CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY DATE DUE PRINTCDIN U.S.A. Cornell University Library PR 3726.M86 Dean Swift and his writings. 3 1924 014 149 144 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014149144 ©!^« Urns)///,/ II ■f/t'r//~ Dean Swift cAND HIS WRITINGS GERALD P. MORIARTY, B.A. BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD lf A person of great honour in Ireland used to tell me that my mind was like a conjured spirit, that would do mischief if I would not give it employment."— Swift to the Rev. J. Kendall, Feb. n, 1692. NEW YORK CHARLES SCdlB'NER'S SONS 303 -Vot, PREFACE The biographical part of this work must be regarded as subordinate to the literary. I have attempted to describe and illustrate Swift's chief writings, merely giving such a sketch of his career as is required for a due understanding of their import. The quotations from Swift's works and correspondence have been intentionally made as numerous and as full as possible ; it being, in my opinion, easier to give an idea of an author's genius in this way than by means of unsup- ported critical disquisitions. The latter are always delu- sjve, except when a good knowledge of the works criticised has been previously obtained by the reader. In my quotations I have modernised the spelling, and have given up the use of capital letters in the case of common nouns prevalent in Swift's time. I have also altered a few words and phrases, the crudity of which suits not with present ideas. The edition of Swift's works mainly used has been that of Roscoe, published in 1864 by Bohn. In dealing with Swift's character, I have contented myself with the explanation of motives, without offering any comment thereon. The reader will notice that my view differs considerably from that of certain modern writers. The latter, in a spirit of reaction against the iv Preface. sombre and somewhat inaccurate picture drawn of Swift by Thackeray and M. Taine, have all but tried to raise the Dean of St. Patrick's to the rank of a saint and a hero. With this opinion, after much study of the original authorities for Swift's life and the circumstances of his time, I find myself unable to concur. It is ill supported by the evidence; and it is self-contradictory in view of the peculiar tone of Swift's writings. An amiable parish priest could never have produced the " Tale of a Tub " or " Gulliver's Travels." A high-minded politician would never have written the " Character of Lord Wharton " or the " Legion Club." It may, in conclusion, be doubted whether any advan- tage is to be gained from the present fondness for — to use a colloquialism — "whitewashing" historical characters. To paint in dark colours is not to depreciate. The Napoleon of Lanfrey is a far more interesting figure than the Napoleon of Thiers. It is true that Swift has much to urge in his excuse. He had endured more disappointments than fall to the lot of most men ; and he suffered, nearly all his life, from an intermittent and distressing malady. None the less, the qualities produced by these trials were resentment, not resignation ; vindictiveness, not forbear- ance ; misanthropy, not fellow-feeling. GERALD MORIARTY. Balliol College, Oxford, October, 1802. CONTENTS CHAPTER vkcB I. SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE'S SECRETARY I II. AN ALLY OF THE WHIGS . . 23 III. A TORY CONVERT . . . 48 IV. POLITICAL ACTIVITY . 77 V. IN THE GREAT WORLD 1 27 VI. THE TORY DOWNFALL . . . . . . 165 VII. THE DEAN OF ST. PATRICK'S . . 1 86 VIII. "GULLIVER'S TRAVELS" . . .219 IX. SETTLED IN IRELAND . „ 255 X. LETTERS TO ENGLAND (1727-1735) . 277 XI. SWIFT AS POET . 294 XII. CONCLUSION . . ... 312 ERRATUM. Page 136, line 8 : For words " but now married to a brother of the Duke of Hamilton " read "a different person to the wife of the Lord George Hamilton, created Earl of Orkney in 1696." LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Dean Swift. After C.Jervas. . . . Frontispiece Sir William Temple. After Sir Peter Lely. ... 20 Joseph Addison. After Sir Godfrey Kneller. ... 66 Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke. After H. Rigaud. 92 Matthew Prior. After Sir Godfrey Kneller. . .102 Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford. After Sir Godfrey Kneller. ■ . . . . 168 Hester Vanhomrigh (Vanessa) 194 Esther Johnson (Stella) 250 John Gay. After W. Aikman. ... . . 284 The portraits of Stella and Vanessa are from, pictures in the possession of G. Villiers Briscoe, Esq., of Bellinter, Co. Mealh. The former is thus mentioned by Sir William Wilde in his ' ' Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life" ■ " It was originally in the possession of the distinguished Charles Ford of Woodpark, where Stella was con- stantly in the habit of visiting, and where she spent several months in 1723, when probably it was painted, Stella being then about forty-two. It remained, along with an original picture of Swift, at Woodpark for many years, with an unbroken thread of tradition attached to it, until it came, zuith the property and effects of tlie Ford family, into the possession of the Preston family." By permission of Mr. Preston, of Bellinter, it was engraved (not satisfactorily) as a frontispiece to Sir William Wildes book. It afterwards passed into the possession of Mr. Preston's heir, its present owner, by whose kind permission it has been photographed, together with the portrait of Vanessa, for the present volume. Jt^-^Lz-e/u-.A^icoi 07l4.SLffs x DEAN SWIFT AND HIS WRITINGS. CHAPTER I. SIR WILLIAM TEMPLES SECRETARY. Sir William Temple at Moor Park — Career and character of that statesman — Arrival of Jonathan Swift as his secretary — Retro- spect on the latter : his parentage, birth and education— Enters Temple's employment — The first residence at Moor Park — Temple's treatment of Swift — The household at Moor Park — First intimacy with Stella — Return of Swift to Ireland in search of health — Second visit to Temple — Becomes M.A. of Hart Hall, Oxford — Is now entrusted with important business — His early poems — Resolves to take orders — Leaves for Ireland a second time, after quarrel with Temple — The penitential letter — Swift ordained ; receives the prebend of Kilroot — His life there — Return to Moor Park — Characteristics of the third visit — Improved position — Attaches himself to Lord Sunderland — Is disappointed— Writes the "Battle of the Books" — Death of Temple — His will. A Swiss gentleman, who travelled through England in 1695, gives an interesting account of his visit to Sir William Temple, at Moor Park, in Surrey. The house of that celebrated negotiator and philosopher, says our informant, was the very model of an agreeable retreat. Far enough from town to escape the intrusion of the 2 Dean Swift and his Writings. vulgar, the air was wholesome, the land good, and the view contained but pretty. No sound could be heard save the rustling of the leaves and the murmur of a small rivulet which ran near the windows. The house was small, but convenient and neatly furnished ; the garden proportioned to the house, and cultivated by the master himself. The latter, completely retired from the world, passed his time amidst the pursuit of letters and the occasional society of a few chosen friends. Sir William Temple is the most respectable figure of the reign of Charles II. Whenever the merry monarch and his myrmidons found that they had presumed too far upon the loyalty of a long-suffering people, Temple, as the incarnation of virtue, had been always summoned to ex- tricate them from the gulf. On the downfall of Clarendon, he had been called in to negotiate an alliance with the sound Protestant governments of Holland and Sweden. Ten years later, on the exposure of Charles' secret deal- ings with France, Temple's scheme for a reorganisation of the privy council, by which that body was to become an efficient check on the prerogative, was accepted without demur. Yet by the end of the reign Temple found him- self completely shelved. Nor need the result be a matter of surprise. Virtue, acting as a sort of mediator in times of great national ferment, had alwa^'s won success. But such moments were rare in their occurrence ; and men noticed with an amused surprise that, once its task per- formed, Virtue had always retired from the field. In the storm and stress of a continuous political career it refused to share. The dull- debate, the tortuous intrigue, the wearisome compromise, might be for others. For Virtue, was to be preserved a perpetual pre-eminence, without any of the toilsome strivings by which, in ordinary cases, that pre-eminence could be alone attained. The time Sir William Temple s Secretary. % came, therefore, when Virtue found itself deserted. Fear- ful of making enemies, it had made no friends. Refusing to join any distinct party in the state, it had been dis- owned by all. At last, nothing was left for Virtue but to shake the dust from off its feet and retire to the dignified seclusion of a country seat. The picture given of Sir William, in his later years, by his sister Martha, Lady Giffard, is hardly pleasing. His political memories were clouded by an ever-present sense of disappointment. His humour had become " very unequal, from cruel-fits of spleen and melancholy." His temper, naturally bad, was kept in uneasy subjection by sheer force of will. An exact observer of nice points of honour, he was ill-apt to make allowance for the deficiencies of others ; liable to strong dislikes, which he only con- cealed with difficulty; and kind to his inferiors, solely because he thought it his duty to be just to all men. In a word, a man capable of making a favourable impres- sion on chance visitors, but a trying companion to his familiars, and an ungracious patron towards those unfor- tunates who might have to stand to him in the relation of dependants. Early in 1689 a petition came to Temple from a widow lady, connected by blood and association with his family, asking him to provide an opening in life for her only son. Sir William, busily engaged in drawing up his memoirs, at once expressed a willingness to take the applicant into his own service as secretary. The offer was accepted ; and, in the summer of 1689, a young man of humble appearance and unpractised manners, but whose strongly- marked features and piercing blue eyes indicated a nature of no common type, appeared at the threshold of Moor Park. The new-comer was Jonathan Swift. Full details regarding his birth and parentage are sup- 4- Dean Stvift and his Writings. plied by Swift in a fragment of autobiography, written in 1727. * His grandfather, Thomas Swift, vicar of Good- rich, in Herefordshire, played a stirring part in the Great Rebellion. More royalist than the king, he upheld the Stuart cause from the pulpit, garrisoned his vicarage against the parliament, and sent money and provisions to the loyal commander at Raglan Castle. " At another time," says Jonathan, who was very proud of this ancestor's exploits, "being informed that three hundred horse of the rebel party intended in a week to pass over a certain river, Mr. Swift contrived certain pieces of iron with three spikes, whereof one must always be with the point upward; he placed them overnight in the ford where he received news that the rebels would pass early the next morning, which they accordingly 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." In vain were his flocks driven off, and his house plundered from cellar to garret by Lord Stamford's troopers. It became necessary to extinguish this redoubtable member of the church militant. In 1646, the vicar of Goodrich was arrested and flung into prison. His private property was sequestrated, and his three livings handed over to sour-visaged fanatics, of whose true Puritan zeal the parliament was well assured. Though released in 1649, he was a broken man. He died in 1658 — two years before the Restoration might have brought him some redress — and his family, " four- 1 The Swifts were an old Yorkshire family. The elder branch ended, in the male line, with Bamam Swift, a man of great wit and ability, created Viscount Carlingford, in the peerage of Ireland, in 1627. The representative of the younger branch, Thomas Swift, migrated from Yorkshire to Kent, and became preacher at St. Andrew's, Canterbury. He died in 1592. His son, William Swift, who married a Miss Philpot, was father of the Thomas Swift referred to in the text. Sir William Temples Secretary. 5 teen or fifteen " in number, were thrown upon the world. Five of his sons made their way to Ireland, the disturbed condition of which country held out chances of fortune to adventurers of every type. Of these, the eldest, Godwin Swift, obtained great fame as a barrister in Dublin. The " seventh or eighth son," Jonathan, though glad to take the crumbs that fell from his rich brother's table, excited the family anger by an indiscreet marriage with Mistress Abigail Eric, daughter of a poor but ancient Leicester- shire family. A daughter was born to him in 1665. He obtained the post of Steward of the King's Inn, Dublin. But in 1667 he died, some months before the birth of a son, the greater Jonathan Swift, who saw the light in a house in Hoey's Court, Dublin, on November 30, 1667. Swift's infancy was destined to be passed in England. " When he was a year old," saj ; s the autobiography, which is written in the third person, "his nurse, who was a woman of Whitehaven, being under an absolute neces- sity of seeing one of her relations, who 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 uncle, and carried him with her to Whitehaven, where he continued for almost three years. For, when the matter was dis- covered, his mother sent orders by all means not to hazard a second voyage till he could be better able to bear it. The nurse was so careful of him that before he returned he had learned to spell, and by the time he was three years old he could read any chapter in the Bible." Mrs. Swift's income consisted only of a settlement of £20 a year, and her son's education was due to the charity of his uncle Godwin. Swift was wont to assert in later times that his uncle had treated him like a dog. For any special injustice on Godwin's part it would be 6 Dean Swift and his Writings. vain to seek. But Swift's haughty nature chafed bitterly at the mere thought of dependence; and, in his auto- biography, he declares that he felt the consequence of his parents' improvident marriage, "not only through the whole course of his education, but during the greatest part of his life." At the age of six, Jonathan Swift was sent to the foundation school of the Ormonds, at Kilkenny. After remaining here eight years he proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin, where, with his cousin Thomas, a son of Godwin Swift, he was admitted on April 24, 1682. In dealing with this period of his life, Swift states that, " by the ill-treatment of his nearest relations, he was so dis- couraged and sunk in his spirits that he too much neg- lected his academic studies, for some parts of which he had no great relish by nature, and turned himself to read- ing history and poetry." As a consequence his university career was not a success. In the terminal examination of Easter, 1685, Jonathan Swift, though marked "bene" in Latin and Greek, was stigmatised as "male" in Philo- sophy, while his Thema, or Latin essay, was only marked "negligenter." He had failed in two out of three sub- jects, and, to use a modern university phrase, the unfor- tunate.Jonathan was "plucked." In strict rule Swift should have been stopped of his degree till the ensuing year. But the authorities were inclined to temper justice with mercy, and they allowed him to proceed to his B.A. degree on February 15, 1685, speciali gratia. This concession, Swift subsequently con- fessed, was little to his credit. But the results of a university training are to be found elsewhere than in its class lists. That Swift owed the foundation of his great acquirements to Trinity College, Dublin, is an honour of which that institution may be justly proud. Swift continued to reside in college in order to qualify for Sir William Temples Secretary. 7 his Mastership of Arts. Up to the taking of his B. A. degree he had lived "with great regularity and observance, of the statutes." From that date, however, he began to show a fondness for those minor breaches of the law which tend to enliven the routine of an academic career. On March 18, 1686, Jonathan Swift was publicly censured for notorious neglect of duties and frequenting the town of Dublin late at night, without leave. Many are the fines imposed on him for non-attendance at chapel, and for missing lectures. Lastly, the college register for Novem- ber 30, 1688, records, in sonorous Latin, that Dominus Swift and some others, for stirring up riots and assailing the junior dean, Dr. Lloyd, with threatening words, are to be suspended frorri all degrees they have taken or hope to take ; and it adds that Dominus Swift and Dominus Sargeant — quoniam cceieris adhuc intolerabilius se gessenmt, sjnce they have behaved worse than the others — are to ask pardon of the aforesaid junior dean on bended knee. The first part of the punishment was remitted. From the ignominious apology there seems to have been no escape. But Swift, who was a good hater, nursed his revenge, and in his "Character of Thomas, Earl of Wharton," written many years after, he went out of his way to make Dr. Lloyd the victim of a libel of peculiar atrocity. 1 The Revolution of 1688 was followed by universal con- fusion in Ireland. Trinity College fell into the hands of the Jacobites. The students were dispersed, and Swift, in sorry plight, came to England and made his way to 1 For Swifl's university career, see John Barrett, "Essay on the Earlier Part of the Life of Swift." It is compiled from the Trinity Col- lege records. There is a long discussion on the same point in John Forster's " Life of Swift." Mr. Forster disagrees with Dr. Barrett's conclusions. 8 Dean Swift and his Writings. Leicester, where his mother had now been for some years settled. Godwin Swift had lost much of his property in foolish speculations, and was no longer able to help his nephew. Another uncle, William Swift, settled in Portugal, called by Swift " the best of my relations," occasionally sent supplies, but these were precarious ; and Swift, not liking to be a burden to his mother, was compelled to find some new opening in the world. Mrs. Swift was connected with Lady Temple, and Temple's father, as Master of the Rolls in Ireland, had come into frequent contact with Godwin Swift and the other brothers. It was therefore resolved to send an applica- tion to Sir William Temple on Jonathan's behalf. Its result has already been described, and by the end of 1689 Jonathan Swift was domiciled at Moor Park as secretary to Sir William Temple. Swift's duties were to read to his patron, to copy out the rough draught of his memoirs, and to keep accounts. Though not treated with deliberate unkindness, he felt his position keenly. Temple's constant suspicion that the world did not estimate him at his own value had made him the most pompous of men. By his trembling household he was regarded as a demigod. Years afterwards when Swift, as the right-hand man of a great political party, was being treated with deference by princes and ambassadors, he remembered what pain he used to suffer when Sir William Temple would look cold and out of humour for three or four days. He recalled how Temple, on one of his good days, would give his secretary a few shillings to begin with and play at cards with him. "Sir William Temple spoilt a fine gentleman," he used to say ; and the enforced subservience to the despot of Moor Park fostered those darker qualities, of which an unhappy childhood had already sown the seeds. Of Lady Temple, the charming Dorothy Osborne, whose Sir William Temple's Secretary. 9 early letters to Sir W. Temple are among the most delight- ful in seventeenth-century literature, we hear nothing. The household at Moor Park was under the manage- ment of Temple's sister, Dame Martha Giffard. She was a notable woman, proud as a German canoness, and with an inborn talent for vindictive hatred, who might have sat for the portrait of Smollett's Tabitha Bramble. But among the inmates of Temple's household was one des- tined to exert a very different influence on Swift's career. Attached to Lady Giffard, in the capacity of confidential servant, was a certain Mrs. Johnson. The latter, though of humble birth, had been married to a younger son of a good Nottinghamshire family, who had been in Temple's employment, probably as steward. Mr. Johnson had died before Swift's arrival at Moor Park, leaving his widow with two young daughters. Of the younger, Ann, at this time little more than an infant, we hear little. The elder, Esther, had been born in 1681, and was now in her eighth year. 1 She was a dark-eyed little maid, with 1 The chief authority for Esther Johnson's parentage and character is Swift's own account in the curious paper, " On the Death of Mrs. Johnson." There was, however, a tradition current, then and long after, that Esther Johnson was, in reality, Sir William Temple's natural child. It is referred to at some length in Mr. Deane Swift's life of his great kinsman. Though documentary evidence is lacking, there are strong presumptive grounds for the above belief. Firstly : Esther Johnson always occupied an anomalous position in Temple's household. She received an extremely good education ; she seems to have moved on almost equal terms with the family and their friends ; and she is always spoken of in a very distinct way from her sister Ann; Swift describing the latter as "a good, modest sort of girl." Secondly: There is the significant fact that Sir William Temple in his will singled out Esther Johnson for a special and valu- able legacy. Yet Temple's fortune barely sufficed to keep up the family dignity, and his other dependants received nothing but the most trifling gifts. io Dean Swift and his Writings. winning ways, and a most lovable disposition. In his hours of idleness the sullen Irish secretary found his way to the child's side, and in the training, of her infant mind laid the foundations of an intimacy, the tale of which is the most fascinating in romantic history. When Swift, in later years, thought of his first gloomy residence with Temple, he could always recall with pleasure, that it had enabled him to be " little Stella's first writing-master." In the spring of 1690, Swift began to suffer from attacks of vertigo and deafness. It was suggested that a return to Ireland might benefit him, and he left Moor Park in May. To Temple, Swift had as yet been a nonentity; and in recommending him to the Irish Secretary, Sir Robert Southwell, he solemnly stated that the future author of the ablest political pamphlet and the most scathing satire in English literature, was honest, diligent, and wrote a good current hand. Swift failed to obtain any settled position through Southwell's influence, and by the end of 1691 he was back at Moor Park. Swift had now resolved to obtain his Mastership of Arts. He disliked the idea of a return to Trinity College, Dublin. In the summer of 1692, there- fore, he went to Oxford, where he was entered at Hart Hall. On showing the certificate of his Dublin B.A. degree he was admitted by the Oxford authorities, ad eundem, and on July 5th he took the degree of M.A. 1 The possession of a full Oxford degree would, under any circumstances, have given him an improved social position. But some inkling of his secretary's abilities had begun to dawn upon Temple, and Swift now began to be entrusted with important business. Temple's diplomatic work in 1 Swift seems to have thoroughly enjoyed his visit to Oxford, where he says " he had been obliged in a few weeks to strangers more than in seven years to Dublin College." Sir William Temples Secretary. 11 Holland had brought him into early connection with William of Orange. After the latter became King of England, as William the Third, he frequently visited Moor Park. On one occasion Mr. Jonathan Swift had the honour of escorting his Majesty round the gardens. The king was much taken with the young secretary's address, showed him how to cut asparagus in the Dutch style, and promised him the royal patronage in his future career. In 1693, Swift was sent, at Temple's suggestion, to point out to the king the impolicy of refusing his assent to the Triennial Act. But William, who had a high idea of his prerogative, refused to listen to Swift's representa- tions; a result which, it would seem from the autobio- graphy, caused the latter much chagrin. The second residence with Temple is interesting as the period of Swift's first literary efforts. They took the shape of long poems, written in the style of Pindaric odes, which were extremely fashionable at that time. 1 Any- thing more out of touch with Swift's real bent and capacity it would be impossible to imagine. Three of these effusions have been preserved : an ode to Sancroft, an address to the Athenian Society, and — most heart- rending of all — an address to Sir William Temple. That great man is represented as warding off, without an effort — "The wily shafts of state, those jugglers' tricks Which we call deep designs and politics.'' The fight between Virtue — i.e., the Right Honourable Sir William Temple, baronettus — and the spirit of Evil is thus described : — 1 They were,' however, preceded by a metrical translation of the 18th Ode of Horace's 2nd Book, written at Oxford. 12 Dean Swift and his Writings. "And though as some ('tis said) for their defence Have worn a casement o'er their skin So he wore his within, Made up of virtue and transparent innocence, And though he oft renewed the fight, And almost got priority of right, He ne'er could overcome her quite, In pieces cut, the viper still did reunite." Fortunately Swift soon wearied of these super-heroic flights. For the time he continued to write poetry, but in a less ambitious strain. He produced an ode to King William and an address to his old school and college friend, Congreve the dramatist. But Temple still dominated the horizon. When that great man recovered from an illness in December, 1693, Swift felt called upon to celebrate the event in a torrent of rhymed couplets. While Temple lay in danger, we are told : — "Joy every face forsook, And grief flung sables on each menial look; The humble tribe mourned for the quickening soul, That furnished spirit and motion through the whole ; So would earth's face turn pale, and life decay, Should Heaven suspend to act but for a day ; So nature's crazed convulsions make us dread That time is sick, or the world's mind is dead." Lady Temple has a special passage to herself : — • " Mild Dorothea, peaceful, wise, and great, Trembling beheld the doubtful hand of fate j Mild Dorothea, whom we both have long Not dared to injure with our lowly song, Sprung from a better world, and chosen then The best companion for the best of men." Even grim Dame Martha, whom Swift in his later Sir William l^emples Secretary. 13 days spoke of as that old beast, receives a shower of praise under the melodious name of Dorinda. It would seem that this last effort exhausted poor Swift's stock of patience. The proffer of the royal patronage had opened out to him a vista of the promised land of indepen- dence. He had already made up his mind to enter the Church, and, early in 1694, he began to ask Sir William for some definite promise of support in the clerical profession. But Temple was very disinclined to give Swift his liberty. He asked for time to consider the matter; declared it was impossible to obtain preferment just now ; and in general showed himself so adverse to Swift's aspirations, that the latter at length had a violent quarrel with his patron and left for Ireland, resolved to rely on his own efforts. Un- fortunately the young man had forgotten an important detail. He applied in due course to the Irish ecclesiastical authorities for ordination ; but the latter naturally refused to accede to his request till he could give them the usual certificate as to his good conduct, during the last three years. The only person who could give such a certificate was Temple ; and Swift, after a frightful internal struggle, had to swallow his pride and send his patron a humili- ating appeal. What anguish such a letter as the following caused to the writer can be well imagined : — " Dublin, October 6, 1694. " Hay it please your Honour, — . . . The sense I am in, how low I am fallen in your honour's thoughts, has denied me assurance enough to beg this favour, till I find it impossible to avoid ; and I entreat your honour to understand that no person is admitted here to a living without some knowledge of his abilities for it. ... I en- treat that your honour will consider this, and will please 14 Dean Swift and his Writings. to send me some certificate of my behaviour during almost three years in your family ; wherein I shall stand in n^ed of all your goodness to excuse my many weaknesses and oversight, much more to say anything to my advantage. The particulars expected of me are what relate to morals and learning, and the reasons of quitting your honour's family, that is, whether the last was occasioned by any ill actions. They are all left entirely to your honour's mercy, though in the first I think I cannot reproach myself any further than for infirmities. This is all I dare beg at pre- sent from your honour, under circumstances of life not worth your regard : what is left me to wish (next to the health and prosperity of your honour and family) is, that Heaven would one day allow me the opportunity of leaving my acknowledgment at your feet for so many favours I have received ; which, whatever effect they have had upon my fortune, shall never fail to have the greatest upon my mind, in approving myself, upon all occasions, your honour's most obedient and most dutiful servant, "Jonathan Swift." Temple was far too lofty a being to bear malice towards Mr. Secretary Swift, especially when the latter had shown so proper a sense of his base ingratitude. He sent the required certificate. Swift was ordained on October 25, 1694, and on January 28, 1695, he was presented by Lord Capel to the prebend of Kilroot, near Belfast. It was worth about £100 a year. Swift's first experience of the Irish Church was very short. Kilroot was intensely dull. Excepting an old Trinity chum named Waring, and an Oxford friend, Mr. Winder, Swift could find no society. Though well pro- vided with books he missed Temple's excellent library. Partly in sheer desperation, partly out of that curious Sir William Temples Secretary. 15 longing to win the heart of any agreeable woman who happened to be much thrown in his society, Swift made furious love to Waring's sister, whom he styled Varina. The following passage from a letter dated April 29, 1696, in which Swift upbraids the lady's coldness, is worthy of the Grand, Cyre : — " Surely, Varina, you have but a very mean opinion of the joys that accompany a true, honourable, unlimited love ; yet either nature and our ancestors have highly deceived us, or else all other sublunary things are dross in comparison. Is it possible you can be yet insensible to the prospect of a rapture and delight so innocent and so exalted ? Trust me, Varina, Heaven has given us nothing else worth the loss of a thought. Ambition, high appear- ances, friends, and fortunes are all tasteless and insipid when they come in competition. Yet millions of such glorious minutes are we perpetually losing — for ever, irre- coverably losing — to qualify empty forms and wrong notions, and affected coldness and peevish humour. These are the unhappy encumbrances which we who are distinguished from the vulgar do fondly create to torment ourselves. The only felicity permitted to human life we clog with tedious circumstances and barbarous formality." It may be that the lady doubted the good faith of such hyperbolical proposals. She delayed the desired answer, and the only other extant letter of Swift to her, to be referred to in the next chapter, forms the drop-scene of this curious comedy. Sir William Temple, with all an old man's dislike to any change in his habits, had soon begun to regret Swift's absence. Lady Temple died in January, 1695, and he felt very lonely now. 1 1 Lady Temple died about a month after Queen Mary. Lady Giffard declares, with characteristic family pride, that the two had 16 Dean Swift and his Writings. Letters soon began to arrive at Kilroot, inviting Swiffs return. To be a guest where he had formerly been a dependant, seemed to Swift a triumph. To come at Temple's express invitation, would place him in the posi- tion of one who grants instead of receiving favours. In May, 1696, therefore, Swift returned to England. He left the charge of Kilroot in the hands of the Oxford friend, Mr. Winder, and by the end of 1697 had formally resigned the living in his favour. Swift's last residence with Temple was very different to the two preceding. Treated as an honoured guest he was left to order things his own way. Temple saw few visitors, and was often confined to his room by illness. Swift had thus much time thrown on his hands. Most of this he devoted to reading. He took long walks in the neighbourhood, and he drew closer the bond between himself and Esther Johnson, now growing into woman- hood. He scribbled on subjects innumerable for his own amusement, and he revised his manuscript of the " Tale of a Tub." In 1697, when the Temples went to London to get a sight of Peter the Great, then on a visit to Eng- land, Swift remained behind as master of the house. " I live in great state," he says in a letter of the time, " and the cook comes in to know what I please to have for dinner. I ask very gravely what is in the house, and accordingly give orders for a dish of pigeons, or &c." But Swift had at last found an opening for his ambition in the political world. The patriotic enthusiasm which had produced the Revolution of 1688 had long since died away, and public life had again fallen back into the usual struggle for place, in which the victory was to the most dexterous or the most compliant. Swift may possibly been close personal friends, Lady Temple's own death being hastened by grief at her Majesty's. Sir William Temples Secretary. 17 have once had high ideas of civic virtue. But they had been crushed out by a miserable childhood and a youth of slavery ; and his sole aim was now the attainment, by fair means or foul, of personal distinction. "All my endeavours from a boy," he afterwards confessed to Pope, " 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." Nothing proves the truth of this statement more than that Swift at this, his entry into the political arena, should have attached himself to Lord Sunderland. The motto of that original genius had been, Thorough. When the bill for excluding the Duke of York from the throne was brought forward, he was the most determined of its supporters. When the Duke of York became king as James II., Sunderland promptly went over to the court, was chief agent in the prosecution of the seven bishops, and, to completely win the favour of his royal master, became a Catholic. As soon as James II. 's throne began to totter, Sunderland threw himself heart and soul into the cause of William of Orange ; and in 1697, after a period of diplomatic seclusion, the world learnt with astonish- ment that this arch-plotter, having won another sovereign's ear, had been made chamberlain of the royal household, sworn of the privy council, and named one of the lords justices who were to administer the government during the king's absence. Of Swift's relations to Sunderland the authorities, unfortunately, give us no information. It is not unnatural that the latter must have gladly availed himself of a supporter whose brilliant abilities later events so amply proved. It is possible, too, that Swift may at this time have taken some part in the pamphlet war that was being waged on the question of standing armies. But Swift's first political adventure was doomed to disap- 3 1 8 Dean Swift and his Writings. pointment. Except for a few kindred spirits, whose sym- pathy was an insult, Sunderland was utterly alone. Whigs and Tories readily joined together to attack one who was so hopelessly their superior in the baser arts of political warfare. In a few weeks' time the lord chamberlain, warned of a coming motion against him in the House of Commons, resigned. "Lord Sunderland fell," says Swift, with enigmatic brevity, " and I fell with him." A literary episode fortunately arose at this time to occupy his attention. The French writer Fontenelle had, in an unguarded moment, declared that the writers of the present day surpassed in every respect those of clas- sical times. Fontenelle had long been the standing butt of literary France, and his dictum was greeted with a universal howl. Defenders of the ancients started up on every side. The contest between the rival partisans soon grew so furious that its fame spread across the channel ; and the English wits, not to be outdone by their brethren of France, rushed with avidity to arms. Sir William Temple remembered the time when his appearance — vir pietate gravis — had stilled the fight between prerogative and liberty. He accordingly put forward a treatise on " Ancient and Modern Learning," which, it was hoped, would drive back the moderns in shame to their entrenchments. But he had yet to learn that men of letters heed not that scriptural maxim which bids a combatant make peace with his adversary quickly. His interference added fuel to the flames. Temple's essay received a prompt answer from the Rev. William Wotton. But this was only a beginning. Temple had, in his pamphlet, declared that the more remote the time, the better the authors. Msop and Phalaris were, according to him, the earliest of known authors. What fables were more delightful than those of ^Esop ? What letters so brilliant as those of Phalaris ? Sir William Temples Secretary, 19 Encouraged by Temple's dictum, the Hon. Charles Boyle, of Chiist Church, Oxford, published a new edition of the " Letters of Phalaris." The preface to Boyle's work contained an ironical reflection on Dr. Bentley, the greatest classical scholar of the day, afterwards master of Trinity College, Cambridge, but at that time keeper of the royal library in St. James's Palace. The latter promptly rushed into the fray on the side of the moderns. He proved that the- so-called letters of Phalaris were a clumsy forgery of later times, and overwhelmed Temple, Boyle, and all their following, with a torrent of sarcastic ridicule. An answer from Boyle and a rejoinder from Bentley soon appeared, till to the contest there seemed to be no end. It was now that Swift wrote his " Battle of the Books," cr, to give the work its full title, " A Full and True Account of the Battle Fought last Friday Between the Ancient and the Modern Books in St. James's Library." Though Swift, for Temple's sake, supports the cause of the ancients, the pamphlet is far more a satire than a polemic. The moderns in this celebrated battle begin by boasting of their originality — a claim scornfully derided by the ancients, and, after much mutual reviling, ancients and moderns confront one another in hostile array. The attention of the opposing forces is however suddenly drawn off by a dispute between a spider and a bee. iEsop, on behalf of the ancients, points to this as typical of the present wrangle. The spider has boasted of her web, all built with her own hands and from materials extracted out of her own person, while the bee is a freebooter over fields and gardens, and a universal plunderer of nature. The bee in answer laughs at the filthy cobweb, which is the only result of the spider's toil, and glories in the fact that his own goods are sought for from every corner of the 20 Dean Swift and his Writings. world. w^Esop gaily applies the fable, mutato nomine. The moderns, with all their boasted originality, says he, produce, like the spider, nothing but dirt and poison. The ancients, like the bee, acknowledge their indebtedness to the world in general, and just as the bee fills his hive with honey and wax, so we, says iEsop, furnish mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light. This taunt rouses the moderns to frenzy, and war is declared. Great interest is taken in its fortunes by the Olympian deities. Momus, god of laughter, resolves to champion the moderns, and goes to seek aid of the goddess of criticism. The description of this malignant demon is the gem of the whole pamphlet. She is discovered on the top of a snowy mountain in Nova Zembla, extended upon the spoils of numerous volumes, half devoured. Around, are her father and mother, Ignorance and Pride; her sister, Opinion ; and her children, Noise, Impudence, Dulness, Vanity, Positiveness, Pedantry, and Ill-manners. " It is I," she says, " who give wisdom to infants and idiots ; by me children grow wiser than their parents, by me beaux become politicians, and schoolboys judges of philosophy ; by me sophisters debate and conclude upon the depths of knowledge; and coffee-house wits, instinct by me, can correct an author's style, and display his minutest errors, without understanding a syllable of his matter or of his language." The goddess, in answer to Momus, tells various members of her family to attend the leaders of the moderns ; and the battle, which is described in true Homeric style, now begins. The great heroes of classical literature, Homer, Pindar, and Virgil, perform prodigies of valour, and bear down all before them. Temple, as general of a select band of moderns allied to the ancients, shows a vigour worthy of his cause. Bentley, whose uncouth scurrility has rendered him odious Sir William Temples Secretary. 21 even to his friends, sneaks up to the ancients' camp at nightfall and steals the armour of Phalaris and iEsop. Wotton, on a similar intention bent, throws a lance at Temple's sleeping form ; but the latter's henchman, Boyle, promptly avenges the outrage on his master. " As a young lion ... if chance a wild ass, with brayings importune, affront his ear, the generous beast, though loathing to distain his claws with blood so vile, yet much provoked by the offensive noise . . . hunts the noisy long-ear'd animal. So Wotton fled, so Boyle pursued." In vain Bentley comes to Wotton's aid. Boyle's fury grows the greater, and he hurls his lance with such tremendous force that Wotton and Bentley are transfixed at one fell blow. " As when a skilful cook has trussed a brace of woodcocks, he with one iron skewer pierces the tender sides of both, their, legs and wings close pinioned to the ribs ; so was this pair of friends transfixed, till down they fell, joined in their lives, joined in their deaths; so closely joined that Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over Styx for half his fare." With the " Battle of the Books " Swift's last residence at Moor Park came to an end. Sir William Temple had long been sinking under a complication of diseases, and he died on January 27, 1699. Swift had thoroughly enjoyed his last stay at Moor Park, and it is not unlikely that, during the last illness, Temple's better qualities alone had shown themselves, and that Swift's last memories of his patron were not unkindly. To Esther Johnson Temple's will left some land at Monistown, in the county of Wicklow, Ireland. To Swift Temple be- queathed a legacy of £100, and "the care, trust, and advantage of publishing his posthumous writings." The latter eventually appeared in five volumes. From their publication, which extended over ten years, Swift seems 22 Dean Swift and his Writings. to have derived a small profit. 1 But the task, which en- tailed much rearrangement and revision, was extremely irksome, and, moreover, involved Swift in long and bitter disputes with Lady Giffard. 1 From Swift's papers it appears that for the third part of Temple's Memoirs he received ,£40. There is no evidence to show what his gains were from the other four parts. CHAPTER II. AN ALLY OF THE WHIGS. Effect of circumstances on Swift's character— His position on Temple's death— Goes to Ireland as chaplain to Lord Berkeley — His various "disappointments— Obtains livings of Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan ; and the prebend of Dunlaven — His life at Dublin Castle — " Meditation on a Broomstick " — " Petition of Mrs. Harris on the loss of her purse '' — Swift settles at Laracor — His life there — Varina— Goes to London — "The Dissensions in Athens and Rome" — Swift intimate with the Whig leaders — The Act against Occasional Conformity — Settlement of Stella and Mrs. Dingley in Ireland— The Tisdall episode — The "Tale of a Tub " — Effects of this work — Toleration policy of the Whigs — Swift wavers in his allegiance to them — Comes to England in November, 1707, to obtain first-fruits for Irish Church. With the death of Sir William Temple the first part of Swift's career comes to an end. Henceforward he is his own master, and the steps he takes are of his own de- liberate choice. The preceding chapter has explained how great an influence the events of his education and early manhood had upon his character and aims. We have shown how the germ of pride, implanted in him by- nature, was fostered by circumstances till it became a domineering passion. In the succeeding chapters we shall show the variations of'this feeling, during the stress of early struggles, till its triumph in the very highest fields of social and political success ; and we shall trace its gradual 23 24 Dean Swift and his Writings. degeneration into cynicism, isolation, and misanthropy during the long years of an enforced and gloomy retire- ment. With this we have to chronicle the achievements of an active career, and to analyse the products of an original and fertile genius. The death of his patron left Swift completely stranded. He had resigned his Irish living, and he had as yet failed to obtain a fixed position as a writer or politician. His first step, says the autobiography, was to go to London and apply by petition to King William, who, it seems, had promised Sir William Temple to give Swift a prebend of Canterbury or Westminster. The Earl of Romney, a brother of the ill-fated Algernon Sidney, who was now in great favour at court, engaged to second the petition. Romney, a trifler and a debauchee, however, took no trouble in the matter ; and " Mr. Swift, having totally relied on this lord's honour, and having neglected to use any instrument of reminding his Majesty of the promise made to Sir William Temple, 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 June 29, 1699. He attended his lordship, who hnded near Waterford ; and Mr. Swift acted as secretary the whole journey to Dublin. But another person had so far in- sinuated himself into the earl's favour by telling him that the post of secretary was not proper 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." There were other disap- pointments in store ; and Swift, who was furious when his claims were disregarded, comments upon them with great An Ally of the Whigs. 25 bitterness. Just at this time the deanery of Derry fell vacant. Its disposal was entrusted to Lord Berkeley, and Swift confidently expected to obtain it. But the unscupu- lous secretary, " having received a bribe," persuaded his lordship to give the prize to Dr. Theophilus Bolton. The lord justice told Swift he was too young for a deanery, and put him off with the rectory of Agher, and the vicarage of Laracor and Rathbeggan in Meath. They were worth about £200 a year altogether — " not a third part of the deanery of Derry," Swift indignantly remarks. In the following year, September, 1700, the Archbishop of Dublin conferred upon him the prebend of Dunlaven in the cathedral of St. Patrick's. But this slight addition does not seem to have put Swift in a better humour. However, Lord Berkeley would have been far too great a man to quarrel with ; Swift concealed his disappoint- ment as well as he could, and settled down to his duties as chaplain at Dublin Castle. He thoroughly enjoyed a position in which his peculiar talent for the first time had full play. Of Lord Berkeley himself we hear little. Lady Berkeley, who had what would now be called strong Evangelical inclinations, was much attached to devotional books of the vapid type. Swift, part of whose duties was to read these productions to her ladyship, was one day instructed to take up a work which he held in especial horror — Boyle's Meditations. To revenge himself he, therefore, substituted for one of the passages in the text an invention of his own, entitled, " A Meditation upon a Broomstick," from which the following is extracted : — " This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest : it was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs ; but now in vain does the busy art of man 26 Dean Swift and his Writings. pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk. . . . When I beheld this I sighed and said within myself, ' Surely man is a broomstick ! Nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, until the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left them a withered trunk ; he then flies to art and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs (all covered with powder) that never grew on his head. " But a broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree standing on its head ; and pray what is man but a topsy-turvy creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where, his heels should be, grovelling on the earth ? And yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances, rakes into every slut's corner of nature, bringing hidden corruptions to the light, and raises a mighty dust where there was none before ; sharing deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to sweep away; his last days are spent in slavery to women, and generally the least deserving; till, worn out to the stumps, like his brother besom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of to kindle flames for others to warm themselves by." Lady Berkeley, who, like all persons of her stamp, had no sense of humour, derived great consolation from the above masterpiece. With Lord Berkeley's daughters, the Ladies Betty, Mary, and Penelope, Swift was a great favourite — the first of them remaining his friend and correspondent through life. They completely submitted to his autocratic ways, in return for which he regaled them with a rich flow of An Ally of the Whigs. 27 merriment and wit. As Lady Betty expressed it in a doggerel rhyme, tacked on to some verses of Swift's own, describing a card-party at the castle : — " With these is parson Swift, Not knowing how to spend his time, Does make a wretched shift, To deafen them with puns and rhyme.'' Of the latter the best which has survived is " The Petition of Mrs. Frances Harris." One of the servants having lost her purse raises the whole castle with her lamentations. All the other domestics are put under examination. Says Cary,says he, " I have been a servant this fiv.e-and-twenty years come spring, And in all the places I lived I never heard of such a thing." " Yes," says the steward, " I remember when I was at my Lord Shrewsbury's, Such a .hing as this happened iust about the time of gooseberries.'' Miss Frances taxes the wife of a footman with having taken it. " The devil take me!" said she (blessing herself), " if ever I saw't ! " So she roared like a bedlam, as though I had called her all to naught. So you know what could I say to her any more ? I e'en left her and came away as wise as I was before. At last Miss Harris applies to parson Swift for assist- ance in her search. " Parson," said I, " can you cast a nativity when a body's plundered ? " (Now you must know he hates to be called parson, like the devil!) " Truly," says he, " Mrs. Nab, it might become you to be more civil ; If your money be gone, as a learned divine says, d'ye see, You are no text for my handling ; so take that from me : I was never taken for a conjurer before, I'd have you to know." Eventually Lord Berkeley quiets the complainant by an ample present. 28 Dean Swift and his Writings. The poem is an instance of Swift's lightest and most humorous manner; it has special interest, moreover, owing to the insight it shows into the character of servants— a line subsequently developed by Swift in his " Advice to Servants." Some months after Swift's appointment to the living of Laracor he went down to take possession. It was situated in the county of Meath, about a mile and a half from the town of Trim. Swift arrived to find an ill-kept church, and a dilapidated parsonage. His first duty was to repair the one and rebuild the other. He laid out a garden, in which he imitated the Dutch tulip beds, straight canal, and quaint lines of willows which he remembered at Moor Park. As time went on he in- creased the amount of glebe, and endowed the parish with additional tithes purchased at his own cost. Re- garding his spiritual work there are few details. Tra- ditions regarding the eccentricities of himself and his clerk, Roger Coxe, subsequently grew up. But they are as authentic as the epigrams which have been attributed to Talleyrand, or the puns which have been fathered on Sydney Smith. In a letter to Archbishop King Swift speaks with sarcastic indifference of his " audiences of half a score " ; and it may be safely concluded that Swift, like most of the Irish churchmen of this time, was not actuated by strong missionary zeal. His ambition was political, not religious ; and his heart was far more set upon shaping the conduct of English statesmen than on saving the souls of a few Leinster peasantry. It was during this settlement at Laracor that his first love affair came to a termination. Reference has already been made to Miss Waring, the Varina whose fascinations had attracted Swift's attention at Kilroot. That lady had heard of the improvement made in Swift's position An Ally of the Whigs. 29 by his chaplaincy at Dublin Castle, and his living of Laracor. He had already offered her his heart, which it would seem, from the scanty evidence extant, had been accepted. When, however, she now pressed him to fulfil his promise, Swift began to draw back. A strange aversion to marriage, due partly to physical reasons, but more, we believe, to an overpowering sense of moral and intellectual isolation, had been upon him ever since he came to man's estate ; and the letter he now wrote to Miss Waring indicates a resolve to rid himself at all costs of an embarrassing intimacy. 1 Swift began with a long string of explanations and excuses. He expresses much concern at the lady's ill health, and trusts that nothing on his part is to blame for it. He thought that a full and clear statement of his position had been already made, but as she is not yet satisfied, he will answer her last letter, point by point. She has expressed some surprise at the altered style of his letters since his return to Ireland. This is not due, as she insinuates, to the fact of his having found another love. But he has tried to get her " from the company and place she is now in." Her present circle of friends is unworthy of her and hateful to himself, and seeing that she is possessed of means, she might have acquiesced in his suggestions and removed elsewhere. She must hold him in very slight regard to pay no attention to his requests. Her uncle Adam has been interfering in the matter. He has asked for a categorical statement of Swift's intentions, on the ground that the present con- dition of uncertainty was doing Miss Waring considerable harm. But Swift declares he has no wish to tie the lady down to a hard and fast engagement. His living of 1 The letter is dated Dublin, May 4, 1700. 3