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 excursions to Leicester and elsewhere. He was fond of walking, and used, it is said, to interrupt his studies by running up a hill and back, half a mile in six minutes (, p. 272). He constantly preached the duty of exercise to his friends. He made some of his expeditions on foot, and liked to put up at wayside inns where ‘lodgings for a penny’ were advertised, and to enjoy the rough talk of wagoners and hostlers (, p. 34;, p. 72). He showed his love of Moor Park Gardens by afterwards imitating them on a small scale in Ireland. The great charm of Moor Park, however, was of a different kind. Esther Johnson (1681–1728), born at Richmond, Surrey, on 13 March 1680–1 (Richmond Register), was the daughter of a merchant who died young. Her mother became the companion of Lady Giffard, sister of Temple, who, as a widow, went to live with her brother. The Johnsons also became inmates of the family. A writer in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for November 1757 asserts that both Esther and Swift were Temple's natural children. The statement as to Swift is all but demonstrably false, and the other a gratuitous guess. The Rev. James Hay has tried to revive this hypothesis in ‘Swift, the Mystery of his Life and Love,’ 1891. Swift during his first stay at Moor Park took some part in Esther's early education, which seems to have been imperfect enough. When he returned in 1696 she had got over an early delicacy, was 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’ (‘On the death of Mrs. Johnson’). Another member of the household was Rebecca Dingley, who was in some way related to the Temple family.

Sir William Temple died on 26 Jan. 1698–9, and with him, as Swift noted at the time, died ‘all that was good and amiable among mankind.’ He left 100l. to Swift, and a lease of some lands in Ireland to Esther Johnson (Will in Temple, ii. 484–6). To Swift he also left the trust and profit of publishing his posthumous writings. Five volumes appeared in 1700, 1703, and 1709, for one of which Swift received 40l. (a presentation copy to Archbishop Marsh, with Swift's autograph, is now in Marsh's library, Dublin). The last volume, containing a ‘third part’ of Temple's ‘Memoirs,’ provoked an angry correspondence with Lady Giffard, who charged him with printing against Temple's wishes and from an ‘unfaithful copy.’ Swift defended himself successfully (see, ii. 242–8; , p. 99), but was alienated from the family. His hopes of preferment vanished, and he long afterwards declared that he owed no obligation to Temple, at ‘whose death he was’ as far to ‘seek as ever’ (to Palmerston, 29 Jan. 1725–6). In the ‘Journal to Stella’ there are various reminiscences of the days in which he had been treated ‘like a schoolboy’ and felt his dependence painful. He calls Temple, however, ‘a man of sense and virtue’ (notes on Burnet, ap. Swift, xii. 206), and praises him warmly in a memorandum printed in Scott's ‘Life.’ It was not Temple's fault, Swift admitted, that nothing had come of the connection. Temple had obtained a promise from the king of a prebend at Canterbury or Westminster. Swift went to London, and begged Henry Sidney, earl of Romney [q. v.], to obtain its fulfilment. Romney agreed to speak, but did not keep his word. Swift then accepted an offer from Lord Berkeley, who in the summer of 1699 was appointed one of the lords justices of Ireland. Swift was to be his chaplain and secretary, but, upon reaching Ireland, Berkeley gave the secretaryship to a Mr. Bush, who had persuaded him that it was unfit for a clergyman. The rich deanery of Derry becoming vacant, Swift applied for it, but Bush had been bribed by another candidate. Swift was told that he might still have it for 1,000l. He replied to the secretary and his master, ‘God confound you both for a couple of scoundrels!’ (, p. 30). He wrote some verses in ridicule of the pair, and in consequence, or in spite, of this received in February 1699–1700 the livings of Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan. To these was added in 1700 the prebend of Dunlavin in St. Patrick's. The whole was worth about 230l. a year (, p. 117), which to Swift, with his strictly economical habits, meant independence, so long as he had only himself to keep. Miss Waring apparently thought that the income would be enough for two. In a letter to her (4 May 1700) Swift, after demolishing this theory, offers still to take her as his wife, but upon terms so insulting as to make her acceptance incompatible with the slightest self-respect. This, perhaps the most unpleasant of his actions, produced the desired result. Laracor is a mile or two from Trim. Swift rebuilt the parsonage, made a fishpond, planted willows, and formed a garden. His congregation consisted of about fifteen persons, ‘most of them gentle and all simple’ (to King, 6 Jan. 1708–9; to Sterne, 17 April 1710). Orrery (p. 29) tells how he proposed to read prayers every Wednesday and Friday, and had to commence the exhortation with