Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 2.djvu/590

 586 SWIFT. to her the secret of his marriage with Stella, which was privately solemnized in 1716. With qualities almost entirely the reverse of those of Wanessa; mild, humane, polite, and pious, amiable both in mind and in person, and possessed of almost every accomplishment, her fate was little different. Whatever were his motives to this marriage, Swift continued to live with her on precisely the same terms as he had previously. Mrs. Dingly was still her inseparable companion, and it would be difficult to prove that Swift and Stella ever conversed alone. She never resided at the deanery, except during his fits of giddiness and deafness, and on his recovery she always returned to her lodgings, which were on the opposite side of the Liffey. A woman of her delicacy must repine at so extra ordinary a situation. Absolutely virtuous, she was com pelled by her husband, who scorned even to be married like any other man, to submit to all the outward appear ances of vice. Inward anxiety affected by degrees the calmness of her mind and the strength of her body. She began to decline in her health in 1724, and from the first symptoms of decay, she rather hastened than shrunk back in the descent; tacitly pleased to find her footsteps tend ing to that place where they neither marry nor are given in marriage. It is said, that Swift did at length consent that she should be publicly acknowledged as his wife; but the core had rankled too deeply, her health had de parted, and she exclaimed, “it is too late.” She died in January 1727, absolutely a victim to the peculiarity of her fate; a fate which she merited not, and which she pro bably could not have incurred in an union with any other person. “Why the dean did not sooner marry this most excellent person,” says the writer of his life; “why he married her at all; why his marriage was so cautiously concealed; and why he was never known to meet her but in the presence of a third person; are inquiries which no man can answer without absurdity.” The character which Swift had acquired as a man of humour and wit, had in a great measure removed that odium