more unpleasantly, and his ease and address were such as became the companion of statesmen and courtiers.'-p. 33.

The individual thus gifted had a person tall, strong, and wellformed, a dark complexion, but with blue eyes, and black, bushy eyebrows. An aquiline nose, with features somewhat stern and haughty, expressed that dauntlessness of character which the fairer sex certainly admire, and often love. Yet he was never known to laugh; so that no wonder his gentle followers rather dreaded, as well as admired. Amongst various ladies who sought their chief happiness in his company, Esther Johnson has been more than once mentioned in this article; a most attractive creature, who considered the vicar of Laracor, with the greatest justice and propriety, as entirely her own. For him, and at his suggestions, she had quitted her country, declined another suitor, and almost perilled her reputation. With her he perpetually corresponded, and to her the celebrated and familiar journal, known under the title of that to Stella, was regularly addressed, from Swift when absent in England. Yet throughout a large portion of this period, his heart was rotten to its core. He had seen in London a second Esther, whose surname was Vanhomrigh, better recognised, perhaps, under her fanciful appellation of Vanessa. Our clerical Adonis, according to his wicked custom in such cases, attached himself to her as an intellectual Mentor, if one might believe his hollow professions, he being on the shady side of forty, and the young lady not more than twenty. Her personal and mental attractions quickly made him feel that he could never prosecute the intimacy without cruel injustice to Miss Johnson. Vanessa, altogether ignorant that the object of her sincere selection lay under a prior engagement, let her affections go in the flowery but certain road to ultimate misery and disappointment. Not a shadow of blame can attach to her, or her rival. An atrocious traitor to both played them off, one against another, for his own gratification and pleasure. The romance which ensued would be deemed hardly suitable to our general taste, or that of our readers. All parties discovered that love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.' According to one account, he went through the ceremony of a private marriage with Stella, to preserve her life, upon conditions unjust to the lady, and revolting to nature. Walter Scott receives this statement; although there occur many things to make it doubtful. In fact, clouds of mystery overhang every chapter in the dark story. Nothing appears certain but the extreme culpability of the dean--the misery and agony of the injured females -the premature death of Vanessa from a broken heart-the lingering anguish, terminated only by her dissolution, of Stella

the remorse, through a protracted life, of Swift himself-and the bitter, yet pathetic memorandum, which he made on a ringlet of Esther Johnson, always kept by him, Only a woman's hair!' About the time when the clandestine nuptials were imagined to have occurred, Doctor Delaney observing Swift very gloomy and dejected, went to Archbishop King to mention his apprehensions. On entering the library, the very object of his fears rushed past him, with a countenance full of distraction, and without speaking. He found the Archbishop in tears, and upon asking the reason, he replied, You have just met the most unhappy man upon earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness, you must never ask a question!' His doggerel verses of this period, called poems by courtesy, deserve neither to be analysed nor enumerated.

From the Peace of Utrecht, to which he had in no slight degree indirectly contributed, down to 1723, he took an active share in the affairs of his cathedral, and studied several hours every day. Herodotus, Lucretius, Aulus Gellius, and Philostratus, seem to have been his favourite authors in the dead languages. That he borrowed from the last his idea of the Lilliputians in Gulliver's Travels, we think there can be little doubt. Any of our curious and learned friends, who may wish to satisfy themselves about the matter, will obtain a full view of it, by just comparing Gulliver on the ground, asleep after his landing, with Philostrat. Icon. lib. ii. cap. 22, pp. 846, 7, in the folio Olearian edition; or with passages better known in the works of Pliny, Elian, and many others. He boarded himself, for the sake of economy, with Mr. Worrall, whose wife preserved that neatness and good order which were always particularly agreeable to him. Two public days, however, were weekly kept up at the deanery, where, after dinner, Swift allowed himself about an English pint measure of tolerable claret; but when Lady Eustace or any other guests of quality honoured him with their presence, he used to allow them a shilling a head to provide their own entertainment, and would even. struggle hard that only sixpence should go for the brat, as he called Miss Eustace.' His society, or at least his conversation, must have been marvellously attractive to have rendered such modes of intercourse tolerable; unless much may be allowed for the fashion of going to look at, or listen to, so eccentric a personage. He was fond of pranks of all descriptions, even the most childish. Anecdotes, scarcely credible, are related of his practical jokes. Amongst the least absurd was his treatment of the Grattans-a family to whom he grew strongly attached, but whose male members, together with other accommodating friends, he would chase in cold weather through his large apartments, or up and down stairs, with a whip in his hand, driving them like horses, until he had accomplished his

necessary quantity of exercise. We cannot forbear observing, that whoever got horsewhipped on such occasions, richly deserved it. By the servile submissions of perhaps well-meaning dependents, such domestic despots as Dean Swift are often made. Sheridan and Delany found their stock of good-nature, which was equal to that of most men, quite exhausted at last by the demands of this semi-insane humorist. In punning he has had few competitors; none probably could surpass him. A lady had thrown down with her mantua a valuable Cremona violin, when he immediately applied to the circumstance that verse from Virgil

'Mantua væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremona !'

The comfort which he gave an elderly gentleman who had lost his spectacles, was more grotesque: If this rain continues all night, you will certainly recover them in the morning betimes. 'Nocte pluit totâ redeunt spectacula mane!'

His occasional visits abroad, with an immense correspondence carried on whilst at home, occupied part of his leisure. In 1720, he came forth once more upon the stage as a political writer, and in a better cause than before. He still professed that he adhered stoutly to the Hanoverian succession, although holding intercourse principally with extreme Tories. So also, announcing everywhere his prejudices against Ireland and Irishmen, he, nevertheless, now used his pen on their behalf with invincible spirit and energy. England had assumed the power of legislating for her dependent kingdom. The statutes of the 10th and 11th William III. prohibited the exportation of Irish woollens except to British or Welsh harbours; by which preposterous measure, certain manufactories in Ireland were ruined to the extent of £1,000,000 per annum. Nor did this iniquitous tyranny constitute more than a single item in a long course of contumelious injury exercised by the strong country towards the weaker one. Swift now published his Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures,' utterly rejecting and renouncing everything wearable that comes from England! It was a measure of immense boldness, and the grand juries of the county and city were soon instructed by the time-serving tools of Government to present the pamphlet as a 'seditious, factious, and virulent libel.' 'A trial of the printer terminated in a glorious triumph for the friends of justice. The spirit of an oppressed people commenced that deep response to the calls of patriotism, which we have lived to see still more successful. The proposal of a national bank, coming as it did soon after this affair from a very questionable quarter, also roused the satire of the Dean; who appealed so strenuously

to the lower house of parliament at Dublin, that the project, conceived as it doubtless was for dishonest or exclusive purposes, fell to the ground. Many other minor opportunities turned up for the suppression of various abuses, through gibbeting them for public inspection; all which received due attention from the divine of St. Patrick's; his quills being ever ready, like those of the porcupine, to dart at a nuisance, and drive it, if possible, into annihilation.

All these, however, must yield the palm, in point of importance, to his 'Letters of a Drapier against Wood's Copper Coinage.' Walpole had granted in 1723, upon certain conditions, to one William Wood, a patent right of coining halfpence and farthings, to the extent of £108,000, to be current in Ireland. Now George the First kept a couple of infamous mistresses, who were the 'two daughters of the horseleach, crying Give-give!' To the Duchess of Kendal, one of these women, and by far the most rapacious, the patentee had promised a handsome slice of the profits, having, in fact, procured his contract altogether through her disgraceful influence over the sovereign. Neither had the minister, acting officially in the matter, condescended to consult the lord-lieutenant or the Irish privy council; but on the suggestion of a royal harlot, had devolved, upon an obscure individual, one of the highest privileges of the crown. Wood seems to have acted honestly in the affair, so far as the emission of handsome and genuine halfpence was concerned; but the entire nation thrilled with the insult of the transaction from the noble and powerful Whig family of the Brodericks down to the coalporters and scavengers of Dublin. Whilst the struggle was impending, Swift published his incomparable Letters, strong in argument, and brilliant in humour, but unequalled in the address with which those arguments are selected, and that humour applied.' They ran like wildfire through the land. From Cape Clear to the Giant's Causeway, nothing seemed talked of but Wood's abominable copper, and the eloquence and wit of the Drapier. The despotism, which for thirty years had held down a spirited people, might have bent, but could never break, the honest harp of Erin; and when circumstances thus occurred which re-strung its chords, a clergyman, who was the oddity of his age, threw his hand across them with such exquisite skilfulness and nature, that tyranny itself turned pale, if it did not actually tremble. Every day the fermentation waxed more formidable. Both the Irish houses of parliament plucked up courage to address the throne against the new coinage. Tradesmen refused to receive or pass it. The nearest relations of the patentee felt obliged to disavow their possessing a shadow of participation in the business. From the wealthy and pompous corporation of the city, as well as from the

various commercial companies, memorials were circulated, and hostile associations formed. Swift fanned the flame with ceaseless ballads and prose satires, seasoned with all the bitterness and pungency of his sarcasm against the unfortunate ironmonger, and his patrons and patronesses in England. The Duke of Grafton, as viceroy, foresaw a civil war, unless Walpole gave way; which, so far was he from thinking of at first, that he issued a proclamation limiting the issue, upon the supposition, that by diminishing the magnitude of an abuse, its principle might seem to be sanctioned against some more favourable opportunity. The Dean quickly exposed this; and in his fourth letter ventured to bring before the public the true point of difference betwixt the two countries. Was Ireland, or was she not, a mere dependency of England, in whose parliament she possessed no representation? The cabinet of London threatened coercion, unless her subject, yet sister island, should forthwith succumb; but the remedy,' writes the Drapier, 'is wholly in your own hands, and therefore I have digressed a little, in order to refresh and continue that spirit so suitably raised amongst you, as Irishmen; and to let you see that by the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country, you are, and ought to be, as free a people as your brethren in England! No finer appeal to original rights had then ever been uttered in the world; nor has it been rivalled since, except, perhaps, by the Declaration of American Independence. The Dean having pronounced his oracles, Dublin, Leinster, Ulster, Connaught, and Munster, said 'Amen' to them! A reward was offered by Government of £300, for the apprehension of so daring a patriot; yet, though his printer was thrown into gaol, (the name of the man was Harding,) and Lord Carteret was sent out to supersede the Duke of Grafton, it was quite manifest that the oppressors would be disappointed.

Her

When the bill against Harding was about to be presented to the grand jury, Swift addressed to that body his Seasonable Advice;' exhorting them to remember the league made by the wolves with the sheep, on condition of their parting with their shepherds and mastiffs; after which they ravaged the flock at pleasure. Ireland looked on with greedy eyes and ears. champion was plainly the person really struck at in the prosecution against Harding. A Quaker, moreover, admonished his fellow-citizens, in an apt quotation from Scripture, Shall JONATHAN die, who has wrought this great deliverance in Israel? God forbid: as the Lord liveth, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground, for he hath wrought with God this day; so the people rescued Jonathan, that he died not.' In vain an arbitrary Lord Chief-Justice denounced and threatened; the jury returned a verdict of ignoramus, and thus fulfilled the expecta