each other this account is compiled. It is not thought neceffary to relate every trifling particular that has been recorded, but only to felect fuch as will fufficiently diflinguish the peculiarities of his character and manners, and tranfmit a knowledge of him to pofterity, of the fame kind, if not in the fame degree, as was obtained by those among his contemporaries, who were admitted to his converfation and friendship.

For the hiftory of his works the reader is referred to them, and to the notes and remarks that are now added. Doctor Jonathan Swift was defcended from a younger branch of an ancient family of that name in Yorkshire. Bernam Swift, efq; who, in the reign of king James the Firft, poffeffed the paternal eftate, was, on the 20th of March, 1627, by king Charles the First created a pecr of Ireland, with the title of viscount Carlingford; though it is faid he never went into that kingdom. He died without male iffue, and the family-inheritance defcended to his daughters, one of whom married Robert Fielding, efq; commonly called handfome Fielding, and the other the earl of Eglington. Fielding foon diffipated his wife's pa trimony; and, that of her fifter being transferred to the family of lord Eglington, the principal eftate of the Swifts was divided from the name for ever. One of the younger branches from the fame ftem was fir Edward Swift, whe diftinguished himself by his attachment to the royal caufe in the great rebellion of 1641, from whom there is no defcendant of the name.

Another of the younger branches was the reverend Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich, in Herefordshire, with which he also held another ecclefiaftical living.

His father William Swift, rector of St. Andrew's in Can terbury, married the heiress of Philpot, who contrived to keep her eftate, which was very considerable, in her own hands; fhe is faid to have been extremely capricious and ill-natured, and to have difinherited her fon Thomas, an only child, merely for robbing an orchard when he was a boy; but, however this be, it is certain, that except a church or chapter lease, which was not renewed, Thomas

Sketch.

never poffeffed more than one hundred pounds a year; this little eftate, which lay at Goodrich, he mortgaged for three hundred broad pieces, and having quilted them into his waistcoat, he fet out for Ragland Caftle, whither his majefty king Charles the First had retired after the battle of Nafeby. The governor, who well knew him, afked what was his errand; I am come, faid Swift, to give his majefly my coat, at the fame time pulling it off and prefenting it: the governor told him pleasantly that his coat was worth little; why then, faid Swift, take my waistcoat; this was foon found to be an ufeful garment by its weight; and it is remarked by lord Clarendon, that the king received no fupply more feafonable or acceptable than these three hundred broad pieces during the whole war, his diftrefs being then very great, and his refources cut off. The zeal and activity of this gentleman for the royal cause exposed him to much danger and many fufferings; he was plundered more than thirty times by the parliament's army, he was ejected from his church-livings, his eftate was fequestered, and he was himself thrown into prifon. His eftate however was afterwards recovered, and part of it fold to pay the money due on the mortgage, and fome other debts; the remainder, being about one half, defcended to his heir, and is now poffeffed by his greatgrandfon, Deane Swift, efq *.

This Mr. Thomas Swift married Mrs. Elizabeth Dryden, of an ancient family in Huntingdonshire, fifter to the father of John Dryden the poet; by whom he had ten fons and four daughters; of the fons, fix furvived him, Godwin, Thomas, Dryden, William, Jonathan, and Adam.

Thomas was bred at Oxford, and took orders; he mar◄ ried the eldest daughter of fir William D'Avenant, but died young, and left only one fon, whose name also was Thomas, and who died in 1752 rector of Put- Sketth tenham in Surry, a benefice which he had pof- and note. feffed threefcore years.

* The grandmother of this gentleman, one of the wives of Godzvin Swift, was heiress to

admiral Deane, whence Deane became a Chriftian name in the family.

B 2

God-win

Godtvin was a barrifter of Gray's-Inn, and William, Dryden, Jonathan, and Adam, were attornies.

Godwin having married a relation of the old marchionefs of Ormond, the old duke of Ormond made him his attorney-general in the palatinate of Tipperary in Ireland. Ireland was at this time almost without lawyers, the rebellion having made almoft every man of whatever condition a foldier. Godwin therefore determined to attempt the acquifition of a fortune in that kingdom, and the fame motives induced his four brothers to go with him. Godwin foon became wealthy, and the reft obtained fomething more than a genteel competence, though Dryden and Jonathan, who died foon after their arrival, had little to bequeath.

Jonathan at the age of about three and twenty, and before he went to Ireland, married Mrs. Abigail Erick, of Leicestershire; the family of this lady was defcended from Erick the Forefter, who raised an army to oppofe William the Conqueror, by whom he was vanquished, and afterwards made commander of his forces. But, whatever was the honour of her lineage, her fortune was fmall, and, about two years after her marriage, she was left a widow with one child, a daughter, and pregnant with another, having no means of fubfiftence but an annuity of twenty pounds, which her husband had purchafed for her in England, immediately after his marriage.

In this diftrefs fhe was taken with her daughter into the family of Godwin, her husband's eldest brother, and on the 30th of November, 1667, about feven months after her husband's death, fhe was delivered of a fon, whom the called Jonathan in remembrance of his father, and who was afterwards the celebrated dean of St. Patrick's.

Of all the brothers of Mrs. Swift's husband, Godwin only had fons; and by these fons she was fubD. S. P. fifted in her old-age, as the had been before by their father and their uncles, with fuch liberality, that the declared herself not only happy but rich.

23.

It

It happened, by whatever accident, that Jonathan was not fuckled by his mother, but by a nurse, who was a native of Whitehaven; and when he was about a year old, her affection for him was become fo ftrong, that finding it neceffary to vifit a relation who was dangeroufly fick, and from whom the expected a legacy, the found means to convey the child on fhip-board, without the knowledge of his mother or his uncle, and carried him with her to Whitehaven: at this place he continued rear three years; for, when the matter was difcovered, his mother fent orders not to hazard a fecond voyage, till he should be better able to bear it. The nurfe however gave other teftimonies of her affection to Jonathan, for, during his stay at Whitehaven, he had taught him to fpell, and when he was five years old he was able to read any chapter in the bible.

Mrs. Swift, about two years after her husband's death, quitted the family of Mr. Godwin Swift in Ireland, and retired to Leicester, the place of her nativity; but her fon was again carried to Ireland by his nurfe, and replaced under the protection of his uncle Godrvin.

It has been generally believed that Swift was born in England, a mistake to which many incidents befides this have contributed; he had been frequently heard to say, when the people of Ireland difpleafed him, I am not ⚫ of this vile country, I am an Englishman.' Mr. Pope alfo, in one of his letters to him, mentions England as his native country; but this account of his birth is taken from that which he left behind him in his own handwriting; and while he lived, he was so far from seriously denying or concealing his being a native of Ireland, that he often mentioned, and even pointed out, the house in which he was born.

He has also been thought by fome to have been a natural fon of fir William Temple, a mistake which was probably founded upon another; for till the publication of his letter to lord Palmerfton, among his pofthumous works, he was thought to have See vol. received fuch favours from fir William, as he

xii. p. 98.

could

could not be fuppofed to bestow upon a perfon to whom he was not related; however, fuch a relation between fir William and the Dean appears beyond contradiction to have been impoffible, for fir William Temple was refident abroad in a public character from the year 1665 to 1670, as may be proved by his letters to the earl of 4rlington and the reft of the miniftry. Swift was born in November, 1667, and his mother was never out of the British dominions.

Orrery,
P. 5.

1673.

1681.

At about the age of fix years he was fent to the fchool of Kilkenny, and, having con tinued there eight years, he was at the age of fourteen admitted into the univerfity of Dublin, and became a ftudent in Trinity college. There he lived in perfect regularity, and obeyed the ftatutes with the utmoft exactnefs; but he was fo Sketch. much depreffed by the difadvantages of his fituation, deriving his prefent fubfiftence merely from the precarious bounty of an uncle, and having no other object of hope but the continuance of it, that he could not refift the temptation to neglect many neceffary objects of academic study, to which he was not by nature much inclined, and apply himself wholly to books of history and poetry, by which he could, without intellectual labour, fill his mind with pleafing images, and for a while fufpend the sense of his condition. The facrifice of the future to the prefent, whether it be a folly or a fault, is feldom unpunished, and Swift foon found himself in the fituation of a man who had burned his bed to warm his hands, for at the end of

1685. four years he was refused his degree of batchelor of arts for infufficiency, and was at laft admitted Speciali gratia, which is there confidered as the highest degree of reproach and dishonour.

But upon Swift this punishment was not ineffectual, he dreaded the repetition of fuch difgrace as the last evil that could befal him, and therefore immediately fet about to prevent it as the principal business of his life. During feven years from that time he ftudied eight

hours