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similar perfections should attract each other's notice? This gentlewoman was the widow (as she always averred) of one Johnson, a merchant, who, having been unfortunate in trade, afterwards became master of a trading sloop which ran between England and Holland, and there died."

It is stated by several of Swift's biographers that Esther Johnson was the daughter of Sir William Temple's steward; but, as will be shown, her mother did not marry this person, whose name was Mosse(a), till long after Temple's death, and when Stella was resident in Ireland; nor is it likely that this nobleman would have left the daughter of his steward one thousand pounds in his will. Mrs. Johnson had three children: the eldest, a daughter, married one Fillby, a baker in London; this is the sister mentioned in Stella's will. The second child was a son, Edward, who died abroad, young. The third and last was her daughter Esther, "who only," says the correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine, "of all her children, was permitted to reside with her at Moor Park, where she was educated; and her appearance and dress so far exceeded the rank and fortune of her mother, and the rest of the children, that the world soon declared Miss Johnson to be Sir William's daughter. But had dress shown no distinction between her and the rest of her mother's children, nature had already distinguished her sufficiently. Her mother and brother were both fair, her sister is said to have been the same. The boy was said to be like his father, he, therefore, must be fair too, as the boy was so to an uncommon degree; yet Esther's, or, as she was usually called in the family, Miss Hetty's, eyes and hair were of a most beautiful black; and all the rest of her features bore so strong a resemblance to those of Sir William T- that no one could be at a loss to determine what relation she had to that gentleman(b). And could the striking likeness have been overlooked, Sir William's un

(a) The name is spelled sometimes with one and sometimes with two ss. (b) There certainly is a likeness between the portraits.

110 STELLA'S RELATIONSHIP TO SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.

common regard for her, and his attention to her education, must have convinced every unprejudiced person that Miss Hetty Johnson was the daughter of one who moved in a higher sphere than a Dutch trader. The respect that Sir William affected to show the child induced his family to copy his example; and the neighbouring families behaving in the same manner, she early lost all that servility that must have tinged her manners and behaviour, had she been brought up in dependance, and without any knowledge of her real condition."

The writer was of opinion that Sir William Temple had informed Miss Johnson, as she was called, of her birth, and here follows the only error which we have been able to detect in his narrative, it is that she retired to Ireland during the lifetime of Sir William Temple; " but of this," he candidly says, "I am not so positive." Her leaving all her natural connexions, to go to another country with a comparative stranger as her companion, is certainly remarkable. All Swift says concerning her birth is, that "she was born at Richmond, in Surrey, on the 13th day of March, 1681. Her father was a younger brother of a good family in Nottinghamshire; her mother of a lower degree; and indeed, she had little to boast of her birth." 66 Here," continues the writer in the article just quoted from, "let me leave the daughter, and return to Mrs. Johnson, her mother, who continued to live at Moor Park till the death of Sir William Temple, soon after which she resided with Lady Giffard, sister to Sir William Temple, and his great favourite, as her woman, or housekeeper, or perhaps in both capacities. Upon Lady Giffard's death she retired to Farnham, and boarded with one Fillby, a brother of her daughter's husband, and some time after intermarried with Mr. Ralph Mosse, a person who had for a long series of years been intrusted, as steward, with the affairs of the family, and had successively served Sir William Temple, Lady Giffard, and Mr. Temple. He was a widower, and his first wife had been cook to Sir William Temple. Upon the death of Mr.

STELLA'S RELATIONSHIP TO SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 111

Mosse, she went to board with Mrs. Mayne of Farnham, a gentlewoman who had a particular esteem for her, and at length retired to Mr. Fillby's again, and there died, not long after the year 1743. I saw her myself in the autumn of 1742, and, although far advanced in years, she still preserved the remains of a very fine face"(a).

It may be wondered how a woman of her taste could marry a man so much beneath her; but Mosse might, it is conjectured, be privy to certain secrets that she was unwilling to have divulged. "The lady," continues the writer," to whom I am obliged for those anecdotes, assured me that she heard Mrs. Mosse, in her freer hours, declare that she was obliged, by indispensable necessity, to marry the man her soul despised.' She appears, from the description given of her, to have been a woman of high attainments as well. as of great personal attractions. It is said that Pomfret, in his poem of "The Choice," has given a description of Moor Park, Sir William Temple, and Mrs. Johnson, the mother of Stella. The writer in the Magazine then goes on to relate the incident of Stella's courageous conduct in firing a pistol at a robber who was entering her chamber during her residence in Dublin. Now this story, which is there for the first time published, is detailed in almost the same words by Swift; but his "character of Mrs. Johnson" (Stella) did not appear till several years after; and this circumstance certainly lends the greater probability to the entire narrative. Dr. Delany also, who evidently inclined to the opinion of Stella being a daughter of Sir W. Temple, thus writes in his Observations: "We are told (and I am satisfied by Swift himself) at the bottom of a letter to Dr. Sheridan, dated September 2, 1727(6), that Mrs. Johnson and Mrs.

(a) In the notes to Scott's Swift, vol. xv. p. 268, it is erroneously stated that Mosse married Stella's sister. The name Fillby was also erroneously altered to Kilby in the second edition of that work.

(b) This letter, as published by Sir Walter Scott, does not contain the