859 



SWIFT, JONATHAN, D.D. 



SWIFT, JONATHAN, D.D. 



860 



awkward, and began to anticipate that he might bo allowed to return 

 to Ireland neither higher in the church iior richer than he left it. 

 He became impatient and restive. The bishopric of Hereford became 

 vacant, and Oxford and Lady Masham, the queen's favourite, exerted 

 themselves to obtain her consent to bestow it upon him, but the 

 opposition of the Duchess of Somerset, the queen's other favourite, 

 whom S \vift had libelled in his ' Windsor Prophecy,' frustrated their 

 efforts. As soon as Swift knew that the bishopric had been given to 

 another, he sent notice to Lord Oxford of his determination to retire. 

 The ministry now saw, that unless something were done for him, they 

 would lose his powerful aid, which had kept their enemies at bay, 

 and had helped so effectively to keep themselves in possession of the 

 government. Thus pressed, Oxford, with the concurrence of the 

 Duke of Ormond, proposed that Dr. Sterne should be removed to the 

 bishopric of Dromore, in order to make room, for Swift in the deanery 

 of St. Patrick's. This they accomplished; and, with the view of 

 retaining him in England, an effort was made by Oxford and Lady 

 Masham to exchange the deanery for a Windsor prebend ; but the 

 queen's determination against this arrangement was not to be shaken. 

 The warrant for the deanery of St. Patrick's was signed February 23, 

 1713, and early in June the same year Swift set out for Ireland to 

 take possession. 



In the early part of his Journal Swift expresses a continual desire to 

 return to Laracor and the society of his beloved Stella, but this feeling 

 evidently becomes gradually weaker. The splendid society in which 

 he moved, and the sort of homage with which he was treated, such as 

 perhaps no other person of his rank. ever received, had long before his 

 return to Ireland taken strong possession of his heart ; so that whtu 

 he entered into the possession of his deanery, it was with feelings in 

 the highest degree dissatisfied and desponding. 



Swift was scarcely settled in his deanery when he received the most 

 pressing invitations from the friends of the Tory administration to 

 return to England, for the purpose of reconciling, if possible, Oxford 

 and Bolingbroke, whose dissension endangered the very existence of 

 the Tory government He came over to England without delay, and 

 BOOII afterwards published ' The Public Spirit of the Whigs,' a bitter 

 attack on Steele as well as the patty to which he belonged. In this 

 pamphlet the Scotch were spoken of as " a poor fierce northern 

 people," with several other offensive remarks, directed especially 

 against the Duke of Argyle. A prosecution was instituted against 

 Barber the printer, which the ministers managed to set aside ; but the 

 Scotch peers went up in a body to complain to the queen of the 

 indignity with which they had been treated. 



Finding that Oxford and Bolingbroke could not be reconciled, Swift 

 retired to the house of the Rev. Mr. Geary, Upper Letcombe, Berk- 

 shire, at the beginning of June 1714. Here he wrote his 'Free 

 Thoughts on the State of Public Affairs.' Bolingbroke was now about 

 to supplant Oxford, and left no means untried to conciliate Swift. 

 The queen, at Bolingbroko's earnest request, sigued an order on the 

 treasury for 1000Z., which Swift had in vain endeavoured to obtain 

 through Oxford, to relieve him from the debts amounting to at least 

 that sum which he was obliged to incur on entering his deanery. 

 This sum however he never received, the death of the queen having 

 occurred before the order was presented for payment. At the same 

 time Lady Masham wrote to him, conjuring him not to desert the 

 queen, and Barber was commissioned by Bolingbroke to say that he 

 would reconcile him to the Duchess of Somerset Almost the next 

 post brought a letter from Lord Oxford, now dismissed and going 

 alone to his seat in Herefordshire, requesting Swift to accompany him. 

 His gratitude and his affection for Lord Oxford did not allow him to 

 hesitate a moment in accepting the invitation of the disgraced minister, 

 and he wrote immediately to Ireland to get an extension of his leave 

 of absence, which was now nearly expired, to enable him to do so. 

 Within three days the death of Queen Anne and the accession of 

 George I. put an end to the power of the Tories. Lord Oxford was 

 arrested and imprisoned, and Swift wrote to him with a touching 

 earnestness to request that he might be permitted to attend him in 

 his confinement. Lord Oxford however refused to accede to his 

 request. Bolingbroke and Ormond fled to France, and Swift returned 

 to Ireland. 



Not long after Swift came to London, to solicit the remission of the 

 first-fruits; he was introduced to the acquaintance of Mrs. Vanhomrigh, 

 the widow of Bartholomew Vanhomrigh, a Dutch merchant, who at 

 his death had left to his widow a life interest in 16,0002., which sum 

 was afterwards to be divided equally among his children, two sons and 

 two daughters. _When Swift became intimate in this family, Miss 

 Esther Vanhomrigh, the eldest daughter, was under twenty years of 

 age, not remarkable for beauty, but well educated, lively, graceful, 

 spirited, and, unfortunately for Swift, with a taste for reading. He 

 became the director of her studies, and their friendly intercourse was 

 continued till Miss Vanhomrigh made a declaration of affection for 

 him, and proposed marriage. How that declaration was received is 

 related in Swift's poem of ' Cadenus and Vanessa.' Cadenus is 

 decanus (dean) by transposal of letters, and Vanessa is the poetical 

 name which he gave to Miss Vanhomrigh. The proposal was declined; 

 but Swift, from vanity or fondness, or both, had not firmness enough 

 to relinquish their affectionate intercourse. 



After his return to Ireland, Swift, conscious of his imprudence, 



endeavoured to limit as much as possible the correspondence between 

 himself and Vanessa, probably expecting that her attachment would 

 be diminished by absence ; but hers was a deep and uncontrollable 

 passion. She wrote to him frequently, and complained bitterly of his 

 not replying to her letters. At length Mrs. Vauhomrigh died ; her two 

 sons died soon afterwards ; and the circumstances of the two sisters 

 being somewhat embarrassed by imprudent expenses, they resolved to 

 retire to Ireland, where their father had left a small property near 

 Celbridge. Swift, in his diary, though he mentions occasionally his 

 calling at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, makes no allusion to her daughter. 

 Notwithstanding this caution, obscure murmurs of the intercourse 

 between Swift and Vanessa had reached Stella soon after its com- 

 mencement. In 1714 Vanessa arrived in Dublin, to the annoyance of 

 Swift and dread of Stella. Swift saw her very seldom : he introduced 

 Dean Winter to her, a gentleman of fortune, as a suitor for her hand ; 

 and proposals of marriage were made to her by Dr. Price, afterwards 

 bishop of Cashel ; but both offers were rejected. Stella's jealousy at 

 length became so restless that Swift is said to have consented to their 

 marriage, and the ceremony was performed in 1716, in the garden of 

 the deanery, by the Bishop of Clogher ; and though Swift never 

 acknowledged the marriage, and no change took place in their inter- 

 course, the evidence, though imperfect, has been usually considered to 

 leave little doubt of the fact. But on the other hand, in her will 

 made during her last illness (December 1727), and drawn up, as Mr. 

 Wilde who first printed it (in his ' Closing Years of Dean Swift's 

 Life,' 1849), thinks, after a careful comparison of it with Swift's own 

 will, by Swift himself, she describes herself as " Esther Johnson, of 

 the city of Dublin, spinster." At length, in 1717, Vanessa and her 

 sister retired to Marley Abbey, near Celbridge, where Swift does not 

 appear to have visited them till 1720, when Vanessa's sister became 

 dangerously ill : during that illness his visits were frequent, and were 

 continued occasionally to Vanessa after her sister's death. Vanessa by 

 degrees became more impatient, and at length wrote to Stella to 

 inquire into the nature of her connection with Swift. Stella, highly 

 indignant, sent the letter to Swift, and immediately retired to the 

 house of Mr. Ford, near Dublin. Swift, in a paroxysm of rage, rode 

 instantly to Marley Abbey. Vanessa, on his entering the room, was 

 struck dumb by that awful sternness which his countenance assumed 

 when he was in auger, and to which she more than once alludes in her 

 letters to him. He flung the letter on the table without saving a 

 word, instantly left the house, and rode back to Dublin. Poor 

 Vanessa sank under the blow. In a few weeks afterwards she died, in 

 1723, leaving her property to Dr. Berkeley, afterwards bishop of Cloyue, 

 and to Mr. Marshall, one of the judges of the Irish court of Common 

 Pleas. The poem of ' Cadenus and Vanessa ' was published soon after 

 Misa Vauhomrigh's death ; but Berkeley is said to have destroyed the 

 original correspondence : a full copy however remained in the pos- 

 session of Mr. Marshall, and it was published for the first time (with 

 the exception of one or two letters) in Scott's edition of Swift's Works. 



Swift, in an agony of shame and remorse, retreated to some place 

 in the south of Ireland, where he remained two months, without the 

 place of his abode being known. On his return to Dublin, Stella was 

 easily persuaded to forgive him. After their reconciliation, Stella 

 continued to be the friend of Swift, the companion of his social hours, 

 his comforter and patient attendant iu sickness ; and she presided at 

 his table on public days : but they were never alene together ; their 

 union as husband and wife was merely nominal. 



In 1720 Swift published ' A Propos'al for the Universal Use of Irish 

 Manufactures.' This honestly-meant tract was represented as a sedi- 

 tious libel : the printer was brought to trial : the verdict of the jury 

 was ' Not Guilty ; ' but Judge Whitshed kept them eleven hours, aud 

 sent them back nine times, till they reluctantly left the matter in his 

 hands by a special verdict. The public iudignation however was 

 roused, and the government by a ' nolle prosequi,' were obliged to 

 relinquish the contest. 



In 1723, there being a scarcity of copper coin in Ireland, George I. 

 granted to William Wood a patent right to coin farthings and half- 

 pence to the amount of 108,000^. The grant was made without con- 

 sulting the lord-lieutenant or privy council of Ireland : it had been 

 obtained by the influence of the Duchess of Kendall, the king's 

 mistress, who was to have a share of the profits. The Irish parliament 

 expressed their dislike to it by a remonstrance, of which no notice was 

 taken, when a voice was heard which apparently arose from one of 

 the trading classes : a letter was published signed ' M. B., drapier 

 (draper), Dublin,' and was followed by five or six more. The effect of 

 these letters is known. All Ireland was roused. No one would touch 

 the contaminated coin. A reward of 3002. was offered for the discovery 

 of the author of the Drapier's fourth letter. A bill against the printer 

 was about to be presented to the grand jury, when the Dean addressed 

 to them " Some seasonable Advice ;." and the memorable quotation 

 fro'm Scripture was circulated, "And the people said unto Saul, shall 

 Jonathan die, who hath wrought this great salvation in Israel ? God 

 forbid : as the Lord liveth, there shall not one haii- of his head fall to 

 the ground; for he hath wrought with God this day. So the people 

 rescued Jonathan that ho died not." The grand jury wrote 'ignora- 

 mus' on the bill, and Judge Whitshed could only vent his rage by 

 dismissing them. Ultimately the patent was withdrawn, and Wood 

 was compensated by a grant of 30002. yearly for twelve years. 



