he entered the ministry of the Irish Church.  During the early years of the century he spent much time in London, and took an active part in bringing about that political revolution which seated the Tories firmly in power during the last four years of the reign of Queen Anne.  His services in that connection on the Examiner newspaper were so great that it would be difficult to dispute the assertion, which has been made, that he was one of the mightiest journalists that ever wielded a pen.  He also stood loyally by his party in his great pamphlets, The Conduct of the Allies (1711), The Barrier Treaty (1712), and The Public Spirit of the Whigs (1714).  When the time came for his reward, he received not, as he had hoped, an English bishopric, but the deanery of St. Patrick’s in Dublin.  On resuming his residence in Ireland he was at first very unpopular, but his patriotic spirit as shown in the Drapier Letters (1723-1724), written in connection with a coinage scheme known as “Wood’s halfpence”, not only caused the withdrawal of the obnoxious project but also made Swift the idol of all classes of his countrymen.  In many others of his writings he showed that pro-Irish leaning which caused Grattan to invoke his spirit along with that of Molyneux on the occasion already referred to.  Nothing more mordant than the irony contained in his Modest Proposal has ever been penned.  In his plea for native manufactures he struck a keynote that has vibrated down the ages when he advised Irishmen to burn everything English except coal!

Swift’s greater works are The Battle of the Books, his contribution to the controversy concerning the relative merits of the ancients and the moderns; the Tale of a Tub, in which he attacked the three leading forms of Christianity; and, above all, Gulliver’s Travels.  In this last work he let loose the full flood of his merciless satire and lashed the folly and vices of mankind in the most unsparing way.  He also wrote verses which are highly characteristic and some of them not without considerable merit.  His life was unhappy and for the last five years of it he was to all intents and purposes insane.  His relations with Stella (Hester Johnson) and Vanessa (Esther Vanhomrigh) have never been quite satisfactorily explained.  The weight of evidence would seem to show that he was secretly married to Stella, but that they never lived together as husband and wife.  Many novels and plays have been written round those entanglements.  He lies buried in his own cathedral, St. Patrick’s, Dublin, and beside him lies Stella.  Over his tomb there is an epitaph in Latin, written by himself, in which, after speaking of the saeva indignatio which tore his heart, he bids the wayfarer go and imitate, if he can, the energetic defender of his native land.