Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

JONATHAN SWIFT.

PART I.

FROM BIRTH TO THE AGE OF FORTY-SIX.

(1667-1713.)

JONATHAN SWIFT was born in Dublin on the 30th of

November 1667. He died on the 19th of October 1745,

at the age of seventy-eight.

He was of a Yorkshire family which had a branch in Ireland. A Rev. Thomas Swift in the reign of Queen Elizabeth was Rector of St. Andrews, Canterbury, during three-and-thirty years before his death in 1592. He had nine children or more, of whom one, William, succeeded to his father's rectory. The Rev. William Swift married about four months after his father's death. His wife was an heiress, Mary Philpott, who had a large estate, which she kept under her own control. This lady was our Jonathan Swift's great-grandmother.

In a short sketch of his family, made by himself, Swift seems to have dwelt, from sense of heredity, on eccentricity of character in those from whom he was descended. In course of time he had become convinced of the fact that he had inherited a taint of insanity. In his underlying knowledge of this we find the key to actions in his life which it would otherwise be difficult to understand.

Mary Philpott, who married Swift's great-grandfather, the Rev. William Swift, is described by her great-grandson, from family

tradition, as "a capricious, ill-natured, and passionate woman, of which there have been told several instances; and it hath been a continual tradition in the family that she absolutely disinherited her only son, Thomas, for no greater crime than that of robbing an orchard when he was a boy." Her husband, the Rev. William Swift, became Rector of Harbledown at the end of Elizabeth's reign, and he was Prebendary of Canterbury. He died in 1624, near the end of the reign of James the First, a year and a half before the wife to whom he had been thirty-two years married. His great-grandson rather goes out of his way to note even of him that "he seems to have been a person somewhat fantastic," because he altered the family coat of arms.

[ocr errors]

The Rev. William Swift had two daughters and but one son, Thomas, our Jonathan Swift's grandfather. He also became a clergyman, and having been disinherited by his mother, as Swift says, 'never enjoyed more than one hundred pounds a year, which was all at Goderich in Herefordshire. He became Vicar of Goderich, and afterwards of Bridstow in the same county." The Rev. Thomas Swift married Elizabeth Dryden. Thence came the cousinship between Jonathan Swift and John Dryden the poet. Swift's grandmother was niece to Dryden's grandfather. It was that grandmother who brought the name of Jonathan out of the Dryden into the Swift family. Swift finds also his grandfather Thomas to have been "somewhat whimsical and singular.” "He built a house on his own land in the village of Goderich, which by the architecture denotes the builder to have been somewhat whimsical and singular, and very much towards a projector." It was a house of three storeys, containing twelve or fourteen rooms, besides vaults and garrets, and was built in three blocks, like separate houses joined together at a single point. Thomas Swift died in 1658, towards the end of the Commonwealth time. He suffered so much in the Civil War time for his loyalty to the King, that one must suspect error in the tradition that he had only the small income from his livings of Goderich and Bridstow ; for he had thirteen children, and Swift tells us that "he was

CVTILOBHIV

plundered by the Roundheads six-and-thirty, some say above fifty times." Swift writes of this grandfather :

"The author of 'Mercurius Rusticus' dates the beginning of his sufferings so early as October 1642. The Earl of Stamford, who had the command of the Parliament army in those parts, loaded him at first with very heavy exactions; and afterwards, at different times, robbed him of all his books and household furniture, and took away from the family even their wearing apparel; with some other circumstances of cruelty too tedious to relate at large in this place. The Earl being asked why he committed these barbarities, my author says 'he gave two reasons for it; first, because Mr. Swift had bought arms and conveyed them into Monmouthshire, which, under his lordship's good favour was not so; and secondly, because, not long before, he preached a sermon in Ross upon the text 'Give unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's,' in which his lordship said he had spoken treason in endeavouring to give Cæsar more than his due. These two crimes cost Mr. Swift no less than £300.

"About that time he engaged his small estate, and having quilted all the money he could get in his waistcoat, got off to a town held for the King; where being asked by the governor, who knew him well, what he could do for His Majesty, Mr. Swift said he would give the King his coat, and stripping it off, presented it to the governor, who observing it to be worth little, Mr. Swift said, 'Then take my waistcoat,' and bid the governor weigh it in his hand, who ordering it to be unripped, found it lined with three hundred broad pieces of gold, which, as it proved a seasonable relief, must be allowed an extraordinary supply from a private clergyman of a small estate, so often plundered, and soon after turned out of his livings in the Church." That was in 1646.

The thirteen children of this Rev. Thomas Swift, and some wives and children of theirs, shall now be set forth in form of pedigree.

« AnteriorContinua »