his place at Kilroot, but he resigned the living in 1698.

His last stay at Moor Park continued till the death of Temple in January, 1699. The relations of Swift to his patron appear now to have been very cordial, and Swift found his old pupil Esther Johnson rapidly developing into womanhood. She was not quite

fifteen when Swift returned to Moor Park. "I knew her," Swift afterwards wrote, "from six years old, and had some share in her education by directing what books she should read, and perpetually instructing her in the principles of honour and virtue from which she never swerved in any one action or moment of her life. She was sickly from her childhood until about the age of fifteen, but then grew into perfect health, and was looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young women in London, only a little too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of her face in perfection. . . . Never was any of her sex born with better gifts of the mind, or who more improved them by reading and conversation."

It is remarkable that a writer who was destined to become the greatest of English humourists, and one of the greatest masters of English prose, should have wholly failed to discover his true talents before his twenty-ninth year. There is some reason to believe that the first sketch of "The Tale of a Tub" was written at Kilroot, but it was on his return to Moor Park in 1697 that this great work assumed its complete form, though it was not published till 1704. To the same period also belongs that exquisite piece of humour, "The Battle of the Books," the one lasting

fruit of the silly controversy about the comparative merits of the ancient and modern writers which then greatly occupied writers both in France and England, and into which Temple, though totally destitute of classical scholarship, had foolishly flung himself. Of the merits of the controversy which such scholars as Bentley and Wotton waged with the Christ Church wits, the world has long since formed its opinion; but the fact that the burlesque was intended to ridicule the party who were incontestably in the right does not detract from its extraordinary literary merits. It appears to have been written to amuse or gratify Temple, and it was not published till 1704.

Temple left Esther Johnson a small landed property in Ireland, where she lived with Mrs. Dingley, a distant relative of Temple, who became her lifelong companion, and was herself the possessor of a small competence. Swift urged upon them that living was much cheaper, and the rate of interest higher in Ireland than in England, and it was by his advice that they went over to Ireland in 1708. To Swift, Temple left a small legacy, and the charge and profit of publishing a collected edition of his works, which he duly accomplished in five volumes. He dedicated them to the king, who, however, did nothing for him; but he became chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, who had been appointed one of the Lords Justices in Ireland, and he lived with him for some time at Dublin Castle. As was not unusual with Swift, he considered that he was much neglected, and he expressed his indignation in no measured terms. The post of secretary, which he thought should have

gone with that of chaplain, was given to another, and he failed in his application for the rich deanery of Derry. He obtained, however, the small living of Laracor, near Trim, in the county of Meath, and two or three other pieces of almost sinecure Church patronage. The united income seems to have been about £230. The congregation at Laracor was not more than about fifteen, and when he endeavoured to introduce a weekly service he is said to have found himself alone with his clerk. After a certain time he followed the example which was then so common in the Irish Church of leaving the duties of Laracor to a curate, but it is remarkable that he enlarged the glebe from one acre to twenty acres, and endowed the church with tithes which he had himself bought, and it is still more remarkable that he made a provision in his will that the tithes should pass to the poor in the event of the disestablishment of the Church.

Swift was already moving familiarly in the best society connected with the government of Ireland. His dispute with Lord Berkeley led to no breach; he speaks with much respect and affection of Lady Berkeley, and with one of the daughters, Lady Betty Germaine, he formed one of those long, warm, and steady friendships which are among the most characteristic features of his life. He was chaplain to the Duke of Ormond, who became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1703, and to the Earl of Pembroke, who succeeded him, and in many visits to London he soon became a familiar figure among the writers and politicians of the metropolis. The "Discourse on the Contests and Dissensions in Athens and Rome," which is his earliest political writing, was published

anonymously in 1701. It was written when the two Houses of Parliament were in conflict about the proposed impeachment by the Tory party of Somers and three other Whig ministers who had taken part in the Partition treaty, and it was intended to support the House of Lords in resisting that impeachment. At the same time, though it was a Whig pamphlet, probably composed under the influence of Lord Berkeley, those who read it carefully will easily perceive that it is in no essential respects inconsistent with the later writings of the author when he was the great supporter of the Tory party. The Church questions which chiefly determined his later policy were not here at issue. The evils of party spirit, the necessity of preserving a balance of power in the State, the opposite dangers to be feared from the despotism of an individual and from the despotism of a majority, the wisdom of making great changes in government so gradually that the old forms may continue unbroken, and the new elements may be slowly and insensibly incorporated into themare all familiar topics in his later writings. In an age when reporting and newspaper criticism were still unborn, the political pamphlet exercised an enormous influence, and the pamphlet of Swift, though much less remarkable than several which he afterwards wrote, excited considerable attention, and was attributed to Bishop Burnet. The true authorship was soon known, and it strengthened his social position in London. He became intimate with Somers and several of the Whig leaders, and it is from this time that may be dated that friendship with Addison which, in spite of great differences of political opinion and still greater differences of charac

ter, was never wholly eclipsed. The copy of his Italian travels which Addison presented to Swift may still be seen bearing the well-known autograph inscription, "To Dr. Jonathan Swift-the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age." Swift afterwards speaks of the many evenings he had spent alone with Addison, never wishing for a third. He described Addison as one who had "virtue enough to give reputation to an age," and he consented at the advice of Addison to cut out some eighty lines of his "Baucis and Philemon," and to alter many others.

"Whoever has a true value for Church and State," Swift wrote at a later period, "should avoid the extremes of Whig for the sake of the former and the extremes of Tory on account of the latter." In these words we have the true key to his politics. He was at no period of his life a Jacobite. He fully and cordially accepted the Revolution, and either never held the Tory doctrine of the divine right of kings, or at least accepted the king de facto as the rightful sovereign. As long as the question was mainly a question of dynasty he was frankly Whig, and it was natural that a young man who was formed in the school of Temple should have taken this side. On the other hand, Swift was beyond all things a Churchman, and was accustomed to subordinate every other consideration to the furtherance of Church interests. In each period of his life this intense ecclesiastical sentiment appears. Coarse and irreverent as are many passages in the "Tale of a Tub," which was published in 1704, the main purport of the book was to defend the Church of England, by pouring a torrent of ridicule and