two years after he left College, Swift rarely missed visiting her once a year at least at Leicester, where she had finally fixed her home-travelling by waggon or on foot in his poorer, by coach in his more opulent days. In his earlier journeys to and from that place when, seeing written over a door 'Lodgings for a penny,' he would hire a bed, giving an additional sixpence for clean sheets-he had opportunities of observing the ways and speech of the common people, which must have much helped to form his popular style and turn of thought.

Swift, says Mr. Forster, 'was little more than two months past his twenty-first birthday, when Tyrconnel let loose the Celtic population on the English settlers in Dublin; and quitting the College with a crowd of other fugitives, he found his way to his mother's house in England.' His visit to Leicester on this occasion lasted some months, and his watchful parent became alarmed on his account because of the daughters of Heth'-one Betty Jones in particular, who afterwards married 'a rogue of an innkeeper' at Loughborough.

Hardly had he escaped this Betty Jones,' says Mr. Forster, 'when there began to be talk of another; and long before the "some months" passed which he describes as the duration of this visit to Leicester, his mother must have been convinced of the truth of what her son already had been told by a person of great honour in Ireland," who was "pleased to stoop so low as to look into my mind; and used to tell me that it was like a conjured spirit, that would do mischief if I would not give it employment."

66

Under these circumstances, it was his mother's suggestion that he should apply to Sir William Temple. Lady Temple was a relation of hers, and was still living when Swift's application for admission to Sir William Temple's house and patronage was made and received favourably.

'He joined,' says Mr. Forster, the retired statesman at Moor Park, near Farnham, before the close of 1689, and continued with him, not without intervals of absence, until just before Lady Temple's death in 1694. These five years are to be regarded as the first residence with Temple.'

Swift's great intellectual development, especially in the direction of politics, may be dated from the period of his two protracted sojourns under the roof of a veteran statesman of such experience and capacity as Temple. We ourselves have no doubt that Swift's moral character, so far as still pliable, must also have been improved by having set before him so accomplished a model of qualities which he could not but respect, albeit he could not emulate-his own natural temper being not less restless and ambitious than Temple's was the reverse.

If the pen of Swift, at a later period, inflicted the first defeat of Marlborough in the battle-field of English public opinion; if the pen of Swift first taught Ireland to adventure resurrection, and commenced and carried to a triumphant issue the first successful Irish agitation, the school in which he learned to wield such a pen was Temple's house at Moor Park.

'Every judicious reader,' says Lord Macaulay, 'must be struck by the peculiarities which distinguish Swift's political tracts from all similar works produced by mere men of letters. Let any person compare, for example, the Conduct of the Allies, or the Letter to the October Club, with Johnson's "False Alarm," or "Taxation no Tyranny," and he will be at once struck by the difference of which we speak. He may possibly think Johnson a greater man than Swift. He may possibly prefer Johnson's style to Swift's. But he will at once acknowledge that Johnson writes like a man who has never been out of his study. Swift writes like a man who has passed his whole life in the midst of public business. It is impossible to doubt that the superiority of Swift is to be, in a great measure, attributed to his long and close connection with Temple.'*

It is curious to remark that the man whose pen so powerfully and effectively contributed to bring to a most lame and impotent conclusion' that great European league against Francethe foundations of which had been first laid by Temple-was Temple's political pupil. It is not too much to say that the long struggle with Louis XIV., in which the dauntless persistency of William of Orange engaged England and Europe -which was carried on with such triumphant success by Marlborough, and closed, if not too soon, yet too regardlessly of national and European interests, by Harley and St. John, at the Peace of Utrecht-might have been averted at the outset by honest adherence, on the part of England, to the policy of the Triple Alliance, concluded by Temple between England, Holland, and Sweden, in 1668. De Witt, the other wise and honest man employed in forming that alliance, relied on the continued adherence of England to its objects and policy, because he relied on England continuing to see her own interest in them. What he did not know, or, at any rate, did not sufficiently take into account, was that the Lady England had then a Lord, whom the most frivolous and adulterous counter-interest too easily seduced at any time from that of his lawful spouse. The temptress France came with gold in her hand-with Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans (sister of Charles II.), for emissary, who opened her batteries against

*Macaulay's Essays,' vol. iii. p. 96.

the

the Anglo-Dutch alliance by unmerciful ridicule of the insular cut of English vests. Without notice-without pretext or provocation-Charles and his shameless councillors of the Cabal' rushed at once from alliance with Holland, in resistance to the encroachments of France, to war on Holland, in improvised alliance with France. The suddenness of the witch-brewed hurricane threw the Dutch Republic on its beam-ends, and precipitated a revolution in its federal democracy in favour of Orange and fatal to De Witt, as a similar revolution in the preceding generation had been to Barneveldt. But the storm of perfidiously-planned hostilities against Holland subsided as suddenly as it had risen. She sought refuge in brave despair, and found succour in fresh alliances. The sole permanent product of the shamelessly treacherous league between Charles and Louis was the life-long direction of the policy of William of Orange in antagonism to France. And the sole result which the Grand Monarque reaped at last from the costly and corrupt purchase of two English monarchs was the accession, by grace of Revolution, of a third and true monarch, whose policy prepared-if it left for another reign to consummate-the most crushing overthrows the arms of France had sustained since Crecy and Agincourt.

Lord Macaulay, who, while doing full justice to Temple's intrepid and patriotic diplomacy, seemed, in his Essay on Temple,' to have got tired of hearing Aristides always called The Just,' describes him in that essay as having 'transferred to the new settlement after the Revolution the same languid sort of loyalty which he had felt for his former master'-Charles II. How, may we ask, could any honest man have felt more for such a master than a very languid sort of loyalty? 'In spite,'

*The Duchess of Orleans, according to the author or authors of the 'Character of a Trimmer' (of which lively and telling political tract the credit of authorship is divided between Sir William Coventry and the Marquis of Halifax), was a very welcome guest here; and her own charms and dexterity, joined with other advantages, that might help her persuasions, gave her such an ascendant, that she could hardly fail of success. One of the preliminaries of her treaty, though a trivial thing in itself, yet was considerable in the consequence, as very small circumstances often are in relation to the government of the world. About this time a general humour, in opposition to France, had made us throw off their fashion, and put on vests, that we might look more like a distinct people, and not be under the servility of imitation, which ever pays a greater deference to the original than is consistent with the equality all independent nations should pretend to. France did not like this small beginning of ill-humour, at least of emulation, wisely considering that it is a natural introduction first to make the world their apes, that they may be afterwards their slaves. It was thought that one of the instructions Madam brought along with her was to laugh us out of these vests, which she performed so effectually, that in a moment, like so many footmen who had quitted their masters' livery, we all took it again, and returned to our old service.'

the

the great historian goes on to say, ' of the most pressing solicitations, he refused to become Secretary of State. The refusal evidently proceeded only from the dislike of trouble and danger.' Might it not have partly proceeded from Temple's sixty years, well told, and his gout? Lord Macaulay himself states that William was in the habit of consulting Temple in his Surrey retreat on all political emergencies. On one important occasion, the King having sent to ask his opinion on the Triennial Bill, which he was very reluctant to pass, Temple's confidential secretary, Jonathan Swift, had the honour to be made the mouthpiece of the veteran statesman's prudent counsel to the monarch.

'The sequel,' says Mr. Forster, 'may be told by Swift himself. What had weighed heavily with William was that Charles I. had passed such a Bill. But Swift explained that Charles's ruin was not owing to his passing a Bill which did not hinder him from dissolving any Parliament, but to the passing another Bill which put it out of his power to dissolve the Parliament then in being without its own consent. "Mr. Swift, who was well versed in English history [here the autobiography is quoted], gave the King a short account of the matter, and a more large one to the Earl of Portland, but all in vain; for the King, by ill-advisers, was prevailed upon to refuse passing the Bill. This was the first time that Mr. Swift had ever any converse with courts, and he told his friends it was the first incident that helped to cure him of vanity." One may guess from this, the confidence in himself with which the young scholar had stepped into the closet of the King.'

When Swift first became an inmate at Moor Park, Esther Johnson (Stella) was living there under the same roof with her mother, whom Macaulay degrades into a waiting-woman, and whom Scott and Mr. Forster describe as a governess or companion of Temple's sister, Lady Giffard, with whom she continued in that connection till the death of Temple. Esther Johnson was then a little girl in a pinafore. I knew her,' says Swift, from six years old, and had some share in her education, by directing what books she should read, and perpetually instructing her in the principles of honour and virtue, from which she never swerved in any one action or moment of her life.' Contrast this simple statement, placed in a perfectly clear light by Mr. Forster, with the following broad caricature by Lord Macaulay :—

'An eccentric, uncouth, disagreeable young Irishman, who had narrowly escaped plucking at Dublin, attended Sir William as an amanuensis for board and 201. a-year, dined at the second table, wrote bad verses in praise of his employer, and made love to a very pretty, dark-eyed young girl who waited on Lady Giffard.'

Vol. 141.-No. 281.

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