Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/546

 522 SWIFT SWIMMING ceived a strong friendship for Esther Johnson, daughter of a woman who was for many years an attendant upon Temple's sister, Lady Gif- furd. Swift's account of Esther is that "her father was a younger brother of a good family in Nottinghamshire, her mother of a lower de- gree." Swift on his first settlement in Ireland invited this young lady (named Stella in his poems) to Laracor, and with a friend, Mrs. Dingley, she came and resided near him. They were intimate, saw each other often, and cor- responded when apart; and she attended to his household in his absence. Subsequently, in London, he became acquainted with Hester Vanhomrigh, a spirited, intelligent, and accom- plished girl, whom he kindly noticed and aided in her studies. She conceived for him a pas- sion so earnest that she proposed marriage, which he declined, but without discouraging her advances ; and after the death of her moth- er she went to Ireland (1714) to dwell in his vicinity. Vanessa (the name he gave her), ignorant for a time of his relations to Stella, endured his coldness with hope of a favorable change, till in 1717 she retired with her sister to Marley abbey to live in deep seclusion. Meantime Stella urged her claims, and won his consent under the stipulation of perpetual secrecy; and they were married privately in the garden of the deanery in 1716. Their re- lations had been, and because of this secrecy continued to be, equivocal. Vanessa's sister being ill, Swift several times visited the ab- bey; but receiving no other encouragement, and tormented by suspicion and impatience, Vanessa wrote to Stella to ascertain the na- ture of her intimacy with Swift. The dean, getting possession of the letter, rode directly to Marley abbey, flung it upon the table be- fore Vanessa with a frown which struck her dumb with terror, and instantly departed. The unhappy woman survived this shock but a few weeks, and Swift, overcome by shame and remorse, retired for two months to soli- tude in the south of Ireland. After her death appeared his poem " Cadenus and Vanessa," describing the manner in which Swift (per- sonified as Cadenus, an anagram of Desanus, the dean) received the early advances of Miss Vanhomrigh. Five years later Stella herself died, without any public recognition of her marriage. Swift produced in 1720 "A De- fence of English Commodities, being an An- swer to the Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures," followed in 1724 by the celebrated "Drapier's Letters," in oppo- sition to the royal grant authorizing Wood to coin 108,000 in halfpence and farthings for general circulation in Ireland. The au- thor denounced the whole system of govern- ment in Ireland with a vigor and point which aroused a powerful popular feeling in his fa- vor. His effigy was produced on signs and medals, and distributed broadcast in innumer- able prints; and so powerful became his in- fluence with the lower classes that Walpole, when meditating legal proceedings against him, was told that it would require 10,000 men to arrest him. In 1726 appeared his " Gulli- ver's Travels," a series of satires on human nature and society, the most original and ex- traordinary of all his productions, and that by which he will be known while the lan- guage lasts. In 1726 and 1727 he made vis- its to England, renewing his intimacy with Pope, Gay, Bolingbroke, Arbuthnot, and others of his early friends ; but after the death of Stella he never left Ireland. For several years he wrote with vigor and increasing bitterness on Irish affairs, and amused himself with com- posing verses, the humor of which is more than equalled by the fierceness and obscenity of the satire; but by 1736 his health became so undermined by frequently recurring attacks of deafness and vertigo, to which he had been subject from an early age, as to preclude further literary labors. His infirmities rapidly increased after this, and in a corresponding degree his memory and intellect decayed. In the latter part of 1740 his memory almost en- tirely left him, and frequent fits of passion at length terminated in furious lunacy. This sub- sided in 1742, and he passed the last three years of his life in a condition of speechless torpor. He was interred in the cathedral, amid extravagant demonstrations of popular respect. He bequeathed the bulk of his prop- erty, amounting to 10,000, to found a hos- pital for insane persons. Swift was tall and well made, with a swarthy complexion, and a cast of face that would have been heavy but for the pleasing expression of his eyes. Some posthumous works of Swift were published long after his death, including "A History of the four last Years of Queen Anne; " " Polite Conversation," a satire on the frivolities of fashionable life; and "Directions for Ser- vants." A complete edition of his writings was published in 19 vols. by Sir Walter Scott, whose biography of him is still the standard one. That by Dr. Johnson, in his " Lives of the Poets," reflects too closely the dislike which the biographer always entertained for Swift. There is also a copious life by Thomas Sheri- dan, and an account of his latter years by Dr. Wilde of Dublin, written on the occasion of the remains of Swift and Stella being exhumed, during some repairs in St. Patrick's cathedral, in 1835. The character of Swift is the subject of an elaborate essay by Thackeray, included in his " British Humorists." See also the " Life of Jonathan Swift," by John Forster, including numerous poems and other matter hitherto unpublished (London, 1875 et seq. SWIMMING, the art of keeping the body afloat and propelling it by means of the hands and feet. The swimming of man is artificial, but as the specific gravity of the human body is very little greater than that of water, it can be floated with little difficulty. The support is greatly increased by propulsion, just as a thin flat stone is prevented from sinking by