ESSAY ON THE EARLIER PART

OF

THE LIFE OF SWIFT.

AFTER the many accounts which have been given

to the Public of the Life of the celebrated Dean of St. Patrick's, it may justly be thought a matter of wonder, that room should be left to add to the narratives already supplied by his biographers, and to increase the stock of general information on the actions and writings of so extraordinary a character. But we should recollect, in what a cursory manner they pass over all that relates to his earlier years (which portion of his life I mean principally to consider); and that, while they profess minutely to detail those transactions in which he bore a considerable share as one of the supporters of the measures of Lord Oxford's administration, (when his political life may be said to have commenced,) or to relate his conduct in a private station whilst he was Dean, (which last chiefly fell under their inspection,) they seem unacquainted with his earlier transactions: nor have they vouchsafed to seek that information relative to them, which the College where he had the honour to be educated, might be supposed best able to supply.

The same conclusions will force themselves upon us, if, from considering the persons who have favoured

At

us with accounts of his life, we pass to a review of the times when these events happened. his departure from College, the political hemisphere was covered with thick clouds; the Protestant religion seemed on the point of being extinguished in Ireland; and the College experienced such convulsions from the troubled state of the times, as produced a temporary dissolution, and had well nigh destroyed the society. Once more restored to the blessings of peace, religion, and freedom, many of its members were exalted to high stations, the reward of their distinguished attachment to the principles of true. religion and constitutional freedom: the few who remained, in no great length of time gave place to others, and, in the change of the parties concerned, was lost much of the recollection of the past.

The first ten years after the Revolution, Swift appears to have almost exclusively spent in England, where he took his Master's degree, and where all his hopes of preferment were centred: the death of Sir William Temple was the epocha of his return to Ireland, with the fixed intention of there residing; and although he spent much of the next ten years in Ireland, yet it was not without many and long excursions to that country where he was one day to act so distinguished a part. During all this time he was a person but little known; he had not attained that celebrity of character which attracted and fixed the attention of the world, and which only could bestow importance on, and render interesting, the most trivial occurrences of his past life. His earliest production, the Tale of a Tub, he was ashamed or afraid to avow; it was therefore sent into the world anonymously; as were also many of his

other

other juvenile pieces. At length, in the year 1710, we behold him emerging from obscurity, but this upwards of twenty years after he had left college; and the earliest of his college friends, who has favoured us with an account of his life, Dr. Delany, a person who was admitted into college fourteen years after Swift had left it. Can it then be any wonder that, when the office of collecting and transmitting to us the transactions of his earlier years, devolved on different persons inadequate to the task, because they were long posterior to the times, and not sufficiently careful to consult the proper authorities, we should labour under much ignorance and uncertainty upon the subject ?

Subsequent long to those times as was their connexion with Swift, what then was the source whence they derived all they knew about his conduct in college? It was from his own information, and no other.-Depending on his authority, they all enlarge on his neglect of science, and the ignominious circumstances which attended the taking of his degree; and in them imagine they have found a true solution of that disgust which Swift sometimes expressed against that society where he received his education. That a degree of A. B. taken in the manner he did, was ignominious, I readily admit: for I find in the petition of the College to Lord Tyrcounell, that a degree of A. M. confered SPECIALI GRATIA on the unworthy Bernard Doyle, in July 1685, is thus spoken of:--" Add hereunto his ignorance and want of scholarship, whereby he obtained his degree with much difficulty, out of compassion chiefly, and because he had long since left the college, so tliat it was registered with the mark of unworthiness and disgrace

disgrace in the public acts of the University." But while they think they have found in this, the true cause of Swift's pique to the college, they are ignorant that degrees of this nature were very frequently conferred in those days; and they forget that Swift always acknowledged the justice of the measure, and candidly admitted that it was what he deserved.— And granting that Swift, in the moments of peevishness or disappointment, did write or utter things to the disparagement of the college, are we warranted thence to infer that he was the real enemy of this institution, and it the settled object of his aversion? Was he not the approved and staunch friend of Ireland, and yet known on some occasions to express resentment against it? Were not his principal connexions among members of the college, and do not his letters contain abundant proofs of his regard for it? I would particularly refer to his letter of July, 1736, to the Provost and Senior Fellows, as containing a very explicit declaration of his feelings towards their society. See also his letter to Lord Peterborough, 28th April, 1726. And did he not abide in college near three years after the supposed slight and affront?

After thus considering what they have told us, let us next turn our eyes to the points on which they have left us in the dark, and respecting which they are entirely silent. And here, in case we find from undoubted authority that Swift became the object of academic censure on more than one occasion, and yet find these circumstances unnoticed by his biographers, to what can we ascribe it, except to the silence which Swift himself (who was their sole authority) preserved on the subject? And why was he silent, unless some disgrace had attended these censures, which, to

a spirit

a spirit so high as his was, it must have been peculiarly grating to reflect upon? Would it not have been most probable, that in order to avert inquiry into the causes of any ill-nature or pique in which he could not avoid sometimes indulging, and to obliterate, as far as in him lay, all memory of past disgrace, he would have assumed the appearance of a candid confession, and frequently rehearsed the circumstances that attended his degree; and that thus, in the repetition of a lesser miscarriage, he was likely to abolish the memory and avert the suspicion of a greater delinquency-For that he left college in a disgust, is pretty evident from the following passage, taken from his own letter of 28 November, 1692: "I am ashamed to have been more obliged in a few weeks to strangers, than I was in seven years to Dublin College."

I propose therefore in this Essay, to draw up a short account of that early part of Swift's life which he spent in Trinity College, and to notice some omissions respecting this celebrated author, even in his more advanced years, into which his biographers have been betrayed. Such an account, if properly authenticated, will discover some particulars that cannot fail to interest us: will discover the true sources of any intemperate language or harsh expressions respecting his ALMA MATER, which he may have been led to adopt; and will prove a proper introduction to the papers that accompany this Essay, and shew that they are not ascribed to him as their author, upon weak or slight evidence.

But first it will be proper to premise what are the sources whence I derive my information respecting the time he spent in college. They are these: