unknown to the civilised world. And I have often reflected in how few hours with a swift horse or a strong gale a man may come among a people as unknown to him as the antipodes." At Dublin “he was brought to the landing-place in a kind of triumph. The boats were adorned with streamers, and he was conducted to his house by a multitude of his grateful countrymen, amid repeated acclamations Long live the Drapier.' The bells were all set a-ringing and bonfires kindled in every street."

Lady Carteret, wife of the Lord-Lieutenant, said to Swift, The air of this country is good.' He fell down on his knees. For God's sake, madam, don't say so in England; they will certainly tax it.'"

The " Lady of my old acquaintance who was extremely ill" was Stella. On July 15 he had written to a friend in Dublin from Pope's house : "What you tell me of Mrs. Johnson I have long expected with great oppression and heaviness of heart. We have been perfect friends these thirtyfive years. Upon my advice they both [she and Mrs. Dingley] came to Ireland, and have been ever since my constant companions; and the remainder of my life will be a very melancholy scene when one of them is gone, whom I most esteemed upon the score of every good quality that can possibly recommend a human creature. . . . Let her know I have bought her a repeating gold watch for her ease in winter nights. I designed to have surprised her with it; but now I would have her

know it, that she may see how my thoughts are always to make her easy." In another letter he writes: "There hath been the most intimate friendship between us from our childhood, and the greatest merit on her side that ever was in one human creature towards another. . . . I have been long weary of the world, and shall for my small remainder of years be weary of life, having for ever lost that conversation which could only make it tolerable." He was troubled by the fear that she might die in the Deanery, which she was occupying in his absence. "You know it cannot but be a very improper thing for that house to breathe her last in." She lived a year and a half longer, dying on January 28, 1728.

He wished much to be settled in England. During his visit there he wrote to a friend: "This is the first time I was ever weary of England, and longed to be in Ireland; but it is because go I must; for I do not love Ireland better, nor England, as England, worse; in short you all live in a wretched, dirty doghole and prison, but it is a place good enough to die in." Three years later he wrote from Dublin: "You think, as I ought to think, that it is time for me to have done with the world; and so I would, if I could get into a better,

Perhaps Swift wrote "from her childhood," as he was nearly fourteen years the elder. When he first saw her he was a young

man.

before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole."

XLVI.

DUBLIN. Feb 14th 1726-7.

SR-I should have sooner answered y Lett [your Letter] if my time had not been taken up with many impertinences, in Spight of my Monkish way of living; and particularly of late-with my preparing a hundred little affairs which must be dispatched before I go for England, as I intend to do in a very short time, and I believe it will be the the last Journey I shall ever take thither. But the omission of some Matters last summer, by the absence of certain people hath made it necessary. As to Capt" Gulliver, I find his book is very much censured in this Kingdom which abounds in excellent Judges; but in Engl" I hear it hath made a bookseller almost rich enough to be an Alderman. In my Judgment I should think it hath been mangled in the press, for in some parts it doth not seem of a piece, but I shall hear more when I am in England. I am glad you are got into a new Tast of your Improvements, and I know no thing I should more desire than some Spot upon which I could spend the rest of my life

in improving. But I shall live and dye friendless, and a sorry Dublin inhabitant; and yet I have Spirit still left to keep a clutter about my little garden, where I pretend to have the finest paradise Stockes of their age in Ireland. in Ireland. But I grow so old, that I despond, and think nothing worth my Care except ease and indolence, and walking to keep my Health.

I can send you no news, because I never read any, nor suffer any person to inform me. I am sure whatever it is it cannot please me. The Archb❞ of Dublin is just recovered after having been despaired of, and by that means hath disappointed some hopers.

I am S1 y' &c.

NOTES ON XLVI.

Swift more than once mentions his "Monkish way of living." In one letter he speaks of the years "all monastically passed in this country of liberty, and delight, and money, and good company." In another letter he writes: "I am as mere a monk as any in Spain; I eat my morsel alone like a king, and am constantly at home when I am not riding or walking, which I do often and always alone."

On November 8, 1726, Arbuthnot had written to him from London : "Gulliver's Travels, I believe, will have as great a run as John Bunyan. It is in

everybody's hands. Lord Scarborough, who is no inventor of stories, told me that he fell in company with a master of a ship, who told him that he was very well acquainted with Gulliver; but that the printer had mistaken; that he lived in Wapping, and not in Rotherhithe. I lent the book to an old gentleman who went immediately to his map to search for Lilliput." Gay wrote a few days later: "The whole impression sold in a week. From the highest to the lowest it is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery." "Here is a book come

out," wrote Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, "that all our people of taste run mad about: 'tis no less than the united work of a dignified clergyman, an eminent physician, and the first poet of the age [Swift, Arbuthnot and Pope]."

Swift used to leave the profits of his writings to the booksellers. In 1735 he wrote: "I never got a farthing by anything I writ, except one about eight years ago, and that was by Mr Pope's prudent management for me." The time of publication renders it almost certain that this one book was Gulliver's Travels. He is said to have received £300. His cousin, Mrs. Whiteway, wrote to Pope in 1740: The History of the Last Four Years of Queen Anne's Reign, if I am rightly informed, is the only piece of his, excepting Gulliver, which he ever proposed making money by." It was not, however, published till some years after his death. For editing the third part of Sir William Temple's