Of the excellent persons who enjoyed such famous hospitality we know little, with the exception of two to be noticed hereafter. But they seem to have been all of one sex. In the short sketch of Mathew’s career that I have plundered so freely, I can find no record of any ladies among the guests. Nor is there any mention of a Mrs. Mathew, which is not surprising, for woman, who knits up the social fabric and keeps civilisation intact, does not favour these noble experiments, these staggering ideals, these gigantic whims; she puts the golden hobby-horse between the shafts or at the end of a towing-line. As a husband and family man Mathew would have been admirable and still the very soul of hospitality, but, you may depend upon it, he would never have carried out his astonishing scheme, never have had his coffee-house and tavern and what not at Thomastown, never have come down to us as one of the most delightful eccentrics of his age. As it was, the life at Thomastown was a purely masculine affair, as remote from femininity as that of a monastery or a college, and better than either, where men not desperately in love could ‘fleet the time carelessly,’ away from their ladies’ eyes.[A] It is fortunate that we do know the names of at least two of those lucky gentlemen who stayed with Mathew, and that one of them happens to be a great man, a man who might be called a ‘hard case’ so far as guests are concerned, a man with a capacity for being displeased that had not its equal in Europe, whose enjoyment may reasonably be taken as the very acid test of Mathew’s scheme--no other than Dean Swift. Yes, we are told that the great Dean himself rode down to Tipperary and spent some time at Thomastown. The fact is not recorded, so far as I know, in any of his numerous biographies; I have taken it on trust from the old volume that contains Mathew himself. Like many other stories, if it is not true it ought to be. But I see no reason to doubt it. [A] But I am assured by a gentleman bearing the same name, and presumably of the same family, as our hero, that actually Mathew was married twice; also that his Christian name was George--“Grand George” he was called.