Stella he had known and taught in her young maidenhood at Sir William Temple's. As has been said, she was called the daughter of his steward and housekeeper, but conjectures are rife that she was Sir William's own child. When Swift removed to Ireland, she came, at Swift's request, with a matron friend, Mrs. Dingley, to live near him. Why he did not at once marry her, and why, at last, he married her secretly, in 1716, are questions over which curious readers have puzzled themselves in vain, and upon which, in default of evidence, some perhaps uncharitable conclusions have been reached. The story of their association may be found in the _Journal to Stella_. With Miss Hester Vanhomrigh (Vanessa) he became acquainted in London, in 1712: he was also her instructor; and when with her he seems to have forgotten his allegiance to Stella. Cadenus, as he calls himself, was too tender and fond: Vanessa became infatuated; and when she heard of Swift's private marriage with Stella, she died of chagrin or of a broken heart. She had cancelled the will which she had made in Swift's favor, and left it in charge to her executors to publish their correspondence. Both sides of the history of this connection are fully displayed in the poem of _Cadenus and Vanessa_, and in the _Correspondence of Swift and Vanessa_. CHARACTER AND DEATH.--Pride overbearing and uncontrollable, misanthropy, excessive dogmatism, a singular pleasure in giving others pain, were among his personal faults or misfortunes. He abused his companions and servants; he never forgave his sister for marrying a tradesman; he could attract with winning words and repel with furious invective; and he was always anxiously desiring the day of his death, and cursing that of his birth. His common farewell was "Good-bye; I hope we may never meet again." There is a painful levity in his verses _On the Death of Doctor Swift_, in which he gives an epitome of his life: From Dublin soon to London spread, 'Tis told at court the dean is dead! And Lady Suffolk, in the spleen, Runs laughing up to tell the queen: The queen, so gracious, mild, and good, Cries, "Is he gone? it's time he should." At last the end came. While a young man, he had suffered from a painful attack of vertigo, brought on by a surfeit of fruit; "eating," he says, in a letter to Mrs. Howard, "an hundred golden pippins at a time." This had occasioned a deafness; and both giddiness and deafness had recurred at intervals, and at last manifestly affected his mind. Once, when walking with some friends, he had pointed to an elm-tree, blasted by lightning, and had said, "I shall be like that tree: I shall die first at the top." And thus at last the doom fell. Struck on the brain, he lingered for nine years in that valley of spectral horrors, of whose only gates idiocy and madness are the hideous wardens. From this bondage he was released by death on the 19th of October, 1745.