Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/118

 78 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS two years with Sir William, he contracted a very long and dangerous illness by eating an immoderate quantity of fruit. To this surfeit he was often heard to ascribe that giddiness in his head which, with intermissions sometimes of longer and sometimes of shorter continuance, pursued him to the end of his life. In compliance with the advice of physicians, when he was sufficiently recov- ered to travel, he went to Ireland, to try the effects of his native air ; but find- ing the greatest benefit arose from the exercise of travelling, he followed his own inclination. He soon returned into England, and was again received in a most af- fectionate manner by Sir William Temple, who was then settled at Shene, where he was often visited by King William. Here Swift had frequent conversations with that prince, in some of which the king offered to make him a captain of horse, which offer, in splenetic disposi- tions, he always seemed sorry to have refused ; but at the time he had resolved within his own mind to take orders ; and during his whole life his resolutions, when once fixed, were ever after immovable. About this time he assisted Sir William Temple in revising his works. He likewise corrected and improved his own " Tale of a Tub," a sketch of which he had drawn up while he was a student at Trinity College, Dublin. Sir William's conversation naturally turned upon political subjects, and Swift improved the frequent opportunities he had of acquiring from this able statesman a competent knowledge of public affairs. But at length he suspected that Sir William neg- lected to provide for him, merely that he might keep him in his family ; and he resented this so very warmly that a quarrel ensued, and they parted in the year 1694, and he went to Ireland, where he took orders. Sir William, however, notwithstanding the differences between them, recom- mended him in the strongest terms to Lord Capel, then lord-deputy, who gave him a prebend, of which the income was about ^100 a year. Swift soon grew weary of his preferment : it was not sufficiently considerable, and was at so great a distance from the metropolis that it absolutely deprived him of that conversa- tion and society in which he delighted. He had been used to different scenes in England, and had naturally an aversion to solitude and retirement. He was glad, therefore, to resign his prebend in favor of a friend, and to return to Shene, to Sir William Temple, who was so much pleased with his return, which he consid- ered as an act of kindness to him in the close of life, that a sincere reconciliation took place, and they lived together in perfect harmony till the death of Sir Will- iam. By his will he left him a considerable legacy in money, and the care, trust, and emolument of publishing his posthumous works. During Swift's residence at Shene he became intimately acquainted with Miss Johnson, who was the daughter of Sir William's steward, and who was afterward so distinguished and so much celebrated in Swift's works under the name of Stella. Soon after the death of his patron, Swift came to London, and took the earliest opportunity of transmitting a memorial to King William, under the claim of a promise made by his majesty to Sir William Temple, " that Mr. Swift should have the first vacancy that happened among the prebends of Westminster