church and vicarage had sustained, by the carelessness or avarice of former incumbents. He expressed the utmost indignation at the appearance of the church; and, during the first year of his incumbency, expended a considerable sum in putting it into decent repair. The vicarage he also made comfortably tenantable *, and proceeded to improve it, according to the ideas of beauty and taste which were at that time universally received. He formed a pleasant garden; smoothed the banks of a rivulet into a canal, and planted willows in regular ranks by its side. These willows, so often celebrated in the Journal to Stella, are now decayed or cut down; the garden cannot be traced; and the canal only resembles a ditch. Yet the parish and the rector continues to derive some advantage, from its having been once the abode of Swift. He increased the glebe from one acre to twenty. The tithes of Effernock, purchased with his own money, at a time

*The house appears, from its present ruins, to have been a comfortable mansion. The present Bishop of Meath, (whom the editor is proud to call his friend,) with classic feeling, while pressing upon his clergy, at a late visitation, the duty of repairing the glebe-houses, addressed himself particularly to the Vicar of Laracor, and recommended to him, in the necessary improvements of his mansion, to save, as far as possible, the walls of the house which had been inhabited by his great predecessor.

when it did not abound, were, by his will, settled for ever on the incumbent of that living *.

But Laracor had yet greater charms than its willows and canal, the facetious humours of Roger Coxe, and the applause of the gentry of the neighbourhood. Swift had no sooner found his fortune established in Ireland, than it became his wish that Stella should be an inhabitant of that kingdom. This was easily arranged. She was her own mistress, and the rate of interest being higher in Ireland, furnished her with a plausible excuse for taking up her residence near the friend and instructor of her youth. The company of Mrs Dingley, a woman of narrow income and limited understanding, but of middle age, and a creditable character, obviated, in a great measure, the inferences which the world must otherwise have necessarily drawn from this step. Some whispers so singular a resolution doubtless occasioned; but the caution of Swift, who was never known to see Stella but in presence of a third party, and the constant attendance of Mrs Dingley, to whom, apparently, he paid equal at

*This was not without a touch of his peculiar humour. These tithes, by his will, are devised to his successors in the cure, so long as the established church lasted; and to the poor, in case it should be exchanged for any other form of the Christian religion, always excepting from the benefit thereof, Jews, atheists, and infide ls.

tention, seem to have put scandal to silence. Their residence was varied with the same anxious regard to Stella's character. When Swift left his parsonage at Laracor, the ladies became its tenants; and when he returned, they regularly retired to their lodgings in the town of Trim, the capital of the diocese, or were received by Dr Raymond, so often mentioned in the Journal, the hospitable vicar of that parish. Every exterior circumstance which could distinguish an union of mere friendship from one of a more tender nature, was carefully observed, and the surprise at first excited by the settlement of Mrs Dingley and Stella in a country to which they were strangers, seems gradually to have subsided*. It is, however, highly probable, that between Swift and Stella there was a tacit understanding that their union was to be completed by marriage, when Swift's income, according to the prudential scheme which he had unhappily adopted, should be adequate to the expence of a matrimonial establishment. And here

*The English acquaintances of the parties expected a different result. Mr Thomas Swift, the Dean's "Parson-Cousin," in a letter from Puttenham, Feb. 5, 1706, asks" whether Jonathan be married? or whether he has been able to resist the charms of both these gentlewomen that marched quite from Moorpark to Dublin (as they would have marched to the North or anywhere else) with full resolution to engage

it is impossible to avoid remarking the vanity of that over-prudence, which labours to provide against all possible contingencies. Had Swift, like any ordinary man in his situation, been contented to share his limited income with a deserving object of his affections, the task of his biographers would have been short and cheerful; and we should neither have had to record, nor apologize for, those circumstances which form the most plausible charge against his memory. In the pride of talent and of wisdom, he endeavoured to frame a new path to happiness; and the consequences have rendered him a warning, where the various virtues with which he was endowed, ought to have made him a pattern.

Meanwhile the risk of ill construction being so carefully guarded against, Stella with her beauty and accomplishments was not long without an admirer. She was then about eighteen, her hair of a raven-black, her features both beautiful and expressive, and her form of perfect symmetry, though rather inclined to embonpoint. To these outward graces were added good sense, great docility, and uncommon powers both of grave and gay conversation, and a fortune, which, though small, was independent. It is not surprising, therefore, that she should have received an offer of marriage from the Reverend Dr William Tisdal, a clergyman of talents and respectability, with whom Swift lived upon a familiar and friendly footing. The proposals

of the lover were made to Swift, as the lady's guardian, by whose wishes and advice she was determined to be guided; and thus he was apparently reduced either to the necessity of stating his own pretensions to Stella's hand, or of resigning her to a rival. Mr Deane Swift has here frankly explained and condemned the conduct of his kinsman, which Mr Sheridan, perhaps for that very reason, has laboured to colour over and justify. According to the former, Swift insisted upon such unreasonable terms for Stella's maintenance and provision, in case of widowhood, that Tisdal was unable to accede to them. Sheridan, on the other hand, assures us, that the refusal came finally from the young lady herself, who, though she shewed at first no repugnance to Tisdal's proposal, perhaps with a view to sound Swift's sentiments, yet could not at length prevail upon herself to abandon the hope of being united to him. Tisdal himself suspected Swift did not warmly befriend his suit, as is evident from a letter, dated 20th July 1706*, in which the latter endeavours, somewhat imperfectly, to justify himself from such an accusation. For considering his express admission, that if his fortune and humour permitted him to think of matrimony, among all persons on earth Stella should be his choice; and considering the close and intimate union which had so long subsisted between them, it requires strong faith

* Volume XV. p. 256.