much frult. The original of difeafes is commonly obfcure. Almost every boy cats as much fruit as he can get, with out any great inconvenience. The dif cafe of Swift was giddinefs with deafnefs, which attacked him from time to time, began very early, purfued him through life, and at laft fent him to the grave deprived of reafon.

Being much oppreffed at Moor-park by this grievous malady, he was advised to try his native air, and went to reland; but, finding no benefit, returned .to Sir William, at whofe houfe he continued his ftudies, and is known to have read, among other books, Cyprian and Irenæus. He thought exercife of great neceffity, and ufed to

Fun

half a

3

mile

1

mile up and down a hill every two

hours.

It is eafy to imagine that the mode in which his first degree was conferred left him no great fondness for the Univerfity of Dublin, and therefore he refolved to become a Master of Arts at Oxford. In the teftimonial which he

produced, the words of difgrace were omitted, and he took his Mafter's degree (July 5, 1692) with fuch reception and regard as fully contented him..

While he lived with Temple, he ufed to pay his mother at Leicester an yearly vifit. He travelled on foot, unless some violence of weather drove him into a waggon, and at night he would go to a penny lodging, where he purchafed

....

clean

clean fheets for fix-pence. This prac tice Lord Orrery imputes to his innate love of groffnefs and vulgarity: fome may afcribe it to his defire of furveying human life through all its varieties; and others, perhaps with equal probability, to a paffion which feems to have been deep fixed in his heart, the love of a fhilling.

In time he began to think that his attendance at Moor-park deferved fome other recompenfe than the pleasure, however mingled with improvement, of Temple's converfation; and grew fo impatient, that (1694) he went away in difcontent.

Temple, confcious of having given reafon for complaint, is faid to have made him Deputy Mafter of the Rolls in Ire

land;

land; which, according to his kinf man's account, was an office which he knew him not able to discharge. Swift therefore refolved to enter into the Church, in which he had at firft no higher hopes than of the chaplainfhip to the Factory at Lifbon; but being recommended to Lord Capel, he obtained the prebend of Kilroot in Connor, of about a hundred pounds a year.

But the infirmities of Temple made a companion like Swift fo neceffary, that he invited him back, with a promise to procure him English preferment, in exchange for the prebend which he defired him to refign. With this request Swift quickly complied, having perhaps equally repented their feparation, and they

fived 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..