I think I have shown the best side of him; and it is not very imposing. A man to be petted; one for confections and for valentines, rather than for those lifts of poetic thought which buoy us into the regions of enduring song. Yet Swift says in a letter, “‘The Beggar’s Opera’ hath knocked down Gulliver!” This joyous poet lies in Westminster Abbey, with an epitaph by Alexander Pope. How, then, can we pass him by? _Jonathan Swift._ But Dean Swift[108] does not lie in Westminster Abbey. We must go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, to find his tomb, and that bust of him which looks out upon the main aisle of the old church. He was born in Dublin, at a house that might have been seen only a few years ago, in Hoey’s Court. His father, however, was English, dying before Swift was born; his mother, too, was English, and so poor that it was only through the charity of an uncle the lad came to have schooling and a place at Trinity College--the charity being so doled out that Swift groaned under it; and groaned under the memory of it all his life. He took his degree there, under difficulties; squabbling with the teachers of logic and metaphysics, and turning his back upon them and upon what they taught. After some brief stay with his mother in Leicestershire, he goes, at her instance, and in recognition of certain remote kinship with the family of Sir William Temple, to seek that diplomat’s patronage. He was received charitably--to be cordial was not Temple’s manner--at the beautiful home of Sheen;[109] and thereafter, on Temple’s change of residence, was for many years an inmate of the house at Moor Park. There he eats the bread of dependence--sulkily at times, and grudgingly always. Another _protégée_ of the house was a sparkling-eyed little girl, Hester Johnson--she scarce ten when he was twenty-three--and who, doubtless, looked admiringly upon the keen, growling, masculine graduate of Dublin, who taught her to write. Swift becomes secretary to Sir William; through his influence secures a degree at Oxford (1692); pushes forward his studies, with the Moor Park library at his hand; takes his own measure--we may be sure--of the stately, fine diplomat; measures King William too--who, odd times, visits Temple at his country home, telling him how to cut his asparagus--measures him admiringly, yet scornfully; as hard-working, subtle-thoughted, ambitious, dependent students are apt to measure those whose consequence is inherited and factitious.