a story equally improbable. For to execute this operation, the whole stock of Mr. Wood's coin and metal must be melted down and moulded into hollow balls with wildfire, no bigger than a reasonable throat may be able to swallow. Now, the metal he has prepared, and already coined, will amount to at least fifty millions of halfpence, to be swallowed by a million and a half of people; so that, allowing two halfpence to each ball, there will be about seventeen balls of wildfire apiece to be swallowed by every person in the kingdom; and to administer this dose there cannot be conveniently fewer than fifty thousand operators, allowing one operator to every thirty, which, considering the squeamishness of some stomachs and the peevishness of young children, is but reasonable. Now, under correction of better judgments, I think the trouble and charge of such an experiment would exceed the profit." 1

In conclusion, the following is interesting as giving Swift's explanation of the method he chose in attacking Wood; it is one of the very few instances in which Swift quotes Scripture:

"I was in the case of David, who could not move in the armour of Saul, and therefore I rather chose to attack this uncircumcised Philistine (Wood, I mean) with a sling and a stone. And I may say, for Wood's honour as well as my own, that he resembles Goliath in many circumstances very applicable to the present purpose, for Goliath had a helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass; and he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders.' In short, he was like Mr. Wood, all over brass, and he defied the armies of the living God. Goliath's conditions of combat were likewise

the same with those of Wood: if he prevail against us, then shall we be his servants.' But if it happens that I prevail over him, I renounce the other part of the condition; he shall never be a servant of mine, for I do not think him fit to be trusted in any honest man's shop.'" I

The history of Wood's halfpence can soon be told. A Committee of Inquiry opened in answer to Irish demands in April, 1724, recommended a reduction of the proposed. coinage to £40,000. But Swift's first Drapier's Letter, published before the committee's report was issued, had inflamed the people to madness. The second and third letters followed in August. The fourth letter, addressed "to the whole people of Ireland," appeared in October. A stirring summons to national independence, the sensation it aroused was extraordinary. The Government at last felt bound to take action. Harding, the Drapier's printer, was arrested, and a reward of £300 offered for the apprehension of the Drapier himself. But England saw that conciliation was needed besides force. They recalled the actual lord lieutenant, the Duke of Grafton, a man of dull manners and no ability, and sent over in his place the brilliant and versatile Lord Carteret. The latter was an old friend of Swift's, and had no wish to embitter public feeling. In addition to this, though Swift's authorship was universally known, any informer against him would have been in peril of his life. It was resolved, however, to press the charge against Harding. On November 11th his cause came on before Chief Justice Whitshed. The grand jury threw out the bill. They were dismissed after a furious denunciation from the judgment-seat. Another grand jury was summoned. Again the judge threatened, expostulated, and reviled. Their only reply was to present Wood's halfpence as a Drapier's Letter IV.

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common nuisance. Beaten at last, the English Government gave up the struggle. Wood's patent was cancelled, a pension of £3,000 a year for eight years being given to him in compensation for the great expense and trouble he had undergone.

He

Swift's triumph was complete. He had taught Ireland for the first time in her history to substitute constitutional agitation for the old system of rebellion, and he had made her first effort in this new field a brilliant success. had given the Irish parliamentary party the watchword, "Free trade and legislative independence." Alone among Irish leaders he had united every class in Ireland, Churchman, Catholic, and Dissenter into an irresistible phalanx. On his arrival in Dublin in 1714 he had been the most unpopular man in the city; he was now its idol.

All this might well have been a source of pride. But we should err greatly in regarding Swift as satisfied by his triumph. Disappointed ambition and personal pique had set too deep a mark on his moody spirit. Even now he looked on Ireland as a land of exile. In the organised schemes of its would-be liberators he refused to share. He had shown the power of his genius; he had defeated that Whig aristocracy which ten years before had so exulted in his downfall. For the rest he cared not. He well knew the emptiness of popular favour. One will again find him denouncing the iniquities of Irish misgovernment; but it is not as the patriot who suffers with his country, but as the misanthrope who finds in the vice and folly of his fellow-creatures fit food for the ravenous appetite of his rage. The success of the Drapier arrested not the despondent bitterness which now begins to grow upon him more strongly year by year.

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In 1727 Swift wrote:

"Remove me from this land of slaves,

Where all are fools and all are knaves."

CHAPTER VIII.

"GULLIVER'S TRAVELS."

Story of a marriage between Swift and Stella-This not the caseEvidence-No definite intention on Swift's part ever to marryReasons-His relations to Stella' never more than those of a friend-Stella at the deanery-With Swift at Quilca- Experiences there-Swift's birthday odes to Stella-Her want of sentiment-This admired by Swift-Witticisms of Stella-Visit of Swift to England in 1726-Illness of Stella-Swift's letters thereon-He returns to Dublin-Publication of "Gulliver's Travels"-Plan of the work-Extracts-Swift's opinion of princes, prime ministers, the House of Commons, the peerage --Denunciation of war-Of lawyers-Of English public life— Swift's ideal simplicity-His theories of education and marriage -Passage on lying-The people who never die-" Gulliver's Travels" a general anathema-Swift's last visit to England in 1727-Death of George I. does not aid the Tories-Renewed illness of Stella-Swift's unhappiness-He returns to Dublin—. Death of Stella-Swift's comments thereon.

IT has been shown, in the preceding chapter, that between the connection with Stella and the connection with Vanessa there was a difference in kind. In spite, therefore, of their external similarity, it has seemed best to treat these two passages in Swift's life entirely apart.

There is a fixed tradition with the average type of English novelist, that his task remains undone till the hero of his fancy finds a resting place in the joys of a conventionally loving wife. This theory has extended its

dominion beyond the realm of fiction; and English biographers, even the most unprejudiced, have come to doubt the possibility of a permanent friendship between two persons of opposite sex, unjoined by marriage.

It was probably in obedience to the same feeling that most of Swift's contemporaries insisted so strongly on the marriage between him and Esther Johnson.

Their statements have been regarded as authoritative by later writers, and therefore need a brief recapitulation. Lord Orrery, in his "Remarks upon the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift," published in 1751, says "Stella was the concealed but undoubted wife of Dr. Swift, and if my informations are right, she was married. to him in the year 1716 by Dr. Ashe, then Bishop of Clogher." Whence these "informations" came, Orrery does not state. Dr. Delany, in his "Observations upon Lord Orrery's Remarks," published three years later, merely expresses his agreement with Orrery's bare assertion. Mr. Deane Swift, in his "Essay on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift," written in 1756, is equally vague; and the various statements on the subject made by the younger Sheridan in his "Life of Swift" are so crowded with palpable inaccuracies as to be entirely inconclusive. Dr. Johnson was told by a certain Samuel Madden that, soon after his forty-ninth year, Swift was married to Stella by Dr. Ashe. The ceremony, said Madden, took place at Dublin, in the deanery

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Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Craik, in their Lives of Swift, uphold the marriage. For the opposite view see Monck Mason and an article on “Dean Swift in Ireland,” Quarterly Review, vol. 156. Mr. Leslie Stephen, in his monograph on Swift, in the English Men o Letters Series, commits himself to neither side. The late Mr. Forster, in vol. i. of his unfinished Life of Swift, expresses strong disbelief in the marriage.