[109] From the "History of the Great Plague in London." The year of the plague was 1665.
JONATHAN SWIFT
Born in 1667, died in 1745; educated at Trinity College, Dublin; became secretary to Sir William Temple in 1688; held small livings in Ireland in 1700 and other years; lived mostly in London from 1701 to 1710, when he abandoned the Whigs and became a Tory; appointed by Queen Anne dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, in 1713; intimate with Bolingbroke, Addison, Steele and Pope; published "Gulliver's Travels" in 1726; his mind clouded in later years, and in 1741 he was put under restraint.
I
ON PRETENSE IN PHILOSOPHERS[110]
I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to the academy. Every room hath in it one or more projectors, and I believe I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms.
The first man I saw was of a meager aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin were all of the same color. He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me he did not doubt in eight years more that he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine at a reasonable rate; but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers. I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practise of begging from all who go to see them.