A Tale of a Tub and other Satires [antikvár]

Tk INTRODUCTION. Jonathan Swift was born in 1667, in Dublin, but of an English family and one which had traditional ties with the Anglican church. His grandfather, the Vicar of Goodrich in Hereford, was a faithful supporter of Charles I, and devoted his entire fortune to the royalist cause, with the result that his sons had their own way to make. Jonathan's father, the fifth son, and his elder brother Godwin entered the legal profession and went to Ireland, where the elder Jonathan died very young, leaving a wife, a small girl, and a posthumous son, later to become the great Dean. In these difficult circumstances. Swift was educated—at Kilkenny Grammar School and Trinity College—through the help of his uncles; and he then, apparently through further family connections, became secretary to the distinguished former statesman and man of letters Sir William Temple, first at Sheen and then in his house Moor Park, in Surrey. Swift remained with Temple for ten years, except for a period of absence, from 1689. Temple had considerable experience of the world, of politics, and of government, and had rendered good service to his friend William III, but he had left the court to devote himself to the pleasures of an elegant and cultivated retirement. Swift must have learned much, through Temple's familiarity with the places of power, that stood him in good stead when he came himself to enter the complicated politics of the period. But he learned much more still, for he had the resources of Temple's large library available to him, and he read avidly, for hours each day. The result is visible most clearly in the copious learning of A Tale of a Tub, but it is there too in the richness and flexibility of his admirable prose style. For other reasons too his time with Temple was important for his future; it was at Moor Park that he contracted Meniere's disease, the alarming and disabling complaint from which he was to suflfer recurrently, and with increasing severity, for the rest of his days. More happily, it was here that he met Esther Johnson, the fatherless daughter of Sir William's vii