Ile comes jut() full light in September, 1710, with the beginning of his Journal to Stella. lie had invited her in 1701 to Ireland, with her friend Mrs. Dingley. They lived in his house at Laraeor and Dublin when he was absent. and in lodgings near by when he was present. The diary letters which] be sent to Stella and Mrs. Dingley, ending. with April, 1713. com pose one of the most interesting documents that ever threw light on the history of a man of genius. In London he lodged close to Mrs. Vanhomrigh, whose daughter Hester (called Vanessa IT him) fell in love with Swift. and hugged the chains to which Stella merely sub mitted. In 1714 the Tory Ministry fell, Queen Anne died, and Swift's power was gone. In spite of the Queen's distrust of him, he had been appointed to the deanery of Saint Patrick's in Dublin, in 1713. and thither he now retired, no doubt hoping that the move would settle his Com plieations for him. But, as luck would have it. Vanessa's mother died and she followed Min to Cclbridge, in the near neighborhood. It is pos sible that in 1716 Swift may have married Siena. Ile undoubtedly loved her a s.loWs a tenderness for her such as he never displays in any other case. From 1717 to 1720 he and Vanessa re mained apart, hut in the latter year he began to pay her regular visits. In 1723 Vanessa took desperate step of writing to Stella. Swift rode down to Marley Abbey, where she was stay ing, with a terrible countenance, petrified her with a frown, and departed, flinging on the table a packet containing her letter to Stella. Van essa died within a few weeks, leaving behind her the poem he had written for her, Cadcnus and Vanessa, and their correspondence.
Five years afterwards Stella followed Vanessa, and the wretched lover sat down the same night to record her virtues in language of unsurpassed simplicity. A lock of her hair is preserved with the inscription in Swift's handwriting, most af fecting in its apparent eynicism,"Only a woman's hair." Between the death of 'Vanessa and that of Stella, as though withheld by an evil fate un til he could no longer enjoy it, came the greatest political and literary triumph of Swift's life. lie had fled to Dublin a broken man, politically extinct; a few years raised him to the summit of popularity, though power was denied him. In 1724 he took Ireland by storm with the Drapier Letters, a series of wonderfully effective pamphlets, directed against the patent granted to one Wood, a hanger-on of the Court, for coining copper halfpence in Ireland.
The noise of this success had hardly died away when Swift acquired more lasting glory by the publication of Gulliver's Trarcls. Few books have added so much to the innocent mirth of mankind as the first two parts of Gunirer. With the omission of certain passages, it is one of the most delightful children's books ever written. Yet it has been equally valued, as
Swift meant it to be, for an unrivaled satire on mankind. He seems to have solaced himself with its composition in the early years of what he called his exile; and if the later books show his most savage temper. it is well to remember that they were written during the years when he was attacking political corruption and when his pri vate happiness was being destroyed. In 1726 he brought the completed manuscript to England with him and it was published anonymously in the winter of that year, meeting with instanta neous success.
His last years, however, were clouded by constantly increasing torture from disease. He governed his cathedral with great strictness and conscientiousness, and for years after Stella's death held a sort of miniature court at the deanery. But death was becoming more and more real and welcome to him. His regular fare well to a friend in these latter years was. "Good night—I hope I shall never see you again." A period of absolute mental decay closed with his death on October 19, 1745. He was buried in his in the same coffin with Stella, with the epitaph written by himself. "Here lies the body of Jonathan Swift. D.D.. dean of this cathedral, where braming indignation can no longer tear at his heart. Go, traveler, and imitate if you can a man who was an undaunted champion of liberty." Swift's character, as a whole, forms a fascinat ing psychological study. From some passages of his life he would appear a heartless egotist; and yet he was capable of the sincerest friend ship, and could never dispense with human sympathy. Thus an object of pity, as well as awe, he is the most tragic figure in the literature of the eighteenth century—the only man of his age who could be conceived as affording a ground work for the creations of Shakespeare. think of him," says Thackeray, "is like thinking of the ruins of a great empire." Nothing finer or truer could be said.
Consult his Works, edited by Sir Walter Scott (19 vols., Edinburgh, 1814 and 1824) ; Prose Works (the best edition) edited by T. Scott. with introduction by W. E. II. Leeky (Bohn's Library, S vols., London, 1897-99) : various selections, by S. Lane-Poole (ib., 1884-85), by IV. Lew in (Camelot Series, ib., 1886), by H. Morley (Carisbronke Library, ib., 1889), and by H. Craik (Oxford, 1892-93) : Unpublished Let ters (edited by G. B. Hill, London, 1S99). The best recent lives of Swift are by H. Craik (London, 1882), Leslie Stephen (lb., 1582), and Churton Collins (ib., 1S93). Consult also Forster's incomplete Life (1875); Wilde, Closing Years of Swift's Life (Dublin, 1849) ; Lane Poole's Notes for a Bibliography of Swift, reprinted from The Bibliographer (London, 1884 ) .