Swift Jonathan

Swift, JONATHAN (1667-1745), greatest of English satirists, was born of Engitsh parents at Dublin on the 30th of November, 1667, belllg remotely related on his mother's side to Herrick, and on his father's to Dryden. By the death of his father seven months before his birth, he was left to the care of his uncle, Godwin Swift, who put him to school at Kilkenny and afterwards entered him at Trinity College, Dublin. Losing his uncle in 1688, he came to England, and in 1689 was taken up by Sir William Temple a connnection of his mother who installed him at Moor Park, near Farnham, Surrey, as his secretary. After some years he became dissatisfied with his position, and returned to Dublin, taking orders as priest In 1695, and being presented to the prebend of Kilroot, near Belfast. In the following year he went back to Moor Park as Temple's literary assistant, and the relation continued until 1699, when his patron died, bequeathing him his manuscripts and a legacy of £100. Retnrning once more to Ireland, he obtained the vicarage of Laracor with the living of Rathbeggan He had already, while at Moor Park, written The Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books; he now gave himself up largely to political writing, spending much of his time in London in the company of the leading wits and politicians of the day and forming an intimacy with Harley and Bolingbroke. Throwing his influence more and more on the Tory side, he at last, in 1710, became editor of the Examiner. Among his writings in these years were the Argument to Prove the Inconvenience of Abolishing Christianity (1708), the Conduct of the Allies (1711), and the Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue (1712). The reward of his incalculable services to the Tories was long delayed, and when, in 1713, it came, it was not the English bishopric he had expected, but the deanery of St. Patrick's, which he accepted with little satisfaction and less gratitude. Some years later, animated by no sympathy with the country in which he felt himself an exile, he began the publication of a series of tracts exposing the misgovernment of Ireland, the most famous of them being the Drapier's Letters (1724). The last of his more notable works and the greatest of all, Gulliver's Travels, appeared in 1726, and created an immense sensation. The closing years of his life were years of mental decay. His uncle Godwin had died insane; he had prophesied that, "like that tree," he should "die at the top," and his death on the 19th of October, 1745, was a long-delayed release from blank imbecility. There is no space here to discuss the problems arising out of Swift's relations with "Stella" and "Vanessa." The former Miss Esther Johnson, was the daughter of Sir William Temple's steward; at his invitation she, accompanied by a lady companion, followed him to Ireland, living at Trim while he was at Laracor, and at the parsonage while he was in England; and it is probable, though not demonstrable, that in 1716 he pnvately married her, although he never lived with her or publicly recognised her as his wife. It is certain, however, that In his strange way he was deeply attached to her, and her death in 1728 left him lonely and disconsolate. Why he did not marry her, or, having married her, behaved as though he had not, will never, perhaps, be known; the most charitable and not the least reasonable theory is that he was determined not to transmit to descendants the malady which he felt to be latent in himself. Of "Vanessa," Miss Esther Vanhomrigh, he became tutor in London in 1709, and acquired such influence over her that she made him an offer of marriage, which he evaded rather than refused; and there is too much ground for believing that her death, in 1723, from consumption, was hastened by her discovery or suspicion of his relations with "Stella," and by his cruel resentment of her expostulations.