Swift returned to the house of Sir William Temple rather as a confidential friend, than as a dependent companion. The mark of kindness and confidence point more particularly to a flagrant part of his criminality at Kil. root, not so generally known. A general account of this offence is all that is requisite here, and all that decency permits. In consequence of an attempt to ravish one of his parishioners, a farmer's daughter, Swift was carried before a magistrate of the name of Dobbs, (in whose family the examinations taken on the occasion are said to be still extant to this day,) and, to avoid the very serious consequences of this rash action, immediately resigned the prebend, and quitted the kingdom. This intelligence was communicated, and vouched as a fact well known in the parish even now, by one of Swift's successors in the living, and is rested on the authority of the present prebendary of Kilroot, February 6, 1785." It was not to be supposed, that a charge so inconsistent with Swift's general character for virtue, religion, and temperance, should remain unanswered. Accordingly, a reply was addressed to the Editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, by Theophilus Swift, Esq., who was justly zealous for the honour of his great relative, but it was refused admission on account of its length. An answer is also to be found in Mr. Monck Berkeley's Reliques; and, in both cases, the advocates of Swift, or rather his vindicators, urge the utter improbability of the charge, considering the circumstances of the case. It was shown by Mr. Berkeley, that had such a criminal stigma ever stained the character of Swift, some allusions to it must have been found amid the profusion of personal slander with which, at one time, he was assailed, both in Britain and Ireland. It was further remarked, that had Swift been conscious of meriting such an imputation, his satire upon Dean Sawbridge, for a similar crime, (Swift's Works, Vol. XIV. p. 252.) argues little less than insanity in the author. To which it might have been added, that the same reproach is thrown by Swift on Sir John Browne, in one of the Drapiers. (See his Works, Vol. VII. pages 127, 149, 366.) Above all, the proof of this strange allegation were loudly demanded at the hand of those who had made public a calumny unknown to the eagle-eyed slander of the age in which Swift lived. these defiances, no formal answer was returned, but the story was suffered to remain upon record. That this most atrocious charge may no longer continue without an explicit contradiction, I here insert the origin of the calumny, upon the authority of the Rev. Dr. Hutcheson of Donaghadee. Το The Rev. Mr. P―r, a successor of Dean Swift in the prebend of Kilroot, was the first circulator of this extraordinary story. He told the tale, among other public occasions, at the late excellent Bishop of Dromore's, who committed it to writing. His authority he alleged to be a Dean Dobbs, who, he stated, had informed him that informations were actually lodged before magistrates in the diocese of Down and Connor, for the alleged attempt at violation. But when the late ingenious Mr. Malone, and many other literary which he had exhibited in relinquishing that independence after which he had longed so earnestly, marked at once the generosity and the kindness of his disposition, and Sir William was insensible to neither. He resided with that great man from his return to England in 1695, till Temple's death in 1699, scarce a cloud intervening to disturb the harmony of their friendship. A cold look from his patron, such was the veneration with which Swift regarded Temple, made him unhappy for days; his faculties were devoted to his service, and, during his last decline, Swift registered, with pious fidelity, every change in his disorder; and concluded the Journal, "He died at one o'clock this morning, (27th January 1698-9,) and with him all that was good and amiable among men. "" From another memorandum, copied by Thomas Steele, Esq. junior, we have this further character by our author of his early pat * gentlemen, began to press a closer examination of the alleged fact, the unfortunate narrator denied obstinately his having ever promulgated such a charge. And whether the whole story was the creation of incipient insanity, or whether he had felt the discredit attached to his tergiversation so acutely as to derange his understanding, it is certain the unfortunate Mr. Pr died raving mad, a patient in that very hospital for lunatics, established by Swift, against whom he had propagated this cruel calumny. Yet, although Pr thus fell a victim to his own rash assertions, or credulity, it has been supposed that this inexplicable figment did really originate with Dean Dobbs, and that he had been led into a mistake, by the initial letters, J. S. upon the alleged papers, which might apply to Jonathan Smedley, (to whom, indeed, the tale has been supposed properly to belong,) or to John Smith, as well as to Jonathan Swift. It is sufficient for Swift's vindication to observe, that he returned to Kilroot, after his resignation, and inducted his successor in face of the church and of the public; that he returned to Sir William Temple with as fair a character as when he had left him; that during all his public life, in England and Ireland, where he was the butt of a whole faction, this charge was never heard of; that when adduced so many years after his death, it was unsupported by aught but sturdy and general averment; and that the chief propagator of the calumny first retracted his assertions, and finally died insane. In the Journal to Stella, he says, "Don't you remember how I used to be in pain, when Sir William Temple would look cold and out of humour for three or four days, and I used to suspect a hundred reasons? I have plucked up my spirit since then, faith; he spoiled a fine gentleman."-S. ron: "He was a person of the greatest wisdom, justice, liberality, politeness, eloquence, of his age and nation; the truest lover of his country, and one that deserved more from it by his eminent public services, than any man before or since: besides his great deserving of the commonwealth of learning; having been universally esteemed the most accomplished writer of his time." Among the most acceptable services which Swift could render Temple during this period, was his powerful assistance in the dispute concerning the superiority of ancient or modern learning, in which his patron had taken an anxious share, and had experienced some rough treatment from Wotton. This controversy, with other foolish fashions, had passed to England from France, where Fontenelle and Perrault had first ventured to assert the cause of the moderns. Upon its merits it may be sufficient to observe, that the field of comparison is infinitely too wide to admit of precise parallels, or of accurate reasoning. In works of poetry and imagination, the precedence may be decidedly allotted to the ancients, owing to the superior beauties of their language, and because they were the first to employ these general and obvious funds of illustration, which can appear original in those only by whom they were first used. On the other hand, in physical science, which necessarily is gradually enlarging its bounds, both by painful research and casual discovery, and in ethics, where the moderns enjoy the advantages of a pure religion and more free polity, it seems that they have far outshone their predecessors. But there is an ardour in literary controversy which does not rest contented with a drawn-battle. The arguments in favour of the moderns were adopted in England by Mr. Wotton, in his Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, and indignantly combated by Sir William Temple, in his treatise on the same subject. Among other works of the ancients on which he founded the plea of their pre-eminence, Temple unhappily referred to the Epis tles of Phalaris, now generally regarded as spurious, but which he pronounced to exhibit "such diversity of passion, such freedom of thought, such knowledge of life and contempt of death, as breathed in every line the tyrant and the commander." Wotton replied to this treatise, and was seconded by the learned Bentley, who had the double motive of detecting the spurious Phalaris, and of vindicating himself from the charge of incivility, respecting the loan of a manuscript from the King's library to the Honourable Mr. Boyle, then engaged in an edition of the Epistles. This gave occasion to the treatise called Boyle against Bentley, and to the reply of that profound scholar, known by the name of Bentley against Boyle. Swift felt doubly interested in this dispute, first, on account of the share his patron had in the controversy, and secondly, because the literati of Oxford, with whose conduct towards him he had been so highly satisfied, were united against Bentley, and in the cause of his antagonist. The Battle of the Books was the consequence of Swift's interest in behalf of Sir William Temple, and it was probably shown and handed about in manuscript during his lifetime, although it was not printed until some years afterwards. The idea is taken from Coutray's "Histoire Poetique de la Guerre novellement declarée entre les anciens et les modernes," a spirited poem, divided into eleven books, inferior to Swift's work in personal satire and raciness of humour, but strongly resembling the Battle of the Books in the plan and management of the literary warfare. About the same time, Swift appears to have revised and completed his Tale of a Tub, one of his most remarkable productions. The preliminary advertisements of the bookseller in 1704, mention, that both these treatises appear to have been arranged for publication in 1697, the last year of Sir William Temple's life; there is, therefore, reason to believe that his death prevented their being then given to the world. During this period, Swift's muse did not remain entirely idle. The following nervous verses on the burning of Whitehall, occur in his hand-writing, and with his corrections, among the papers of Mr. Lyons. It is remarkable, that while the first couplet breathes that zeal for the property of the church, which afterwards dictated so many of Swift's publications, the tenor of the whole is completely in unison with revolution principles, and perhaps they are more violently expressed respecting the execution of Charles the First, than would have received the applause of many determined Whigs. The rough satirical force of the lines somewhat resembles the poetry of Churchill. ON THE BURNING OF WHITEHALL, IN 1697.* THIS pile was raised by Wolsey's impious hands, A fiercer Tudor fill'd the churchman's seat, Whirl'd hence by th' angry demons of the air. * Such is the date upon the manuscript. But Whitehall was burned in April 1690-1; the date therefore must be that of the year in which the verses were composed, not that in which the accident took place. + Beheading of Queen Mary. After this a line scratched out, And here did under the black plaister groan. Originally thus Of spurious brats, abhorr'd by all. |