The other suggestion concerning the illegitimacy of his birth, is equally false.  Sir William Temple was employed as a minister abroad, from the year 1665, to the year 1670; first at Brussels, and afterwards at the Hague, as appears by his correspondence with the earl of Arlington, and other ministers of state.  So that Dr. Swift’s mother, who never crossed the sea, except from England to Ireland, was out of all possibility of a personal correspondence with Sir William Temple, till some years after her son’s birth.  Dr. Swift’s ancestors were persons of decent and reputable characters.  His grand-father was the Revd.  Mr. Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodridge, near Ross in Herefordshire.  He enjoyed a paternal estate in that county, which is still in possession of his great-grandson, Dean Swift, Esq; He died in the year 1658, leaving five sons, Godwin, Thomas, Dryden, Jonathan, and Adam.

Two of them only, Godwin and Jonathan, left sons.  Jonathan married Mrs. Abigail Erick of Leicestershire, by whom he had one daughter and a son.  The daughter was born in the first year of Mr. Swift’s marriage; but he lived not to see the birth of his son, who was born two months after his death, and became afterwards the famous Dean of St. Patrick’s.

The greatest part of Mr. Jonathan Swift’s income had depended upon agencies, and other employments of that kind; so that most of his fortune perished with him[1], and the remainder being the only support that his widow could enjoy, the care, tuition, and expence of her two children devolved upon her husband’s elder brother, Mr. Godwin Swift, who voluntarily became their guardian, and supplied the loss which they had sustained in a father.

The faculties of the mind appear and shine forth at different ages in different men.  The infancy of Dr. Swift pass’d on without any marks of distinction.  At six years old he was sent to school at Kilkenny, and about eight years afterwards he was entered a student of Trinity College in Dublin.  He lived there in perfect regularity, and under an entire obedience to the statutes; but the moroseness of his temper rendered him very unacceptable to his companions, so that he was little regarded, and less beloved, nor were the academical exercises agreeable to his genius.  He held logic and metaphysics in the utmost contempt; and he scarce considered mathematics, and natural philosophy, unless to turn them into ridicule.  The studies which he followed were history and poetry.  In these he made a great progress, but to all other branches of science, he had given so very little application, that when he appeared as a candidate for the degree of batchelor of arts, he was set aside on account of insufficiency.

’This, says lord Orrery, is a surprising incident in his life, but it is undoubtedly true; and even at last he obtained his admission Speciali Gratia.  A phrase which in that university carries with it the utmost marks of reproach.  It is a kind of dishonourable degree, and the record of it (notwithstanding Swift’s present established character throughout the learned world) must for ever remain against him in the academical register at Dublin.’