Jonathan Swift was born in 1667, on the 30th of November. His father was
a Jonathan Swift, sixth of the ten sons of the Rev. Thomas Swift, vicar
of Goodrich, near Ross, in Herefordshire, who had married Elizabeth
Dryden, niece to the poet Dryden's grandfather. Jonathan Swift married,
at Leicester, Abigail Erick, or Herrick, who was of the family that had
given to England Robert Herrick, the poet. As their eldest brother,
Godwin, was prospering in Ireland, four other Swifts, Dryden, William,
Jonathan, and Adam, all in turn found their way to Dublin. Jonathan was
admitted an attorney of the King's Inns, Dublin, and was appointed by the
Benchers to the office of Steward of the King's Inns, in January, 1666.
He died in April, 1667, leaving his widow with an infant daughter, Jane,
and an unborn child.
Swift was born in Dublin seven months after his father's death. His
mother after a time returned to her own family, in Leicester, and the
child was added to the household of his uncle, Godwin Swift, who, by his
four wives, became father to ten sons of his own and four daughters.
Godwin Swift sent his nephew to Kilkenny School, where he had William
Congreve among his schoolfellows. In April, 1782, Swift was entered at
Trinity College as pensioner, together with his cousin Thomas, son of his
uncle Thomas. That cousin Thomas afterwards became rector of Puttenham,
in Surrey. Jonathan Swift graduated as B.A. at Dublin, in February,
1686, and remained in Trinity College for another three years. He was
ready to proceed to M.A. when his uncle Godwin became insane. The
troubles of 1689 also caused the closing of the University, and Jonathan
Swift went to Leicester, where mother and son took counsel together as to
future possibilities of life.
The retired statesman, Sir William Temple, at Moor Park, near Farnham, in
Surrey, was in highest esteem with the new King and the leaders of the
Revolution. His father, as Master of the Irish Rolls, had been a friend
of Godwin Swift's, and with his wife Swift's mother could claim
cousinship. After some months, therefore, at Leicester, Jonathan Swift,
aged twenty-two, went to Moor Park, and entered Sir William Temple's
household, doing service with the expectation of advancement through his
influence. The advancement he desired was in the Church. When Swift
went to Moor Park he found in its household a child six or seven years
old, daughter to Mrs. Johnson, who was trusted servant and companion to
Lady Gifford, Sir William Temple's sister. With this little Esther, aged
seven, Swift, aged twenty-two, became a playfellow and helper in her
studies. He broke his English for her into what he called their "little
language," that was part of the same playful kindliness, and passed into
their after-life. In July, 1692, with Sir William Temple's help,
Jonathan Swift commenced M.A. in Oxford, as of Hart Hall. In 1694,
Swift's ambition having been thwarted by an offer of a clerkship, of 120
pounds a year, in the Irish Rolls, he broke from Sir William Temple, took
orders, and obtained, through other influence, in January, 1695, the
small prebendary of Kilroot, in the north of Ireland. He was there for
about a year. Close by, in Belfast, was an old college friend, named
Waring, who had a sister. Swift was captivated by Miss Waring, called
her Varina, and would have become engaged to marry her if she had not
flinched from engagement with a young clergyman whose income was but a
hundred a year.
But Sir William Temple had missed Jonathan Swift from Moor Park.
Differences were forgotten, and Swift, at his wish, went back. This was
in 1696, when his little pupil, Esther Johnson, was fifteen. Swift said
of her, "I knew her 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. She was sickly
from her childhood until about the age of fifteen; but then grew into
perfect health, and was then looked upon as one of the most beautiful,
graceful, and agreeable young women in London, only a little too fat. Her
hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of her face in
perfection." This was the Stella of Swift's after-life, the one woman to
whom his whole love was given. But side by side with the slow growth of
his knowledge of all she was for him, was the slow growth of his
conviction that attacks of giddiness and deafness, which first came when
he was twenty, and recurred at times throughout his life, were signs to
be associated with that which he regarded as the curse upon his life. His
end would be like his uncle Godwin's. It was a curse transmissible to
children, but if he desired to keep the influence his genius gave him, he
could not tell the world why he refused to marry. Only to Stella, who
remained unmarried for his sake, and gave her life to him, could all be
known.
Returned to Moor Park, Swift wrote, in 1697, the "Battle of the Books,"
as well as the "Tale of the Tub," with which it was published seven years
afterwards, in 1704. Perrault and others had been battling in France
over the relative merits of Ancient and Modern Writers. The debate had
spread to England. On behalf of the Ancients, stress was laid by Temple
on the letters of Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum. Wotton replied to Sir
William for the Moderns. The Hon. Charles Boyle, of Christ Church,
published a new edition of the Epistles of Phalaris, with translation of
the Greek text into Latin. Dr. Bentley, the King's Librarian, published
a "Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris," denying their value, and
arguing that Phalaris did not write them. Christ Church replied through
Charles Boyle, with "Dr. Bentley's Dissertation on the Epistles of
Phalaris examined." Swift entered into the war with a light heart, and
matched the Ancients in defending them for the amusement of his patron.
His incidental argument between the Spider and the Bee has provided a
catch-phrase, "Sweetness and Light," to a combatant of later times.
Sir William Temple died on the 27th of January, 1699. Swift then became
chaplain to Lord Berkeley in Dublin Castle, and it was as a little
surprise to Lady Berkeley, who liked him to read to her Robert Boyle's
"Meditations," that Swift wrote the "Meditation on a Broomstick." In
February, 1700, he obtained from Lord Berkeley the vicarage of Laracor
with the living of Rathbeggan, also in the diocese of Meath. In the
beginning of 1701 Esther Johnson, to whom Sir William Temple had
bequeathed a leasehold farm in Wicklow, came with an elder friend, Miss
Dingley, and settled in Laracor to be near Swift. During one of the
visits to London, made from Laracor, Swift attacked the false pretensions
of astrologers by that prediction of the death of Mr. Partridge, a
prophetic almanac maker, of which he described the Accomplishment so
clearly that Partridge had much ado to get credit for being alive.
The lines addressed to Stella speak for themselves. "Cadenus and
Vanessa" was meant as polite and courteous admonition to Miss Hester Van
Homrigh, a young lady in whom green-sickness seems to have produced
devotion to Swift in forms that embarrassed him, and with which he did
not well know how to deal.