of his uncles. The house was open to him as long as his 1667-1688. uncle lived or his aunt survived him; and on the walls hung the portrait of his favourite ancestor.* There was another Uncle uncle, Adam, who seems to have thriven in the world, for he

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Adam.

and Lowndes, a man high in the Treasury during Anne's last ministry, and to whom Gay addressed some humorous verses ' on the ingenious and worthy author of that celebrated trea'tise in folio called the Land-tax Bill,' had married two sisters; † but almost all that is known of him in connection with his great kinsman is an allusion from the latter which might lead us to suppose they had had personal intercourse in the north of Ireland, where presumably this uncle then lived. Of another relative something is more certainly known. While at Moor Park Swift gave praise so unusual with him to a cousin Willoughby, Godwin's eldest surviving son by his first marriage settled prosperously as a merchant in Lisbon, that

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1667-1688. it lends some colour of probability to a story told by Mr. Deane Swift on the relation of Willoughby's eldest daughter,* and accepted by all his biographers. 'It happened when he 'was at the University of Dublin that one day, as he was 'looking out of his window pensive and melancholy, his 'pockets being then at the lowest ebb, having spied a master ' of a ship gazing about in the college courts-Lord! thought 'he, if that person should now be enquiring and staring

Waiting on

'about for my chamber, in order to bring me some present providence. from cousin Willoughby Swift, what a happy creature I 'should be! He had scarce amused himself with this pleasing 'imagination, when behold, the master of the ship having 'come into his chamber, asked him if his name was Jonathan 'Swift. He told him it was. Why then, said the master, I 'have something for you that was sent to you by Mr. Wil'loughby Swift. Whereupon he drew out of his pocket a 'large greasy leather bag, and poured him out all the money 'that it contained on the table. As the sum which he had 'now received was much greater than ever in his life he had 'been master of before at any one time, he pushed over with'out reckoning them a good number of the silver cobs (for it

A sailor 'ex 'machina.'

was all in that specie) to the honest sailor, and desired he 'would accept of them for his trouble. But the sailor would 'not touch a farthing. No, no, master, said he, Ize take 'nothing for my trouble. I would do more than that comes 'to for Mr. Willoughby Swift. Whereupon Jonathan gathered 'up the money as fast as he could, and thrust it into his pocket. For by the Lord Harry, said he, I was afraid if 'the money had lain much longer on the table he might ' have repented his generosity and taken a good part of it. 'But from that time forward he declared that he became a Essay,54-5. 'better economist, and never was without some little money 'in his pocket.' That Swift did receive help from this

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cousin at Lisbon, and that the fact impressed gratefully both 1667-1688. himself and his mother, there is no doubt; but whether it came at this time, and in this way, can only now be determined by the degree of credibility in the story itself, which for that reason is here given with its particular 'thought 'he's' and 'said he's' exactly as first related. It is likely enough that such an incident should have impressed the importance of economy and the uses of a little money in the Habits of pocket; and it is in any case certain that Swift acquired economy. the habit, at an unusually early time, of keeping very minute record of the pence he expended and the shillings or pounds that were due to him. Many of his account books are in my possession, and will be used to illustrate his life.

Another of Mr. Deane Swift's stories it is impossible to accept even conditionally. 'Mr. Warren, the chamber'fellow of Swift in the University of Dublin, and a gentleman of undoubted veracity, whose sister had made some

،

،

very considerable impressions upon the Doctor's heart in

'the days of his youth, assured a relation of mine, whom he

'courted for a wife about eight or nine and forty years ago,

'that he saw the Tale of a Tub in the handwriting of Dr.

،

credible.

Swift, when the Doctor was but nineteen years old; but Not 'what corrections or improvements it might have received 'before the publication in the year 1697, he could by no means declare. The Tale did not appear until 1704, but Swift has himself informed us that the most part of it was written in 1696 during his second residence with Temple,§

*

'I wish and shall pray he may 'be as happy as he deserves, and he 'cannot be more. My mother desires 'her best love to him and to you.'3 June 1694. Swift to Deane Swift the elder, who passed some time in Willoughby's counting-house, and whose son and namesake is better known to us. Willoughby was the second son of Godwin's first marriage, but became the eldest by a brother's

death 'some years before 1688.'-
Essay, 50. See also post, 73-4.
+ The proper name is Waring. He
stands 129th on the College Roll (ante,
36), and was one of the batch of
'mediocriter in omnibus' at the ex-
amination in 1685.
‡ Essay, 31.

§ 'The greatest part of that book
'was finished about thirteen years
'since, 1696, which is eight years

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1667-1688. and there is certainly no evidence that any portion was in existence before that date. But he was familiar with Waring's family for more than three years beyond it; and it is not at all improbable that the story is true in everything but place and (a more important drawback) date, and that the manuscript was seen by Waring before its publication.

Fellow student

Waring.

For a third incident of the later college time he is himself the authority. In the Anecdotes, as we have seen, he relates that he happened, before twenty years old, to contract a giddiness and coldness of stomach that almost brought him to his grave, and this disorder pursued him with intermissions of two or three years (hazarding a sorrowful prediction) 'to the end of his life.' Sometimes he a little altered the date of what he believed to have been the origin of these miseries, and, as in a letter to Mrs. Howard (Lady Suffolk) in August 1727, fixed his giddiness at the first residence with Giddiness. Temple, and his deafness at the second.* 'About two hours 'before you were born, I got my giddiness, by eating a hundred 'golden pippins at a time, at Richmond; and when you were 'four years and a quarter old, bating two days, having made 'a fine seat' (having selected, he means, some favourite spot in the grounds at Moor Park) 'about twenty miles further 'in Surrey, where I used to read, &c. there I got my deaf'ness; and these two friends have visited me, one or other, 'every year since, and being old acquaintance, have now 'thought fit to come together.' That the disorders did so pursue him, and may have had part, as he sadly foretold, in what at last overwhelmed him, there will be evidence enough. From those early days up to 1708, when he told Archbishop King that he had been persecuted with a cruel distemper

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of giddiness in his head for more than seven weeks which 1667-1688. would not suffer him to write or think of anything; through all the years that followed to 1727, when he told Knightley Chetwode that he had been nine weeks very ill in England both of giddiness and deafness, saying in the same year to Sheridan that he believed his giddiness to be the disorder that would at last get the better of him; from thence onward to 1733, when he wrote to the second Lord Oxford that he was just recovering after seven months' cruel indispositions of giddiness and deafness, the former of which he doubted would never quite leave him till he left it; and again to 1737, when he told Mr. Richardson that he had been troubled with a giddy head and deafness for nearly seven weeks that unfitted him for human conversation; the continual recurrence for less lengthened periods, of these terrible and frequent visitors, has large and reiterated mention in his letters. His own belief as to the origin of the giddi- How they ness he never changed, and it is curious to observe how much it cost him all his life to abstain from fruit, which he as passionately liked as he steadily forced himself to resist; but there is a remark upon it by Johnson, which has his characteristic common sense. The original of diseases is commonly 'obscure; and almost every boy eats as much fruit as he can 'get, without any inconvenience.'

came.

Swift was little more than two months past his twentyfirst birthday, when Tyrconnel let loose the Celtic population on the English settlers in Dublin, and, quitting the college Swift with a crowd of other fugitives, he found his way to his from mother's house in England.

driven

college.

VOL. I.

E