Page images
PDF
EPUB

spirit with which Swift submitted to this despotic infliction, if indeed he obeyed it, for of this there is no absolute proof, may be more easily conceived than described. The sense of his resentment shows itself in the dislike which he exhibits to his Alma Mater, the Trinity College of Dublin, and the satirical severity with which he persecutes Dr Owen Lloyd, the junior Dean, before whom he had been ordained to make this unworthy prostration.1

This unpleasant circumstance of the Dean's aca

of the heads of the university, than on his own acknowledged talents. Yet an ingenious correspondent has alleged the following reasons, to prove that this degrading ceremony never was submitted to.

"From Dr Barrett's Life of Swift, it appears that he graduated above a year before the usual time, which in Trinity College, Dublin, is four years and a half, therefore speciali gratia must mean that he got it by interest or merit; or, if it was suspended after, as Dr B. suggests, it might have been restored to him on intercession of friends. But there appears

little to countenance the supposition, that he was ordered to beg pardon on his knees, and nothing to warrant the assertion that he submitted to such an indignity, as there is no trace of his remaining in college after the revolution, which is the date Dr B. assigns for that censure. The dates are very confused and contradictory as to the two Swifts; and, while he allows Thomas Swift to have had a scholarship, and suspects that Jonathan had not, he forgets that very few ever remain in Trinity College, Dublin, after graduating, unless they enjoy scholarships; and that Jonathan Swift had one, appears farther from his remaining in Commons, and being, according to Dr B., suspended from Commons, by way of punishment after graduating, which could be no punishment at all to him, if his Commons were not at the charge of the University."

1 See the Works of Jonathan Swift, to which these Memoirs are prefixed, vol. iv., p. 13, where Dr Lloyd is said to have been bribed by a deanery to take a cast-mistress off the handsof Lord Wharton.

[blocks in formation]

1

demical life, has become gradually confounded with the yet more severe penalty of expulsion, inflicted upon John Jones, one of his companions. Mr Richardson has recorded a tradition, that Swift was expelled from college for writing a Tripos, as it is called, or satirical oration, uttered by him as Terræ-Filius. The research of the learned Dr Barrett has ascertained, that such a tripos was actually delivered, 11th July, 1688. He had published its contents, which are preserved in the Lanesborough MS., and he has proved, from the college records, that Jones, the Terræ-Filius of the period, was actually deprived of his degree, for the false and scandalous reflections contained in that satire, though the sentence was afterwards mitigated into a temporary suspension of his degree and academical rights. But Jones, not Swift, was the TerræFilius so degraded. The inaccuracy of Richardson's informer may be easily pardoned: he was recollecting the events of a remote period, when Swift and Jones, friends and associates, both experienced

1 Vol. vi., p. 171. Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh, April 22, 1752." I am told my Lord (Orrery) is mistaken in some of his facts; for instance, in that wherein he asserts, that Swift's learning was a late acquirement. I am very well warranted by the son of an eminent divine, a prelate, who was for three years what is called his chum, in the following account of that fact. Dr Swift made as great a progress in his learning at the University of Dublin in his youth, as any of his contemporaries; but was so very illnatured and troublesome, that he was made Terræ- Filius, on purpose to have a pretence to expel him. He raked up all the scandal against the heads of that university, that a severe enquirer, and a still severer temper, could get together into his harangue. He was expelled in consequence of his abuse; and having his discessit, afterwards got admitted at Oxford to his degree."

punishment for petulant satire and insubordination. It is not, therefore, wonderful, that he confounded the circumstances attending their delinquencies, and attributed the more weighty offence, an offence, too, of which Swift was likely to have been guilty, and the more severe punishment, to him who afterwards became the object of general attention. It is probable, likewise, that the tripos may have been heightened by the satirical strokes of Swift; though I cannot think it likely that he was the principal author of the work, for which Jones sustained the sentence of expulsion, since, with all his grossness, it exhibits little of his humour.

In 1688, the war broke out in Ireland; and Swift, then in his twenty-first year, without money-and, if not without learning, at least without the reputation of possessing it—with the stains of turbulence and insubordination attached to his character-and without a single friend to protect, receive, or maintain him-left the College of Dublin. Guided, it may be supposed, more by affection than hope, he bent his course to England, and travelled on foot to his mother's residence, who was then in Leicestershire. Herself in a dependent and precarious situation, Mrs Swift could only recommend to her son to solicit the patronage of Sir William Temple, whose lady was her relation, and had been well acquainted with the family of the Swifts, and in whose house Thomas Swift, the cousin of our author, had already resided as a chaplain.

The application was made, and succeeded; but for some time Sir William Temple's patronage seemed to be unattended either by confidence or

affection. The accomplished statesman, and polite scholar, was probably, for a time, unreconciled to the irritable habits, and imperfect learning of his new inmate.1 But Sir William's prejudices became gradually weaker, as Swift's exquisite power of observation increased his faculties of pleasing, while his knowledge was expanded by a course of study so hard, that it engaged eight hours of every day. Such a space of time, well employed, soon rendered a man of Swift's powers an invaluable treasure to a patron like Temple, with whom he remained about two years. His studies were partially interrupted by bad health. He had contracted, from a surfeit of stone-fruit, a giddiness and coldness of

1 In the letter to Lady Bradshaigh, already quoted, Richardson says, "Mr Temple, nephew to Sir William Temple, and brother to Lord Palmerston, who lately died at Bath, declared to a friend of mine, that Sir William hired Swift, at his first entrance into the world, to read to him, and sometimes to be his amanuensis, at the rate of L. 20 a-year and his board, which was then high preferment to him; but that Sir William never favoured him with his conversation because of his ill qualities, nor allowed him to sit down at table with him. Swift, your ladyship will easily see, by his writings, had bitterness, satire, moroseness, that must make him unsufferable to his equals and inferiors, and unsafe for his superiors to countenance. Sir William Temple was a wise and discerning man. He could easily see through a young fellow, taken into a low office, and inclined to forget himself. Probably too, the Dean was always unpolite, and never could be a man of breeding. Sir William Temple was one of the politest men of his time."-Richardson's Correspondence, vol. vi., p. 173. The outlines of this unfavourable statement are probably true, if restricted to the earlier part of Swift's residence at Moorpark. But we must not forget, that the enmity which subsisted between him and all the descendants of Sir William Temple, may account for Mr Temple's placing his conduct in a disreputable light,

stomach, which almost brought him to his grave, and the effects of which he felt during his whole lifetime. At one time he was so ill that he visited

1

It here becomes the indispensable duty of an editor, briefly to notice the opinion expressed by the learned Dr Beddoes, who, in the ninth essay of his work, entitled Hygeia, has directly ascribed the vertigo of Swift, with all its distressing consequences, to habits of early and profligate indulgence. And he has argued upon our author's conduct towards Stella and Vanessa, as indicating the inflamed imagination, and the exhausted frame of a premature voluptuary, who still courted pleasures he was unable to enjoy. The same conclusion, Dr Beddoes is disposed to derive, from the tone of gross indelicacy, of which Swift's writings afford too many proofs. Το the hypothesis of this ingenious writer, we may oppose, first, The express declaration of Swift himself, that this distressing malady originated in the surfeit mentioned in the text, a cause which medical professors have esteemed in every respect adequate to produce such consequences. Secondly, His whole intercourse with Stella and Vanessa, indicates the very reverse of an ardent or licentious imagination; and proves his coldness to have been constitutionally inherent, both in mind and person, and utterly distinct from that of one who retains wishes which he has lost the power to gratify. Those who choose to investigate this matter further, may compare Swift's Journal to Stella, with Pope's Letters to the Miss Blounts, in which there really exists evidence of that mixture of friendship, passion, and licentious gallantry, which the learned author of Hygeia has less justly ascribed to the correspondence between Swift and Stella. Lastly, Without raking deeper into such a subject, it may be briefly noticed, that the coarse images and descriptions with which Swift has dishonoured his pages, are of a nature directly opposite to the loose impurities by which the exhausted voluptuary feeds his imagination. The latter courts the seductive images of licentious pleasure; but Swift has indulged in pictures of a very different class, and has dwelt on physical impurities, calculated to disgust, and not to excite the fancy. We may, therefore, safely take Swift's word for the origin of his malady, as well as for his constitutional temperance. And, until medical authors can clearly account for, and radically cure the diseases of their contemporary

« PreviousContinue »