As the state of Sir William's health made it impossible for him to go himself to Kensington, he determined to send his secretary thither.

The secretary was a poor scholar of four or five and twenty, under whose plain garb and ungainly deportment were concealed some of the choicest gifts that have ever been bestowed on any of the children of men; rare powers of observation, brilliant wit, grotesque invention, humour of the most austere flavour, yet exquisitely delicious, eloquence singularly pure, manly and perspicuous.

This young man was named Jonathan Swift.

He was born in Ireland, but would have thought himself insulted if he had been called an Irishman.

He was of unmixed English blood, and, through life, regarded the aboriginal population of the island in which he first drew breath as an alien and a servile caste.