This very pretty, dark-eyed young girl,' was a poor little thing of six or seven years old, of whom Swift relates that she was sickly from her childhood until about the age of fifteen," and of whom he installed himself as the early instructor in reading and writing self-evidently without the remotest possible motive of making love to her. Many years afterwards, Swift writes to Esther Johnson :

'I met Mr. Harley in the Court of Requests, and he asked me how long I had learnt the trick of writing to myself. He had seen your letter through the glass case at the coffee-house, and would swear it was my hand; and Mr. Ford, who took and sent it me, was of the same mind. I remember others have formerly said so too. I think I was little M. D.'s writing-master.'*

In his History, Macaulay returned to the charge on Swift's position at Moor Park. The temptation recurred irresistibly to wield his usual weapons-hyperbole and contrast. The lower he could make the degradation of Swift in his years of dependence, the more striking the effect of contrasting that degradation with his after-eminence. It was a trick of style, and Macaulay's immense success has been a snare to lesser men.

It was in the interval between his first and second sojourn with Temple that Swift took orders; and he would seem to have done so in despair of his patron ever getting him any lay promotion worth taking. Temple, indeed, as we have seen, had put him in personal communication with King William III., and William had obligingly offered him a troop of horse. Afterwards there was some promise, which was never fulfilled, of the first prebend that might fall vacant. It must be remembered that so great a gulf was not fixed between clerical and secular functions before as since the Hanoverian succession. Important diplomatic service,' says Mr. Forster, 'was still rendered by Churchmen; secretaries' places were often at their disposal; a bishop held a cabinet office in the succeeding reign; and when the rumour went abroad, during Anne's last ministry, that St. John was going to Holland, Swift was generally named to accompany him in that employment.' We may add to these instances of the then not unusual employment of clergymen in secular offices, that one of the plenipotentiaries nominated to conclude the Peace of Utrecht was the Bishop of Bristol-the last instance, we believe, of an ostensible position in diplomacy or politics being held by an ecclesiastic in England.

* M.D. (My Dear) was part of the 'little language' which Swift adopted in his correspondence with Esther Johnson, who, as Mr. Forster observes, is usually designated by those initials, though they occasionally comprise Mrs. Dingley as well.

The

The death of Sir William Temple, in 1698-9, 'closed,' says Mr. Forster, 'what without doubt may be called Swift's quietest and happiest time.'

In the three peaceful years of that second residence he had made full acquaintance with his own powers, unconscious yet of anything but felicity and freshness in their exercise; and the kindliest side of his nature had found growth and encouragement. The soil had favoured in an equal degree his intellect and his affections. More than one feeling of this description, we may be sure, contributed to his pathetic mention of the day and hour of Temple's death. "He died at one o'clock this morning, the 27th of January, 1698-9, and with him all that was good and amiable among men.' There was afterwards some natural disappointment at the smallness of the legacy left for editing the writings, but it never coloured unfavourably any other of his allusions to Temple. The opinion now expressed he never changed. He continued, speaking rather with affection than judgment, to characterise him as a statesman who deserved more from his country, by his eminent public services, than any man before or since, and as the most accomplished writer of his time.'

To the studious leisure of Swift's years at Moor Park is due the production of two of his works most written about, if not, both of them, most read, the 'Battle of the Books,' and the 'Tale of a Tub;' the latter of which was not published, however, till some years afterwards. The 'Battle of the Books' was a pièce de circonstance, having for its main motive to come to the aid of Sir William Temple and his Oxford allies against Wotton and Bentley (himself a host), in the obsolete controversy on the comparative merits of ancients and moderns. Swift's patron does not seem to have shown himself particularly obliged to him for turning a matter of absurd gravity into grotesque satire. Authors are seldom very grateful to volunteer auxiliaries who make fun of their earnest. Addison gave Pope no thanks for his 'Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis.' He probably felt, as Temple had probably felt towards Swift, that his volunteer champion had more gall for others than balm for him. Swift was more intent on decrying Dryden than on defending Temple; and Pope on wounding Dennis than on shielding Addison. The 'Battle of the Books' is a piece which we confess we have never had much pleasure in reading, though we are not disposed to question the intensity of mind and meaning which Mr. Forster finds in its apparent absurdity and extra

vagance.

Swift described himself, shortly after the epoch of his taking orders, as a Whig and one who wears a gown.' His gown, however, which he donned in the last resort about the age of twenty-seven,

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twenty-seven, seemed fated to bring him no satisfactory amount of Whig preferment. He went to Ireland in 1699 with Lord Berkeley, who was appointed one of the Lords Justices of that kingdom, in the double capacity during the journey of chaplain and private secretary, but was soon superseded, on the Earl's arrival in Dublin, in the latter of those offices by another person [we quote his autobiography] who had insinuated himself into the Earl's favour by telling him that the post of secretary was not fit for a clergyman.'

'In some months the deanery of Derry fell vacant, and it was the Earl of Berkeley's turn to dispose of it. Yet things were so ordered,. that the secretary having received a bribe, the deanery was disposed of to another, and Mr. Swift was put off with some other church livings, not worth above a third part of that rich deanery. The excuse pretended was his being too young, although he were then thirty years old.'

This second passe-droit (for so Swift considered it) put him in a towering passion, and Sheridan has preserved for posterity his very unclerical apostrophe thereon, meant for the Earl and secretary—' . . . confound you both for a couple of scoundrels!' 'Not till he had gibbeted both in some satirical verses,' says Mr. Forster, 'did his anger begin to subside.' He had formed what proved a life-long intimacy at the Castle with the Countess of Berkeley and her daughters. One of these-the lively Lady Betty, afterwards Lady Elizabeth Germaine, who continued a correspondent of Swift till old age-had picked up in the chaplain's room some unfinished verses of his, descriptive of the card-playing and other ponderous levities of the Castle, and straightway put the following tack to them, which had more of truth than of poetry :—

'With these is Parson Swift.

Not knowing how to spend his time,

Does make a wretched shift

To deafen them with puns and rhyme.'

Punning became an inveterate habit of Swift's, much aggravated by his intercourse with a subsequent Lord-Lieutenant,. Lord Pembroke, and of which his tract, entitled 'God's Revenge against Punning,' was but a mock-expiation.

Not many weeks after the explosion of wrath which has just been narrated, and probably not without female influences to bring him back to the Castle (which he had momentarily quitted in disgust) Swift-as his autobiography above intimates-discontentedly accepted the vicarage of Laracor; the new Dean of Derry being required to resign to him this and

the

the other livings which had previously been held with the deanery.

'Swift,' says Mr. Forster, 'increased the glebe from one acre to twenty, and endowed the vicarage with tithes which he had himself bought, and which by his will he settled on all future incumbents subject to one condition. Language more eloquent than mine may be here interposed. "When Swift was made Vicar of Laracor," said Mr. Gladstone to the House of Commons in March 1869, "he went into a glebe-house with one acre, and he left it with twenty acres improved and decorated in many ways. He also endowed the vicarage with tithes purchased by him for the purpose of so bequeathing them; and I am not aware if it be generally known that a curious question arises on this bequest. This extraordinary man, even at the time when he wrote that the Irish Catholics were so down-trodden and insignificant that no possible change could bring them into a position of importance, appears to have foreseen the day when the ecclesiastical arrangements of Ireland would be called to account; for he proceeds to provide for a time when the episcopal religion might be no longer the national religion of the country. By some secret intimation he foresaw the shortness of its existence as an establishment, and left the property subject to a condition that in such case it should be administered for the benefit of the poor." Not quite so. The incumbents were to have the tithes for as long as the existing Church should be established; and Mr. Gladstone having withdrawn that condition, the living loses the tithes. But it is "whenever any other form of Christian religion shall become the established faith in this kingdom," that the condition arises handing them over to the poor, securing that their profits shall be given in a weekly proportion "by such other officers as may then have the power of distributing charities to the parish," and excluding from this benefit Jews, Atheists, and Infidels.

'It is a bequest which certainly raises a "curious question," whether we regard it with Scott as a mere stroke of Swift's peculiar humour, or with Mr. Gladstone as a quasi-forethought for the "downtrodden" Irish Catholics.

Shortly after his institution to Laracor, Swift received from the Archbishop of Dublin (then Marsh, the founder of the Library) the Prebend of Dunlavin in St. Patrick's Cathedral, entitling him to a seat in the chapter; and a few months later, on the 16th February, 1700-1701, he took his Doctor's Degree in Dublin University. At the beginning of April, he set sail with the Berkeleys for England; where for the present, notwithstanding his professional preferments, the most memorable portion of his life is to be passed. But let the reader disposed to be severe on such abandonment of clerical duties, remember always what the Irish Church then was, and that when the Vicar of Laracor turned his back on Ireland he left behind him "a parish with an audience of half-a-score."

The one insurmountable obstacle to Swift's professional pro

motion was raised by himself. He published anonymously in 1704 the Tale of a Tub,' which appears to have lain some half-dozen years in MS. The credit of joint authorship of this celebrated tale seems to have been claimed by Thomas Swift, whom he used to call his little parson cousin,' and who, at the time of its composition, was an inmate along with Jonathan at Moor Park, and very possibly may have rendered him some slight assistance on points of scholastic detail. It was the sort of masterpiece, however, which inevitably affiliated itself on the right parent, and Swift, observes Mr. Forster, though he never adventured to put his own name to it, took very good care that no one else should.

Atterbury, after saying that nothing could please more than the book did in London, added the shrewd remark that

'if he has guessed the man rightly who wrote it, he has reason to continue to conceal himself, because its profane strokes would be more likely to do harm to his reputation and interest in the world than its wit could do him good.'

But when did wit ever put his candle under a bushel on such cool calculation? Swift never did; and then he marvelled that his friends at Court, whether Whig or Tory, never could contrive to make him a bishop-even an Irish bishop. Somers accordingly came under the secret lash of his pen as 'a false deceitful rascal,' and Wharton as the most universal villain he ever knew.' Wharton's was a character to which no license of invective could do much injustice. But it was precisely his profligacy that rendered more intensely exasperating the exceptional scruples he is said to have pleaded, when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, against admitting Swift's claims to the highest church preferment. He was reported to have said that the Whig party had no character to spare, and could not afford to make such an appointment to an Irish bishopric:

Says Clarinda, though tears it may cost,

"Tis high time we should part, my dear Sue!

For your character's totally lost

And I've not got sufficient for two.'

To be assigned the part of 'Sue' by such a 'Clarinda' would have provoked a saint. How much more must it have provoked a Swift!

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6

The Tale of a Tub' is, in its main drift, with many digres-sions, a show-up' of superstition and fanaticism, as embodied, to Swift's eyes, in Romish Catholicism and English and Scottish Puritanism. Voltaire gave Swift the palm over Rabelais, and styled him Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne compagnie.'