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Rh so much that at his death he was almost insolvent, died, having decayed, it would seem, not less in mind than in body and estate, and Swift sought counsel of his mother at Leicester. After a brief residence with his mother, who was needlessly alarmed at the idea of her son falling a victim to some casual coquette, Swift towards the close of 1689 entered upon an engagement as secretary to Sir William Temple, whose wife (Dorothy Osborne) was distantly related to Mrs Swift. It was at Moor Park, near Farnham, the residence to which Temple had retired to cultivate apricots after the rapid decline of his influence during the critical period of Charles II.'s reign (1679-1681), that Swift's acquaintance with Esther Johnson, the "Stella" of the famous Journal, was begun. Stella's mother was living at Moor Park, as servant or dame de compagnie of Temple's strong-minded sister, Lady Giffard. Swift was twenty-two and Esther eight years old at the time, and a curious friendship sprang up between them. He taught the little girl how to write and gave her advice in reading. On his arrival at Moor Park, Swift was, in his own words, a raw, inexperienced youth, and his duties were merely those of accountkeeper and amanuensis: his ability gradually won him the confidence of his employer, and he was entrusted with some important missions. He was introduced to William III. during that monarch's visit to Sir William's, and on one occasion accompanied the king in his walks round the grounds. In 1693 Temple sent him to try and convince the king of the inevitable necessity of triennial parliaments. William remained unconvinced and Swift's vanity received a useful lesson. The king had previously taught him "how to cut asparagus after the Dutch fashion." Next year, however, Swift (who had in the meantime obtained the degree of M.A. ad eundem at Oxford) quitted Temple, who had, he considered, delayed too long in obtaining him preferment. A certificate of conduct while under Temple's roof was required by all the Irish bishops he consulted before they would proceed in the matter of his ordination, and after five months' delay, caused by wounded pride, Swift had to kiss the rod and solicit in obsequious terms the favour of a testimonial from his discarded patron. Forgiveness was easy to a man of Temple's elevation and temperament, and he not only despatched the necessary recommendation but added a personal request which obtained for Swift the small prebend of Kilroot near Belfast (January 1695), where the new incumbent carried on a premature flirtation with a Miss Jane Waring, whom he called "Varina." In the spring of 1696 he asked the reluctant Varina to wait until he was in a position to marry. Just four years later he wrote to her in terms of such calculated harshness and imposed such conditions as to make further intercourse virtually impossible.

In the meantime he had grown tired of Irish life and was glad to accept Temple's proposal for his return to Moor Park, where he continued until Temple's death in January 1699. During this period he wrote much and burned most of what he had written. He read and learned even more than he wrote. Moor Park took him away from brooding and glooming in Ireland and brought him into the corridor of contemporary history, an intimate acquaintance with which became the chief passion of Swift's life. His Pindaric Odes, written at this period or earlier, in the manner of Cowley, indicate the rudiments of a real satirist, but a satirist struggling with a most uncongenial form of expression. Of more importance was his first essay in satiric prose which arose directly from the position which he occupied as domestic author in the Temple household. Sir William had in 1692 published his Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning, transplanting to England a controversy begun in France by Fontenelle. Incidentally Temple had cited the letters of Phalaris as evidence of the superiority of the Ancients over the Moderns. Temple's praise of Phalaris led to an Oxford edition of the Epistles nominally edited by Charles Boyle. While this was preparing, William Wotton, in 1694, wrote his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, traversing Temple's general conclusions. Swift's Battle of the Books was written in 1697 expressly to refute this. Boyle's Vindication and Bentley's refutation of the authenticity of Phalaris came later. Swift's aim was limited to co-operation in what was then deemed the well-deserved putting down of

Bentley by Boyle, with a view to which he represented Bentley and Wotton as the representatives of modern pedantry, transfixed by Boyle in a suit of armour given him by the gods as the representative of the "two noblest of things, sweetness and light." The satire remained unpublished until 1704, when it was issued along with The Tale of a Tub. Next year Wotton declared that Swift had borrowed his Combat des livres from the Histoire poétique de la guerre nouvellement déclarée entre les anciens et les modernes (Paris, 1688). He might have derived the idea of a battle from the French title, but the resemblances and parallels between the two books are slight. Swift was manifestly extremely imperfectly acquainted with the facts of the case at issue. Such data as he displays may well have been derived from no authority more recondite than Temple's own essay.

In addition to £100, Temple left to Swift the trust and profit of publishing his posthumous writings. Five volumes appeared in 1700, 1703 and 1709. The resulting profit was small, and Swift's editorial duties brought him into acrimonious relation with Lady Giffard. The dedication to King William was to have procured Swift an English prebend, but this miscarried owing to the negligence or indifference of Henry Sidney, earl of Romney. 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 Bushe, who had persuaded him that it was an unfit post for a clergyman. The rich deanery of Derry then became vacant and Swift applied for it. The secretary y had already accepted a bribe, but Swift was informed that he might still have the place for £1000. With bitter indignation Swift denounced the simony and threw up his chaplaincy, but he was ultimately reconciled to Berkeley by the presentation to the rectory of Agher in Meath with the united vicarages of Laracor and Rathbeggan, to which was added the prebend of Dunlavin in St Patrick's—the total value being about £230 a year. He was now often in Dublin, at most twenty miles distant, and through Lady Berkeley and her daughters he became the familiar and chartered satirist of the fashionable society there. At Laracor, near Trim, Swift rebuilt the parsonage, made a fish-pond, and planted a garden with poplars and willows, bordering a canal. His congregation consisted of about fifteen persons, "most of them gentle and all of them simple." He read prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays to himself and his clerk, beginning the exhortation "Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry places." But he soon began to grow tired of Ireland again and to pay visits in Leicester and London. The author of the Tale of a Tub, which he had had by him since 1696 or 1698, must have felt conscious of powers capable of far more effective exercise than reading-desk or pulpit at Laracor could supply; and his resolution to exchange divinity for politics must appear fully justified by the result. The Discourse on the Dissensions in Athens and Rome (September 1701), written to repel the tactics of the Tory commons in their attack on the Partition Treaties "without humour and without satire," and intended as a dissuasive from the pending impeachment of Somers, Orford, Halifax and Portland, received the honour, extraordinary for the maiden publication of a young politician, of being generally attributed to Somers himself or to Burnet, the latter of whom found a public disavowal necessary. In April or May 1704 appeared a more remarkable work. Clearness, cogency, masculine simplicity of diction, are conspicuous in the pamphlet, but true creative power told the Tale of a Tub. " Good God ! what a genius I had when I wrote that book !" was his own exclamation in his latter years. It is, indeed, if not the most amusing of Swift's satirical works, the most strikingly original, and the one in which the compass of his powers is most fully displayed. In his kindred productions he relies mainly upon a single element of the humorous - logical sequence and unruffled gravity bridling in an otherwise frantic absurdity, and investing it with an air of sense. In the Tale of a Tub he lashes out in all directions. The humour, if less cogent and cumulative, is richer and more varied; the invention, too,