網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

lived on together with mutual fatisfaction; and, in the four years that paffed between his return and Temple's death, it is probable that he wrote the Tale of a Tub and the Battle of the Books.

Swift began early to think, or to hope, that he was a poet, and wrote Pindarick Odes to Temple, to the King, and to the Athenian Society, a knot of obfcure men, who published a periodical pamphlet of anfwers to questions, fent, or fuppofed to be fent, by Letters. I have been told that Dryden, having perufed thefe verfes, faid, " Coufin Swift, you will "never be a poet ;" and that this denunciation was the motive of Swift's perpetual malevolence to Dryden..

In 1699 Temple died, and left a legacy with his manufcripts to Swift, for whom he had obtained, from King William, a promife of the first prebend that should be vacant at Weftminiter or Canterbury.

That this promife might not be forgotten, Swift dedicated to the King the pofthumous works with which he was intrufted; but neither the dedication, nor tenderness for the man whom he once had treated with confidence and fondnefs, revived in King William the remembrance of his promife. Swift awhile attended the Court; but foon found his folicitations hopeless.

He was then invited by the Earl of Berkley to accompany him into Ireland,

as

as his private fecretary; but after having done the bufinefs till their arrival at Dublin, he then found that one Bush had perfuaded the Earl that a clergyman was not a proper fecretary, and had obtained the office for himself. In a man like Swift fuch circumvention and inconftancy must have excited violent indignation.

But he had yet more to fuffer. Lord Berkley had the difpofal of the deanery of Derry, and Swift expected to obtain it; but by the fecretary's influence, fupposed to have been fecured by a bribe, it was bestowed on fomebody elfe; and Swift was difiniffed with the livings of

[ocr errors]

Laracor and Rathbeggin in the diocese of

Meath,

Meath, which together did not equalhalf the value of the deanery.

At Laracor he increased the parochial duty by reading prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays, and performed all the offices of his profeffion with great decency and exactness.

Soon after his fettlement at Laracor, he invited to Ireland the unfortunate Stella, a young woman whose name was Johnson, the daughter of the steward of Sir William Temple, who, in confideration of her father's virtues, left her a thousand pounds. With her came Mrs. Dingley, whofe whole fortune was twenty-feven pounds a year for her life. With these Ladies he passed his hours of relaxation, and to them he opened

2

his

16

S. W IF T.

his bofom; but they never refided in the fame houfe, nor did he fee either without a witnefs. They lived at the Parfonage, when Swift was away; and when he returned, removed to a lodging, or to the houfe of a neighbouring clergyman.

Swift was not one of those minds which amaze the world with early pregnancy his first work, except his few poetical Effays, was the Diffentions in Athens and Rome, publifhed (1701) in his thirty-fourth year. After its appearance, paying a vifit to fome bishop, he heard mention made of the new pam-phlet that Burnet had written, replete with political knowledge. When he feemed to doubt Burnet's right to the work, he was told by the Bishop, that

he

« 上一頁繼續 »