Seldom orderly that it should be suspended. sunk in his spirits." can there have been a more striking example of what seemed vice being only woe. Swift all his life was a being with a dash of insanity in his blood, and the pride of Lucifer in his heart. For such a man what fate could be more terrible than to pass his youth penniless, parentless, and dependent for everything on the charity of an acrid uncle! The very fact that that uncle placed him in the best foundations, where were educated the sons of the wealthiest fathers in the land, could only add to the horrors of the situation. One can well imagine that fierce haughty youth, with harsh repellent features only partly redeemed by large eyes "quite azure as the heavens," stalking in threadbare clothes with empty pockets solitary about the courts, or sitting solitary in the classes, of old Trinity, hearing in the laughter of happier, well-clad, well-provided students jeers at his poverty, and in every rebuke of his teachers an insult put on him because of his wretched condition. No wonder that he should revolt against the authorities and neglect the studies of the place, that the examiners should refuse him his degree, and that after he had obtained it by special grace, his conduct should be so dis Uncle Godwin died, and Jonathan became the care of Uncle Dryden.1 Uncle Dryden was a poorer, but seems to have been a gentler man than Unole Godwin; but there is no evidence that his gentleness in any way checked the disorderly life Swift was leading at Trinity. That was ended, however, by the Revolution of 1688. When Ireland fell under Catholic rule, Swift, like many other Protestants, took refuge in England. 800n These were Swift's first experiences of Ireland. To his last day he hated Dublin University as the scene of his early miseries and degradations. When in 1692 he obtained his M. A. at Oxford, he wrote bitterly that "he was ashamed to be more obliged in a few weeks to strangers than in seven years to Dublin College." Perhaps if he had spent the seven years at Dublin College as well as he spent the four years before going to Oxford, he should have been as much obliged to Dublin College; and perhaps if he had been as disorderly at Oxford as he was at Dublin College, he never should have got a degree there at all. However, he arrived in England with hatred for Trinity and no love for Ireland in his heart, and no wish ever to 1 Swift's great-grandmother was a Dryden, and, the poet was Swift's cousin once removed. Not long before Swift died insane in Dublin, Dryden's last surviving son died insane at Canons Ashby. It is commonly assumed that Dryden's son inherited his insanity from his mother, who also died insane; but this coincidence is worth noticing, as is also the fact that considerable eccentricity existed in some other members of the Dryden family, and the Swifts descended from Elizabeth Dryden. return to either. His fortune in life compelled him to return to both, but he always returned with reluctance, and till his health rendered it difficult to do so, found frequent occasion to desert them and to pay visits to England, which at times lasted for years. We need not deal with the first six years he spent with Sir William Temple, first at Sheen and later at Moor Park, save to point out that he there retrieved the wasted years of his nonage by study so ardent and prolonged that probably it, and not the over-eating of fruit, was the cause of the vertigo from which he from time to time suffered during the rest of his life. When he obtained his Oxford M.A., he thought it was time to establish himself in life, and he applied to Temple to secure him an appointment. Temple not very warmly consented to do so, and found him a small office in the Rolls Court in Ireland. Swift declined it. He had, as he said, a scruple to enter the Church merely for a maintenance; now that he was offered a maintenance elsewhere this objection, he thought, no longer applied. He left Moor Park, set out on foot to Leicester, where his mother lived, being "passing rich on twenty pounds a year." From there he travelled to Dublin, was ordained deacon in October 1694 by the Bishop of Kildare, was made priest in January 1695, and in the same year was, probably through Temple's recommendation, presented by Lord Deputy Capel to the prebend of Kilroot, with a stipend of about £100 a year. Kilroot is a part of that district which slopes down from the hills of Antrim to the shores of Belfast Bay. It is a land of rushing streams and singing birds, and its surroundings recall to the memory of the travelled visitor Gibbon's "sweet country of Vaux." Over the bay lie the rolling richly-wooded fields of Down; across the Channel rise bluely in the far distance the mountains of Galloway, and on your right hand the ancient Norman Castle of Carrickfergus stands on its grey rook out among the waves like another Chillon. It was in these surroundings that the first of Swift's three love affairs began; and as wherever these love affairs began they all ended in Iréland, though they have little to do with Swift's feelings as to Ireland and things Irish, it is proper to trace them here. Among the families resident near Kilroot was one, a son of which Swift had known at Trinity. The family's name was Waring, a name still common enough about Belfast. Naturally before long Swift established friendly relations with the Warings, and soon he developed a passion for one of the daughters called Jane. Just as he did in his two subsequent love affairs, he conferred on Jane a pet 1 He obtained his D.D. in Trinity in February 1701. name-Varina, The passion Lady Giffard, Sir William's continued to grow stronger sister-in-law, resided there. and stronger till the May of She had a waiting - woman 1696. Then Swift was pre- known as Mrs Johnson, and paring to return to Sir William Mrs Johnson had ୫ little Temple, and before doing so he delicate child of six years proposed to Varina in a vehe- called Esther. Who Mrs ment letter that she should Johnson was, or who Esther's await till he had acquired a father was, is not certain to position worthy of her, and this day. Writing forty years then become his bride. Varina later on Esther's death, Swift returned an evasive answer, says that Mr Johnson was a and Swift resigned his living younger son of a Nottinghamand returned to Moor Park. shire gentleman, and that Mrs Johnson belonged to a lower class, adding significantly that "indeed" the little girl "had little to boast of her birth.” The ordinary opinion was that Esther was the natural daughter of Temple himself; and this is not rendered the less likely by the fact that in features she closely resembled him, and on his death he bequeathed her £1000 and some leasehold property in Ireland. Whosoever's daughter she may have been, to all the world save Swift she remained Esther Johnson all her life, even after her alleged marriage to Swift. He, as he had done with his previous love, gave her a pet name-Stella-and by that pet name she is likely to be remembered as long as the world lasts. Swift's return to Moor Park was due to the urgent and repeated requests to do so from Sir William Temple. The aged statesman, now in declining health, had felt the loss of Swift's services deeply, and now implored him to come back to be his friend, companion, and man of affairs. Temple had been very much the fine gentleman towards his poorly-paid secretary; but from this return till his death his bearing was different. When in 1698 he died, he by his will left Swift £100, and appointed him his literary executor; and Swift, in ehronioling his last illness, wrote, "with him died all that was good and amiable among men. "1 What, from a literary and historical point, is ten times of more importance, is this: it was during this short second residence with Temple that Swift's second love affair began. When he first entered Temple's service at Sheen, Macaulay's account of the beginning of Swift's second love affair is sufficiently ridiculous: "An eccentric, uncouth, disagreeable young Irishman, who had narrowly escaped plucking at Dublin, 1 Again in 1709, when Temple had been long dead and Swift long famous, he refers with affection and respect to his old friend in the Apology prefixed to 'The Tale of a Tub.' attended Sir William as an amanuensis for board and twenty pounds a year; dined at the second table, wrote bad verses in praise of his employer, and made love to a very pretty, dark-eyed, young girl who waited waited on Lady Giffard. Little did Temple imagine that the coarse exterior of his dependant concealed a genius equally suited to politics and to letters-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 or of Abelard." Macaulay here seems to confuse the Swift of 1688 with the Swift of 1696, and Stella with her mother. When Swift went to Sheen in 1688, Stella was a sickly child in her seventh year; when he left Moor Park in 1693, she was still a sickly child and in her thirteenth year. It is not likely there could be many love passages between a grown man and a delicate girl of such an age. When he came back to Moor Park in 1696, the position was very different. Swift was no longer merely an uncouth young Irishman who had narrowly escaped plucking in Dublin, but a very learned M. A. of Oxford; and he was no longer the humble dependant of Sir William Temple, but a clergyman who, at Temple's entreaty, had resigned his benefice to be the companion and trusted friend of the old statesman during his declining years. other hand, Stella was not, but her mother was, waitingwoman to Lady Giffard — a position Mrs Johnson continued to to hold long after Stella had left Moor Park. And Stella had changed much since 1693. She was now in her sixteenth year, and was a charming young woman in excellent health, and, as Swift says, with "hair as black as the raven's wing." It was then that the long unprosperous love began. ous love began. So little love was there between them before their second meeting that, as we have seen, Swift had, as his last act before returning to Moor Park, proposed marriage to another woman. Indeed, in later life, he seems sometimes to have forgotten that he had ever met her before 1696. Thus, in birthday poem sent to her twenty-two years after this second meeting, he writes "Since first I saw thee at sixteen, The brightest virgin on the green." It is impossible to believe that an all-knowing person like Macaulay did not know this; but he wanted to paint an arresting picture, and when he did so he was not the man to spoil it for a ha'porth of paint. The death of Temple, in 1698, broke up the household at Moor Park. Swift edited Temple's literary remains, and quarrelled with Temple's family over the job; Mrs Johnson remained with Lady Giffard as waiting-woman and companion; Stella, though still only in her eighteenth year, left her mother and retired to the country with another member of the household, Mrs Dingley, where they lived together in the closest friendship. The legacies Temple had left Stella brought in some £125 a year, and Mrs Dingley had an annuity of £28; so between them they had, as money went in those days, sufficient, but not more than sufficient, to live on in comfort. One immense advantage Swift derived from his long residence with Sir William Temple: he came to know and be known to many of those who were then called "the great," from King William himself downwards. King William had taught him, in the gardens of Moor Park, how to out and eat asparagus in the Dutch style, and had, before his ordination, offered to give him a captaincy of dragoons, which he declined; and, after his ordination, promised to present him to a prebend of the Church, which he was very willing to accept. When Swift had edited Temple's literary remains, he dedicated the book to King William, and then applied to him to keep his promise. But with the death of Temple the King seems to have forgotten the existence of Swift; and so at length, becoming sick of applying for what there was no chance of receiving, Swift sought the assistance of less exalted acquaintances. One of those whose help he asked was Lord Berkeley. It happened his lordship was just then about to start for Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, and he offered to appoint Swift his secretary. In default of anything better, Swift accepted, and started once more for his native but unloved land. Here When he arrived at Dublin his troubles once more began. Some one persuaded Lord Berkeley that a clergyman was not a proper person to be secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, and Lord Berkeley dismissed Swift, but promised him, as a solatium, the valuable Deanery of Derry. another disappointment awaited him. It was announced that another candidate had been chosen; but two of the Lord Lieutenant's household informed Swift privately that he could still have the Deanery if he handed them £1000. Swift had not £1000 to hand them, and if he had, the man who hesitated to enter the Church for a livelihood was not likely to buy a livelihood in it with a bribe. He glared at the two place-mongers with fury in his sky-blue eyes. "God confound you both for a pair of scoundrels!" he said, and left the room. This was Swift's first experience of the way things were managed in Ireland, and he had plenty more of such displays of public spirit later on. The place-mongers were |