Lectures and Essays Volume 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ...to William the Third, as befitted a secretary and dependant of Temple's, and another a very obviously genuine tribute to Sancroft as non-juror, a trustworthy piece of evidence as to Swift's early jealousy for the rights of the Church of England--a jealousy which, as we shall see, followed him and controlled much of his life's action and his life's destinies to the very end. But the date of this last-named ode (1689), when Swift was but twenty-two, was the first year of his residence under Temple's roof, and the event introduced him to another and curiously different influence that was to make or mar his future life. In a cottage within the grounds of Moor Park dwelt a certain Mrs. Johnson, the widow of a former dependant of Temple's. Mrs. Johnson filled the post of companion and confidential friend to Temple's sister, Lady Giffard, who was one of the Moor Park household. With her were her two daughters, the elder of whom, Esther, just eight years old, was, from Swift's first introduction to the Temple family, placed to a certain extent under his care as pupil. In those words of terrible calmness written on the very night of her death, nearly forty years later, Swift looked back and recorded those early days with the method and precision of an obituary notice: --" She was born at Richmond, in Surrey, on the 13th day of March in the year 1681. Her father was a younger brother of a good family in Nottinghamshire, her mother of a lower degree, and indeed she had little to boast of her birth. I knew her from six years old" (this was a confusion of memory, by the way--she was eight when Swift went first to Moor Park), "and had some share in her education, by directing what books she should read, and perpetually instructing her in the...