Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/183

 us. vii. MAE. 1,1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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kingdom, which abounds in excellent judges ; but in England I hear it hath made a bookseller almost rich enough to be an alderman. In my judg- ment I should think it had been mangled in the press, for in some parts it doth not seem of a piece, but I shall hear more when I am in England." Dr. Ball, in his second Appendix to the third volume, states that during his work of annotation he has often questioned " how far the letters in existence represent Swift's actual correspondence, and to what circumstances the disappearance of other letters which are known to have been written is due." This has been more especially the case with the letters covering the first period of his residence in Ireland as Dean of St. Patrick's, since the inquiry then has a direct bearing on the nature of the friendships formed by him in Eng- land, and an attempt has been made in regard to that time to analyze the information which is available on the subject.

The examination has shown that the greater number of the letters from Swift's more prominent correspondents have been preserved. There are, however, two of Swift's English correspondents in the series of whose letters gaps are noticeable, namely, Pope and Erasmus Lewis. Dr. Ball says : "In Swift's own opinion there was not one of his Irish friends entitled to rank with the least important of his English acquaintances. In the lists made by him of the distinguished persons whom he had met, the Duke of Ormond is the single individual connected even by descent with Ireland, and amongst the letters in the British Museum collection there are not more than five or six dated from that country ... .The only Irish- man of contemporary eminence with whom Swift maintained constant communication was Archbishop King, and copies of all the letters addressed by him to Swift, with one exception, have been at one time or other obtained from his letter-books."

When we turn to Swift's side of the correspond- ence, the series of letters is almost unbroken in the case of his more notable friends ; but Swift was not a frequent correspondent, and there are many letters in which complaint is made as to his slowness in sending a reply. This may in some measure have been caused by his bad health : he was constantly suffering from giddiness and depression of spirits, while his deafness caused him much uneasiness. His ears had given him trouble half his life. About 1720, Dr. Ball relates, " the attacks became more acute and frequent. Swift and his earlier biographers believed the deafness to be a distinct ailment from the giddi- ness, but Dr. Bucknill explains. .. .that the affection known as labyrinthine vertigo, which was discovered by a French physician, named Me"niere, arises from disease of the auditory organ, and that deafness is one of the symptoms of the disorder."

Dr. Ball has much of interest to say about Vanessa and her correspondence with Swift. In 1711 the friendship had so developed that Vanessa resolved to preserve Swift's letters, and soon she also preserved copies of her own letters to him. Dr. Ball suggests that this might have been from " an idea that the correspondence might be useful if Swift proved recalcitrant," and his opinion is confirmed by the fact that " Vanessa's letters are printed from copies kept by her, and not from the originals. In almost every case such letters of

hers as are forthcoming were sent at times where there was tension between her and Swift, while letters written to him when the prospect seemed brighter are lost."

Contrary to Swift's wishes, Vanessa followed him to Dublin, and two years afterwards the estrangement began ; but Dr. Ball says " the cause of the final rupture must remain a matter of doubt." Vanessa's will, executed on the 1st of May, 1723, " affords ample evidence that she was at enmity with Swift ; she leaves no remem- brance to him, and does not mention his friends Charles Ford, the faithful Glassheel, and Sir Andrew Fountaine, notwithstanding that nine- teen persons, some of whom she had not seen for many years, are named in it."

In Appendix I. in the fourth volume, referring to- Stella, Dr. Ball states that " it is not his intention to solve the insoluble, or to ask others to believe the incredible, but to relate the incidents which cannot be questioned in her history, and to in- dicate their relation to the traditions which linger round her name."

The first event in her life that does not admit of controversy is her baptism on 20 March, 1680/1, in the parish church of Richmond, Surrey. The register gives her name as Hester, although she appears to have herself used that of Esther ;: but the tablet to her memory in St. Patrick's has Hester. Her father was stated to be Edward Johnson, " but there is a widely prevalent opinion that the introduction of Johnson's name was a subterfuge, and that Stella's father was in reality Sir William Temple." Her marriage with Swift is said to have taken place in 1716, at the time- when Stella and her companion were residing at Walls's house over against the Hospital in Queen Street. In opposition to the supposed marriage Dr. Stanley Lane-Poole communicated two deeds to ' N. & Q.' (8 S. ii. 302) relating to- investment transactions between Swift and Stella the first dated 20 May, 1718, and the second, dated 28 November, 1721. Dr. Ball, in referring to these, says: " Dr. Lane-Poole is careful to point > out that in both documents Stella is described as ' Spinster.' " Of the last ten years of her life' the years of absorbing interest little know- ledge is to be gathered. First-hand authorities are few, and the information imparted by them is scanty. Swift's custom was to send verses to Stella on her birthday, the 13th of March. The first of the kind which are known were sent to her in the year 1718/19 :

Stella this day is thirty-four.

In this poem Swift says that he first saw her at the age of sixteen; but in the character of her he began to write on the night of her death, he says that he knew her "from six years old." Dr. Ball states that " for 1719/20 no verses are forth- coming. It is possible that Swift was at the time too ill to write any, and that the poems ' To Stella visiting Me in my Sickness ' and ' To Stella, who collated and transcribed his Poems,' " which were written in that year, " were substituted." We feel some diffidence in calling this in question, as Dr. Ball is such a trustworthy authority ; but was not the poem commencing

All travellers at first incline

written on the occasion of Stella's birthday in 1719/20 ? At the beginning of 1720 Swift was seriously ill, and Stella, although herself in bad