Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/863

SWIFT. 753 SWIFT. I Miicropteryx) contains the tree-swifts, whose [ihunage is peculiarly soft, the tails deeply forked and the head crested. They are shy and breed in rocky jungles, forming a little cup- shaped nest of Hakes of bark glued logellier with saliva and attached to the side of the branch ol a tree. There is only one egg, which (as is the case with all the family) is pure white. Five species are found in the Indo-Chinese region and eastward to the Solomon Islands. SWIFT, Benjamin. The pseudonym of the English novelist William Romaine Paterson dl-'v.). SWIFT, GusTAVus Franklin (1839-1903). An American merchant, born at Cape Cod, Mass. After various business experiences he engaged in meat-packing in Chicago, and was the first to .ship meat long distances successfully. He foiind- ed and was president of the corporation of Swift and Company, one of the largest packing firms in the United States, and was a prominent mem- ber of many other similar concerns. His busi- ness enterprise did much for the trade de- velopment of Chicago. SWIFT, Jonathan (1607-1745). The great- est of English satirists, born in Dublin, Novem- ber 30, 1667. He was of Yorkshire origin. His father had been attracted to Ireland by the prospect of political preferment, but died before .Jonathan's birth. Yhen he was six years old, ills uncle Godwin sent him to Kilkenny School, the Eton of Ireland, where Congreve and Berke- ley were his contemporaries. At fifteen he was sent to Trinity College. Dublin. At Trinity the hid read much history and poetry, but was so dis- dainful of the ordinary curriculum and of college regulations that his degree was only granted to him by a special grace. The disturbances of the Revolution of 1688 drove him to England, and in the following year he obtained employment as secretary to Sir William Temple (q.v. ) at Moor Park, in Surre.y. Swift found the position trying, thoiigh he calls Temple "a man of sense and virtue." In 1694 he quarreled with his employer and returned to Ireland to seek ordination, ob- taining the small living of Kilroot, near Belfast. But he soon wearied of rural isolation and in 1696 he went back to Moor Park. Perhaps the impell- ing motive was the presence there of Esther .John- son, subsequently immortalized as "Stella." a poor relation of Temple's. Swift had a hand in her education : she was now, at fifteen, growing into a beautiful woman, with "hair blacker than the raven and every feature of her face in per- fection." Swift remained at jIoor Park mitil Temple's death in 1699. His sojourn there, how- ever galling some incidents of it may have been to his pride, was of inestimable value to him. Besides the daily association with a states- man and a man of culture, he had time for an enormous amount of reading and for practice in writing. His only relics, however, of this period are some Pindaric odes, a species of composition for which he was little qualified and which Dry- den characterized frankly with the judgment, "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet." His first prose composition betrayed his resent- ment. This was TJw Battle of the Bools. a bur- lesque of the controversy then raging over the relative merits of the ancients and the moderns, in which for the first and last time his satire re- coiled on himself. He returned once more to Ire- land, as secretary and chaplain to Lord Berkeley, but lost the secretaryship and did not get the deanery of Derry, which he had expected. He was, however, appointed to the rectory of Agher, with the vicarages of Laracor and Kathbeggan. For the first time his own master. Swift sliuwcd that stern regard for duty which eliaracterized him, and gained the respect, if he failed to in- fiuence the convictions, of his Catholic neigh- bors. He realized himself that he was a poor preacher, calling his sermons "pamiihlets.' He soon began his career as a political pam]ihlcte<'r, which was to be so epoch-making, with .1 Discuurse on the Dissensions in Athens <ind Home (1700), really a defense of Somers and the other Whig lords threatened with impeachment. In 1704 he published the Tale of a Tub, the most auuis- ing of his satirical works, the most strikingly original, and the one in which the full compass of his powers was most perfectly displayed. Mth matrlilcss irony he ridiculed many forms of pretentious pedantry, mainly in literature and religion. The book led to many doubts of his orthodoxy and injured his chances of ec- clesiastical ])refermeiit. Though nominally a Whig, Swift diflfered from his party on important questions. He hated its war policy and its alliance with dissent. These difi'erences, along with the failure to gain any- thing from the connection, made it easy for him to break from his former allies. In 1710 the Tories came into power with Ilarley and St. John at their head and Swift was easily won over to their side. He turned upon the Whigs with a series of brilliant squibs, assumed the editorship of the Examiner, the Tory organ, Xovemlicr 2, 1710-June 14, 1711, and produced several in- dependent pamphlets, in all of which he ably de- fended the policy of the Tories. Of these par- ticular papers the most powerful was the Con- duet of the Allies (November, 1711), in which the position was maintained that the Whigs had prolonged the Continental War out of self-inter- est. Swift certainly led the way to the dis- missal of SJarlborough ami the Peace of Itrccht (1713). For three years Swift was among the most conspicuous men in politics and .society. His advent marks a new era in English politics, with the accession of public opinion, fostered by him more than by any other man, to supreme power. He comes .into full light in September, 1710, with the beginning of his Journal to Stella. He had invited her in 1701 to Ireland, with her friend Mrs. Dingley. They lived in his house at Laracor and Dublin when he was absent, and in lodgings near by when he was present. The diary letters which lie sent to Stella and Mrs. Dingley, ending with April, 1713, com- pose one of the most interesting documents that ever threw light on the history of a man of genius. In London he lodged close to Mrs. Vanhomrigh, whose daughter Hester (called Vanessa by him) fell in love with Swift, and hugged the chains to which Stella merely sub- mitted. In 1714 the Tory Jlinistry fell. Queen .^nne died, and Swift's power was gone. In spite of the Queen's distrust of him, he had been appointed to the deanery of Saint Patrick's in Dublin, in 1713, and thither he now retired, no doubt hoping that the move would settle his oom- plientions for him. But, as luck would have it, Vanessa's mother died and she followed him to