apparent means of income. After some disappointment, he accepted the post of chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, who was just going over to Ireland; he was under-secretary also, but immediately on reaching Dublin he found himself dismissed from this post, and he resigned the chaplaincy as well. Early in 1700 he was given a group of livings and a prebend, the total revenues of all of which were sufficient for a single man to live upon in Ireland. He now finally broke off all relations with Varina, and came into closer connection with Stella, who had arrived at Dublin "with full resolution to engage him." Swift's duties now called him chiefly to his living of Laracor, in Meath, where he improved the house and garden, and even kept a curate, although the congregation was so small that it was here, having no audience but the clerk, that he opened the service with "Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me." Five visits to London, covering in all some three years, broke up the monotony of Swift's Irish residence from 1700 to 1710. In 1704 he published, in a single anonymous volume, the Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books, and some brief kindred treatises; and this introduced him to the London wits, of whom he was already intimately known to Congreve. His friendship with Addison and Steele dates from 1705, and under this stimulus he wrote Baucis and Philemon and the facetious Partridge tracts (1708). He saw his friends advance in the world, however, while he himself remained what he scornfully called a "hedge-parson." Already, since 1701, Swift had dabbled in politics, and had privately published, in the Whig interest, his brilliant Discourse on the Dissensions in Athens and Rome. After 1704

he found himself too high a churchman to applaud Whig measures without reserve. It was probably the uncertain note which he sounded in such tracts as the Project for the Advancement of Religion, which stood in the way of his promotion; years passed and Swift got nothing, although in 1708 the bishopric of Waterford seemed within his reach. In 1709, after the failure of his negotiations to secure Queen Anne's Bounty for the Irish Church, Swift abandoned the Whigs altogether, and returned to Laracor to sulk. He stayed a year and a half "in one scurvy acre of ground," until the Whigs were turned out of office in August 1710. Swift hastened to London as soon as the news reached him, and he received civil attentions from the leaders of both parties. He was presented, "as a discontented person, who was ill-used for not being Whig enough," to the Tory leader, Harley, and was welcomed with flattering effusion. The Journal to Stella now begins, and for thirty months keeps us closely informed as to Swift's movements. Swift found himself "ten times better with the new people than he ever was with the old, and forty times more caressed." He began to write with vehement and effective wit in the Tory Examiner. His tract on the Conduct of the Allies may plausibly be conceived as having brought about the fall of Marlborough, and early in 1712 Swift was at the height of his political and personal prestige.

VOL. III.

Q

He used it with generous pertinacity for the advantage of his personal friends, and especially of men of letters; for himself he could do nothing. At last, in April 1713, Swift was appointed to be Dean of St. Patrick's; he saw he should get nothing better, and three months later, in great depression of spirits, he left for

Jamad

a = Welch men or woman by 'the peevich paflionele way of barking. This paper thall Sone to cry was ill your questions about my Young; and I will hour is printed to fclie the Kingdom Força it has olion this lye bo I thall clivery frot at the remanse of this imprisonment. Proz pity par buck, to he is called I was aggre and dyar 500 timel an hair, and yet he incens and ill, for he mice nothing. Oh for dusun battles of Scamry wine ведад and I bottle brod and better slice of locd and butter. The wine you for his little Шай Bom, I with you had chosen belter. geing to had at law a clock, because I am weary of being up. Wednesday. Sest night I dreamt and Bolinglich and nur

upon Celter, I car

In the Gallery, and that my Id was

Dublin. The Tories wanted his pen, and

presently called him

back, but when in May 1714 he saw

the quarrel between

Harley (now Lord
Oxford) and St. John

(now Lord Boling-
broke) to be hope-

less, he withdrew to a rectory in Berkshire, and wrote his brilliant pamphlet, Free Thoughts upon the Present State of But when

the Affairs.

Oxford fell in July,
Swift refused to join

Bolingbroke, nor was
there much oppor-

my Coltunity for doing so, to prouch; I

since Queen Anne died and the Tories

and not find my Surplice, the Church for wo were "not so much 'The Dear ven Hand:

thes

ruined as annihilated." Swift, "like a

man knocked down," hastened to Dub

lin. Here, for some years, he lived an

way. were and oft of ŷ would land Lo Id to come luks vary Shell for mons concesiuney to get ins the Pulpet the shell was all hoben, the to the Collegions had done it I squeezed among the Rabble, Saw my It in the Inquit I thought his preye was good, pregny and I faget it. In his Sarman, I did not like his qusting hot Wychalyor plays. by name, and fending my small dobus play. This is all and do I wached. To

Facsimile Page from Swift's Private Diary

extremely quiet life; "my amusements," he says, "are de

minions against the archbishop, and endeavouring to reduce my rebellious choir." Hester Vanhomrigh,

He had pushed now to intimacy an acquaintance with Miss "Vanessa," whom he had slightly known since 1708; the longest of Swift's poems, the Cadenus [Decanus] and Vanessa, probably written in 1714, tells the story of this unfortunate relationship. But on reaching Dublin, the influence of Stella

SWIFT

243 immediately began to supplant that of Vanessa, although the latter followed Swift to Ireland. But he began a strange, indeed a perfectly inexplicable, double subterranean life between these two unhappy women. There was a legend, unconfirmed but undenied, that in 1716 he secretly married Stella; in 1723 Vanessa wrote to Stella to ask if this was true, and Swift, possessing himself of the letter, rode at once to Celbridge, where Vanessa lived, flung the letter on the table without

Vanessa is wholly mysterious; we know no more than what Archbishop King is said to have told Delany, that Swift "was the most unhappy man on earth, but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a question." As early as 1717 he said to Young, "I shall die at the top," and he seems to have been always haunted by the fear of dying insane. To return to his public life, Swift was for six years silent both as an author and as a politician. In 1720 he published his earliest Irish pamphlet, an appeal to the people to consume none but Irish manufactures. This tract made a stir, but a far greater commotion was caused in 1724 by the publication of The Drapier's Letters, appealing with sarcastic vehemence against the proposed copper coinage of William Wood, a bankrupt hardwaresman; these are the most brilliant of Swift's polemical writings. Walpole sent Carteret over to Dublin to make a compromise and to punish the anonymous Drapier. Swift went to Carteret's levée, and mocked him for persecuting a poor tradesman; his own pseudonymity was preserved, Carteret failed, and

St Patrick's Dublin 1736.

the coinage of Wood was presented by the Grand Jury as a nuisance. This was the most brilliantly successful of Swift's political actions. He became the idol of Ireland, and when Walpole proposed to arrest him, he was told that a guard of 10,000 men would be needful to get him safe out of the country. Swift was now already sketching the most famous of his books, but it was not until late in 1726 that Gulliver's Travels was ready for the press; it was published under the pseudonym of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, and as if edited by "Richard Sympson," Lemuel's cousin. After the death of Stella, Swift's cynicism became more pronounced. To 1729 belongs The Modest Proposal, that the children of poor people in Ireland should be prevented from being a burden to their parents or country by being served up as food. In 1731 he wrote his amazing poem On the Death of Dr. Swift. In these and similar writings, in prose and verse, we see "the corruptions and villanies of men" eating into Swift's flesh and exhausting his spirit. He breathed in a dry furnace of irony and anger. In 1726 and 1727 he paid two short