A lampoon directed against the Queen's favourite, upon whose red hair Swift had been facetious, prevented the satirist's advancement in England. The see of Hereford fell vacant in 1712, Bolingbroke would now have paid the debt due from his government to Swift, but the Duchess of Somerset, upon her knees, implored the Queen to withhold her consent from the appointment, and Swift was pronounced by Her Majesty as "too violent in party" for promotion. The most important man in the kingdom found himself in a moment the most feeble. The fountain of so much honour could not retain a drop of the precious waters for itself. Swift, it is said, laid the foundations of fortune for upwards of forty families who rose to distinction by a word from his lips. What a satire upon power was the satirist's own fate! England one inch.

He could not advance himself in Promotion in Ireland began and ended with his appointment to the Deanery of St. Patrick, of which he took possession, much to his disgust and vexation, in the summer of 1713.

The summer, however, was not over before Swift was in England again. The wheels of government had come to a dead lock, and of course none but he could right them. The Ministry was at sixes and sevens. Its very existence depended upon the good understanding of the chiefs, Bolingbroke and Harley, and the wily ambition of the latter, jarring against the vehement desires of the former, had produced jealousy, suspicion, and now threatened immediate disorganisation. A thousand voices called the Dean to the scene of action, and he came full of the importance of his mission. He plunged at once inta

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the vexed sea of political controversy, and whilst straining every effort to court his friends, let no opportunity slip of galling their foes. His pen was as damaging and industrious as ever. It set the town in a fever. It caused Richard Steele to be expelled the House of Commons, and it sent the whole body of Scotch peers, headed by the Duke of Argyll, to the Queen, with the prayer that a proclamation might be issued for the discovery of their libeller. Swift was more successful in his assaults than in his mediation. The Ministers were irreconcilable. Vexed at heart with disappointment, the Dean, after his manner, suddenly quitted London, and shut himself up in Berkshire. One attempt he made in his strict seclusion to uphold the government and save the country, and the composition is a curiosity in its way. He published a proposition for the exclusion of all dissenters from power of every kind, for disqualifying Whigs and Low Churchmen for every possible office, and for compelling the presumptive heir to the throne to declare his abomination of Whigs, and his perfect satisfaction with Her Majesty's present advisers. Matters must have been near a crisis when this modest pamphlet was put forth, and so they were. The intrigues of Bolingbroke had triumphed over those of his colleague, and Oxford was disgraced. The latter about to retire into obscurity addressed a letter to Swift, entreating him, if he were not tired of his former prosperous friend, " to throw away so much time on one who loved him as to attend him upon his melancholy journey." The same post brought him word that his own victory was won. Bolingbroke

triumphant besought his Jonathan, as he loved his Queen, to stand by her Minister, and to aid him in his perilous adventure. Nothing should be wanting to do justice to his loyalty. The Duchess of Somerset would be reconciled, the Queen would be gracious, the path of honour should lie broad, open, and unimpeded before him. Bolingbroke and Harley were equally the friends of Swift. What could he do in his extremity? What would a million men, taken at random from the multitude, have done, had they been so situated, so tempted? Not that upon which Swift, in his chivalrous magnanimity, at once decided. He abandoned the prosperous to follow and console the unfortunate. "I meddle not with Lord Oxford's faults," is his noble language, "as he was a Minister of State, but his personal kindness to me was excessive. He distinguished and chose me above all men when he was great." Within a few days of Swift's self-denying decision Queen Anne was a corpse, Bolingbroke and Oxford both flying for their lives, and Swift himself hiding his unprotected head in Ireland amidst a people who at once feared and hated him.

During Swift's visit to London in 1710, he had regularly transmitted to Stella, by which name Esther Johnson is made known to posterity, an account of his daily doings with the new government. The journal exhibits the view of the writer that his conduct invariably presents. It is full of tenderness and confidence, and not without coarseness that startles and shocks. It contains a detailed and minute account, not only of all that passed between Swift and the government, but of his changeful

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feelings as they arose from day to day, and of physical infirmities, that are commonly whispered into the ear of the physician. If Swift loved Stella in the ordinary acceptation of the term, he took small pains in his diary to elevate the sentiments with which she regarded her hero. The journal is not in harmony throughout. Towards the close it lacks the tenderness and warmth, the minuteness and confidential utterance, that are so visible at the beginning. We are enabled to account for the difference. Swift had enlarged the circle of his female acquaintance whilst fighting for his friends in London. He had become a constant visitor, especially, at the house of a Mrs. Vanhomrigh, who had two daughters, the eldest of whom was about twenty years of age, and had the same Christian name as Stella. Esther Vanhomrigh had great taste for reading, and Swift, who seems to have delighted in such occupation, condescended, for the second time in his life, to become a young lady's instructor. The great man's tuition had always one effect upon his pupils. Before Miss Vanhomrigh had made much progress in her studies she was over head and ears in love, and, to the astonishment of her master, she one day declared the passionate and undying character of her attachment. Swift met the confession with a weapon far more potent when opposed to a political foe than when directed against the weak heart of a doting woman. He had recourse to raillery, but, finding his banter of no avail, endeavoured to appease the unhappy girl by "an offer of devoted and everlasting friendship, founded on the basis of virtuous esteem." He might with equal success have attempted to put

out a conflagration with a bucket of cold water. There was no help for the miserable man. He returned to his deanery at the death of Queen Anne with two love affairs upon his hands, but with the stern resolution of encouraging neither, and overcoming both.

Before quitting England he wrote to Esther Vanhomrigh, or Vanessa, as he styles her in his correspondence, intimating his intention to forget everything in England and to write to her as seldom as possible. So far the claims of Vanessa were disposed of. As soon as he reached his deanery he secured lodgings for Stella and her companion, and reiterated his determination to pursue his intercourse with the young lady upon the prudent terms originally established. So far his mind was set at rest in respect of Stella. But Swift had scarcely time to congratulate himself upon his plans before Vanessa presented herself in Dublin, and made known to the Dean her resolution to take up her abode permanently in Ireland. Her mother was dead, so were her two brothers; she and her sister were alone in the world, and they had a small property near Dublin, to which it suited them to retire. Swift, alarmed by the proceeding, remonstrated, threatened, denounced-all in vain. Vanessa met his reproaches with complaints of cruelty and neglect, and warned him of the consequences of leaving her without the solace of his friendship and presence. Perplexed and distressed, the Dean had no other resource than to leave events to their own development. He trusted that time would mitigate and show the hopelessness of Vanessa's passion, and in the meanwhile he sought, by occa