy on the level of Kabelais, he had the same habit as the great Frenchman of turning things inside out, and putting away decencies as if they w^ere shows or hypocri- sies. In both it led to an insufferable coarseness. lieply- ing himself to the charge, he said very earnestly that no lewd words would be found in the book, and that its se- verest strokes of satire were leveled against the prevailing fashion of employing wit to recommend profligacy. This was true, but it did not touch the imputation of indecency, for wliicli he could only partially plead the example of contemporaries; and he might have been better guided by one of his own wittiest illustrations in the Tale. You do not treat nature wisely, he says, by always striving to get beneath the surface. What to show and to conceal, she With and ■without one's skin. § III.] TALE OF A TUB. 165 knows ; it is one of lier eternal laws to put lier best fur- 1704. nitiire forward ; and in making choice between the inside ' * and the outside, though it be but skin-deep, better follow her suggestion. " Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the Avorse." Under the process of flaying applied by himself so indiscriminately, he altered much for the w^orse, and did not get really nearer to the innermost depth of things. But this objection admitted (and, with full allowance for the manners of the age, it is a very grave one), hardly any praise can be deemed excessive for the Tale of a Tuh, To th« corruptions of learning it applies the same handling ^ as to those of religion ; and in it flrst appears that great invention of a Grub-street Dunciad to which Pope later Prose Dun- was to bring his poetry and personalities, but by which ^^^ * Swift thus early cleared an important ground from what might otherwise have left it the property of dunces to this hour. Something to such effect has been shown ; but in Ard?, 109. additions on the eve of publication the looser threads of the satire were knitted up and the purpose more closely interwoven in the texture of the whole. One or two illus- trations may express this part of his design, though it would be clifiicult to give with them the faintest notion of the astonishing and never-ceasing play of wit and raillery, ^lie book-seller, observing Detur dignissimo written large Dedication. the covers of the papers, fancied the Avords might have "some meaning. ^' But it unluckily fell out that none of the authors I employ understood Latin, though I have them often in pay to translate out of that language." So * he has to get the meaning from the curate of his parish ; and, finding that the book is to be given to the worthiest, he asks of a poet in an alley hard by (" he works for my shop ") wdio it can possibly be that is intended : on which the poet tells him, after some consideration, that vanity is a poet's a thing he abhors, but by the description he thinks he must "^° ^^ ^' be the person aimed at, and kindly offers to write gratis a dedication to himself. Trying a second gness, however. 166 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1704. ^.T. 37. Choice of worthiest. Immortal procluctious Bvvamped. Fate of one hundred and thirty-six first-rate poets. at the book-seller's request, lie names Lord Somers ; and as tlie same thing occurred with several other wits of his acquaintance, it had finally dawned upon himself that the best title to the first place was likely to be his to whom every body allowed the second, and that the " dignissimus " must be Lord Somers. To him therefore the book-seller dedicates the book. The same turn is given to the author's Epistle Dedica- tory, addressed to Pri nce Poste rity, in which intercession is made wdth the prince against the malice of his governor. Time, in ruthlessly hurrying modern authors off the scene. Such had been his inveterate dislike to the writings of the age, that, out of several thousands produced yearly from that renowned city of London, not one was to be heard of by the next revolution of the sun. Many w^ere destroyed even before they had "so much as learnt their mother- tongue to beg for pity." If the prince doubts this, let him ask his governor where they are. The author was himself acquainted with the names of "a hundred and thirty-six poets of the first rate " not one of Avhose immortal produc- tions was likely to reach the prince's eyes. Of course his governor (of whose designs the writer was well informed) would ask the prince what was become of them, and would even pretend that there never were any because none were then to be found. Is^ot to be found, indeed ! Who, then, had mislaid them ? Were they suddenly sunk in the abyss of things? Certain it was that in their own natui^e they were light enough to swim upon the surface for all eternity. No, no ; there could be no doubt, with any one who noticed the large and terrible scythe the prince's governor affect- ed to bear continually about him, wlio was really the author of this universal ruin. The writer of this book, however, was bent upon doing his best to baffle the destroyer In- composing " a character of the present set of wits in our nation ;" and meanwhile lie offered to the prince "a faitli- ful abstract drawn from the universal l)ody of all Arts and Sciences." In wliat are culkMl the '* Di«]rre.s>sions " of the Tale that i § III.] TALE OF A TUB. 167 deeper plunge is accordingly taken, the Arts and Sciences ^''^^ being called to render account. Frankly at the same time -^ — ^- the author describes himself as a man who had written, tious writ- under three reigns, four-score and eleven pamphlets for ^""' the service of six-and-thirty factions ;''^ who had therefore passed a long life with a conscience void of offense ; and who now, finding the state has no further occasion for his pen, had willingly turned it to speculations more becom- ing a philosopher. He then proceeds to show that the philosophers who meet at Gresham's (the recently found- ed Royal Society), and the wits to be met with nightly at WilFs (Congreve, Yanbrugh, and the rest), are only two junior start-up societies that have branched of from Grub offshoots Street; and that the two prodigals, whenever they should street.'" think fit to return from their virtuoso experiments and comedies of high life, " their husks and their harlots," will be received back with open arms. The several platforms of modern intellectual display are next ranged under three "oratorical" machines — the Pulpit, the Ladder, and the oratorical Stage ; illustrations pregnant with rarest humor and wit ^^^ ^"^^* eing applied to each kind respectively ; from which he f terward breaks off, for a correct estimate of results, to digression concerning critics. These are shown to have proved beyond contradiction, with unwearied pains, that the very finest things delivered of old had been long since invented by much later pens ; and that the noblest discov- eries those ancients ever made, of art or of nature, had all been produced, on the three several platforms, by the tran- scending genius of the existing age. A digression in the modern kind follows ; whereby, among other things, the assertion that a certain author called Homer (" though oth- Homer's rie- erwise a person not without some abilities, and, for an an- ficieucies. * That is the passage to which an ex- act parallel was discovered in Swift's later and greater satire. "On each conveyed four-score and eleven chains, like those that hang to a lady's watch in Europe, and about as large, which side the gate," says Gulliver in Lil- were locked to my left leg with six- liput, " was a small window not above I and-thirty padlocks." This curious six inches from the ground ; into discovery was made by Professor Por- that on the left side, the king's smiths ! son. — Tracts by Kidd (1815), p. 316. 168 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 170-i. ^T. 37. Origiu of Marlinus JScriblerus. Jack com- peting with Peter. cient, of a tolerable genius ") liad embraced omnes res hii- Tnanas in liis poem, is shown to be absurd by proof of liis "gross ignorance in tlie common laws of this realm, and in the doctrine as well as discipline of the Church of En- gland;" to which is added the hope that some famous modern may yet attempt a universal system in a small portable volume of all things that are to be known, or be- lieved, or imagined, or practiced, in life. That part of the book, in which we have the germ of the whole of Martinus Scriblerus, exposes the falsity and pretenses of prevailing forms of learning. The next digression is in praise of di- gressions, which are justified on the ground that the socie- ty of waiters would quickly be reduced to a very inconsid- erable number if men were put upon making books with the fatal confinement of delivering nothing but what was to the purpose ; and then, though not so entitled, there is a digression in regard to a sect w^ho maintain the cause of all things to be wind, being, in fact, progenitors of the in- numerable w^ind-bags to which attention has been since directed. These are the ^olists, w^hose primary rite, or mystery, is to stuff themselves to enormous sizes with the " spirit or breath or wind of the world," and who then, by disemboguing the snme in varied and surprising ways, blow out their cKsciples to the same extent. Hence the expres- sion that learning puffeth a man up, which they prove by a syllogism : " Words are but wind, and learning is noth- ing but words ; ergo, learning is nothing but wind." From this too he is led — Jack having now launched into extrav- agances as mad as Peter's in the other extreme — to enter upon a consideration whether great things have not been done by people with their brains shaken out of their nat- ural position like Jack's ; and whether madness so called, being but a redundancy rising up into the brain of the same vapor or spirit which the Latins called ingeiiium par negotiis, might not by re-adjustment be turned into the sort of frenzy never in its right element " till you take it up in the business of the state." He proposes a commis- sion, therefore, to report upon the fitness for employment. § in-] TALE OF A TUB. 169 1704. ^.T. 37. Utilization of Bedlam. in a way useful to the public, of tlie inmates of Bedlam : supporting it as well by illustrious examples of the mad- men of history, as by homely resort to the requirements of the existing world. " Is any student tearing his straw in piecemeal, swearing and blaspheming, biting his grate, foaming at the mouth . . . let the right worshipful the Com- missioners of Inspection give him a regiment of dragoons and send him into Flanders among the rest. Is another eternally talking, sputtering, gaping, bawling, in a sound without period or article? What wonderful talents are here mislaid! Let him be furnished immediately with a Fixed fare green bag and papers, and threepence in his pocket, and three-pence! away with him to Westminster Hall," The war in Flan- ders fixes the date of this passage, and adds another to the ma^y proofs, all mystificatiofts notwithstanding, that the piwlication of the Tale was excliTsively the act of Swift. Tlmt Johnson should have doubted it, and even the au- Johnson on thorship altogether, shows how strangely unreasoning a strong personal dislike may be. To think the thing not good enough to be Swift's, one might have understood ; the Tale. ut to find it too good to be his, is a touch not intelligible I' .. . rom such a critic. In the life he speaks of it as a " wild " lOok, of which the authorship was never owned or proved ly any evidence ; though it v/as not deij^ied wdien Arch- dshop Sharp first, and the Duchess of Somerset afterward, debarred Swift of a bishopric by showing it to the queen."^ * Doctor William King (principal of St. Mary's Hall, Oxon), says in his Anecdotes (p. 60) that Lord Boling- broke told him " he had been assured by the queen herself that she never had received any unfavorable charac- ter of Doctor Swift, nor had the arch- bishop, or any other person, endeav- ored to lessen him in her esteem. My Lord Bolingbroke added that this tale was invented by the Earl of Ox- ford to deceive Swift, and make him contented with his deanery in Ireland ; which, although his native countrv, he always looked on as a place of banish- ment. If Lord Bolingbroke had hated the Earl of Oxford less, I should have been readily inclined to believe him." No belief can be given to such an al- leged statement by Bolingbroke, who would have had ten thousand reasons for disclosing it to Swift himself ; from whom, if it were true, he carefully with- held it. But even Doctor King, head- long Jacobite as he was, could not have put credence in his informant. And see what had gone before, post, 223. 170 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1704. JEt. 37. Odd reason for a doubt. Wit's disad- rautages. In the life, also, Johnson remarks that it is not like Swift, because it has (what every one versed in him knows him pre-eminently to have had) vehemence and rapidity of mind, copiousness of images, and vivacity of diction. More than once the same was said to Boswell. It was said at one of their earliest meetings at the Mitre, when they were together in the Hebrides, and when they met at the club. Often as it was repeated, no question was made of its rea- sonableness or fairness. Swift was to lose a bishopric in one generation because a piece of writing was thought too witty to be fathered on any body else, and in the next he w^as to lose the credit of having written the piece because it w\as thought too witty to be fathered on him.* E"o- Cobbett's first knowl- edjre of Swift. * " The Tale of a Tub is one of the most masterly compositions in the language, whether for thought, wit, or style. " — Hazlitt. "An effusion of genius sufficient to redeem our name in that century's annals of fiction. The Tale of a Tub is, in my appre- hension, the masterpiece of Swift ; certainly Rabelais has nothing supe- rior even in invention, nor any thing so condensed, so pointed, so full of real meaning, of biting satire, of fe- licitous analogy." — Ilallam, Lit. of Eur. , iv. , 336. Another tribute should not be omitted. Cobbett had a passion for Swift, to whom he often refers as the first writer with whom he made acquaintance "after Moses:" the book that seized upon his fancy being the Tale of a Tib. He was, curious- 1}' enough, a native of Farnham, and at eleven years old employed there as a gardener's lad, though ho did not then know Swift's connection with the place ; when he heard of the beautiful , gardens at Kew, and had the ambition | to go and get work there. So he set ; of?' on a June morning, with no clothes except those on his back, and in his pocket thirteen half-pence; of which he si>ent twopence on bread -and - cheese, a penny on small- beer, and somehow lost a half-penny before he got to Richmond in the afternoon with threepence left. " With this for my whole fortune, I was trudging through Richmond in my blue smock- frock, and my red garters tied utuler my knees, when, staring about me, my eyes fell upon a little book in a book-seller's window, on the outside of which was wi itten The Tale of a Tub, price threepence. The title was so odd that my curiosity was excited. I h;id the threepence ; but, then, I could not have any supper. In I went and got the little book, which I was so impatient to rend, that I got over into a field at the upper corner of Kew Gardens, where there stood a haystack. On the shady side of this I sat down to read. The book was so difi'erent from any thing that I had ever read before, it was something so new to my mind, that, though I could not under- stand some parts of it, it delighted mo beyond description, and produced \\ hat I have always considered a sort of birth of intellect. I read on until it was dark without any thought of suj)- ])er or bed." He slept by the stack till the birds woke him. went on to Kew next day, still reading his little book, and got work fioni the kind § IV.] BAUCIS AND PHILEMOX. 171 where is there proof of the authorship so irresistible as in 1704. the reasons against it thus expressed by Johnson : " There ^' '' is in it such a vigor of mind, such a swarm of thoughts, so much of nature, and art, and life." These words exactly describe it. Swift could have desired no better to vindi- cate the claim. They might liave risen to him on tliat Touching in- day of the dark close of his life, when he was seen by his kinswoman and nurse turning over the leaves of the copy he had given her, and overheard to mutter to himself as he shut them up, unconscious of any listener, Good God, tchat a genius I had vjheri I lorote that hoolcj cident. ly. BAUCIS AND PHILEMON. 1705. ^T. 38. 0( I Shepjdan would have his readers believe that Swift was 1705. not familiarly known at clubs or coffee-houses until after '^'^^' nons connecting him with the Tale had stirred curi- osity about him. But this is not better founded than the itatement on the same page of the memoir, that he now rst met Arbutlmot in the coffee-house where Addison ave " his little senate laws."* The " senate " did not Addison's come into existence for six or seven years, nor was "But- ton's " before then in vogue ;t and Swift certainly did not Scotch gardener, who, seeing liim fond of books, lent him some on gardening, "But these I could not relish after my Tale of a Tub, which I carried about with me wherever I went, and when I — at about twenty years old — lost it in a box that fell overboard in the Bay of Fundy, in North America, the loss gftve me greater pain than I have since felt at losing thousands of pounds." One would naturally look for this interesting passage in the to be found there. He published it in the Evening Post, when he was ap- pealing to reformers to pay for return- ing him to Parliament. * Or than his other assertion that the Battle of the Books was published two years before the Tale of a Tub. Loss of his They appeared together. threepenny t The date of Swift's last friendly intercourse with Ambrose Philips is 1708 and 1709; and in July of the former vear he thus mentions to his writer's Autobiography, but it is not I correspondent their place of resort; 172 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1705. jEt. 38. Snppers of the gods. know Arbutlmot, wlio was not of Addison's party at all, until after six years :^ but Prior or Congreve was not bet- ter known at Will's than he was. At the St. James's, which for the present was the whig resort, he had turned the langli against Yanbrugh a year and a half before by some verses on the house he had built in "Whitehall; and his note-books fix the present year as the beginning not of his acquaintance, but of his more intimate intercourse, with Addison. A batch of entries, clustered on the same page, are dry enough ; but vividly behind them rise the nodes coenceqiie deoriim : " Tav'"" Addison 2^. 6<:Z. Tav''" Addison Is. Tav° Add^'^ 1^. 6tf. Tav'^'^ Addis" U. ^d. Tav" Addis" 2^. MP "I have heard Swift say," says Delany of such memorable nights in London and Dublin, " that often, as they spent their evenings together, they neither of them ever w^ished for a third person to support or enliven their conversation." There is a well-known saying of Addison that the only real conversation is be- tween two persons, and his own charm in this respect Swift has explained in what he says of Prior. lie liked him, and thought him one of the best of the talkers of that day ; but he would say that he was not a fair one, be- cause he left no elbow-room for another, which Addison always did. There was, however, one point in which Swift had perhaps the superiority in friendly talk over all his Swift's talk, lettered friends. He was better able than either Prior or Addison, or even Steele, or any of the wits, to tolerate wit of a less grade than tlieir own. This, in fact, arose from his regarding literature as less of a serious employment than they did, and it is a peculiarity to be always noted in him. " Col. Froud," lie writes to Ambrose Philips, " is just as he was, very friendly and grand reveur et distrait. Real conver- sation. St. James's coffee-house is grown a I meily, and, therefore, can not revenge very dull place upon two accounts : first, by the loss of you, and secondly, of eveiy body else. Mr. Addison's himeness goes off daily, and so does he. for I see him seldomer than for- myself of you by getting ground in your absence." ♦ Their first meeting is mentioned in the Journal to Esther Johnson. §iv.] BAUCIS AND PHILEMON. 173 He has brought his Poems almost to perfection, and I have great credit with him, because I can listen when he reads, which neither you, nor Mr. Addison, nor Steele ever can." Froud or " Frowde " was a small poet who had written two tragedies,'^ and whose recommendation to Swift was his intercourse w^ith Addison. That most pleas- ing of winters and zealous of whigs, who was next year to have his party reward by appointment as under-secretary of state, had this year (1705) published his Travels in It- aly ; and I possess a large-paper presentation-copy with an inscription in Addison's hand,t which is itself an em- phatic memorial of one of the most famous of literary friendships. 1705. ^T. 38. A small poet. f^2 .f Addison to Swift. j^ That " the Aiithour " had then read the Tale of a Tiib, and knew who had written it, we need not hesitate to believe. I^or is it incumbent on us to reject all that even Sheri- dan tells us, upon the authority of Ambrose Philips, of Swift's so-called first appearance at the whig club. The * Philotas and the Fall ofJerusa- letn, long forgotten. Not to be con- founded, as he is by Scott and others, with "Old Fronde," the squire of Farnham, who repeatedly appears in the Journal. And see post, 305. t "To Dr. Jonathan Swift, Tlie most Agreeable Companion, the Tru- est Friend, and the Greatest Genius of his Age, This Book is presented by his most Humble Servant the Au- thour." 174 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1705. ^T. 38. Swift at the St. James'g. A view of Provideuce. Journal, 7th June, nil. misdate and misplace throw discredit over it ; but wliat the old whig poet, to whom in his youth Swift had shown many kindnesses for Addison's sake, related to the young Irish player must have had some substance of truth. He says that they had for several successive days observed a strange clergyman come into the coffee-house, who seemed utterly unacquainted with any of those who frequented it ; and whose custom it was to lay his hat down on a table, and walk backward and forward at a good pace for half an hour or an hour, without speaking to any mortal, or seem- ing in the least to attend to any thing that was going for- ward there. He then used to take up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk away without opening his lips. The name he went by among them, in consequence, was the mad parson. On one particular evening, as Mr. Addi- son and the rest were observing him, they saw him cast his eyes several times on a gentleman in boots, who seem- ed to be just come out of the country, and at last advance as intending to address him. Eager to hear what their dumb, mad parson had to say, they all quitted their seats to get near him. Swift went up to the country gentleman, and in a very abrupt manner, without any previous salute, asked him, " Pray, sir, do you remember any good weather in the world?" The country gentleman, after staring a little at the sinsrularitv of his manner and the oddity of the question, answered, " Yes, sir, I thank God I remem- ber a great deal of good weather in my time." " That is more," rejoined Swift, " than I can say. I never remem- ber any weather that was not too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry ; but, however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year 'tis all very well." With which re- mark he took up his hat, and, without uttering a syllable more, or taking the least notice of any one, walked out of the coffee-house. It lias something of the same turn, and not without the same philosophy, as his own anecdote of " Will Seymour the general " fretting under the excessive lieat, at which a friend remarking that it was such weather as pleased the Almighty, " Perhaps it may," replied the §iv.] BAUCIS AND PHILE:\rOX. 175 1705. ^T. 38. general, " but I'm sure it pleases nobody else " (as there was not the least necessity that it should). There is, how- ever, as small probability that this was Addison's first uobody. ° " knowledge of his great friend, or Swift's first introduction to Steele, as that the incident occurred in 1703. That year was the date of the earliest of the verses on Yan- bi-ugh's house, " built from the ruins of Whitehall ;" and their writer was already as well known on the neutral ground of Will's as at the whig St. James's. But what Philips tells has in it a smack of the same grim humor that turned the laugh of the poorer wits against the pros- perous architect and playwright. * It had not been Swift's intention at first to give to the poem on Yanbrugh poem the form which his printed works have hous^^^ made familiar. It was to laugh, but not without decorum, at a wit who, after building comedies, had taken to build a house."^ There was plenty of banter : but the wits were not to be shown running up and down Whitehall, every- where looking for, and always overlooking, what their brother Yan had raised for himself to inhabit; asking every body for its whereabouts, appealing to the watermen, ven invoking the Thames, till at length they "in the rubbish spy A thing resembling a goose-pie' I ^^wrhich it probably did resemble, if a brother architect was justified in comparing it to a flat Dutch oven). Those ^^ibes were in the second version of the poem. It was not * Vanbrugh had not quite got over the effect of the verses even after seven years were gone. Swift writes to Es- ther Johnson of a dinner with him and Congreve at Sir Richard Temple's on the 7th November, 1710. "Van- brugh, I believe I told you, had a long quarrel with me about those verses on his house ; but we were very civil and cold. Lady Marlborough used to tease him with them, which had made him angry, though he be a good-natured fellow." It is, however, to be added that what had given him most offense was not the first of the poems (printed with the date of 1 70G), but some supplementary verses (printed in 1708) on the selection of him by Marlborough to build Blen- heim. "For if his grace were no more skilVd in The art of battering walls than building, We might expect to see next year A mouse-trap man chief eugiueer 1" 176 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1705. Mt. 38. Earlier lui- priiited ver- fcioii. Swift MSS. at Narford. Unprinted poem on Vanbrugh. in liis first plan to giv^e so strong a personal coloring as tliey express, or as tlie witty parallel between play-building and house-building conveys. His design was ratlier to jeer at tlie successes of the stage of the day (against which he had always the grudge wdiicli its profligacy too well war- ranted), and to show how structures out of nothing rise to the sky, while the solider and heavier can not get above the ground. "After hard throes of many a day," verse-build- ing Van is triumphantly " delivered of a play " "Which in due time brings forth a liouse, Just as the mountain did the mouse : One story high, one postern door, And one small chamber on a floor." The MS. version of the poem from which these lines are taken exists still in Swift's handwriting at Sir Andrew Fountaine's house in Norfolk ; and at Xarford,* which re- mains the property of Sir Andrew's descendant and repre- sentative, Mr. Andrew Fountaine, the present writer dis- covered it. The lines just quoted, and the subjoined satir- ical parallel between a play-writer and a silk-worm, which in this earlier version occupies the place given in the later to a comparison of house-building to play-building, have never until now been printed. "There is a worm by Phoebus bred, By leaves of mulberry is fed, Sir Andrew Fountaine. * Fountaine's fiither built Narford in 1704, and, after his death there, in 1708, the house was let on lease for a time. His son, Swift's friend, edu- cated at Christchurch, was selected by the dean, as one of the best Latin- ists of his year, to make the oration on King "William's visit in 1G99 ; and he then received knighthood. He was afterward much abroad. He had formed a friendship with Leibnitz while at the court of Hanover in 1701 ; and in Italy became acquaint- ed with Lord Pembroke, having much the same taste as a collector in mat- ters of art and vertu. He was very rich in medals and coins, of which the greater part went ultimately to Wil- ton ; and of the wealth of his posses- sions in old pottery and ware, mag- nificent indication still exists at Nar- ford. There is a bust of him by Kou- biliac at Wilton as well as at Narford ; and a painting in oils in the library at Holland House, which, till very re- cently, had peculiar honor as the por- trait of Addison, was a few years ago discovered to be Fountaine. Addison had probably received it after his mar- riage with Lady Warwick, as a present from Sir Andrew, of whom there will be other frequent mention in these pages. §IV.] BAUCIS AND PHILEMON. ITT Which, unprovided where to dwell, 1705. Consumes itself to weave a cell : -^t. 38. Then curious hands this texture take, And for themselves fine garments make. Meantime a pair of awkward things Grow to his back instead of wings : He flutters when he thinks he flies, Then sheds about his spawn, and dies. Just such an insect of the age Is he that scribbles for the stage : His birth he does from Phoebus raise, And feeds upon imagin'd bays : Turns all his wit and hours away In twisting up an ill-spun Play : This gives him lodging, and provides A stock of tawdry shift besides. With the unravel'd shreds of which The under-wits adorn their speech : And now he spreads his little fans (For all the Muse's geese are swans). And, borne on fancy's pinions, thinks He soars sublimest when he sinks : But, scatt'ring round his fly-blows, dies ; Whence broods of insect-poets rise." Xor was this tlie only discovery made by me at l^ar- interesthicr Ford. Another and more important was that of the first ^'^^'^^^'^• U*aiight of a poem of ITOG, a year after the present date, to which peculiar interest belongs. Among the papers in Iwift's handwriting I fonnd the original version of the ►oetical piece which Swift is known to have altered at .ddison's request.* Nothing is better established in his literary history than that he made, at Addison's sugges- tion, extensive changes in one of the happiest of his poems, Goldsmith's favorite, the Baucis and Philemon / " on the Baucis and ever-lamented loss of the two yew-trees in the parish of Chilthorne, Somerset. Imitated from the eighth book of Ovid." Scott speaks more than once, with something of a poet's wonder, of the " forty verses struck out, forty added. Philemon as tirst written. * " He himself," says Doctor Dela- ny, "was often wont to mention that in a poem of not two hundred lines {Baucis and Philemon), Mr. Addison YoL. I.— 12 made him blot out fourscore, add four- score, and alter fourscore." — Observa- tions, p. 19. 178 THE LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT. [Book III. 1705. and forty altered," in tliat brief poem : and much surmise JFt 38 tj ■' 1. ' .. tJL — 1_ has been hazarded whether changes so great in tlie first conceptions of such a master in his art could possibly all of them have been improvements. Swift's own account makes the number of changes twice as large : " Mr. Addi- son," he says, " made me blot out fourscore, add fourscore, and alter fourscore ;" to which he adds, confounding nat- urally enough in his memory the original with the altered piece, " though the poem did not consist of more than one The poem as hundred and seventy-seven verses." The poem, as print- ^'"" ^ * ed, contains one hundred and seventy - eight lines; the poem, as I found it at IN^arford, has two himdred and thir- ty ; and the changes in the latter, bringing it into the con- dition of the former, by wdiich only it has been thus far known, comprise the omission of ninety-six lines, the addi- tion of forty-four, and the alteration of twenty-two. The question can now be discussed w^hether or not the changes w^ere improvements, and in my opinion the decision must be adverse to Addison. The story of the little poem is of course familiar, in oth- er shapes as well as Swift's ; and though M. Taine is an- gry that so touching a legend should be degraded by what he calls travesty, turning the two gods into begging friars and the two lovers into elderly '' Kentish " peasants, it must be said, with deference to our French critic, that the Legend ac- travesty is in his own mind. The license of putting an- cwdiug to ^j(^^g fables into homely modern dress is not disallowed to poetry ; and, worthily executed, is no violation of the an- cient beauty or nobleness, but a homage widening and dif- fusing it. " Two brother hermits, saints by trade " (on whose holiness, that is, attends the power of miracles), wdiile exercising tlieir trade in an English country village by putting to the test the hospitality and Christian kindli- ness of its inmates, are so unlucky as to find them by no means able to stand the test, and that, in fact, they ])ossess nothing whatever of the desired