rried Jane, daughter of Dr Gulstone, and sister to the Bishop of
Bristol, who, in due time, became the mother of our poet. Lancelot was
afterwards made Prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral, and King's Chaplain
in ordinary; about the time (1675) when he took the degree of D.D.
Subsequently he became Archdeacon of Salisbury, and at last, in 1683,
obtained the Deanery of Lichfield. But for his suspected Jacobitism, he
would probably have received the mitre. He died in 1703.

Joseph had two brothers and three sisters. His third sister, Dorothy,
survived the rest, and was twice married. Swift met her once, and with
some awe (for he, like all bullies, had a little of the coward about
him), describes her as a kind of wit, and very like her brother. The
_Spectator_ seems to have been a wild and wayward boy. He is said to have
once acted as ringleader in a "barring out," described by Johnson as a
savage license by which the boys, when the periodical vacation drew near,
used to take possession of the school, of which they barred the doors,
and bade the master defiance from the windows. On another occasion,
having committed some petty offence at a country school, terrified at the
master's apprehended displeasure, he made his escape into the fields and
woods, where for some days he fed on fruits and slept in a hollow tree
till discovered and brought back to his parents. This last may seem the
act of a timid boy, and inconsistent with the former, and yet is somehow
congenial to our ideal of the character of our poet. It required perhaps
more daring to front the perils of the woods than the frown of the
master, and augured, besides, a certain romance in his disposition which
found afterwards a vent in literature. After receiving instruction, first
at Salisbury, and then at Lichfield, (his connexion with which place
forms a link, uniting him in a manner to the great lexicographer, who was
born there,) he was removed to the Charterhouse, and there profited so
much in Greek and Latin, that at fifteen he was not only, says Macaulay,
"fit for the university, but carried thither a classical taste and a
stock of learning which would have done honour to a master of arts." He
had at the Charter-house formed a friendship, destined to have important
bearings on his after history, with Richard Steele, whose character may
be summed up in a few sentences. Who has not heard of Sir Richard Steele?
Wordsworth says of one of his characters--

"She was k