years, of dwelling on this early visit to England, as he thought it took away something of what he held to be the stigma of his Irish birth. When he came back to Dublin, it was only to spend a short time with his mother: two years later he was sent by his uncle to Kilkenny School, and there, with William Congreve for his school-fellow, he remained until, at fourteen, he was entered as a pensioner at Trinity College, Dublin. Justly or unjustly, Swift retained a bitter recollection of his boyhood and of the niggardly charity doled out by his uncle Godwin. It would not be fair to accept Swift's reminiscences, darkened by his natural misanthropy, as a certain gauge of his uncle's conduct. Swift treated his own past with little complacency of memory, and the severe judgment which he passed on himself perhaps tinctured his judgment of others. Naturally Swift rebelled against the somewhat slavish routine which then governed the College studies. But the extent of his rebellion against rule is matter of doubt: wearied, perhaps, with the common talk of early genius emancipating itself by the force of its own superiority from rule, he was wont to set down his College career in plain terms as that of a dunce. The stories of his rebellion against rule are probably as exaggerated as those of his dulness. A copy of the College roll for Easter 1685, recording the doings of the undergraduates, has been preserved. Swift did 'badly' in Physics: 'creditably' in Greek and Latin: 'carelessly' in his Theme. Strictly, such a result might have delayed his degree for a year; but 'by a special grace,'-which appears, indeed, to have been of ordinary occurrence—this strict rule was not enforced, and Swift proceeded to his degree in 1685. His College career was not recalled by him with more pleasure than his school days. The ordinary curriculum probably failed to attract him, and the pursuit of subjects for which he had no liking may possibly have left an after-impression of natural dulness: but the full gloom of his reminiscences must be ascribed to a sense of his dependence upon the charity of an uncle, who may have administered his assistance without that delicacy which was necessary in one who patronized a spirit such as Swift's. When he had taken his degree, Swift, still unsettled as to his future course in life, pursued his reading, until the source even of such charity as he had enjoyed, became dry. Godwin Swift had apparently allowed his ambition to carry him too far: he indulged in speculation; his fortune dwindled, and with it his faculties; he sank into insanity, and died in 1688. Some help still continued to reach Swift from his cousin Willoughby, the son of Godwin, who had sought fortune abroad: but dependence had taught him thrift, and from this time Swift determined to depend upon no one, and to use those faculties, whose extent, nature and proper application were problems yet unsolved, to gain for himself some means of livelihood. The troublesome events that followed the Revolution in Ireland made it needful for Swift to seek his fortune beyond her shores, and his own inclination doubtless prompted him in the same direction. His mother was now settled in Leicester, and to her, from whom he had been so long parted, and who continued to be the object of his tenderest love, the young graduate, brooding over real or imagined wrongs, dominated by passions, and stirred by a genius over which he had yet gained no mastery, now came at the age of one and twenty. He says himself of this period of his life, that ‘a person of great honour in Ireland (who was pleased to stoop so low as to look into my mind) used to tell me that my mind was like a conjured spirit, that would do mischief if I did not give it employment.' It is curious to see the half sarcasm in Swift's reference, even at this period, to 'persons of great honour': but whoever his Mentor was, he gave a judgment which Swift's life proved only too true. Leicester had no attraction for him, beyond the company of his mother; and even had it not been so, a livelihood must be sought elsewhere. Sir William Temple's wife was a kinswoman of Mistress Abigail Swift: to him, therefore, application for employment was made, and made with success, and before the close of 1689 Swift became an inmate of Temple's house at Sheen. The dramatic contrast between the master and dependant has afforded subject for many pictures of impressive force. Temple, the astute diplomatist, the wary politician, tempering his statesmanship by something of the doctrinaire and something of the cynic; spending his honourable retire ment in the elegant pursuits of literature and landscape gardening, and employing his high social position, and the confidence and friendship of the great, to enhance the grace of his literary patronage; a god to his own circle, and respected beyond it, was scarcely the sort of man who could have made a master after Swift's own heart. But any irksomeness in the relation seems only to have broken out occasionally, and (in spite of the halfjocular reminiscence, 'Faith, he spoilt a fine gentleman!') Swift looked back on his residence at Moor Park (the house near Farnham in Surrey which Sir William Temple had recently acquired, and where he soon took up his abode) as fairly pleasant. At first, Swift's position was humble enough: he acted as amanuensis, and kept the household accounts. But there was one in that circle whose name was to be linked with that of Swift in one of the saddest tales by which the annals of literary history have stirred and attracted human sympathy. In a small house in the grounds of Moor Park, there lived a Mistress Johnson, widow of a confidential servant of Sir William Temple's. She had two young daughters: and of these the elder was Esther Johnson, then eight years of age, who in her name of Stella represents to posterity the most romantic and yet the most tragic thread that runs through the life of Swift. Even in this earlier residence at Moor Park, which lasted only a year, and when Swift, 'a raw and inexperienced youth,' perhaps imagined slights and injuries which were not intended, the child seems to have attracted his attention. But either Temple was too pompous and self-satisfied to be endured, or Swift's temper was too moody to be tolerated, and this early residence soon came to an end. Swift returned for a time to Ireland; found no opening there; came back to Leicester, and remained for a time in his mother's house, and at last, after an absence of a year and a half, again took up his residence with Sir William Temple in the autumn of 1691. This time Swift's position was much improved. Both patron and dependant had doubtless come to know one another better, and to respect one another more By Temple's help he became a graduate of Oxford: and, in his own words, 'growing into some confidence, he was often trusted with affairs of great importance.' It was now that he saw more of the society which him of vanity.' But at this time in his life, Swift was also cultivating the literary faculty in a way that has a curious interest for us. 'He writ and burnt, and writ again,' he informs a friend, 'upon all manner of subjects, more than perhaps any man in England.' His reading, too, was wide and discursive, and he had abundant leisure for it. But the strangest feature of his literary activity was his being caught by the infection of a fashionable freak of taste. That 'Pindaric art' of Cowley's, which sank into oblivion within a generation after Cowley's death, was now attracting many imitators. After his example, the most obscure form of Greek poetry, the merits of which are of all others the most difficult for a modern to appreciate, was adopted as a model and in Dr. Johnson's words, 'all the boys and girls caught the pleasing fancy, and they who could do nothing else, could write like Pindar.' Swift followed the prevailing fashion, and, with the encouragement of his patron, he wrote Pindarics on Archbishop Sancroft's non-juring fidelity, in honour of Sir William Temple, and to the Athenian Society-a pedantic gathering of projectors in the sphere of social science, the idea of which had taken rise in the whimsical brain of one John Dunton, a half-mad publisher, whose principal business in life was 'to think or perform something out of the beaten road,' and whose many escapades in literature and politics form altogether one of the strangest pictures in a strange age. But curious as was this passing episode in Swift's literary career, these Pindaric poems are not to be passed over by any one who would trace the growth of his genius.The satire, the brooding melancholy, the abhorrence of the 'lumber of the schools,' the contempt for 'the wily shafts of state, the juggler's tricks '—are all there as in his later writings. But they are mixed up with a constant obscurity of expression as well as of thought, with a painful effort after metaphysical involvement, with a recurrence of pedantic conceits by way of metaphor, which are all strangely in contrast with Swift's later manner. Such were the early poetic attempts which Swift, eventually the most masculine and luminous of English authors, now submitted, according to the common story, to the criticism of his kinsman Dryden, then in the plenitude of his literary dictatorship. The prophetic rebuff by which they were received, 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet,' was never forgotten nor forgiven by Swift. With these early efforts we may join such occasional poems as he addressed to the king, to Congreve, and to Sir William Temple on his recovery from illness. Not one of them is without a biographical interest, or without some revelation of the development of Swift's literary genius, and no collection professing to be representative of Swift's works can omit all specimens of these. They illustrate, above all, the deep melancholy which never left him even in the most busy scenes of his life, and which had its root and groundwork in mood and character, and derived strength and confirmation in a congenital malady from which he suffered. This was caused by a structural malformation near the brain, that dulled his hearing, produced fits of giddiness and uncontrollable depression, and eventually overcame his reason. But as yet its attacks were only intermittent: and soon his genius was led into more practical and congenial lines, by the necessity of bestirring himself to make his way in larger scenes than those of Moor Park. But Moor Park had already done much for him. It had removed him from Ireland which he cordially hated, and from that dependence on the bounty of others which had tried his spirit. It had given him leisure and opportunity for study on the lines which his own taste dictated. But more than all, it had brought him into close contact with men who had played, or were still playing, great parts in history, and had thus at once |