INTRODUCTION.
valued his services, was slow in finding him preferment, he left Moor Park in
order to carry out his resolve to go into the Church. He was ordained, and
obtained the prebend of Kilroot, near Belfast, where he carried on a
flirtation with a Miss Waring, whom he called Varina. But in May 1696 Temple
made proposals which induced Swift to return to Moor Park, where he was
employed in preparing Temple's memoirs and correspondence for publication, and
in supporting the side taken by Temple in the Letters of Phalaris controversy
by writing The Battle of the Books, which was, however, not published until
1704. On his return to Temple's house, Swift found his old playmate grown
from a sickly child into a girl of fifteen, in perfect health. She came, he
says, to be "looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and agreeable
young women in London, only a little too fat. Her hair was blacker than a
raven, and every feature of her face in perfection."
On his death in January 1699, Temple left a will,[3] dated 1694, directing the
payment of 20 pounds each, with half a year's wages, to Bridget Johnson "and
all my other servants"; and leaving a lease of some land in Monistown, County
Wicklow, to Esther Johnson, "servant to my sister Giffard." By a codicil of
February 1698, Temple left 100 pounds to "Mr. Jonathan Swift, now living with
me." It may be added that by her will of 1722, proved in the following year,
Lady Giffard gave 20 pounds to Mrs. Moss--Mrs. Bridget Johnson, who had
married Richard Mose or Moss, Lady Giffard's steward. The will proceeds: "To
Mrs. Hester (sic) Johnson I give 10 pounds, with the 100 pounds I put into the
Exchequer for her life and my own, and declare the 100 pounds to be hers which
I am told is there in my name upon the survivorship, and for which she has
constantly sent over her certificate and received the interest. I give her
besides my two little silver candlesticks."
Temple left in Swift's hands the task of publishing his posthumous works, a
duty which afterwards led to a quarrel with Lady Giffard and other members of
the family. Many years later Swift told Lord Palmerston that he stopped at
Moor Park solely for the benefit of Temple's conversation and advice, and the
opportunity of pursuing his studies. At Temple's death he was "as far to seek
as ever." In the summer of 1699, however, he was offered and accepted the
post of secretary and chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords
Justices, but when he reached Ireland he found that the secretaryship had been
given to another. He soon, however, obtained the living of Laracor, Agher,
and Rathbeggan, and the prebend of Dunlavin in St. Patrick's Cathedral,
Dublin. The total value of these preferments was about 230 pounds a year, an
income which Miss Waring seems to have thought enough to justify him in
marrying. Swift's reply to the lady whom he had "singled out at first from
the rest of women" could only have been written with the intention of breaking
off the connection, and accordingly we hear no more of poor Varina.
At Laracor, a mile or two from Trim, and twenty miles from Dublin, Swift
ministered to a congregation of about fifteen persons, and had abundant
leisure for cultivating his garden, making a canal (after the Dutch fashion of