A One-Sided Sketch of Jonathan Swift

Swift was, as he called it, "dropped" in Ireland on November 30, 1667. His grandfather, a clergyman of the Church of England, had lost everything in the Great Rebellion, and his sons went to Ireland to retrieve their fortunes. The eldest, Godwin, did very well at first, but died poor and senile. Another son, Jonathan, got a small position at the bar. He married young a penniless English girl, Abigail Erick. They had a daughter, Jane, and soon after a son, Jonathan, who was born posthumously. The widow was left with very little of this world's goods. It might have been better for her son if she had had too little to employ a nurse for him for he tells us in his scrap of autobiography: "When he was a year old his nurse who was a woman of Whitehaven, being under an absolute necessity of seeing one of her relations … and being at the same time extremely fond of the infant, she stole him on shipboard, unknown to his mother and uncle, and carried him with her to Whitehaven, where he continued for almost three years. For when the matter was discovered, his mother sent orders by all means not to hazard a second voyage, till he could be better able to bear it. His nurse was so careful of him, that before he returned, he had learned to spell; and by the time he was three years old he could read any chapter in the Bible."

The baby remained with his mother until he was six years old, when he was sent as a boarder to Kilkenny school, and his mother and sister went to Leicester, so that he was orphaned for the third time. His uncle Godwin bore the cost of his education. After school he went to Trinity College, Dublin. He writes of this: "By the illtreatment of his nearest relatives he was so much discouraged and sunk in spirits that he too