SWIFT, JONATHAN (1667-1745), dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, British satirist, was born at No. 7 Hoey's Court, Dublin, on Nov. 3o, 1667, a few months after the death of his father, Jonathan Swift (164o-1667), who married about 1664 Abigaile Erick, of an old Leicestershire family. His grandfather, Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich near Ross, appears to have lost his pos sessions by taking the losing side in the Civil War and died in 1658 before the restoration could bring him redress. He married Elizabeth, niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, the poet's grandfather. The young Swift was supported by his uncle Godwin, a Tipperary official; at the age of six he entered Kilkenny school, where Con greve was a fellow student, and he completed his education at Trinity college, Dublin. Here he exhibited few signs of precocious genius, and it was only by special act of indulgence that he ob tained his degree ; then, on the death of his uncle, he left Ireland and sought counsel of his mother in Leicester.
His first employment commenced towards the close of 1689, when he became secretary to Sir William Temple, who was living in retirement at Moor Park, near Farnham. His ability gradually won him the confidence of his employer, and he was entrusted with some important missions. In 1694, however, Swift (who had in the meantime obtained the degree of M.A. ad eundem at Oxford) quitted Temple, who had, he considered, delayed too long in obtaining him preferment; but it was only after five months' delay, when Swift had unwillingly begged the favour of a testimonial from his discarded patron, that he was able to obtain the small prebend of Kilroot near Belfast (Jan. 1695).
In the meantime he had grown tired of Irish life and was glad to accept Temple's proposal for his return to Moor Park, where he continued until Temple's death in Jan. 1699. His Pindaric Odes, written at this period or earlier, indicate the rudiments of a real satirist, but of more importance was his first essay in satiric prose, The Battle of the Books; this arose out of a dis pute originated in England by Temple's Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning, which argued the superiority of the Ancients over the Moderns. Swift's aim was limited to co-operation in what was then deemed the well-deserved putting down of Bentley by Boyle. Though written in 1697, the satire remained unpub lished until 1704, when it was issued with The Tale of a Tub.
After Temple's death, Swift suffered several disappointments in attempting to find employment, but he eventually secured the rectory of Agher in Meath with the united vicarages of Laracor and Rathbeggan, to which was added the prebend of Dunlavin in St. Patrick's—the total value being about £230 a year. He was
now often in Dublin, at most 20 m. distant, and through Lady Berkeley and her daughters—Lord Berkeley was now a lord jus tice of Ireland—he became the familiar and chartered satirist of the fashionable society there. But he very soon began to grow tired of Ireland again and to pay visits in Leicester and Lon don. His resolution to exchange divinity for politics must ap pear fully justified by the result. The Discourse on the Dissen sions in Athens and Rome (Sept. 1701), written to repel the tactics of the Tory commons in their attack on the Partition Treaties "without humour and without satire," and intended as a dissuasive from the pending impeachment of Somers, Orford, Halifax and Portland, received the honour of being generally attributed to Somers himself or to Burnet, the latter of whom found a public disavowal necessary. In April or May 1704 ap peared a more remarkable work. Clearness, cogency, masculine simplicity of diction, are conspicuous in the pamphlet, but true creative power told the Tale of a Tub. Although it lacks coherence and attains no conclusion, it is the most strikingly original of Swift's satirical works.
In Feb. 17o1 Swift took his D.D. degree at Dublin, and before the close of the year he had taken a step destined to exercise a most important influence on his life, by inviting two ladies to Laracor. Esther, daughter of a merchant named Edward John son, a dependant, and legatee to a small amount, of Sir William Temple's (born in March 168o), whose acquaintance he had made at Moor Park in 1689, and whom he has immortalized as "Stella," came over with her companion Rebecca Dingley, a poor relative of the Temple family, and was soon permanently domi ciled in his neighbourhood. Meanwhile the sphere of his in timacies was rapidly widening. He had been in England for three years together, 1701 to 1704, and counted Pope, Steele and Addison among his friends. In 1708 he wrote the finest ex ample of his irony, the Argument to prove that the abolishing of Christianity in England may, as things now stand, be attended with some inconveniencies, and about this time, too (Nov. 1707), he produced his best narrative poem, Baucis and Philemon.