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SWI due officially to Harley and St. John; but Swift's pamphlet was undoubtedly the real instrument by which the treaty of Utrecht was brought about. For this important service to his party he was rewarded with the deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin, the most valuable preferment which his friends could venture to give him, for they could not afford to rouse the indignation, and lose the support of the English clergy, by presenting to a bishopric or even to a lucrative benefice in England, the author of the "Tale of a Tub." Swift acquiesced sullenly in the appointment, hoping probably that better things were in store for him. But the death of Queen Anne (in 1714) destroyed at once the whole system of Tory politics on which his expectations were built, and extinguished his prospects of any higher preferment. Swift now, much against his will, as Dr. Johnson says, "commenced Irishman for life."

V. In 1713 he entered on the possession of his deanery. He settled in Dublin; and renewed with Stella those singular relations which must now be stated, although they scarcely admit of being explained. This lady was the reputed daughter of Mr. Johnson, Sir William Temple's steward; by many she was believed to be Sir William's own natural child. Handsome, accomplished, and witty, she had been Swift's constant companion during the last four years of his residence with Temple. An original predilection had disposed them to court each other's society, and custom had rivetted the chain. Swift wished always to have her near, but not too near him—proxima, sed intervallo. She would have obliterated the interval, and gradually wore out her life in fretting against the "barrier treaty" which separated them. So far back as 1700, he had invited her to Laracor along with her friend, Mrs. Dingley, a lady in very straitened circumstances. They accepted the invitation, and Stella expected that it would be followed up ere long by an offer of his hand. She was bitterly disappointed. Swift took care that their intercourse should be of the most guarded kind. "Whenever he was from home the ladies took up their quarters at the parsonage; so soon as he returned, they decamped to lodgings of their own. They never slept under the same roof, and he and Stella were never known to have been together alone. Nevertheless Stella felt her position to be exceedingly equivocal, and Swift at length yielded to her remonstrances. They were privately married in 1716. But the marriage made no difference in their mode of life. It was like that of Œdipus, an, a truly unmatrimonial wedlock. They never lived together, and never met except in the presence of a third person—an example of manners, and, we may add, of morals, unparalleled unless by some of the strange observances commemorated in Gulliver's Travels. Stella fell into bad health, and after lingering for some years, she yielded up her wasted existence at the age of forty-eight, a victim to the caprice and constitutional coldness of one who always treated her with the utmost respect, and felt for her the most unbounded admiration, and as tender an attachment as it was possible for him to entertain. She died in 1728. This passage in Swift's life was combined with another episode of a precisely similar character. Esther Vanhomrigh, immortalized by Swift as "Vanessa," was the daughter of a highly respectable Dutch family, whose acquaintance he had made in London when in the zenith of his political importance. She was devoted to literature. Swift had fostered her tastes, and attracted her by the magnet of his genius. She could not live away from him. Her father had been dead for some years. On the death of her mother (1714) she followed him to Ireland, and proposed that he should marry her. Swift treated the proposal as a jest, but she persisted in her overtures. This dalliance went on for years, partly in Dublin, until 1717, and afterwards at Marley abbey, near Celbridge, where the lady had gone to reside. Suspecting that Stella was the obstacle which interfered with her matrimonial designs, she wrote to that lady to ascertain the nature of the relation in which she stood towards the dean. Stella informed her that she was his wife, and forwarded her letter to Swift. His rage was unbounded; he rode instantly to Marley abbey, and flinging Vanessa's letter on the table before her, departed without saying a word. But his ferocious looks had been her death-warrant. She only rallied sufficiently to alter her will, which had been made in his favour, and died a few weeks afterwards in 1723. During this period Swift published in 1724 the "Drapier's Letters." These were written for the purpose of stopping the importation into Ireland of a new copper coinage, which a person named Wood had obtained a patent for introducing to the amount of £180,000. Swift represented the new halfpence as not worth one-third of their nominal value, and that therefore all who received them, and particularly the petty shopkeepers, would be ruined. The letters answered their purpose; the obnoxious coinage was withdrawn, and Swift became the most popular man in Ireland. "Gulliver's Travels" were given to the world in 1727. This is one of the three books which have probably had the greatest run of popularity of any in our language, the other two being Robinson Crusoe and the Pilgrim's Progress. In the same year he published, in conjunction with Pope and Arbuthnot, "Miscellanies in Prose," containing "Martinus Scriblerus, or the art of sinking in poetry"—a most amusing work, in which the pedantries of learning and philosophy are very ingeniously satirized. Swift passed the greater part of 1727 and 1728 in England. He resided chiefly with Pope; but left him with very little ceremony, finding, as he said, "that two sick friends cannot live together." Besides, he was recalled to Ireland at this time by the dangerous illness of Stella, who died, as has been said, in 1728.

VI. Swift lived for many years after the death of the ill-starred Stella. Before that event the shadows of his life had been sufficiently sombre; they now darkened into unmitigated gloom. In consequence, as he thought, of having once surfeited himself with fruit when very young, he had been subject throughout life to fits of giddiness, and these increased in frequency and severity as he grew old. He became deaf, and consequently more morose than ever. His misanthropy made him court solitude, and solitude exasperated his misanthropy. "At last," says Dr. Johnson, "his avarice grew too powerful for his kindness; he would refuse a bottle of wine; and in Ireland no man visits where he cannot drink." In 1741 his mind entirely gave way; he was at times furious, and at times fatuous; and in this condition he remained, with scarcely a lucid interval, until his death in October, 1744.

Dr. Johnson, who must have seen him, says that "he had a kind of muddy complexion, which, though he washed himself with oriental scrupulosity, did not look clean. He had a countenance sour and severe, which he seldom softened by any appearance of gaiety. He stubbornly resisted any tendency to laughter." It must be added, that he performed many generous and charitable and even noble actions, although he performed them in his own way, which was often particularly odd, and seldom at all ingratiating.

Sir Walter Scott wrote his life and edited his works in 1815. A cheap but very complete edition of his works was published in two double-columned volumes by Thomas Roscoe, in 1853.—J. F. F.  SWIFT,, was born at Goodrich, Herefordshire. He was the author of the "Gamblers," a poem; "The Temple of Folly;" "Poetical Addresses to his Majesty;" "Letter to the King on the Conduct of Colonel Lennox;" and "Vindication of Renwick Williams, commonly called the Monster." This Williams was convicted of wounding indiscriminately any woman whom he could pounce upon, but Swift believed him innocent. Swift also wrote "An Essay on the Progress of Rhyme;" and "Mr. Swift's Correspondence with the Rev. Mr. Dobbin and his Family." He died in 1815.—F.  SWINBURNE,, a learned traveller, the youngest son of Sir John Swinburne of Capheaton in the county of Northumberland. He was educated at Scorton school in Yorkshire, and afterwards at Lacelle, in France, Paris, Bordeaux, and at the royal academy of Turin. He travelled over several parts of Italy, and married a lady of congenial tastes, with whom he made several voyages for the purpose of seeing antiquities and the fine arts. They spent six years in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and Swinburne made the acquaintance and won the esteem of some of the most celebrated men of these countries. On his return to England he retired to his seat at Hamsterley in the county of Durham; and in 1779 published his travels in Spain, in a quarto volume. In 1783 appeared the first volume of his travels in the Two Sicilies, and two years afterwards the second volume appeared. A correspondence, which lasted from 1774 to Swinburne's death, was published in 1841, entitled "The Courts of Europe at the Close of the Last Century." This work contains many details of the courts of Louis XV. and Louis XVI., and the most stirring periods of the French revolution. In his writings Swinburne shows himself a close observer, and his 