strange, great man can do nothing wrong in her

eyes.

But she does see that those dinings at a certain Mrs. Vanhomrigh's come in oftener and oftener. 'Tis a delightfully near neighbor, and her instinct scents something in the wind. She ventures a question, and gets a stormy frown glowering over a page of the journal that puts her to silence. The truth is, Mrs. Vanhomrigh* has a daughyoung, clever, romantic, not without personal charms, who is captivated by the intellect of Mr. Swift; all the more when he volunteers direction of her studies, and leads her down the flowery walks of poetry under his stalwart guidance.

ter

Then the suspicious entries appear more thickly in the journal. "Dined with Mrs. Vanhomrigh" -and again: "Stormy, dined with a neighbor". "couldn't go to court, so went to the Vans." And thus this romance went on ripening to the proportions that are set down in the

Acquaintance with Miss Vanhomrigh probably first made in winter of 1708, but no family intimacy till year 1710. See Athenæum, January 16, 1886, in notice of LanePoole's Letters and Journals of Swift.

poem of "Cadenus and Vanessa." He is old, she

is young.

"Vanessa, not in years a score,

Dreams of a gown of forty-four;
Imaginary charms can find

In eyes with reading almost blind.

Cadenus, common forms apart,

In every scene had kept his heart;

Had sigh'd and languished, vowed and writ,
For pastime or to show his wit."

But this wit has made conquest of her; she

called for his poetic works:

[Cupid] meantime in secret lurks;
And, while the book was in her hand,
The urchin from his private stand
Took aim, and shot with all his strength
A dart of such prodigious length,

It pierced the feeble volume through,

And deep transfixed her bosom too."

This is part of his story of it, which he put in her hands for her reading;* and which, like the Stella

*

Henry Morley, in the recent editing of his Carrisbrooke Swift, lays stress upon the sufficient warning which Miss Vanhomrigh should have found in this poem. It appears

to me that he sees too much in Swift's favor and too little in Vanessa's.

journal, only saw the light after the woman most interested in it, was in the ground.

In Ireland Again.

Well, Swift at last goes back to Ireland - all his larger designs having miscarried a saddened and disappointed man; full of growlings and impatience; taking with him from that wreck of London life and political forgatherings, only the poor flotsam of an Irish deanery.

He has some few friends to welcome him there: Miss Hester and Mrs. Dingley among the rest. How gladly would Stella have put all her woman's art and her womanly affection to the work of cheering and making glad the embittered and disappointed Dean: but no; he has no notion of being handicapped by marriage; he is sterner, narrower, more misanthropic than ever. All the old severe proprieties and distance govern their intercourse. He visits them betimes and listens to their adulatory prattle; they, too, come up to the deanery when there are friends to entertain; often take possession when the Dean is away.

The church dignitaries are not open-handed in their advances; the Tale of a Tub, and stories of that London life (not much of it amongst churches) have put a wall between them and the Dean. But he interests himself in certain questions of taxation and of currency, which seem of vital importance to the common people; and he wins, by an influence due to his sharp pamphleteering, what they count a great relief from their dangers or burdens. Thus he becomes a street idol, and crowds throw up their caps for this doctor militant, whom they call the good Dean. He has his private large charities, too; there are old women, decrepit and infirm, whom he supports year after year; does this - Swift-like when he will haggle a half hour about the difference of a few pennies in the price for a bottle of wine, and will serve his clerical friends with the lees of the last dinner strange, and only himself in everything. Then Miss Vanhomrigh― after the death of her mother must needs come over -to the great

perplexity of the Doctor to a little country place which she has inherited in the pretty valley of the Liffey a short drive away from Dublin; she has a

fine house there, and beautiful gardens (Swift never outgrew his old Moor-Park love for gardens); there she receives him, and honors his visits. An old gardener, who was alive in Scott's time, told how they planted a laurel bush whenever the Dean came. Perhaps the Dean was too blinded for fine reading in the garden alleys then; certainly his fierce headaches were shaking him year by year nearer to the grave.

Miss Hester comes to a knowledge of these visits, and is tortured, but silent. Has she a right to nurse torture? Some biographers say that at her urgence a form of marriage was solemnized between them (1716); but if so, it was undeclared and unregarded. Vanessa, too, has her tortures; she has knowledge of Stella and her friend, and of their attitude with respect to the deanery; so, in a moment of high, impetuous daring, she writes off to Mistress Hester Johnson asking what rights she has over her friend the Dean? Poor Stella wilts at this blow; but is stirred to an angry woman's reply, making (it is said) avowal of the secret marriage. To the Dean, who is away, she encloses Vanessa's letter ; and the Dean comes storming back; rages