9

10

11

so much pleased that he detained him two years in his house. Here he became known to King William, who sometimes visited Temple when he was disabled by the gout, and, being attended by Swift in the garden, shewed him how to cut asparagus in the Dutch way2.

King William's notions were all military, and he expressed his kindness to Swift by offering to make him a captain of horse 3.

When Temple removed to Moor-park he took Swift with him; and when he was consulted by the Earl of Portland about the expedience of complying with a bill then depending for making parliaments triennial, against which King William was strongly prejudiced, after having in vain tried to shew the Earl that the proposal involved nothing dangerous to royal power, he sent Swift for the same purpose to the King. Swift, who probably was proud of his employment, and went with all the confidence of a young man, found his arguments and his art of displaying them made totally ineffectual by the predetermination of the King*, and used to mention this disappointment as his first antidote against vanity 5.

Before he left Ireland he contracted a disorder, as he thought, by eating too much fruit. The original of diseases is commonly obscure. Almost every boy eats as much fruit as he can get, without any great inconvenience. The disease of Swift was giddiness with deafness, which attacked him from time to time, began very early, pursued him through life, and at last sent him to the grave deprived of reason".

Swift tells us that when Temple, at the age of forty-seven, had the gout 'he grew very melancholy. He said a man was never good for anything after it.... Nobody,' he added, 'should make love after forty, nor be in business after fifty.' Temple's Works, Pref. p. 27.

2 Deane Swift, p. 108. See Swift's Works, i. 25 n., for Swift's making his bookseller eat the stalks of asparagus on his plate, because King William always ate them.

3 Deane Swift, p. 108. For the King's indifference to literature see ante, ADDISON, 17.

Craik, p. 514. The bill was rejected in March, 1693. The rejecting a bill, though an unquestionable right of the Crown, has been so

Being much oppressed at Moor-park by this grievous malady, 12 he was advised to try his native air, and went to Ireland; but, finding no benefit, returned to Sir William, at whose house he continued his studies, and is known to have read, among other books, Cyprian and Irenæus2. He thought exercise of great necessity, and used to run half a mile up and down a hill every two hours 3.

It is easy to imagine that the mode in which his first degree 13 was conferred left him no great fondness for the University of Dublin, and therefore he resolved to become a Master of Arts at Oxford. In the testimonial which he produced the words of disgrace were omitted 5, and he took his Master's degree (July 5, 1692) with such reception and regard as fully contented him ".

years that they have begun to come together.' Mrs. Delany's Auto. p. 501.

Dr. Bucknill in Brain, Jan. 1882, proves that these two maladies of giddiness and deafness had their common origin in a disease in the region of the ear, to which the name of Labyrinthine vertigo has been given.... Nothing that could be called insanity came on, until this physical and local malady produced paralysis, a symptom of which was the not uncommon one of aphasia.... As a consequence of that paralysis, but not before, the brain, already weakened by senile decay, at length gave way.' Craik, p. 561. See also Letters of Swift to Chetwode, p. 45, and post, SWIFT, 106. [In W. R. Wilde's Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life, &c., Dublin, 1849, the whole course of these symptoms is discussed from the pathological point of view.]

I

Craik, p. 514. On Feb. 14, 1691-2, he wrote: I returned from Ireland about half a year ago.' Works, xv.243.

2 'I have lying before me a book of extracts from St. Cyprian and St. Irenaeus taken by Swift in 1697.' Deane Swift, p. 276. 'A sort of cant or jargon of certain heretics,' found in Irenaeus, is quoted on the title-page of The Tale of a Tub.' Works, x. 170 n.

3 'This exercise he performed in about six minutes; backwards and forwards it was about half a mile.' Deane Swift, p. 272. In 1733 he wrote to Pope, who was forty-five :'At your time of life I could have

leaped over the moon.' Works, xviii. 124. At Letcombe, where he resided in 1714 (post, SWIFT, 61), 'there is a hill,' wrote Bowles in 1806, which the village tradition says he was in the habit of running up every morning before breakfast.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 315.

* In 1724 Swift wrote from Dublin:-The discipline in Oxford is more remiss than here.' Letters to Chetwode, p. 155. See also ib. pp. 156-9. In 1735, contrasting Dublin with Oxford and Cambridge, he wrote: A fellowship is here obtained with great difficulty by the number of candidates, the strict examination in many branches of learning, and the regularity of life and manners.' Works, xviii. 241. See also ib. viii. 229.

In the March List of Deaths in Gent. Mag. 1734, p. 164, is the following:- The Rev. Mr. Edward Ford, M.A., jun. Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, being shot by the Schollars, having render'd himself unacceptable to them, tho' a very pious Man.'

5 These words were never entered in any testimonium, which merely states the fact of a degree being taken.' Johnson's Works, viii. 194 n. Orrery foolishly asserts that it was thought at Oxford 'that the words signified a degree conferred in reward of extraordinary diligence or learning.' Remarks, p. 12.

6

He entered Hart Hall. Craik, P. 515. This Hall had been also

14

While he lived with Temple he used to pay his mother at Leicester an yearly visit. He travelled on foot, unless some violence of weather drove him into a waggon2, and at night he would go to a penny lodging, where he purchased clean sheets for sixpence 3. This practice Lord Orrery imputes to his innate love of grossness and vulgarity: some may ascribe it to his desire of surveying human life through all its varieties; and others, perhaps with equal probability, to a passion which seems to have been deep fixed in his heart, the love of a shilling 5.

15 In time he began to think that his attendance at Moor-park deserved some other recompence than the pleasure, however mingled with improvement, of Temple's conversation; and grew so impatient that (1694) he went away in discontent.

16 Temple, conscious of having given reason for complaint, is said to have made him Deputy Master of the Rolls in Ireland', which, according to his kinsman's account, was an office which he knew him not able to discharge 8. Swift therefore resolved to enter into the Church, in which he had at first no higher hopes

known as Hertford or Hert Hall. For its transformations into Hertford College, Magdalen Hall, and, a second time, into Hertford College, see The University Calendar under HERTFORD COLLEGE. Swift wrote to his uncle, William Swift:-'I never was more satisfied than in the behaviour of the University of Oxford to me.' Works, xv. 244.

Swift wrote from London in 1711: The young fellows here have begun a kind of fashion to walk, and many of them have got swinging strong shoes on purpose; it has got as far as several young lords.' Works, ii. 395. In 1728 the Wesleys, who began to perform their journeys on foot, 'thought it a discovery that four or five and twenty miles are an easy and safe day's journey.' Southey's Wesley, 1846, i. 52.

2 Roderick Random and Strap, in one day's quick walking, overtook the Newcastle and London wagon, though it had two days' start. rick Random, ch. x.

Rode

3 I have often heard him say that he took particular care to keep clear of being lodged in the same bed with the clowns he conversed with; and

6 Works, xv. 246.

7 Charles II gave Temple 'the reversion of the Master of the Rolls' place in Ireland, after his father [Sir John Temple].' Temple's Works, Preface, p. 27. [The patent bears date April 7, 1664. He received the actual appointment on Nov. 23, 1677, exercising it by deputy until 1689, when he was removed. Liber Hiberniae, vol. i, The Establishments of Ireland, pt. 2, p. 20.] Swift says that the post in the Rolls Office offered him was worth about £120 a year. Craik, p. 515.

8 Deane Swift, App. p. 49.

9 He wrote to Lord Peterborough in 1711: My ambition is to live in England, and with a competency to support me with honour. The minis

than of the chaplainship to the Factory at Lisbon'; but, being recommended to Lord Capel, he obtained the prebend of Kilroot in Connor of about a hundred pounds a year 2.

But the infirmities of Temple made a companion like Swift so 17 necessary, that he invited him back, with a promise to procure him English preferment, in exchange for the prebend which he desired him to resign3. With this request Swift complied, having perhaps equally repented their separation, and they lived on together with mutual satisfaction; and, in the four years that passed between his return and Temple's death, it is probable that he wrote The Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books 5.

Swift began early to think, or to hope, that he was a poet, 18 and wrote Pindarick Odes to Temple', to the King, and to the Athenian Society, a knot of obscure men, who published a periodical pamphlet of answers to questions, sent, or supposed to be sent, by Letters. I have been told that Dryden, having perused these verses, said, 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet 10'; and

Ib. p. 247.

2 Craik, p. 515. He was ordained deacon on Oct. 25, 1694, and priest on Jan. 13, 1694-5. Ib. p. 48.

3 He returned to England in May, 1696. Works, xv. 251. Swift's sister wrote of Temple in 1699:-' He made my brother give up his living to stay with him, and promised to get him one in England; but death came in between, and has left him unprovided both of friend and living.' lb. p. 260.

4 Swift, in 1700, described Temple as a good master, and the best friend in the world.' Temple's Works, Preface, p. 26. To Stella he wrote on April 3, 1711:-'I warned Mr. Secretary [St. John] never to appear cold to me, for I would not be treated like a schoolboy; that I had felt too much of that in my life already (meaning Sir William Temple).' Works, ii. 214. See also ib. xvii. 26, for Lord Palmerston (a Temple by birth) reproaching Swift with ingratitude to the family, and the Dean's rough reply.

5 Swift says that 'the greatest part' of the first was finished in

1696, and the second in 1697. Ib.

X. 14, 210.

6

Ante, COWLEY, 143. Swift wrote to his cousin Mr. (afterwards Rev. Dr.) Swift, of Puttenham, co. Surrey, on May 3, 1692, from Moor Park:'I esteem the time of studying poetry to be 2 hours in a morning, and that onely when the humor fits, which I esteem to be the flower of the whole day,... and yet I seldom write about [? above] 2 stanzaes in a week, I mean such as are to any Pindarick ode... I have a sort of vanity or foibless, I do not know what to call it. . . . It is... that I am over fond of my own writings, I would not have the world think so, and I find when I writt [?write] what pleases me, I am Cowley to myself, and can read a hundred times over.' Hist. MSS. Com. vii. App. p. 680. [Swift's correspondent was his 'little parson cousin' Thomas Swift, who affected to talk suspiciously as if he had some share in' The Tale of a Tub. Works, xv. 345.] 7 In 1689. Ib. xiv. 13.

8 Ib. p. 21. It is written in quatrains-in imitation of Dryden's lines on Cromwell.

9 lb. p. 23. For Swift's letter to the Society see ib. xv. 242.

10 Malone, in his Dryden, i. 241,

19

20

that this denunciation was the motive of Swift's perpetual malevolence to Dryden'.

In 1699 Temple died, and left a legacy with his manuscripts to Swift, for whom he had obtained from King William a promise of the first prebend that should be vacant at Westminster or Canterbury 3.

That this promise might not be forgotten, Swift dedicated to the King the posthumous works with which he was intrusted*; but neither the dedication, nor tenderness for the man whom he once had treated with confidence and fondness, revived in King William the remembrance of his promise. Swift awhile attended the Court; but soon found his solicitations hopeless 5.

21 He was then invited by the Earl of Berkeley to accompany him into Ireland as his private secretary; but after having done the business till their arrival at Dublin, he then found that one Bush had persuaded the Earl that a Clergyman was not a proper secretary, and had obtained the office for himself. In a man. like Swift such circumvention and inconstancy must have excited violent indignation.

22

But he had yet more to suffer. Lord Berkeley had the disposal of the deanery of Derry, and Swift expected to obtain it, but by the secretary's influence, supposed to have been secured by a bribe, it was bestowed on somebody else'; and Swift was

3 lb. p. 515.

It was the first two volumes of Letters that he dedicated, in 1700. Works, ix. 103; Temple's Works, i. 225.

5 Craik, p. 515. 'That frequent expression, upon the word of a King, I have always despised and detested, for a thousand reasons.' SWIFT, Works, xii. 158.

6

Craik, p. 516; Works, 1803, i. 108. Berkeley, in 1699, was made one of the three Lords Justices (ante, TICKELL, 16). Craik, p. 515. For The Discovery, satirical lines on him and Bush, see Works, xiv. 59.

7 Swift says a bribe was given. Craik, p. 516. Sheridan adds that Bush, with Berkeley's knowledge, told Swift that he could still have the Deanery 'if he would lay down £1,000. To which he made no other answer but this:-"God confound