was recommended by the peculiar neatness and pleasantry of his wife. To this frugal mode of living, he was first disposed by care to pay some debts which he had contracted, and he continued it for the pleasure of accumulating money. His avarice, however, was not suffered to obstruct the claims of his dignity; he was served in plate, and used to say that he was the poorest gentleman in Ireland that eat upon plate, and the richest that lived without a coach.

How he spent the rest of his time, and how he employed his hours of study, has been enquired with hopeless curiosity. For who can give an account of another's studies? Swift was not likely to admit any to his privacies, or to impart a minute account of his business or his leisure.

Soon after (1716), in his forty-ninth year, he was privately married to Mrs. Johnson by Dr. Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, as Dr. Madden told me, in the garden. The marriage made no change in their mode of life; they lived in different houses, as before; nor did she ever lodge in the deanery but when Swift was seized with a fit of giddiness. "It would be difficult," says Lord Orrery, "to prove that they were ever afterwards together without a third person."

The Dean of St. Patrick's lived in a private manner, known and regarded only by his friends, till, about the year 1720, he,' by a pamphlet, recommended to the Irish the use,* and consequently the improvement, of their manu

A Proposal for the Use of Irish Manufacture “in Clothes and Furniture of Houses, etc. Utterly rejecting and renouncing every thing that comes from England," 1720. S. S. vol. vi. pp. 270-282. Nine years afterwards this was supplemented by & Proposal that all the Ladies and Women of Ireland should appear constantly in Irish Manufactures. S. S. vol. vii. pp. 233-261.

* Swift saw and deplored the misery of the country, and felt that it would be palliated were every person of means to spend in Irish wares the money sent over to England for dress and luxuries. Burn every thing English except her coals," was his trade maxim. His proposal for

facture. For a man to use the productions of his own labour is surely a natural right, and to like best what he makes himself is a natural passion. But to excite this passion, and enforce this right, appeared so criminal to those who had an interest in the English trade, that the printer was imprisoned; and, as Hawkesworth justly observes, the attention of the publick being by this outrageous resentment turned upon the proposal, the author was by consequence made popular.

In 1723 died Mrs. Van Homrigh, a woman made unhappy by her admiration of wit, and ignominiously distinguished by the name of Vanessa, whose conduct has been already sufficiently discussed, and whose history is too well knew to be minutely repeated. She was a young woman fond of literature, whom Decanus the Dean, called Cadenus by transposition of the letters, took pleasure in directing and instructing; till, from being proud of his praise, she grew fond of his person. Swift was then about forty-seven, at an age when vanity is strongly excited by the amorous attention of a young woman. If it be said that Swift should have checked a passion which he never meant to gratify, recourse must be had to that extenuation which he so much despised, men are but men: perhaps however he did not at first know his own mind, and, as he represents himself, was undetermined For his admission of her courtship, and his indulgence of her hopes after his

the use of Irish manufuctures was not written for the peasantry, who did not use silks or velvets, and hence Mr. Froude's comment (" England could not prevent them from ploughing their fields and wearing frieze jerkins," Engl. in Ireland, vol. i. p. 500) is pointless." England did allow the landlords to prevent them from ploughing by turning, as Swift complains, all the good land into pasture; and by permitting rackrents she condemned them to wear rags instead of good sound homespun.H. S. FAGAN.

1 Hawkesworth brought out, in 1766, an edition of Swift's Letters, 3 vols. 8vo.

marriage to Stella, no other honest plea can be found, than that he delayed a disagreeable discovery from time to time, dreading the immediate bursts of distress, and watching for a favourable moment. She thought herself neglected, and died of disappointment; having ordered by her will the poem to be published, in which Cadenus had proclaimed her excellence, and confessed his love. The effect of the publication upon the Dean and Stella is thus related. by Delany.

"I have good reason to believe, that they both were greatly shocked and distressed (though it may be differently) upon this occasion. The Dean made a tour to the South of Ireland, for about two months, at this time, to dissipate his thoughts, and give place to obloquy. And Stella retired (upon the earnest invitation of the owner) to the house of a cheerful, generous, good-natured friend of the Dean's, whom she also much loved and honoured. There my informer often saw her; and, I have reason to believe, used his utmost endeavours to relieve, support, and amuse her, in this sad situation.

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One little incident he told me of, on that occasion, I think I shall never forget. As her friend was an hospitable, open-hearted man, well-beloved, and largely acquainted, it happened one day that some gentlemen dropt in to dinner, who were stranger to Stella's situation; and as the poem of 'Cadenus and Vanessa' was then the general topic of conversation, one of them said, 'Surely that Vanessa must be an extraordinary woman, that could inspire the Dean to write so finely upon her.' Mrs. Johnson smiled, and answered, "that she thought that point not quite so clear; for it was well known the Dean could write finely upon a broomstick."

The great acquisition of esteem and influence was made by the "Drapier's Letters" in 1724.1 One Wood of

1 S. S. vol. vi. pp. 347-455.

Wolverhampton in Staffordshire, a man enterprising and rapacious, had, as is said, by a present to the Duchess of Munster,1 obtained a patent, empowering him to coin one hundred and eighty thousand pounds of halfpence2 and farthings for the kingdom of Ireland, in which there was a very inconvenient and embarrassing scarcity of copper coin; so that it was possible to run in debt upon the credit of a piece of money; for the cook or keeper of an ale-house could not refuse to supply a man that had silver in his hand, and the buyer would not leave his money without change.

The project was therefore plausible. The scarcity, which was already great, Wood took care to make greater, by agents who gathered up the old half-pence; and was about to turn his brass into gold, by pouring the treasures of his new mint upon Ireland, when Swift, finding the metal was debased to an enormous degree, wrote Letters, under the name of M. B. Drapier, to shew the folly of receiving, and the mischief that must ensue, by giving gold and silver for coin worth perhaps not a third part of its nominal value.

The nation was alarmed; the new coin was universally refused: but the governors of Ireland considered resistance to the King's patent as highly criminal; and one Whitshed,"

1 Better known as Duchess of Kendal, the German mistress of George I.-P. CUNNINGHAM.

2 Wood's halfpenny was really handsome and well executed. See the engraving of it, S. S. vol. vi. p. 347. And the coins were proved at the mint under the direction of Sir Isaac Newton to equal or exceed in weight, purity, and value, coins of the same denomination in England. But, as Scott points out (Life, vol. i. p. 285), "the measure was of far less importance in its real merit, than as it necessarily involved the grand question of the servitude or independence of Ireland." And in his introduction to the Drapier's Letters, after a long quotation from Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole, vol. i. p. 388, giving a full account of the scheme, Scott shows that Wood's patent, being forced upon the people of Ireland, was a death blow to the independence of that kingdom.

3 See Swift's verses occasioned by Whitshed's notes on his coach. Libertas et natale solum. S. S. vol. xii. p. 368.

then Chief Justice, who had tried the printer of the former pamphlet,' and sent out the Jury nine times, till by clamour and menaces they were frighted into a special verdict, now presented the Drapier, but could not prevail on the Grand Jury to find the bill.

Lord Carteret and the Privy Council published a proclamation, offering three hundred pounds for discovering the author of the Fourth Letter. Swift had concealed himself from his printers, and trusted only his butler, who transcribed the paper. The man, immediately after the appearance of the proclamation, strolled from the house, and staid out all night, and part of the next day. There was reason enough to fear that he had betrayed his master for the reward; but he came home, and the Dean ordered him to put off his livery, and leave the house; "for," says he, "I know that my life is in your power, and I will not bear, out of fear, either your insolence or negligence." The man excused his fault with great submission, and begged that he might be confined in the house while it was in his power to endanger his master; but the Dean resolutely turned him out, without taking farther notice of him, till the term of information had expired, and then received him again. Soon afterwards he ordered him and the rest of the servants into his presence, without telling his intentions, and bade them take notice that their fellow-servant was no longer Robert the butler; but that his integrity had made him Mr. Blakeney, verger of St. Patrick's; an officer whose in

The Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures.

* Lord Carteret as Secretary of State, intriguing against Walpole, was said to have greatly encouraged the discontents in Ireland, and to have furnished the private history of the mode in which Wood's patent was obtained. But Walpole revenged himself by sending Carteret to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant to extinguish the fire he himself had fanned. S. S. vol. i. p. 294. Lord Carteret was an old friend of Swift's, and the relations between them were always sympathetic, interrupted only by occasional jars. Lord Carteret became afterwards Earl Granville.