As Swift’s relations with Stella are the great interests of his life, the subject which occupies every new writer who so much as touches upon him, it is needless to make any excuse for entering into the question with an amount of detail which our limited space would otherwise scarcely justify. The mystery about it lends it an endless attraction, and as, whatever it was, it is the one great love of his life, and represents all the private satisfaction and comfort he got by means of his affections, it has a permanent interest which most readers will not find in the “Tale of a Tub,” or any other of the productions which made this period of his life remarkable. Swift was continually going and coming to London through these years. Though he had begun at once to make Laracor a sort of earthly paradise with a Dutch flavor, such as he had learnt from his early master, and though it was “very much for his own satisfaction” that he had invited Stella to come to Ireland, yet neither of these reasons was enough to keep him in the rural quiet among his willows, though he loved them. He hankered after society, after fame and power. He liked to meet with great men, to hear the news, to ride over weaker reasoners in society, to put forth his own vigorous views, and whip, with sharp satire, the men who displeased him. Tradition and habit had made him a Whig, but political names were of easy interchange in those days, and Swift’s objects were much more definite than his politics. From the moment of Queen Anne’s ascension, when she gratified the Church of England by the remission of certain dues hitherto paid to the crown, Swift’s energies were directed to obtaining a similar remission for the Irish Church, and this was the ostensible object of his repeated journeys to London. He had also a purpose still nearer to his heart, which was the advancement of Jonathan Swift to a post more fitted to his genius. For these great objects he haunted the anterooms of Halifax and Somers and Godolphin, and did what he could to show them what they were not wise enough to perceive, that he was himself an auxiliary well worth securing. The Whig lords played with, flattered, and neglected the brilliant but importunate envoy of the Irish Church, holding him upon tenterhooks of expectation, going so far as to make him believe that his cause for the church was won, and that his bishopric was certain, till disgust and disappointment overcame Swift’s patience. Nine years had passed in these vain negotiations. It was in 1701 that he paid that visit to Farnham which decided Stella’s fate, but his own was still hanging in the balance when, after almost yearly expeditions in the interval, he set out for London in the autumn of the year 1710 with a threat upon his lips. “I will apply to Mr. Harley, who formerly made some advances toward me, and, unless he be altered, will I believe think himself in the right to use me well.” The change was sudden, but it had