Part 1 (1/2)

Swift.

by Leslie Stephen.

PREFACE.

The chief materials for a life of Swift are to be found in his writings and correspondence. The best edition is the second of the two edited by Scott (1814 and 1824).

In 1751 Lord Orrery published _Remarks upon the Life and Writings of Dr.

Jonathan Swift_. Orrery, born 1707, had known Swift from about 1732. His remarks give the views of a person of quality of more ambition than capacity, and more anxious to exhibit his own taste than to give full or accurate information.

In 1754, Dr. Delany published _Observations upon Lord Orrery's Remarks_, intended to vindicate Swift against some of Orrery's severe judgments.

Delany, born about 1685, became intimate with Swift soon after the dean's final settlement in Ireland. He was then one of the authorities of Trinity College, Dublin. He is the best contemporary authority, so far as he goes.

In 1756 Deane Swift, grandson of Swift's uncle G.o.dwin, and son-in-law to Swift's cousin and faithful guardian, Mrs. Whiteway, published an _Essay upon the Life, Writings, and Character of Dr. Jonathan Swift_, in which he attacks both his predecessors. Deane Swift, born about 1708, had seen little or nothing of his cousin till the year 1738, when the dean's faculties were decaying. His book is foolish and discursive. Deane Swift's son, Theophilus, communicated a good deal of doubtful matter to Scott, on the authority of family tradition.

In 1765 Hawkesworth, who had no personal knowledge, prefixed a life of Swift to an edition of the works which adds nothing to our information. In 1781 Johnson, when publis.h.i.+ng a very perfunctory life of Swift as one of the poets, excused its shortcomings on the ground of having already communicated his thoughts to Hawkesworth. The life is not only meagre but injured by one of Johnson's strong prejudices.

In 1785 Thomas Sheridan produced a pompous and dull life of Swift. He was the son of Swift's most intimate companion during the whole period subsequent to the final settlement in Ireland. The elder Sheridan, however, died in 1738; and the younger, born in 1721, was still a boy when Swift was becoming imbecile.

Contemporary writers, except Delany, have thus little authority; and a number of more or less palpably fict.i.tious anecdotes acc.u.mulated round their hero. Scott's life, originally published in 1814, is defective in point of accuracy. Scott did not investigate the evidence minutely, and liked a good story too well to be very particular about its authenticity.

The book, however, shows his strong sense and genial appreciation of character; and remains, till this day, by far the best account of Swift's career.

A life which supplies Scott's defects in great measure was given by William Monck Mason, in 1819, in his _History and Antiquities of the Church of St. Patrick_. Monck Mason was an indiscriminate admirer, and has a provoking method of expanding undigested information into monstrous notes, after the precedent of Bayle. But he examined facts with the utmost care, and every biographer must respect his authority.

In 1875 Mr. Forster published the first instalment of a _Life of Swift_.

This book, which contains the results of patient and thorough inquiry, was unfortunately interrupted by Mr. Forster's death, and ends at the beginning of 1711. A complete _Life_ by Mr. Henry Craik is announced as about to appear.

Besides these books, I ought to mention an _Essay upon the Earlier Part of the Life of Swift_, by the Rev. John Barrett, B.D. and Vice-Provost of Trin. Coll. Dublin (London, 1808); and _The Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life_, by W. R. Wilde, M.R.I.A., F.R.C.S. (Dublin, 1849). This last is a very interesting study of the medical aspects of Swift's life. An essay by Dr. Bucknill, in _Brain_ for Jan. 1882, is a remarkable contribution to the same subject.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY YEARS.

Jonathan Swift, the famous Dean of St. Patrick's, was the descendant of an old Yorks.h.i.+re family. One branch had migrated southwards, and in the time of Charles I., Thomas Swift, Jonathan's grandfather, was Vicar of Goodrich, near Ross, in Herefords.h.i.+re, a fact commemorated by the sweetest singer of Queen Ann's reign in the remarkable lines--

Jonathan Swift Had the gift By fatherige, motherige, And by brotherige, To come from Gotheridge.

Thomas Swift married Elizabeth Dryden, niece of Sir Erasmus, the grandfather of the poet Dryden. By her he became the father of ten sons and four daughters. In the great rebellion he distinguished himself by a loyalty which was the cause of obvious complacency to his descendant. On one occasion he came to the governor of a town held for the king, and being asked what he could do for his Majesty, laid down his coat as an offering. The governor remarked that his coat was worth little. ”Then,”

said Swift, ”take my waistcoat.” The waistcoat was lined with three hundred broad pieces--a handsome offering from a poor and plundered clergyman. On another occasion he armed a ford, through which rebel cavalry were to pa.s.s, by certain pieces of iron with four spikes, so contrived that one spike must always be uppermost (_caltrops_, in short).

Two hundred of the enemy were destroyed by this stratagem. The success of the rebels naturally led to the ruin of this cavalier clergyman; and the record of his calamities forms a conspicuous article in Walker's _Sufferings of the Clergy_. He died in 1658, before the advent of the better times in which he might have been rewarded for his loyal services.

His numerous family had to struggle for a living. The eldest son, G.o.dwin Swift, was a barrister of Gray's Inn at the time of the Restoration: he was married four times, and three times to women of fortune; his first wife had been related to the Ormond family; and this connexion induced him to seek his fortune in Ireland--a kingdom which at that time suffered, amongst other less endurable grievances, from a deficient supply of lawyers.[1] G.o.dwin Swift was made Attorney-General in the palatinate of Tipperary by the Duke of Ormond. He prospered in his profession, in the subtle parts of which, says his nephew, he was ”perhaps a little too dexterous;” and he engaged in various speculations, having at one time what was then the very large income of 3000_l._ a year. Four brothers accompanied this successful G.o.dwin, and shared to some extent in his prosperity. In January, 1666, one of these, Jonathan, married to Abigail Erick, of Leicester, was appointed to the stewards.h.i.+p of the King's Inns, Dublin, partly in consideration of the loyalty and suffering of his family. Some fifteen months later, in April, 1667, he died, leaving his widow with an infant daughter, and seven months after her husband's death, November 30, 1667, she gave birth to Jonathan, the younger, at 7, Hoey's Court, Dublin.

The Dean ”hath often been heard to say” (I quote his fragment of autobiography) ”that he felt the consequences of that (his parents') marriage, not only through the whole course of his education, but during the greater part of his life.” This quaint a.s.sumption that a man's parentage is a kind of removable accident to which may be attributed a limited part of his subsequent career, betrays a characteristic sentiment.

Swift cherished a vague resentment against the fates which had mixed bitter ingredients in his lot. He felt the place as well as the circ.u.mstances of his birth to be a grievance. It gave a plausibility to the offensive imputation that he was of Irish blood. ”I happened,” he said, with a bitterness born of later sufferings, ”by a perfect accident to be born here, and thus I am a Teague, or an Irishman, or what people please.” Elsewhere he claims England as properly his own country; ”although I happened to be dropped here, and was a year old before I left it (Ireland), and to my sorrow did not die before I came back to it.” His infancy brought fresh grievances. He was, it seems, a precocious and delicate child, and his nurse became so much attached to him, that having to return to her native Whitehaven, she kidnapped the year-old infant out of pure affection. When his mother knew her loss, she was afraid to hazard a return voyage until the child was stronger; and he thus remained nearly three years at Whitehaven, where the nurse took such care of his education, that he could read any chapter in the Bible before he was three years old. His return must have been speedily followed by his mother's departure for her native Leicester. Her sole dependence, it seems, was an annuity of 20_l._ a year, which had been bought for her by her husband upon their marriage. Some of the Swift family seem also to have helped her; but for reasons not now discoverable, she found Leicester preferable to Dublin, even at the price of parting from the little Jonathan. G.o.dwin took him off her hands and sent him to Kilkenny School at the age of six, and from that early period the child had to grow up as virtually an orphan. His mother through several years to come can have been little more than a name to him. Kilkenny School, called the ”Eton of Ireland,” enjoyed a high reputation. Two of Swift's most famous contemporaries were educated there. Congreve, two years his junior, was one of his schoolfellows, and a warm friends.h.i.+p remained when both had become famous. Fourteen years after Swift had left the school it was entered by George Berkeley, destined to win a fame of the purest and highest kind, and to come into a strange relations.h.i.+p to Swift. It would be vain to ask what credit may be claimed by Kilkenny School for thus ”producing” (it is the word used on such occasions) the greatest satirist, the most brilliant writer of comedies, and the subtlest metaphysician in the English language. Our knowledge of Swift's experiences at this period is almost confined to a single anecdote. ”I remember,” he says incidentally in a letter to Lord Bolingbroke, ”when I was a little boy, I felt a great fish at the end of my line, which I drew up almost on the ground; but it dropped in, and the disappointment vexes me to this very day, and I believe it was the type of all my future disappointments.”[2]

Swift, indeed, was still in the schoolboy stage, according to modern ideas, when he was entered at Trinity College, Dublin, on the same day, April 24, 1682, with a cousin, Thomas Swift. Swift clearly found Dublin uncongenial; though there is still a wide margin for uncertainty as to precise facts. His own account gives a short summary of his academic history:--