ANECDOTE BIOGRAPHY. DEAN SWIFT. FAMILY OF THE SWIFTS. THE Swifts of Rotherham, in Yorkshire, from whose younger branch was descended the Dean, rank among the oldest families of that county. His immediate ancestor, the Rev. Thomas Swift, was vicar of Goodrich,* in Herefordshire, and distinguished in the civil wars by his loyalty to Charles I. His house was repeatedly plundered by the Parliamentary soldiers, even to the clothes of the infant in the cradle (traditionally, Jonathan, father of the Dean) and to the last loaf which was to support his numerous family. He left ten sons and three or four daughters. Godwin Swift, his eldest son, studied at Gray's Inn, was called to the bar, and appointed Attorneygeneral of the Palatinate of Tipperary, under the Duke of Ormond. Godwin's success attracted to Ireland three of his brothers, William, Jonathan, and Adam, all of whom settled in that kingdom, and there lived and died. JONATHAN SWIFT BORN. Jonathan Swift, like his brother Godwin, was bred to the law, though not like him, called to the bar; he married * Swift put up a plain monument to his grandfather, and also presented a cup to the church of Goodrich. He sent a pencilled elevation of the monument (a simple tablet) to Mrs. Howard, who returned it with the following lines, inscribed on the drawing, which were by Pope. The paper is endorsed, in Swift's hand, “Model of a monument for my grandfather, with Mr. Pope's roguery." "JONATHAN SWIFT Had the gift, By fatherige, motherige, In this church he has put B Abigail Ericke, of an ancient family in Leicestershire, but poor. He was appointed Steward of the King's Inns, Dublin, in 1665; he died in 1667, leaving his widow in great poverty, with an infant daughter, and pregnant with the future Dean of St. Patrick's. Dryden William Swift, a brother of the deceased, (named after his mother, who was a near relation of Dryden the poet,*) assisted his sister-in-law, but her chief support was Godwin Swift. Upon November 30, 1667, (St. Andrew's Day,) she was delivered of the celebrated Jonathan Swift in a small house, No. 7, Hoey's-court, Dublin, a locality thus minutely described by Mr. W. R. Wilde: Adjoining a portion of one of the ancient city walls, and running between Castle-street and the junction of Great and Little Ship-street, is a narrow passage, now called the Castle Steps, but in former days, Cole'salley. Towards the lower end of this descent, on the western side, another alley led up a few steps into a small square court, in the mouldering grandeur of the houses of which we still recognise the remains of a locality once fashionable and opulent. Here, on our right, is the house occupied by Surgeon-general Buxton; that beyond it was the residence of Lord Chancellor Bowes; and a little further on, upon the right, stands the celebrated Eade's Coffee-house, where the wits and statesmen of the day drank their claret and canary. Upon the opposite side, where the court narrows into the lane that leads into St. Werburgh-street, is the house No. 7, wherein Jonathan Swift was born. In 1809, the house was occupied by Mrs. Jackson, a dealer in earthenware. Mr. Wilde, writing in 1849, says :-"a handsome door-case, a few years ago, ornamented the front of the house, but some antiquary, it is said, carried it away; the mark is still visible. The house is at present occupied by the families of several poor tradesmen; but the carved wainscoting and cornices, the lofty ornamented chimneypieces, and the marble window-sills, which existed up to a very recent period, and some of which still remain, all attest the relics of a mansion of note in its day."-The Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life, 2nd edit. 1849. CHILDHOOD OF SWIFT. The infancy of Swift was marked by a singular chance. The nurse to whom he was committed was a native of Whitehaven, in Cumberland, to which town she was recalled, by the commands of a dying relation, from whom she expected a legacy. She actually stole away little Jonathan, out of affection, and carried him to Whitehaven, where he resided three years; for his health was so delicate, that, rather than hazard a second voyage, his mother chose to fix * Hence it has been said; Swift's mother was a Herrick, and his grandmother a Dryden. his residence for á time with the female who had given such a singular proof of her attachment. The nurse was so careful in teaching the child, that when he returned to Dublin he was able to spell, and when five years old he could read any chapter of the Bible. SWIFT AT SCHOOL. Sir Walter Scott attributes to the circumstances of the boy Swift having to share the indigence of a mother whom he tenderly loved, and to subsist upon the support afforded by his uncle Godwin-the most depressing effects. "Born a posthumous child, and bred up as an object of charity, he early adopted the custom of observing his birthday, as a term, not of joy, but of sorrow; and of reading, when it annually recurred, the striking passage of Scripture in which Job laments and execrates the day upon which it was said in his father's house that a man child was born." Much has been said of the parsimony of his uncle Godwin Swift, but the allowance for the boy's schooling was of necessity regulated by the real state of his uncle's embarrassed circumstances. Meanwhile, his education proceeded apace. At the age of six years he was sent to the school of Kilkenny, endowed and maintained by the Ormond family: here he learned to say latino-anglicè, the words Mi dux et amasti lux, the first germ of the numerous jeux d'esprit of that nature which passed between him and Sheridan during his declining years. When the old college of Kilkenny was about to be removed, the materials were sold by auction. A thriving shopkeeper, named Barnaby Scott, purchased the desks, seats, and boards of the schoolroom. On one of the desks was cut out the name in full-JONATHAN SWIFT-doubtless, with Swift's pocket-knife, and by Swift's own hand. Mr. Barnaby Scott, solicitor, the son of the purchaser of the old desks and boards, died in 1856; he distinctly remembered having seen the incised autograph when a boy, and added that this particular board was, with others of the purchase, used for flooring his father's shop, where it, no doubt, still occupies the place wherein it was fixed 73 years ago. EARLY DISAPPOINTMENT. "I remember when I was a little boy, [says Swift, in a letter to Lord Bolingbroke,] I felt a great fish at the end of my line, which I drew up almost on the ground, but it dropt in; and, I believe, it was the type of all my future disappointments." This little incident, perhaps, gave the first wrong bias to a mind predisposed to such impressions: and by operating with so much strength and permanency, it might possibly lay the foundation of the Dean's subsequent peevishness, passion, and misanthropy. SWIFT AT COLLEGE. From Kilkenny, Jonathan was removed, at the age of 14, and admitted into Trinity College, Dublin, where, as appears from the book of the senior lecturers, he was received as a pensioner under the tuition of St. George Ashe, on the 24th April, 1682. His cousin, Thomas Swift, was admitted at the same time; he afterwards became Rector of Puttenham, in Surrey, and affected to have a share in the original concoction of the Tale of a Tub. Swift used to call him, contemptuously, his "parson cousin." The University studies of the period were mostly ill-suited to Jonathan's genius. Logic, then deemed a principal object of learning, was in vain presented to his notice; for his disposition altogether_rejected the learned sophistry of Smiglecius, Keckermannus, Burgersdicius, and other ponderous worthies now hardly known by name; nor could his tutor ever persuade him to read three pages in one of them, though some acquaintance with the commentators of Aristotle was absolutely necessary at passing examination for his degrees. Neither did he pay regular attention to other studies. He read and studied rather for amusement, and to divert melancholy reflections, than with the zeal of acquiring knowledge. But his reading, however desultory, must have been varied and extensive, since he is said to have already drawn a rough sketch of the Tale of a Tub, which he communicated to his friend Mr. Waryng. We must conclude then, that a mere idler of the seventeenth century might acquire in his hours of careless and irregular reading, a degree of knowledge which would startle a severe student of the present age. Swift's uncle Godwin now died; but he found another patron in his uncle Dryden William Swift, who gave the necessary support for his orphan nephew with more grace and apparent kindness, though he could not afford to increase the amount; yet Swift always recorded him as the "best of his relations." He had a son Willoughby at sea, who sent home by a sailor as a present to his cousin Jonathan at College a large leathern purse of silver coin, which reached him as he was sitting one day in his room absolutely penniless: he then resolved so to manage his scanty income as never again to be reduced to extremity; and from his journals still existing, it is clear that he could have accounted for every penny of his expenditure, during any year of his life, from the time of his being at college, until the total decline of his faculties. Nevertheless, pleasure, as well as necessity, interfered with Swift's studies. He neglected and affected to contemn the discipline of the college, and frequented taverns and coffeehouses. He wantonly assailed the fellows of the University with satirical effusions. Still, no record of penal infliction occurs, until a special grace for the degree of Bachelor of Arts was conferred on him February 13, 1685-6: this was, in Trinity College, a discreditable intimation of scholastic insufficiency. This probably added to Swift's negligence. Between the periods of 14th November, 1685, and 8th October, 1687, he incurred no less than seventy penalties for nonattendance at chapel; for neglecting lectures; for being absent from the evening roll-call; and for town-haunting, or absence from college without licence. At length these irregularities called forth a more solemn censure, for, on 18th March, 1686-7, with his cousin Thomas Swift, his chum, Mr. Waryng, and four others, he incurred the disgrace of a public admonition for notorious neglect of duties. His second public punishment was of a nature yet more degrading. On 20th November, 1688, Swift was, by a sentence of the Vice-Provost and senior fellows of the University, suspended from his academical degree, for exciting disturbances within the college, and insulting the junior dean. He and another were sentenced by the Board to ask pardon publicly of the junior dean, on their knees, as having offended more atrociously than the rest. These facts are supposed to afford the true solution of Swift's animosity towards the University of Dublin, and account for his determination to take the degree of M.A. at Oxford; while the solution receives confirmation from this, that the junior dean, for insulting whom he was punished, was the same Mr. Owen Lloyd, (afterwards Professor of Divinity and Dean of Down,) whom Swift has treated with so much severity in his account of Lord Wharton. This account of the matter was inferred by the late Dr. Barrett from the college records; and his opinion is con |