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ERRATA.

Page 146, note †, after "1709" to read, "The Bishop of Cork was then il of a spotted fever, of which he died: while Dr. South, whose benefice Swift most desired, did not die till 1716."

Page 320, line 16, for "comes" read "come."

LIFE OF JONATHAN SWIFT.

CHAPTER I.

SWIFT'S FAMILY AND EARLY LIFE.

1667-1692.

ЕТАТ. From birth to 24.

New House Farm, Goodrich-The Swiftes at Rotherham-At Canterbury-The Reverend Thomas Swift-His sufferings in the Royalist cause-His sons in Ireland-Godwin Swift's success-Jonathan, the Elder-His marriage — Death-Birth of JONATHAN SWIFT-Childhood-At Kilkenny schoolStories of school life-The troubles of his early days-At Trinity College, Dublin-His bachelor's degree-The specialis gratia-Its real meaningThree years of close reading-Death of his uncle Godwin-Help from other kinsmen-An unexpected visitor-The break-up of 1688-Swift in England -With his mother at Leicester-Character of Swift's mother-Life at Leicester-Goes to Sir William Temple at Moor Park-Swift's surroundings there-Character and position of Temple-Other inmates of the houseEnd of the first residence with Temple-Swift in Ireland-Returns to Temple-Obtains a master's degree at Oxford by Temple's help-His altered position in this second residence.

WITHIN a few minutes' walk of the pleasant village of Goodrich, near Ross, there stands a house, now the solitary memorial of a man not unnoticeable even for his own doings, but with a claim to more enduring fame in connection with the subject of this biography. Amongst all his ancestors and kinsfolk, it was the builder of this house, whose memory JONATHAN SWIFT regarded with the greatest veneration, and from whom he inherited not a few of his characteristic traits. It was to this house that Swift looked, even in his later years, as the home of his family: and in the doings of its builder he

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found what attracted him most in all that family's annals. It was no ordinary dwelling.

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"The architecture," to use the words of Swift himself, "denotes the builder to have been somewhat whimsical and singular, and very much towards a projector." * Fortunately we are yet able to confirm for ourselves the truth of the description. The house has now fallen into utter disrepair, but there is clearly something out of the common in the design. Separated from the village and the church by a small hill, it overlooks a quiet valley near the Wye. It is, as one who owned it a century and a half ago says, like three houses joining at one central point. It is a big house, strong and stable its mullioned windows open to the sun and to the wide-stretching country at every point of the compass: large and roomy enough to provide for its owner's ample family of "ten sons and three or four daughters," and yet with no useless space for halls or corridors or wide staircases. These last creep up in the corners like the winding steps in a turret. But odd as the house is, some of the rooms are handsome even in their fallen estate. Most of all it is remarkable for its enormous and burrowing cellars, reached from one room by a trap-door, large enough and strong enough to store away aud protect not only fugitives and their provisions, but in case of need even cattle and other live stock as well. When the house was built, in 1636, as the date on its doorpost tells us, its owner could have had no idea of the uses to which these cellars were soon to be put and it argued a strange lavishness of space and labour, or a strange craving after some safe retreat even from an imagined danger, that this patriarchal parson should have built his house on such a plan.

The builder of this strange dwelling was the Reverend Thomas Swift, Vicar of Goodrich, and grandfather of JONATHAN SWIFT, the Dean of St. Patrick's. The original seat

* Autobiographical Anecdotes. See Appendix I.

Deane Swift, the younger, in his Essay on the Dean.

*

of the family was in Yorkshire, and Rotherham Church still contains a brass to the memory of Robert Swifte and his wife, who died there in the sixteenth century. From this north-country stock there came two branches, both of which had eventually some connection with Ireland. One branch gained some notoriety by producing a certain Barnam Swifte, in whom the vein of eccentricity that appears in all the ramifications of the family, made itself oddly felt. His pursuit of that somewhat cumbrous form of wit and humour that pleased under James the First, gained for him the sobriquet of Cavaliero Swifte: and by Charles the First he was created, in 1627, an Irish Viscount under the title of Lord Carlingford. He left no son: but his daughters and co-heiresses were married, one to the Fielding who bore in society the name of "handsome Fielding," and the other to Lord Eglinton.

The other branch, pursuing more humble and prosaic lives, passed from Yorkshire to Kent, and were established before the close of the sixteenth century at Canterbury.

One Thomas Swift, whom we may take to be the son of Robert Swifte of Rotherham, became preacher at St. Andrews, Canterbury, about 1570: and his son William Swift succeeded him, in 1592, and married a Miss Philpot, an heiress and a

The epitaph runs thus :-" Here under this Tombe are placyd and buried the bodyes of Robarte Swifte Esquire and Arne his fyrste wyfe, who lyvyde manye yeares in this towne of Rotherham in vertuus fame, grett wellthe and good woorship. They were pytyfulle to the poore and relevyd them lyberallye and to theyr ffrends no les faythfulle then Bountyfulle. Trulye they ffearyd God who Plentuuslye powryd his Blessings uppon them. The sayd Anne dyed in the moneth of June in the yere of o❜ lord God 1539, in the 67 year of hur age and the sayd Robarte Deptyd ye VIII

day of August in the yere of or lorde God 1561 in the 84 yeare of his age on whose sowlles with all Chrystyn Sowlles Thomnipotent lorde have marcy Amen."

This was the Fielding who not only squandered all that his first wife brought him, but to whom the Duchess of Cleveland afterwards trusted herself and her illgotten gains, to find the last frittered away, and herself so cruelly treated as to require the prctection of the law.

In the British Museum there is a funeral sermon preached by William Swift, in 1621, on "that painful and

shrew. He had one son: and with this. son we come to the builder of the strange house at Goodrich, and to the first member of the Dean's family in whom peculiarities like his Own were strongly marked, and whose memory was SO cherished by him that it seems not a little to have affected his life and opinions.

This Thomas Swift, born in 1595, became a man of some mark amid stirring scenes. He was an only son: but unlike most only sons, was brought up under the severe discipline of a mother whose reputation as a termagant lived after her. Of her wealth he obtained but a small share, being disinherited, we are told, on account of some boyish peccadillo: and, left to his own resources, save for a small estate at Goodrich, he entered the Church, and early in the reign of Charles I, obtained the living of Goodrich, with which locality his memory is linked. He married a Miss Elizabeth Dryden,* of that Huntingdonshire family soon to be made famous by the poet to whose genius, for reasons that will be seen hereafter, his "cousin" Jonathan Swift was so obstinately blind, and whose faults and prodigalities alone he remembered.

During the early years of his incumbency, Thomas Swift was busied with the quiet performance of his duties, and with providing for the future of a rapidly growing family. He bought more land in his own parish, and in 1636, while the country was astir with discussions about ship-money, and

faithful servant of Jesus Christ, Mr. Thomas Wilson." The discourse has no special interest, except that, from its strong anti-Catholic views, we may suppose religious differences to have had something to do with sending this branch of the family from the ancestral home at Rotherham, where Robert Swifte had been buried as a devout Roman Catholic, only nine years before his son quitted that home for Canterbury.

She was niece to Sir Erasmus Dryden, the poet's grandfather. From the Dryden family, the Swifts adop ted not only Dryden as a Christian name, but also Jonathan-the name of the Dean's father and his own. The passing criticism from Dryden to Swift, then in the sensitivity of bud ding authorship-" Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet "-may well have laid the seeds of Swift's inveterate hostility to his kinsman's fame.