Jonathan Swift left Ireland, along with many more, in the commotion that succeeded the revolution of 1688--a very poor and homely lad, with nothing but the learning, such as it was, picked up in a somewhat disorderly university career. Through his mother, then living at Leicester, and on the score of humble relationship between Mrs. Swift and Lady Temple, of whom the reader may perhaps remember the romance and tender history,--a pleasant association,--he was introduced to Sir William Temple’s household, but scarcely, it would appear, at first to any permanent position there. He was engaged, an unfriendly writer says, “at the rate of £20 a year” as amanuensis and reader, but “Sir William never favoured him with his conversation nor allowed him to sit at table with him.” Temple’s own account of the position, however, contains nothing at all derogatory to the young man, for whom, about a year after, he endeavored, no doubt in accordance with Swift’s own wishes, to find a situation with Sir Robert Southwell, then going to Ireland as secretary of state. Sir William describes Swift as “of good family in Herefordshire.... He has lived in my house, read to me, writ for me, and kept all my accounts as far as my small occasions required. He has Latin and Greek, some French, writes a very good current hand, is very honest and diligent, and has good friends, though they have for the present lost their fortunes,” the great man says; and he recommends the youth “either as a gentleman to wait on you, or a clerk to write under you, or upon any establishment of the College to recommend him to a fellowship there, which he has a just pretence to.” This shows how little there was in the position of “a gentleman to wait on you,” of which the young suitor need have been ashamed. Swift’s own account of this speedy return to Ireland is that it was by advice of the physicians, “who weakly imagined that his native air might be of some use to recover his health,” which he was young enough to have endangered by the temptations of Sir William’s fine gardens; a “surfeit of fruit” being the innocent cause to which he attributes the disease which haunted him for all the rest of his life. His absence, however, from the Temple household was of very short duration, Sir Robert Southwell having apparently had no use for his services, or means of preferring him to a fellowship, and he returned to Moor Park in 1690, where he remained for four years. It was quite clear, whatever his vicissitudes of feeling might have been, that he identified himself entirely with his patron’s opinions and even prejudices, and was [Illustration: MOOR PARK, RESIDENCE OF SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE, AND OF SWIFT. DRAWN BY CHARLES HERBERT WOODBURY, ENGRAVED BY R. VARLEY.]