Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/42

6 for he told me the several questions on which he disputed, and repeated all the arguments used by his opponents in syllogistick form, together with his answers.

He remained in the college near three years after this, not through choice, but necessity; little known or regarded. By scholars he was esteemed a blockhead; and as the lowness of his circumstances would not permit him to keep company of an equal rank with himself, upon an equal footing, he scorned to take up with those of a lower class, or to be obliged to those of a higher. He lived therefore much alone, and his time was employed in pursuing his course of reading in history and poetry, then very unfashionable studies for an academick; or in gloomy meditations on his unhappy circumstances. Yet under this heavy pressure, the force of his genius broke out, in the first rude draught of the Tale of a Tub, written by him at the age of nineteen, though communicated to nobody but his chamber fellow Mr. Waryng; who, after the publication of the book, made no scruple to declare that he had read the first sketch of it in Swift's handwriting, when he was of that age.

Soon after this, his uncle Godwin was seized with a lethargy, which rendered him incapable of business; and then it was that the broken state of his affairs was made publick. Swift now lost even the poor support that he had before; but his uncle William supplied the place of Godwin to him, though not in a more enlarged way, which could not be expected from his circumstances; yet with so much better a grace, as somewhat lightened the burden of dependance, and engaged Swift's gratitude ward,