The year after his first arrival at Temple's, Swift went back to Ireland by advice of physicians, who "weakly imagined that his native air might be of some use to recover his health." It was at this period, we may note in passing, that Swift began to suffer from a disease which tormented him through life. Temple sent with him a letter of introduction to Sir Robert Southwell, Secretary of State in Ireland, which gives an interesting account of their previous relations. Swift, said Temple, had lived in his house, read for him, written for him, and kept his small accounts. He knew Latin and Greek, and a little French; wrote a good hand, and was honest and diligent. His whole family had long been known to Temple, who would be glad if Southwell would give him a clerkship, or get him a fellowship in Trinity College. The statement of Swift's qualifications has now a rather comic sound. An applicant for a desk in a merchant's office once commended himself, it is said, by the statement that his style of writing combined scathing sarcasm with the wildest flights of humour. Swift might have had a better claim to a place for which such qualities were a recommendation; but there is no reason beyond the supposed agreement of fools to regard genius as a disadvantage in practical life, to suppose that Swift was deficient in humbler attainments. Before long, however, he was back at Moor Park; and a period followed in which his discontent with the position probably reached its height. Temple, indeed, must have discovered that his young dependent was really a man of capacity. He recommended him to William. In 1692 Swift went to Oxford, to be admitted _ad eundem_, and received the M.A. degree; and Swift, writing to thank his uncle for obtaining the necessary testimonials from Dublin, adds that he has been most civilly received at Oxford, on the strength, presumably, of Temple's recommendation, and that he is not to take orders till the king gives him a prebend. He suspects Temple, however, of being rather backward in the matter, "because (I suppose) he believes I shall leave him, and (upon some accounts) he thinks me a little necessary to him." William, it is said, was so far gracious as to offer to make Swift a captain of horse, and instruct him in the Dutch mode of cutting asparagus. By this last phrase hangs an anecdote of later days. Faulkner, the Dublin printer, was dining with Swift, and on asking for a second supply of asparagus, was told by the Dean to finish what he had on his plate. "What, sir, eat my stalks!" "Ay, sir; King William always ate his stalks." "And were you," asked Faulkner's hearer when he related the story, "were you blockhead enough to obey him?" "Yes," replied Faulkner, "and if you had dined with Dean Swift _tête-à-tête_ you would have been obliged to eat your stalks too!" For the present Swift was the recipient not the imposer of stalks; and was to receive the first shock, as he tells us, that helped to cure him of his vanity. The question of the Triennial Bill was agitating political personages in the early months of 1693. William and his favourite minister, the Earl of Portland, found their Dutch experience insufficient to guide them in the mysteries of English constitutionalism. Portland came down to consult Temple at Moor Park; and Swift was sent back to explain to the great men that Charles I. had been ruined not by consenting to short Parliaments, but by abandoning the right to dissolve Parliament. Swift says that he was "well versed in English history, though he was under twenty-one years old." (He was really twenty-five, but memory naturally exaggerated his youthfulness). His arguments, however backed by history, failed to carry conviction, and Swift had to unlearn some of the youthful confidence which assumes that reason is the governing force in this world, and that reason means our own opinions. That so young a man should have been employed on such an errand, shows that Temple must have had a good opinion of his capacities; but his want of success, however natural, was felt as a grave discouragement.