Jonathan Swift, by an account in his own handwriting, was the son of an attorney in the city of Dublin. He was born in 1667. Some doubt has been felt concerning his origin, in consequence of his own angry or capricious declaration, when out of humour with Ireland,—“I am not of this vile country; I am an Englishman;” and Sir William Temple has been said to be his real father. This piece of scandal, however, is disproved by circumstances of time and place. Swift was placed at Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of fourteen. Whether through idleness, or contempt of the prescribed studies, at the end of four years he could only obtain his Bachelor’s degree speciali gratiâ; a term denoting want of merit. This disgrace so affected him, that for the following seven years he studied eight hours a day. In 1688 Sir William Temple, whose lady was related to Swift’s mother, took him under his protection, and paid the expenses of his residence at Oxford for a Master’s degree. On quitting that University, Swift lived with Temple as his domestic companion. To a long illness contracted during this period in consequence of a surfeit he ascribed that frequently recurring giddiness which annoyed him through life, and sent him to the grave deprived of reason.
While under Sir William Temple’s roof, Swift rendered material assistance in the revision of his patron’s works, and corrected and improved his own ‘Tale of a Tub,’ which had been sketched out previously to his quitting Dublin. It was published in 1704. He never avowed himself its author; but he did not deny it when Archbishop Sharpe and the Duchess of Somerset, according to some accounts, showed it to Queen Anne, and thereby debarred him from a bishopric. From Temple’s conversation Swift much increased his political knowledge; and his early impressions were naturally in favour of the Whigs: but he suspected his patron of neglecting to provide for him, from a desire of retaining his services. This produced a quarrel, and the friends parted in 1694. Swift took orders, and obtained a prebend in the north of Ireland; but at Temple’s earnest request he soon resigned that preferment, and returned to England. A sincere reconciliation took place, and they lived together in the utmost harmony till Sir William’s death in 1699. Swift, in testimony of his esteem, wrote ‘The Battle of the Books,’ of which his friend is the hero; and Temple by his will left him a legacy in money, and the profit as well as care of his posthumous works. Swift had indulged hopes, not without good reason, of being well provided for in the English church, through Temple’s interest. Failing in these hopes, he accepted the post of private secretary and chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, on the appointment of that nobleman to be one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. By this new patron he seems to have been ill used. He was soon displaced from his post, on the plea of its unfitness for a clergyman. He was then promised the rich deanery of Derry; but that preferment was bestowed on another person, and Swift could only procure the livings of Laracor and Rathbeggin, which together did not amount to more than half the value of the deanery. During his residence at Laracor, he performed the duties of a parish priest with punctuality and devotion, notwithstanding some occasional sallies of no very decorous or well-timed humour, which coupled with the suspicions founded on the anonymous ‘Tale of a Tub,’ fixed on him an imputation of insincerity in his Christian profession, from which the opinion of posterity seems to have absolved him.
During his incumbency at Laracor, he invited to Ireland a lady with whom he became acquainted while with Sir William Temple. She was the daughter of Temple’s steward, whose name was Johnson. About the year 1701, at the age of eighteen, she went to Ireland, to reside near Swift, accompanied by Mrs. Dingley, a lady fifteen years older than herself. Miss Johnson was Swift’s celebrated Stella. Whether Swift’s first impulse in giving this invitation had a view to marriage, or the cultivation of friendship only, is uncertain. His whole conduct with respect to women was most mysterious: apparently highly capricious, and, whatever might be its secret motive, utterly unwarrantable. The reason assigned by the two ladies for transferring their residence to Ireland was, “that the interest of money was higher than in England, and provisions cheap.” Every possible precaution was taken to prevent scandal: Swift and Miss Johnson did not live together, nor were they ever known to meet except in presence of a third person. Owing to this scrupulous prudence, the lady’s fame, during fifteen years, was never questioned, nor was her society avoided by the most scrupulous. In 1716 they were privately married, but with no change in their mode of life: she never lodged in the Deanery, except during those fits of giddiness and approaching mental aberration, during which a woman, then of middle age, might venture without breach of decorum to nurse an elderly man.
In 1701 Swift had published his ‘Dissensions in Athens and Rome;’ his first political work, in behalf of King William and his ministers, against the violent proceedings of the House of Commons. According to Lord Orrery, from that year to 1708 he did not write any political pamphlet; but he made frequent journeys to England during the whole of Queen Anne’s reign. Between 1708 and 1710 he changed his politics, worked hard against the Whigs among whom he had been educated, and plunged into political controversy, with a view to open the road to power for the Tories. The year 1710 produced the ‘Examiner,’ of which he wrote thirty-three papers. In that year commenced his acquaintance with Harley, who introduced him to St. John and the rest of the ministers. At this period he dined every Saturday at Harley’s, with the Lord Keeper, Mr. Secretary St. John, and Lord Rivers, to the exclusion of all other persons. He may, therefore, be considered at this time as the confidential friend of the ministry, and almost a member of their cabinet. The company was afterwards enlarged to sixteen, including Swift; all men of the first class in society. He now put forth all his strength in support of the Tory party, in pamphlets, periodical papers, and political poems. Amidst all this political agitation, he wrote down the occurrences of every day, whether consisting of conferences with ministers, or quarrels with his own servant, in a regular journal to Stella.
In 1712, ten days before the meeting of parliament, he published a pamphlet, entitled ‘The Conduct of the Allies,’ to facilitate peace, on which the stability, almost the personal safety of the ministers, seemed to depend. He professes that this piece cost him much pains, and no writer was ever more successful. A sale of eleven thousand copies in two months was in those days unprecedented: the Tory members in both houses drew their arguments from it, and the resolutions of parliament were little more than a string of quotations. During that year and the next he continued to exert himself with unwearied diligence. In 1713 he carried to the then latest date the first sketch of the ‘History of the last four Years of Queen Anne.’ Lord Bolingbroke, when called on for his opinion, was sincere enough to speak of it as “a seasonable pamphlet for the administration, but a dishonour to just history.” Swift himself was proud of it, but professed his willingness to sacrifice it to his friend’s opinion. It was, however, published, but with no addition to the author’s fame.
The Queen is said to have intended to promote him to a bishopric; but the story is involved in obscurity. That Archbishop Sharpe had dissuaded her from so doing by representing his belief in Christianity as questionable, is not ascertained by any satisfactory evidence; but whether that were so or not, Johnson’s suggestion seems probable, that the difficulty arose from those clerical supporters of the ministry, “who were not yet reconciled to the author of the ‘Tale of a Tub,’ and would not, without much discontent and indignation, have borne to see him installed in an English cathedral.” The deanery of St. Patrick, in Dublin, was therefore offered to him, and he accepted it. With high pretensions to independent equality with the ministers, and a disinterested support of their measures, it cannot be doubted that he viewed this Irish preferment as a sentence of exile, and was bitterly disappointed. But his temper was too intractable to submit to play the part of a courtier; and it is probable that his English friends were not ill pleased to promote him to competence and dignity at a distance. His feelings are characteristically expressed in one of his letters: “I use the ministry like dogs, because I expect they will use me so. I never knew a ministry do anything for those whom they made companions of their pleasures; but I care not.”
He had indeed little reason to rejoice at first in the land where his lot had fallen: on his arrival in Ireland to take possession of his deanery, he found the country under the strongest excitement of party violence. The populace looked on him as a Jacobite, and threw stones at him as he walked the streets. His chapter received him with reluctance, and thwarted him in whatever he proposed. Ordinary talents and firmness must have sunk under such general hostility. But the revolutions of the Dean’s life were strange; and he, who began with the hatred of the Irish mob, lived to govern them with the authority of a despot.
He had not been in Ireland more than a fortnight when he returned to England for the purpose of attempting, but in vain, a reconciliation between the Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke. While in England, he wrote his ‘Free Thoughts on the Present State of Affairs.’ He was probably still watching the issues of time or chance; but the Queen’s death sealed his political and clerical doom, and he returned to Ireland. To the interval between 1714 and 1720 Lord Orrery ascribes ‘Gulliver’s Travels.’ His mind was at this time much engrossed by a remarkable circumstance. He had formed an intimacy in England with the family of a Dutch merchant, named Vanhomrigh. The eldest daughter, strangely enough, became enamoured of Swift’s mind, for it could not be of a most homely person, nearly fifty years of age. She proposed marriage: this he declined, and wrote his poem of ‘Cadenus and Vanessa’ on the occasion. On her mother’s death, the young lady and her sister followed him to Ireland; the intercourse was continued, and the proposal renewed on her part. This it was absolutely necessary to decline, as the Dean was already married; but he lived with Stella on the same distant footing as before, and was reluctant either to inflict pain, or to forego his own pleasure, by an avowal of the insuperable obstacle. Vanessa continued to receive his visits, but so guardedly as not absolutely to forfeit her good name. She became however more and more urgent; and peremptorily pressed him to accept or reject her as his wife. Failing to obtain a direct answer, she addressed a note to Miss Johnson, desiring to know whether she were married to him, or not. Stella sent this note to Swift, who in a paroxysm of anger rode to Vanessa’s house, threw a paper containing her own note on the table, and quitted her without a word. This blow she did not survive many weeks. She died in 1723, having first cancelled a will in the Dean’s favour.
Vanessa by will ordered her correspondence with Swift to be published, as well as ‘Cadenus and Vanessa,’ in which he had proclaimed her excellence and confessed his love. The letters were suppressed; the poem was published. This, whether meant as an apology for herself, or as a posthumous triumph over her more successful rival, occasioned a great shock and distress both to Stella and the Dean. It is said that at length, probably as a softening to the mortification incident to the public discovery of his passion for Vanessa, he desired that Stella might be publicly owned as his wife; but her health was rapidly declining. She said, perhaps petulantly, “It is too late,” and insisted that they should continue to live as before. To this the Dean consented, and allowed her to dispose of her fortune, by her own name, in public charity. She died in 1727.
By Stella’s death Swift’s happiness was deeply affected. He became by degrees more misanthropic, and ungovernable in temper; and more miserly in his personal habits, while at the same time he devoted to charity a large part, it is said one-third, of his income. In 1736 his deafness and giddiness became alarming, and his mental powers gradually declined. In 1741 his friends found it necessary that guardians should be appointed over his person and estate. In 1742 his reason was entirely overthrown; he became lethargic and, except at short intervals, speechless. On the 30th of November his housekeeper told him that the customary preparations were making to celebrate his birthday: he found words to answer, “It is all folly; they had better let it alone.” He died the latter end of October, 1745; in his seventy-eighth year. With the exception of some few legacies, he left his fortune, amounting to about twelve thousand pounds, to the building of an hospital for idiots and lunatics.