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obtained a promise of the prebend for Swift; but the truth of the apothegm, "put not your faith in princes," was soon manifest. Swift happily found a new patron at this juncture. Lord Berkley, on proceeding to Ireland as Viceroy, invited Swift to act as his private secretary and chaplain. He accepted the proposal, and accompanied that nobleman to Dublin; but a quarrel soon after separated them for ever. Swift was in fact a bad confidant for a certain class of state secrets; he was an Irish patriot at heart, and he honestly and courageously resisted whatever he thought inimical to his country's good. In 1700 we find him installed in the living of Laracor, where his conduct as a clergyman is described as being most exemplary. His church was thinly attended, however, and Lord Orrery records that Swift, on one occasion, addressed the service to a congregation consisting only of his clerk. In the following year Swift's mental powers may be said to have shot into their zenith. The incidents of his grand public life, and brilliant literary career, may be dated and traced from this period. They are already engraven on the appreciative heart of Ireland, and it might seem supererogatory for our feeble pen to seek to imprint them deeper. We have rapidly sketched the comparatively little-known years of Swift's early life, and it but remains to jot down, in a few recording words, his principal acts, achievements and death. Dr. Wilde, we may add, in "The Closing Years of Swift's Life," has left little to be desired regarding that interesting period of his career.

In 1701, having then taken out his Doctor's degree, Swift first entered on the political arena, by publishing

A Discourse of the Contests and Dissentions between the Nobles and Commons of Athens and Rome," and in 1704 appeared that inimitable piece of humour, "The Tale of a Tub." "The Battle of the Books," after the manner of Rabelais, a burlesque comparison between ancient and modern authors, in which Dryden was made to feel the rebound of Swift's wounded pride, was appended to "the Tale of a Tub." In 1708 no less than four distinct works on religion and politics appeared from his pen; and in 1710 we find him on terms of intimacy with Addison, chief secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant. He also gained the confidence of Bolingbroke and his friends to such a degree, that he became one of the sixteen brothers who dined alternately at each other's tables. In 1711 was published, "A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English tongue,"-in a letter to Lord Oxford, which sought to establish an Institution on the principle of the French Academy, with a view to preserve, intact, the purity of the language, which had latterly begun to suffer from the rhymes of poetasters, and the flippancies of illiterate pamphleteers. His own style had long elicited the admiration of critics, for its simplicity, clearness, and purity, though we regret to add, not always in a moral sense. The same year introduced to the world, "The Conduct of the Allies," written to promote peace, and which was received with immense favour. In 1712 appeared, "Reflections on the Barrier Treaty,"

and "Remarks" on Burnet's Introduction to the third volume of his History of the Reformation, in which he gave that learned prelate a castigation not likely to be soon forgotten. Swift aspired to a bishopric, but Archbishop Sharpe warned Queen Anne, that one who could write "The Tale of a Tub," had scant orthodoxy, and that the deanery of St. Patrick's was the only preferment which might with safety be given. to him. To this dignity Swift was accordingly presented in 1713. He lost little time in effecting a meritorious reform in the chapter of St. Patrick's, over which he obtained an ascendancy and authority unequalled by any of his predecessors. His house in Kevin street became the centre of opinion and attraction. He twice a week entertained the best company-Stella regulating the table, but always departing at night with the other guests. In 1716, a private marriage between Stella and Swift was solemnized by the Bishop of Clogher; but the matrimonial contract was never consummated, and Stella, after a time, languished and died. As a solution of the mystery, Dr. Wilde has recently hinted the opinion, that Stella was the daughter of Sir William Temple, and Swift his son, consequently Stella's half brother. This would account, as Dr. Wilde remarks, for many hitherto inexplicable portions of Swift's conduct relative to both Stella and Vanessa. Sir Walter Scott, however, has materially disturbed this theory by the statement, that Swift's parents resided in Ireland from before 1665, until his birth in 1667, and that Temple was residing as ambassador in Holland, from April, 1666, until January, 1668.

In 1720, the dean was roused into honest indignation by the oppressive manner in which Ireland was governed; and some patriotic pamphlets appeared from his pen, including: "A proposal for the universal use of Irish Manufactures," which rendered him a great popular favourite. His celebrated Drapier Letters followed, in which he fearlessly and ably exposed the gross job of Wood's patent for a supply of copper coinage. A large reward was offered by the government for the author of these letters, but the secret was never communicated officially to the law-officers of the crown, although no one had any doubt of Swift being the author. From this date the Dean became the public idol of the Irish people. The late Rev. J. F. Ennis, of Meath Street, told us that he had once professionally attended an old female centenarian in the neighbourhood of Patrick Street. She often spoke to him of Dean Swift, and added, that he never left the deanery house in Kevin Street without an immense attendance behind him of washed and unwashed admirers, who cheered enthusiastically their "darlin' dane." In 1726, Swift became as popular among youths as he had previously been with adults, by the publication of "Gulliver's Travels," a work so well known that we need not add a line of commentary upon it. In the same year, he co-operated with Pope in the compilation of three volumes of "Miscellanies," leaving to the poet all the profits of the publication. Stella had lingered until about this time, and when the hectic flush of consumption had proclaimed the ruin of her.

health, it is said that he offered to acknowledge her as a wife, but she faintly replied, "It is too late." Rogers, in his recently published "Recollections," records a conversation of Grattan's, from which it appears that Stella used frequently to visit his aunt, and sleep with her in the same bed, and weep all night.

Swift acquired a similar ascendancy over the feelings of Hester Vanhomrigh, alias Vanessa, another beautiful and accomplished woman, and the result was also similar, Possessed of great talents, great beauty, and great fortune, her society was eagerly sought after. Swift loved to guide her literary instruction: the pupil became enamoured of the master; and he could ill restrain the boast, that a girl of eighteen had contracted a romantic attachment "for a gown of forty-five." He culpably trifled with her passion. She hinted marriage, but the hint failed to take. The flush of youth and beauty gradually merged into the hectic glow of a fevered mind, and a breaking heart. In Vanessa's will she charged her executors, including Bishop Berkeley, to publish Swift's correspondence with her; but singular to say, they declined to act upon the dying lady's request. His letters to Vanessa are, we believe, still extant. Some mutilated extracts from them were intrusted to Sir Walter Scott for publication. There is also in existence the Dean's correspondence with Knightly Chetwode, Esq., from 1714 to 1731; and Dr. Wilde expresses a wish (Closing Years of Swift's Life, p. 29) that the present R. W. Chetwode, Esq., of Portarlington, could be persuaded to publish this interesting correspondence. "It is a debt he owes to his ancestors, his country, and himself."

After the death of Stella, Swift's life became much retired; but he continued, as of old, to send forth from his study an uninterrupted and energetic succession of efforts to ameliorate the condition of his country and his countrymen. Innumerable effusions, both in prose and verse, had in view this generous end: in addition to which, he regularly dedicated a third of his income to charity. Some of his most striking poems were written at this period, including the celebrated "Verses on his own Death." In 1736, he sustained a severe attack on the brain, attended by deafness, which prevented him from attempting, during the remainder of his life, any work requiring much thought. His "Polite Conversation" was no doubt published subsequent to this illness, together with his inimitable satiric " Directions to Servants;" but both works had emanated from his brain, at a period when his mental powers were in their zenith. This, and other ironical compositions to which we have adverted, constitute Swift the Lucian of the modern world. The faculties of Swift's mind had begun to decay long before those of his robust constitution, and in 1742, a gradual evaporation of the reasoning power at length reduced his once splendid "dome of thought-the palace of the soul," to a sink of idiotic stagnation. A glimmering of reason, at very wide intervals, occasionally shot forth, like the convulsive bounds of an expiring taper; but this effort to re-assert

his mental strength, only rendered the great man's state the more pitiable and wretched.

Swift had a presentiment that his fine, bright mind would one day be bathed in utter darkness; and Young relates a very touching anecdote illustrative of this feeling. Swift was walking with some friends in the neighbourhood of Dublin. 66 Perceiving he did not follow us," says Young, "I went back and found him fixed as a statue, and earnestly gazing upward at a noble elm which, in the uppermost branches, was much decayed. Pointing at it, he said, 'I shall be like that tree-I shall die at the top.'"

In October 1745, he fell with the leaves, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. His fortune, though not large, was sufficiently ample, and he bequeathed the major part of it to an hospital in Bow Lane, for the reception of lunatics. This intention he had already made known in his admirable verses upon his own death,

"To shew, by one satiric touch,
The nation needed it so much."

With one memorable exception, Swift's memory has suffered long and severely from the calumnious misrepresentation of Scotch writers, both during his own life-time and since. Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review for September, 1816, made a savage onslaught upon Swift, and in 1819, there appeared from the pen of the Rev. Edward Berwick, editor of the Rawdon Papers, "A Defence of Dr. Jonathan Swift, in answer to certain observations based on his Life and Writings, in the Edinburgh Review." It, however, was not until the publication of Monck Mason's "History of St. Patrick's Cathedral," that Swift's reputation was placed upon a steady and respectable basis. Rowley Lascelles, in the Liber Hibernice, ii. 22, says, "that book has vindicated talent and virtue from personal envy, faction, and national prejudice: in fact, the reputation of Swift had been again and again rendered next to infamous by Scotch compliments," &c. It is easy to shew that the stream of Scotch hypercriticism, which has so long continued to flow upon the memory of Swift, is not of a very disinterested character. In 1704, Swift, in "the Public Spirit of the Whigs," found it necessary to advance some wholesome truths against certain doings in Scotland. The entire country, from Caithness to Solway Firth, rose indignant at Swift's daring. The Duke of Argyle, and other Scottish peers, issued a proclamation, offering a reward of £300 for the discovery of the author, and a prosecution was with great difficulty avoided. Sir Walter Scott, in his able Life of Swift, occasionally hints that the dean hated his country, and lenged for an excuse to abandon its shores for ever. It is, however, evident from his MS. notes, in Clarendon's "Civil Wars," that it was to the country of his biographer, and not to his own, that Swift's "hatred" was implacably directed; and it is mainly for the purpose of directing attention to these singular and hitherto unpublished memoranda, that we have de licated a few pages to this summary sketch of the illustrious and eccentric Dean of St. Patrick's.

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These marginal remarks of Swift's appear written with his own hand in nearly two hundred places on the margin of the copy of Clarendon's Civil Wars in England, in Marsh's Library, St. Patrick's Cathedral. They are, for the most part, ebullitions of the Dean's rancour against the Scots, but occasionally other persons aud subjects come in for a dash of his splenetic pen. The following may serve as specimens of the whole:-On the fly-leaf of the first volume he wrote: "The cursed, hellish villainy, treachery, treasons, of the Scots, were the chief grounds and cause of that execrable rebellion;" at pages 94 and 95 he wrote: Scots dogs-cursed Scots for ever," and the same expressions are repeated, with or without variation, on several pages, exhibiting the poor Dean's frantic wrath in a most ludicrous manner, and giving strong indications that when they were written he was already labouring under his last fatal malady. On the words, "People of honour in Scotland" (p. 129), he wrote: "Cursed, hellish ScotsGreedy Scotch rebellious dogs!!" On "the rule of the Scots in Ulster" (p. 245), Swift's commentary was:— "Sent cursed rebel Scots, who opposed the English in that kingdom as the Irish rebels did, and were governors of that province." "The godly divines of the Scots," he styles "cursed fanatics" (vol. 2, p. 91); and again (p. 134), the "Kirk" is annotated "Hell!" "Shaftesbury" he calls "An everlasting rogue" (vol. 2, p. 262); on the "marriage between parliament and the Scots" (p. 284) he writes: "Satan was parson;" the Duke of Hamilton, he describes, as a "hellish, treacherous villain of a Scot" (p. 293); Argyle was an odious dog, and so are all his descendants" (p. 351); Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper was a rogue all his life" (p. 382). On the printed fly-leaf of vol. 3 he wrote: The frequent expression upon the word of a king,' I

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have always despised and detested for a thousand reasons." The Marquis of Montrose he calls "the only honest Scot." The Duke of York (James II.) was sorry admiral" (vol. iii. p. 108), and "Popery and cowardice stuck to him all his life" (p. 109); Cromwell was "a cursed hell-hound" (vol. iii. p. 241), and "a cursed dog" (p. 208); Argyle again (vol. iii. p. 272), was that perpetual inhuman dog and traitor, and all his posterity, to a man, damnable villains;" finally, (vol. iii. p. 306), Roman Catholics and Presbyterians were "a blessed pair," and so on to the end; but we have selected these expressions as sufficiently characteristic of the writer, while there are many others of too coarse a texture to be suited for these pages.

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As a postscript, we may add, on the authority of Alderman Banim, of Kilkenny, who communicated the fact to us, that when the old College of Kilkenny, in which Swift was educated, was about to be removed, the materials were sold by auction, and the desks, seats, and boards of the schoolroom became the property of Mr. Barnaby Scott, a thriving shopkeeper in the city of St. Canice. On one of the desks was cut the name"Jonathan Swift"-no doubt by Swift's own hand and pocket knife. Mr. Barnaby Scott, solicitor, the son of the purchaser of the old desks, died in 1856; but previous to that event, he told Mr. Banim that, when a boy, he distinctly remembered to have seen the incised autograph, and added that this particular board was, with others of the same purchase, used for flooring his father's shop. The house has been lately rebuilt, but the floor of the shop was not disturbed; and it is more than probable that if any gentleman of antiquarian taste will communicate, in the proper manner, to Mr. Kenny Scott, the present proprietor, this interesting relic may yet be recovered.

THE BATTLE OF MANNING FORD.

BY ROBERT D. JOYCE.

[This battle was fought in the winter of 1643, by the troops of the Kilkenny Confederation, under Lord Castlehaven, against one of the armies of Murrogh O'Brien, Earl of Inchiquin, commanded by Sir Charles Vavasour. The two armies came in sight of each other in the morning, and marched side by side during the greater part of the day, each watching for an advantageous battle ground. At length they reached the Ford of Manning, across the Funcheon, near Glanworth. Here Sir Charles Vavasour attempted to cross the river, but was attacked by Lord Castlehaven, and his army cut to pieces, after the manner told in the ballad. Sir Charles Vavasour himself was taken prisoner, and all his principal officers either slain or captured. In this battle all the standards, save one, of the enemy, fell into the hands of the Irish forces, together with the preys of cattle, the baggage, and seven or eight hundred stand of arms.] (CARTE'S Ormond. MEEHAN'S Confederation of Kilkenny, &c.)

I.

I SHARPENED my sword in the morning, and buckled my basnet and jack,

I clothed my steed in his harness, and cheerily sprung on his back;

I rode over mountain and moorland, and never slacked spur by the way,

'Till I came to the green Pass of Ballar, and called up young Johnnie Dunlea !

II.

Then down thro' that deep vale we clattered, and on by the hoarse-sounding rill,
'Till we came to the strong House of Sloragh, and blew up our bugle full shrill;
Then Diarmid, the Master of Slora, rode gallantly out with his men,
And we shouted, "Hurrah, for the battle!" as onward we thundered again.

III.

We swept like the wind thro' the valley-deep quagmire and trench we defied,
And we knocked at the strong gate of Dangan, where Will of the Wood kept his bride ;-
How he pressed her sweet lips at the parting, and kissed off her tears o'er and o'er;
But, alas! they flowed faster at even, for her bridegroom came back nevermore !

IV.

Thro' the bog of Glendoran we waded, and up thro' the sere forest crashed,
Then down o'er the broad spreading highland, a torrent of bright steel we dashed;
And there how we shouted for gladness, as the glitter of spears we descried,
From the army of bold Castlehaven, far off on the green mountain side!

V.

I rode up to the brave Castlehaven, and asked for a place in his rank,
And he said, "Keep ye shoulder to shoulder, and charge ye to day from our flank!”
And we marched 'neath his banner that morning, 'till fast by Lis Funcheon we lay,
Just to drink a good slainthe to Ireland, and look to our arms for the fray.

VI.

"Twas then as we gazed down the moorland, a horseman came wild spurring iu,
And he stinted his course not for thicket, for deep bog, or crag-strewn ravine,
'Till his charger fell dead by our standard that waved in the bright morning glow;
Then up to our chieftain he tottered, and told him his dark tale of woe!

VII.

"Ho! Baron of broad Castlehaven! last night in the Tower of Cloghlea,

The foe battered down our defences-save me, every man did they slay;

And they brought forth their prisoners this morning, young maiden, and matron, and child, And led them, for bloodshed still burning, away thro' the brown forest wild!

VIII.

"And there, by the Bridge of Glenullin, they murdered these poor prisoners all,

And the demons they laughed as they slew them-ah! well did they free them from thrall—
And now look ye sharp to the southward-on Vavaзour comes with his horde,
Then give him the murderer's guerdon, and pay him with bullet and sword!"

IX.

We looked to the southward, and saw them with many a creact moving on,
With the spoil of two counties behind them, by murder and treachery won;
With a waving and flaunting of banners, and bright flashing arms did they come,
With the clear shrilly clamour of trumpets, and the loud rolling tuck of the drum !

X.

We answered their challenge as proudly, and threw out our skirmishers bold,
Who pillaged their rere of the cattle, and thinned their broad van from the wold;
And thus the two armies went onward, each watching its neighbour full keen,
'Till we came to the rough slopes of Manning, with the bright Funcheon rolling between.

ΧΙ,

Then out spurred our brave Castlehaven, his sword flashing bright in his hand,

And he cried, "Now, my children, we've caught them, the foes of your dear native land,— Brave horsemen, bear down on their rereguard-brave footmen, strike hard on their flanks, Till we give them a bed 'neath the Funcheon, or a grave cold and red by its banks!"

XII.

Oh! then came the clanking of harness, and the roar of the onset full soon,
And the neighing of steeds, and the champing, and the crash of the loud musquetoon;
And the fierce rolling thunder of cannon, and the rattling of lances and swords,
And the gloom and the glitter of battle, as we fell horse and foot on their hordes !

T

VOL. I.

XIII.

As the frost-loosened crags thunder downward, thro' the wild woods of steep Gaultymore,
We rushed on their thick serried horsemen, and swept them adown to the shore ;
As the grey wolves rush out from the forest, one flood of white fangs on their prey,
Our fierce kerne sprang on their footmen, with blades ready pointed to slay !

XIV.

And there 'twas all shouting and swearing, and the clanging of hard stroke on stroke,
And the flourish of skeins o'er the vanquished, and the glittering of pikes thro' the smoke,—
Till the Ford was half crossed by their footmen, and the river all red with their gore,
'Till the horse thro' their thick ranks retreated, and we at their backs striking sore!

XV.

There's a flat on the far side of Manning, with grey cliffs and wood every side, "Tis there in the blood of the foemen our pikes and our sabres we dyed;

'Tis there you'd have heard the loud clangour, as the steel went thro' corslet and breast, As we slew them, and slew till the sunset glared red o'er the hills of the west.

XVI,

Fierce Vavasour rode by his standard, and stoutly he stood to the charge,

But we took him and all his bold leaders full soon by that red river's marge;

And the pillage he swept from each hamlet, and the gold that he robbed from each town, By the ne'er failing ordeal of battle, was ours ere the red sun went down.

XVII.

And the remnant that 'scaped from the slaughter, we chased over valley and wood, "Till each rough path was strewn with their corses, each ford running red with their blood; One flag-bearer 'scaped to Kilmallock, with banner all shattered and torn

Sad news to Black Murrogh the Burner, the sight of that horseman forlorn!

XVIII.

And soon o'er the red Ford of Manning we kindled our campfires full bright,
And fast by the heaps of the slaughtered, oh! wildly we revelled that night;
And we drank a good slainthe to Ireland, and one to our general brave,
Who led us to triumph and glory that day by the Funcheon's wild wave!

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On the evening of the 16th of August, 1617, two Irish Franciscans were seated in the library of the house which they occupied at Louvain as a temporary domicile for themselves and community, pending the erection of the convent of St. Antony, the first stone of which had been laid a few months before by Albert and Isabella, joint sovereigns of the Netherlands. These two friars, Fathers Purcell and Mooney, were both advanced in years, but the latter, though considerably older than his companion, was still hale and vigorous, notwithstanding the austerities of cloister life and the hardships of his early career, for in youth he had been a soldier, and served in the army of the great Earl of Desmond till the power of that once mighty palatine was utterly destroyed. Tired of camp life, and hoping to pass the remainder of his days in the calm seclusion of a convent, he ultimately took the habit of St. Francis, and after due probation and a brief course of studies, was ordained priest, and advanced to various offices in the venerable

monastery of Donegal, where he resided till the year 1601. Father Purcell, unlike his colleague, Mooney, took the habit of St. Francis when he was a mere stripling, and proceeding to Rome, passed the greater part of his life in that city, where his learning, and, above all, his profound knowledge of the classics, placed him on a level with the most erudite of his day. Returning to Ireland, he resided for some time in the convent of St. Francis at Kilkenny, till at length the combined forces of O'Neill and O'Donnell were routed at Kinsale, and he, like most of his brethren, had to fly for shelter and protection to Louvain, where the Irish Franciscans met cordial welcome from Albert and Isabella. Indeed so solicitous were the Archdukes (the title by which the joint sovereigns were designated, without distinction of sex) for the comfort and advancement of the Irish Franciscans, that they not only assisted in person and with great pomp at the laying of the first stone of the Irish monastery at Louvain, but also bestowed considerable endowments upon it, in order that it might serve as a sanctuary for the persecuted Irish, and a seminary for the training of future missionaries.

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