The house in which Jonathan Swift was born can still be seen in Hoey's Court, which once was a popular place of residence for well-to-do people, and has several mansions of architectural pretensions, but has degenerated into a slum, one of the many that may be found in the very center of the business section of the city. He came of a good Yorkshire family; his mother had aristocratic connections and was one of those women who seem to have been born to suffer from the failings of men. His father was a shiftless adventurer, following several professions and occupations in turn without even ordinary success in any. Jonathan went to the parish schools in Kilkenny for a time when his father happened to be living in that locality, and when he was seventeen years old passed the entrance examinations to Trinity College, Dublin. He was a willful, independent, eccentric person, of a lonely and sour disposition, and refused to be bound by the rules of the university. He would not study mathematics or physics, but delighted in classical literature, and furnished many witty contributions to college literature which gave promise of genius. He wrote a play that was performed by the college students with great success. His degree was reluctantly conferred by the faculty through the influence of Sir William Temple, a famous statesman of those days, whose wife was a distant relative of Swift's mother.
Shortly after graduation he became private secretary to Sir William Temple and attended him in London during several sessions of parliament. While there, under some influence that has never been explained in a satisfactory manner, Swift decided to enter the ministry, and took a course of theology at Oxford. After his ordination in 1695 Sir William Temple got him a living in a quiet, secluded village called Laracor, in central Ireland, near Tara, the ancient capital, in a church that long ago crumbled to ruins and has been replaced by a modern building. It was a small parish consisting of not more than ten or twelve aristocratic families, among them the ancestors of the great Duke of Wellington. The young curate's congregation was not very regular in its attendance, and you will remember, perhaps, an amusing story, how the Rev. Mr. Swift, when he came from the vestry one Sabbath morning, found no one but the sexton, Roger Morris, in the pews. He read the service, as usual, however, and with that quaint sense of humor which cropped out in everything he did, began solemnly: