misfortune, because her affair with Swift had ended before the years of his celebrity.

Miss Jane Waryng was the sister of a fellow-student. She rewarded young Swift's assiduous attentions with a tender attachment. An epistolary correspondence was carried on through seven years. In his first letters Swift gave utterance to his passion in most glowing terms, and was urgent for immediate marriage, though he was without the means of livelihood, and she possessed but a slender fortune. She very prudently preferred to defer the event until they should be in more auspicious circumstances. After the correspondence had continued several years, and Swift had reached an income of nearly four hundred pounds, she modestly reminded him of his former impatience. He had perhaps met another object whom he regarded as more worthy of his affections; at all events he was bent on breaking his engagement. To effect this he wrote a most remarkable letter. He alleges the inadequacy of his income and her fortune. He throws out dark insinuations in regard to his humor, and makes a multitude of most absurd requirements. If these were met, and all obstacles were removed, he signified his willingness to "give all due returns toward making her happy." The correspondence closed with this absurd and dishonorable letter. What became of this unfortunate victim of Swift's inconstancy we are not informed.

His affections were withdrawn from "Varina" to be placed upon "Stella," whose fate, if not more unfortunate, is better known. Her real name was Esther Johnson. When Swift went to reside at Moor Park he found her in the family of Sir William Temple. She was a beautiful young lady, about twenty years his junior. He proposed to give direction to her studies. Swift soon became tenderly affected toward his fair pupil, and she loved him in return. Had Swift possessed as much of good ingredient in his composition as falls to the lot of ordinary human nature, he would have given his hand to this young lady. By so doing he might have secured a happy private life, and saved his biographers the fruitless labor of endeavoring to remove the most dismal blot which pollutes his character. Swift's selfish heart desired the homage of love, but feared that if he yielded to its demands upon him he must forego some of the aims of his vaulting ambition; hence he was guilty of the

sin of encouraging the love of Stella, while he was giving utterance to words so inappropriate to the circumstances as "that he was resolved not to think of marriage until his fortune was settled in the world, and that even then he might be so hard to please he might probably put it off till doomsday."

In his retired residence at Laracor he was in want of refined society, and prevailed upon Stella to come over to Ireland and make her residence near him. To avoid scandal he resorted to the clumsy expedient of having her accompanied by an old lady, Mrs. Dingley, who should always be at her side. He was careful never to show any attentions to Miss Johnson except in the presence of the matron.

Stella was still young, beautiful, and intellectual, and might have married happily had not Swift, like an evil genius, stood in her path. She received the addresses of a reputable clergyman, who would gladly have married her, had not Swift prevented by his most ungenerous conduct. While he had not the manliness to make her his own, he resolved that no one else should carry off the prize.

During his absence in England Swift wrote daily to his friend, whom he sometimes called Stella, and at other times addresses by the mysterious alphabetical combination "MD."

The "Journal to Stella," as it appears in Swift's works, is quite voluminous, and scarcely anything he wrote has more interest to the reader. It gives him an insight into the men and manners of that time, which he cannot get in formal history. He gains a view of the author's character for which he seeks in vain in any other direction. Between the beginning and the end of this curious correspondence there is a marked change in tone and spirit. The glow of feeling shown at the outset becomes dimmer and colder toward the close. Another star has appeared above the horizon by which fair Stella suffers eclipse.

Miss Hester Vanhomrigh, a lady of youth, beauty, brilliant intellect, and independent fortune, had attracted his attention. His tendency to assume airs of superiority over everybody with whom he had anything to do, induced him very soon to take direction of the studies of this interesting young lady. As she knew of no tender relations existing between Swift and any other person, she naturally supposed that his attentions were

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prompted by the very reasonable and proper love which honorable men are not ashamed to avow for the women whom they think endowed with peculiar charms. The young lady had a susceptible heart, and was formed every way to love and be loved. After Swift had been for some time bestowing attentions more particular than would be prompted by ordinary friendship, she intimated to him the state of her affections. Instead of acting the honorable part, and promptly acknowledging his relations with Stella, Swift, true to the instincts of his nature, preferred a more tortuous course, and at first met the young lady's avowal with railery, and then offered her a “devoted and everlasting friendship, founded on the basis of virtuous esteem."

We do not learn that this cool proposal of a virtuous friendship had any effect in lessening the assiduity of the platonic swain. He wrote out a metrical narrative of the progress of this affair with Miss Vanhomrigh, in some very voluminous and prosaical lines entitled, "Cadenus and Vanessa." The Journal to Stella contains no intimation of this new attachment. He mentions his "Vanessa" two or three times as "Mr. Vanhomrigh's eldest daughter." Stella is left to imagine what she may from the colder atmosphere which gradually envelopes the correspondence.

Disappointed in his expectation of a bishopric, but having obtained promotion to the Deanery of St. Patrick, as we have seen, Swift returned to Ireland. He procured lodgings for Stella and Mrs. Dingley near his own residence in Dublin. The death of Vanessa's parents, and the embarrassed condition of her estate in England, gave her a pretext for going to Ireland, where she had a small property near Cellbridge.

The arrival of Vanessa in Dublin placed Swift in a most difficult dilemma. He could not break off his intimacy with her without doing great violence to her feelings. Consequently he visited her frequently, and allowed the continuance of a correspondence, in which she made the most emphatic expressions of affection.

Swift's attentions to Vanessa, now in the immediate neighborhood of her rival, aroused a very natural jealousy in the heart of Stella. The man for whom she had abandoned her friends and country, and even clouded her fair fame, was giving FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XIII.-7

attentions to another which might lead to total estrangement from her. This feeling prayed upon her health, and threatened the most melancholy consequences. Dr. Swift requested his early friend, the Bishop of Clogher, to discover the cause of her melancholy, which doubtless his own conscience had long before revealed. The bishop candidly told his friend that there was but one remedy. He must put it beyond the power of any tongue to say aught against the unfortunate lady by taking her hand in marriage. He replied by presenting two frivolous resolutions which he had formed many years before: first, that he would not marry until possessed of a competent fortune; and, second, that event should take place at a time of life which would give him a reasonable prospect of seeing his children settled in the world. Notwithstanding these insuperable difficulties, he would relieve Miss Johnson's mind by going through the ceremony provided it should remain an inviolable secret from the world, and they should live in the same guarded manner as before! The Bishop of Clogher performed this unmeaning ceremony in the garden of the deanery in the year 1716.

Had Swift given his heart and hand in earnest to either of the ladies, though the consequences might have been fatal to the other, perhaps an ingenious biographer could have framed some kind of apology for him; but he blundered along in his misguided and crafty course in such a manner that both fell victims to his folly. In 1717 Vanessa retired from Dublin to Cellbridge, where, in her solitude, she was left with nothing to relieve her from the effects of her unhappy passion. Swift feared the effects of this retirement, and urged her to mingle in society; but the world had no charms for her apart from the idol of her worship.

At length, wearied with long uncertainty as to her true position and prospects, she wrote a letter to Stella asking the nature of the relation which subsisted between her and Dr. Swift. Stella was indignant that her husband had given any woman cause for making such an inquiry. She immediately put the letter in his hands, and retired to a country-seat near the city. Swift became greatly enraged, and mounting his horse, rode immediately to Cellbridge. Vanessa was so much alarmed at his angry appearance when he entered her house,

that she could scarcely find voice to ask him to be seated. He said not a word, but glared at her fiercely, threw the packet containing her letter on the table and rode hastily away. Poor Vanessa's heart was broken. She never lifted her head afterward. She died in three weeks, and the grave's "tranquilizing mould" buried her away from the world where her only lot was disappointment.

Scarcely a happier fate awaited Stella. She endured the bondage of matrimony without the sympathies and joys which pertain to a well-ordered married life.

With no motive that with a common man would have had a feather's weight, Swift persisted in not acknowledging his wife. A short time before her death she addressed him in the most earnest and pathetic terms. "As the ceremony of marriage had passed between them, in order to put it out of the power of slander to be busy with her fame after death, she besought him to let her have the satisfaction of dying at least, though she had not lived, his acknowledged wife." Swift made no reply, but turned on his heel and left the room.

She still had hope that she might gain her wish, and extort this last poor return for a life of disappointment. It is said that they had another interview. Swift stood by the bed where Stella lay almost exhausted. She found words again to utter her request, but in so weak a voice that they could not be distinguished by any save him to whom they were addressed. He was heard to say, "Well, my dear, if you wish it it shall be owned;" to which she answered with a sigh, "It is too late."

Strange as it may appear, this promise, extorted when his victim was almost in her last agonies, was not kept. He never wrote or spoke a single word that reached the public ear concerning the marriage, which, if acknowledged even after her untimely death, would have gone far to vindicate the character of the unfortunate Stella.

The years in Swift's life which followed the death of Stella were unmarked by incident. They were years of great unhap piness. Though he nowhere expresses regret for his treatment of his victims, nor grief for their melancholy fate, yet, if he had a particle of humanity in his composition, the recollection of these things must have made an ingredient of his misery.