preffed him to marry her, and in his anfwers he still rallied, and ftill avoided a pofitive denial. At length, however, the infifted with great ardour and great tenderness upon his pofitive and immediate acceptance or refufal of her as a wife. The dean wrote an anfwer, and delivered it with his own hand. As this letter of Vanela's, which was written in 1723, is a demonstration that she was then utterly ignorant of the dean's marriage with Stella, and as The appears to have known it almost immediately af terwards, it is probable that the dean's anfwer communicated the fatal fecret, which at once precluded all her hopes, and accounted for his former conduct; it is probable too, that the refentment which he felt at having it thus extorted from him, was the cause of the manner in which he delivered the letter, for having thrown it down upon her table, he hafted back to his horse, D.S. 264. and returned immediately to Dublin. This letter the unhappy lady did not furvive many weeks; however, he was fufficiently compofed to cancel a will that he had made in the dean's favour, and to make another, in which the left her fortune, which long retirement and frugality had in a great measure restored, to her two executors, Dr. Berkeley, the bishop of Cloyne, and Mr. Marshall, one of the king's ferjeants at law, gentlemen whofe characters are excellent in the highest degree. Such was the fate of Vanella, and furely those whom pity could not restrain from being diligent to load her memory with reproach, to conftrue appearances in the worft fenfe, to aggravate folly into vice, and diftrefs into infamy, have not much exalted their own character, or ftrengthened their claim to the candour of others. If Vaneffa, by her fondness for the gaieties of life, encouraged by the example, and, perhaps, influenced by the authority of a mother, Jeffened her fortune at an age when few have been discreet, difcreet, it cannot be denied that the retrieved it by prudence and œconomy, at an age when many have continued diffolute, and was frugal after the habit of expence had made frugality difficult; if he could not fubdue a paffion which has tyrannifed over the strongest and pureft minds, fhe does not appear to have known that it was criminal, or to have defired that it might be unlawfully gratified. She preffed a person whom she believed fingle to marry her, but it does not therefore follow, that he was his concubine, much lefs that fhe defired to be reputed fo, and was then follicitous to incur the infamy which has been fince thrown upon her. It cannot furely be believed that the fhameless and reputed concubine, even of Swift, would have been vifited by ladies of credit and fashion, or follicited in marriage by two clergymen of eminence and fortune, to whom her story and character must have been well known: befides, Dr. Berkeley, after having carefully perused all the letters that paffed between them which Vanela directed to be published, with the poem, found that they contained nothing that could bring the leaft difgrace upon the dean; her's, indeed, were full of paffionate declarations of her love; his contained only compliments, excufes, apologies, and thanks for trifling prefents. There was not in either the leaft trace of a criminal commerce, which, if there had been any fuch, it would, in fo long an intercourfe, have been extremely difficult to avoid; and, if she defired to be reputed his concubine, it cannot be fuppofed that fhe concealed any letter which would have proved that fhe was fo, especially as it would have gratified her refentment againft him, for refufing to make her his wife. 0.73. J.R. 12', 122, 123 If it appears, therefore, that there was no criminal commerce between them, and that she did not defire the world fhould believe there had been any, it fol: lows lows from her directing the publication of the poem, of which, perhaps, the poffeffed the only copy, that, in her sense of the veries, none of them implied a fact which would difhonour her memory. And this appears alfo to have been the opinion of J.R. 123. her executors, who though they fuppreffed the letters, because they contained nothing that could do her honour, yet published the poem, by which, it must therefore be fuppofed, they did not think she would be disgraced. It has indeed been faid, that Vanessa, from the time she was deserted devoted herself, like Ariadne, to Bacchus' and perhaps it is true that in J.R. 123. the anguish of disappointed defire she had recourse to that dreadful opiate which never fails to complicate disease with trouble, to leave the fufferer more wretched when its operation is at an end, to divide life into frenzy and defpair, and at once to haften the approach, and increase the terrors of death. But it cannot be thought, that when the made her will, she was either intoxicated or delirious, because the perfect exercise of reafon is effential to the validity of the act. No particular of her distress, therefore, can weaken the arguments drawn from the direction in her will to publish the poem and the letters, of which the gratification of her vanity was fo evidently the motive, that it is difficult to conceive how it could be overlooked. From 1716 to 1720 is a chafm in the dean's life, which it has been found difficult to fill up. That he had no need to repeat his college exercises, has been fhewn already; and that, in this interval, J.R. 101. he went through a voluminous courfe of ecclefiaftical history, feems farther improbable by a letter to lord Bolingbroke, dated April 5, 1729, in which it appears, that he was then reading Baronius, and Baronius was the only piece of church hiftory that was found in his library. Lord Orrery thinks, with great reason, that he employed this time upon Gulliver's Travels. The author of the Obfervations, indeed, fuppofes the dean's genius to be verging towards a decline, in the year 1723, and that Gulliver's Travels were written after that time; but in both these fuppofitions he is probably mistaken; though in the former he feems to be favoured by a paffage in a letter written by the dean himself to Mr. Pope, dated Sept. 20, 1723. See vol. aii. 199. That his genius was not declining in 1723, appears by the Draper's letters, which were not written till 1724; and of thefe the Obfervator himself fays, his genius never fhone out in greater strength than on that and the subsequent occafions,' a truth which is univerfally acknowledged. That Gulliver's Travels were written before that time is equally evident, for Swift went into the north of Ireland early in the fpring of 1725, and, in a letter to doctor Sherridan, during his refidence there he puts him in mind of his defcription of the Taboos, fo that Sherridan must have seen the Travels in manufcript, at leaft, in the year 1724. The dean alfo, in a letter to Mr. Pope, dated Sept. 29, 1725, fays, O! if the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels. It may reasonably be concluded, therefore, that his Travels were then all written, and that at this time he was reviewing and retouching them for the prefs, especially as they were published in 1726; and as he was otherwife employed in 1724, they must have been written, at least, before 1723. Upon the whole, perhaps, it is not an extravagant conjecture, that having, according to his own account, wholly neglected his ftudies for the first three years of his refidence at the deanery, and indulged the refentment which his disappointments had produced till it could be contained no longer, he he conceived the first notion of expreffing it in fuch a manner as might correct the enormities which he exposed; and with this view immediately began his Travels, of which the firft copy was, probably, finished before the year 1720. About this time the dean, who had already acquired the character of a humourist and a wit, was first regarded with general kindness, as a patriot of Ireland. He wrote a propofal for the univerfal use of Irish manufactures; a tract, which as it was apparently calculated for the fervice of Ireland, and zealously condemned a facrifice of interest to England, made him very popular; but this fervice would not, perhaps, have been fo long and fo zealously remembered, if a profecution had not been commenced against the printer. As foon as this measure was taken, the importance of the work was estimated by the diligence of the government to fupprefs it, and the zeal and integrity of the writer were measured by the danger he had incurred. No publick notice," however, was taken of the dean on this occafion; and Waters, the printer, after having been long harraffed and imprisoned, at length obtained a noli profequi. The dean did not again appear in his political character till the year 1724. A patent having been iniquitously procured by one Wood to coin 180,000 1. in copper, for the ufe of Ireland, by which he would have acquired exorbitant gain, and proportionably impoverished the nation, the dean, in the character of a Draper, wrote a series of letters to the people, urging them not to receive this copper money. Thefe letters united the whole nation in his praife, filled every street with his effigies, and every voice with acclamations; and Wood, though he was long fupported by those who proftituted the higheft delegated authority to the vileft purposes, was at length compel ↑ See Vol. X. p. 1. See the letters and notes, Vol. X. led |