d of extraordinary diligence and learning. It
is natural to imagine that he did not try to undeceive them; he was
entered in Hart-Hall, now Hartford-College, where he resided till he
took his degree of master of arts in the year 1691.

Dr. Swift's uncle, on whom he had placed his chief dependance, dying in
the Revolution year, he was supported chiefly by the bounty of Sir
William Temple, to whose lady he was a distant relation. Acts of
generosity seldom meet with their just applause. Sir William Temple's
friendship was immediately construed to proceed from a consciousness
that he was the real father of Mr. Swift, otherwise it was thought
impossible he could be so uncommonly munificent to a young man, so
distantly related to his wife.

'I am not quite certain, (says his noble Biographer) that Swift himself
did not acquiesce in the calumny; perhaps like Alexander, he thought the
natural son of Jupiter would appear greater than the legitimate son of
Philip.'

As soon as Swift quitted the university, he lived with Sir William
Temple as his friend, and domestic companion. When he had been about two
years in the family of his patron, he contracted a very long, and
dangerous illness, by eating an immoderate quantity of fruit. To this
surfeit he used to ascribe the giddiness in his head, which, with
intermissions sometimes of a longer, and sometimes of a shorter
continuance, pursued him till it seemed to compleat its conquest, by
rendering him the exact image of one of his own STRULDBRUGGS; a
miserable spectacle, devoid of every appearance of human nature, except
the outward form.

After Swift had sufficiently recovered to travel, he went into Ireland
to try the effects of his native air; and he found so much benefit by
the journey, that pursuant to his own inclinations he soon returned into
England, and was again most affectionately received by Sir William
Temple, whose house was now at Sheen, where he was often visited by King
William. Here Swift had frequent opportunities of conversing with that
prince; in some of which conversations the king offered to make him a
captain of horse: An offer, which in his splenetic dispositions, he
always seemed sorry to have refused; but at that time he had resolved
within his own mind to take orders, and during his whole life his
resolutions, like the decrees of fate, were immoveable. Thus determined,
he again went over to Ireland, and immediately inlisted himself under
the banner of t