RINTED FOR JOHN & ARTHUR ARCH; AND FOR BELL & BRADFUTE,

AND J. MUNDELL & CO. EDINBURGH.

LENOX LIBPART

NEW YORK

O SWIFT! if fame be life (as well we know
That bards and heroes have efteem'd it so)
Thou canst not wholly die: thy works will shine
To future times, and life in fame be thine!

PARNELL'S VERSES TO SWIFT ON HIS BIRTH-DAY.

EDINBURGH:

PRINTED BY MUNDELL AND SON, ROYAL BANK CLOSE.

Anno 1794.

LENCY

THE LIFE OF SWIFT.

The life, wags, and character of SWIFT, have fucceffively employed the researches, exercised the ftrictures, and exhausted the praises of Mrs. Pilkington, the Earl of Orrery, Deane Swift, Efq. Dr. Delany, Dr. Hawkefworth, Dr. Johnson, and George-Monk Berkeley, Efq. Their feveral publications, which place his character in very different, and often oppofite points of light, have occafioned great diverfity in the judgments formed of them by the world, according to the different degrees of prejudice or candour in their several readers. On an attentive perufal, it will be found, that the Barrations of Lord Orrery, Dr. Hawkefworth, Dr. Johnson, and Mr. Sheridan, entitle them to the aclusive appellation of his biographers. Dr. Delany, Mr. Swift, Mr. Berkeley, and Mrs. Pilkington, come under a different defcription. The three former must be confidered as his apologists, and the latter as a retailer of entertaining anecdotes. These are the several fources from which the facts flated in the prefent account are chicfly derived. Some particulars of his early life are taken from the Anecdotes of the Family of Swift, a fragment, written by himself, which now exifts in his own hand-writing, in the University Library of Dublin.

Jonathan Swift was, according to the account written by himself, the fon of Mr. Jonathan Swift, an attorney, and was born in Hoey's-Court, in the parish of St. Werburgh, Dublin, on the 30th of November, 1667. He was defcended from a younger branch of an ancient family of that name in Yorkshire. His grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Swift, was Vicar of Goodrich in Herefordshire, and married Elizabeth Dryden, aunt of the great poet, by whom he had ten fons and three or four daughters. He died in 1658; and, of his fons, fix furvived him, Godwin, Thomas, Dryden, Wilham, Jonathan, and Adam.

Thomas was bred at Oxford, and took orders: he married the eldest daughter of Davenant, and left an only fon, Thomas, who died rector of Puttenham in Surrey, May 1752, in the 87th year of his age. Godwin ftudied the law, in the Inner-Temple, and was called to the bar before the Reftoration. He had four wives, one of whom was a relation to the old Marchioness of Ormond; and, upon that account, the old Duke of Ormond made him his Attorney-General, in the palatinate of Tipperary. He left several children, who obtained eflates. William, Dryden, Jonathan, and Adam, were attorneys, who all lived and died in Ireland; but none of them left male iffue except Jonathan, the father of Swift.

Jonathan, at the age of twenty-three, married Abigail Erick, defcended from an ancient family of that came in Leicestershire, but with little or no fortune. He died young, in about two years after his marriage, seven weeks before the birth of his only fon; and, as he was but just beginning the world, left his widow and an infant daughter to the care of his brother Godwin.

When Swift was a year old, his nurfe, who was a native of Whitehaven, finding it neceffary to vifit a fick relation, and being extremely fond of the infant, ftole him on fhipboard, unknown to his mother and uncle, and carried him with her to Whitehaven, where he continued for almoft three years; for, when the matter was discovered, his mother fent orders not to hazard a fecondvoyage till he should be better able to bear it. The nurfe was fo careful of him, that, before he returned, he had learned to fpell, and, before he was five years old, he could read any chapter in

the Bible.

His mother, about two years after his father's death, quitted the family of his uncle Godwin, and retired to Leicester, where she was chiefly fupported by prefents and contributions from her relations. The infancy of Swift paffed without any marks of diftinction. At the age of fix he was fent to the School of Kilkenny, and, at fourteen, admitted into the University of Dublin. The expence of his education was defrayed by his uncle Godwin, who, having a numerous offspring, by four wives, was under the neceffity of reducing his allowance as low as posible.

His other relations feemed at that time to think that their affistance was not necefary, fo that he was obliged to make the best shift he could with the fmall pittance afforded by his unole; who was fuppofed by him, as well as by the reft of the world, to be in circumstances that might have afforded, a much more liberal allowance, without prejudice to his own family.

This fuppofition made fo deep an impreffion on him, that he never afterwards could think with

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