came, therefore, when Virtue found itself deserted. Fearful of making enemies, it had made no friends. Refusing to join any distinct party in the state, it had been disowned by all. At last, nothing was left for Virtue but to shake the dust from off its feet and retire to the dignified seclusion of a country seat.

The picture given of Sir William, in his later years, by his sister Martha, Lady Giffard, is hardly pleasing. His political memories were clouded by an ever-present sense of disappointment. His humour had become "very unequal, from cruel fits of spleen and melancholy." His temper, naturally bad, was kept in uneasy subjection by sheer force of will. An exact observer of nice points of honour, he was ill-apt to make allowance for the deficiencies of others; liable to strong dislikes, which he only con- ' cealed with difficulty; and kind to his inferiors, solely because he thought it his duty to be just to all men. a word, a man capable of making a favourable impression on chance visitors, but a trying companion to his familiars, and an ungracious patron towards those unfortunates who might have to stand to him in the relation of dependants.

In

Early in 1689 a petition came to Temple from a widow lady, connected by blood and association with his family, asking him to provide an opening in life for her only son. Sir William, busily engaged in drawing up his memoirs, at once expressed a willingness to take the applicant into his own service as secretary. The offer was accepted; and, in the summer of 1689, a young man of humble appearance and unpractised manners, but whose stronglymarked features and piercing blue eyes indicated a nature of no common type, appeared at the threshold of Moor Park. The new-comer was Jonathan Swift.

Full details regarding his birth and parentage are sup

plied by Swift in a fragment of autobiography, written in 1727. His grandfather, Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich, in Herefordshire, played a stirring part in the Great Rebellion. More royalist than the king, he upheld the Stuart cause from the pulpit, garrisoned his vicarage against the parliament, and sent money and provisions to the loyal commander at Raglan Castle. "At another time," says Jonathan, who was very proud of this ancestor's exploits, "being informed that three hundred horse of the rebel party intended in a week to pass over a certain river, Mr. Swift contrived certain pieces of iron with three spikes, whereof one must always be with the point upward; he placed them overnight in the ford where he received news that the rebels would pass early the next morning, which they accordingly did, and lost two hundred of their men, who were drowned or trod to death by the falling of their horses, or torn by the spikes." In vain were his flocks driven off, and his house plundered from cellar to garret by Lord Stamford's troopers. It became necessary to extinguish this redoubtable member of the church militant. In 1646, the vicar of Goodrich was arrested and flung into prison. His private property was sequestrated, and his three livings handed over to sour-visaged fanatics, of whose true Puritan zeal the parliament was well assured. Though released in 1649, he was a broken man. He died in 1658-two years before the Restoration might have brought him some redress-and his family, "four

The Swifts were an old Yorkshire family. The elder branch ended, in the male line, with Barnam Swift, a man of great wit and ability, created Viscount Carlingford, in the peerage of Ireland, in 1627. The representative of the younger branch, Thomas Swift, migrated from Yorkshire to Kent, and became preacher at St. Andrew's, Canterbury. He died in 1592. His son, William Swift, who married a Miss Philpot, was father of the Thomas Swift referred to in the text.

teen or fifteen" in number, were thrown upon the world. Five of his sons made their way to Ireland, the disturbed condition of which country held out chances of fortune to adventurers of every type. Of these, the eldest, Godwin Swift, obtained great fame as a barrister in Dublin. The "seventh or eighth son," Jonathan, though glad to take the crumbs that fell from his rich brother's table, excited. the family anger by an indiscreet marriage with Mistress. Abigail Eric, daughter of a poor but ancient Leicestershire family. A daughter was born to him in 1665. He obtained the post of Steward of the King's Inn, Dublin. But in 1667 he died, some months before the birth of a son, the greater Jonathan Swift, who saw the light in a house in Hoey's Court, Dublin, on November 30, 1667. Swift's infancy was destined to be passed in England. "When he was a year old," says the autobiography, which is written in the third person, "his nurse, who was a woman of Whitehaven, being under an absolute necessity of seeing one of her relations, who was then extremely sick, and from whom she expected a legacy, and being at the same time extremely fond of the infant, she stole him on shipboard unknown to his mother and uncle, and carried him with her to Whitehaven, where he continued for almost three years. For, when the matter was discovered, his mother sent orders by all means not to hazard a second voyage till he could be better able to bear it. The nurse was so careful of him that before he returned he had learned to spell, and by the time he was three years old he could read any chapter in the Bible."

Mrs. Swift's income consisted only of a settlement of £20 a year, and her son's education was due to the charity. of his uncle Godwin. Swift was wont to assert in later times that his uncle had treated him like a dog. any special injustice on Godwin's part it would be

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vain to seek. But Swift's haughty nature chafed bitterly at the mere thought of dependence; and, in his autobiography, he declares that he felt the consequence of his parents' improvident marriage, "not only through the whole course of his education, but during the greatest part of his life." At the age of six, Jonathan Swift was sent to the foundation school of the Ormonds, at Kilkenny. After remaining here eight years he proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin, where, with his cousin Thomas, a son of Godwin Swift, he was admitted on April 24, 1682. In dealing with this period of his life, Swift states that, "by the ill-treatment of his nearest relations, he was so discouraged and sunk in his spirits that he too much neglected his academic studies, for some parts of which he had no great relish by nature, and turned himself to reading history and poetry." As a consequence his university career was not a success. In the terminal examination of Easter, 1685, Jonathan Swift, though marked "bene" in Latin and Greek, was stigmatised as "male" in Philosophy, while his Thema, or Latin essay, was only marked "negligenter." He had failed in two out of three subjects, and, to use a modern university phrase, the unfortunate Jonathan was "plucked."

In strict rule Swift should have been stopped of his degree till the ensuing year. But the authorities were inclined to temper justice with mercy, and they allowed him to proceed to his B.A. degree on February 15, 1685, speciali gratia. This concession, Swift subsequently confessed, was little to his credit. But the results of a university training are to be found elsewhere than in its class lists. That Swift owed the foundation of his great acquirements to Trinity College, Dublin, is an honour of which that institution may be justly proud.

Swift continued to reside in college in order to qualify for

his Mastership of Arts. Up to the taking of his B.A. degree he had lived "with great regularity and observance of the statutes." From that date, however, he began to show a fondness for those minor breaches of the law which tend to enliven the routine of an academic career.

On March 18, 1686, Jonathan Swift was publicly censured for notorious neglect of duties and frequenting the town of Dublin late at night, without leave. Many are the fines imposed on him for non-attendance at chapel, and for missing lectures. Lastly, the college register for November 30, 1688, records, in sonorous Latin, that Dominus Swift and some others, for stirring up riots and assailing the junior dean, Dr. Lloyd, with threatening words, are to be suspended from all degrees they have taken or hope to take; and it adds that Dominus Swift and Dominus Sargeant-quoniam cæteris adhuc intolerabilius se gesserunt, since they have behaved worse than the others are to ask pardon of the aforesaid junior dean on bended knee. The first part of the punishment was remitted. From the ignominious apology there seems to have been no escape. But Swift, who was a good hater, nursed his revenge, and in his "Character of Thomas, Earl of Wharton," written many years after, he went out of his way to make Dr. Lloyd the victim of a libel of peculiar atrocity.1

The Revolution of 1688 was followed by universal confusion in Ireland. Trinity College fell into the hands of the Jacobites. The students were dispersed, and Swift, in sorry plight, came to England and made his way to

For Swift's university career, see John Barrett, "Essay on the Earlier Part of the Life of Swift." It is compiled from the Trinity College records. There is a long discussion on the same point in John Forster's "Life of Swift." Mr. Forster disagrees with Dr. Barrett's conclusions.