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 the church. He was recommended to lord Capel, then Lord-Deputy, who gave him, the first vacancy, a prebend, of which the income was about a hundred pounds a year.