certainty of three meals a day, and for that certainty, like his brother dog in the fable, he will get his neck galled for life with a collar."

The Archbishop's advice, if we can trust the report given of him, was not always so worldly. "His advice to young noblemen and gentlemen, who by the order of their parents daily resorted to him, deserves to be mentioned. It was always this: Let it be your principal care to become honest men, and afterwards be as devout and religious as you will. No piety will be of any advantage to yourselves or anybody else unless you are honest and moral men.'" A bad report, however, reached Pepys of his Grace's character. On July 29, 1667, he records: "My cosen Roger told us as a thing certain, that the Archbishop of Canterbury that now is do keep a wench, and that he is as very a wencher as can be . . which is one of the most astonishing things that I have heard of." Burnet says of Sheldon: "He had a great pleasantness in conversation perhaps too great. He seemed not to have a deep sense of religion, if any at all." He does not, however, accuse him of looseness of life. The Archbishop's name is kept alive in the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, which he founded.

Swift in the last lines of his letter implies that he had never been married. Writing nine years later to Alderman Barber he speaks of himself and his correspondent as "we two old bachelors." So like

wise Esther Johnson in her will describes herself as "spinster." That he had been married there is evidence which satisfied Dr. Johnson and Sir Walter Scott, as it had satisfied Swift's second cousin, Deane Swift; who was twenty years old at the time of Stella's death. The proofs against the marriage were first marshalled by W. Monck Mason in his History of St. Patrick's Cathedral, published in 1819. Of his later biographers Mr. Forster "can find no evidence of it that is at all reasonably sufficient." Mr. Churton Collins utterly disbelieves in it; in this view he is supported by Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole who maintains that "the 'evidence' has been laughed out of court." Mr. Leslie Stephen writes: "On the whole, though the evidence has weight, it can hardly be regarded as conclusive. Sir Henry Craik agrees with Johnson and Scott. An argument against marriage may be drawn -perhaps has already been drawn-from the three prayers which Swift used for her in her last sickness. In these, evidently written with deep feeling and a strong sense of religion, he would scarcely have kept hidden, as it were, from his God, that he and the poor sufferer were husband and wife.

Of marriage Swift wrote in his Thoughts on Religion: "No wise man ever married from the dictates of reason."

LIV.

DUBLIN. June 24th 1730.

SR, --I had yours but it came a little later than usuall; you are misinformed; I have neither amused my self with opposing or defending any body. I live wholly within my self; most people have dropt me, and I have nothing to do, but fence against the evils of age and sickness as much as I can, by riding and walking; neither have I been above 6 miles out of this town this 9 months; except once at the Bish" [Bishop's] visitation in Trim. Neither have I any thought of a Villa eith' near or far off; having neither money, youth, nor inclination for such an atchievement. I do not think the Country of Ireland a habitable scene without long preparation, and great expense. I am glad your trees thrive so well. It is usuall when good care is taken, that they will at last settle to the ground.

I cannot imagine how you procure enemyes, since one great use of retirement is to lose them, or else a man is no thorow retirer. If I mistake you not, by your 60 friends, you mean enemies; I knew not Webb.-As to your information of passages in private life, it is a thing I never did nor shall pursue; nor can envy you or any man for knoledge in it; because it must be lyable to great mistakes, and consequently wrong Judgments. This I say, though