Shame there might have been, but surely no guilt on any theory except that of an implicit engagement with Stella. That there was something of the kind, more or less definite, and that it was of some ten years' standing when the affair with Vanessa came to a crisis, we have no doubt. When Tisdall offered her marriage in 1704, and Swift wrote to him "that if my fortunes and humor served me to think of that state, I should certainly, among all persons on earth, make your choice," she accepted the implied terms and rejected her suitor, though otherwise not unacceptable to her. She would wait. It is true that Swift had not absolutely committed himself, but she had committed him by dismissing Tisdall. Without assuming some such tacit understanding, his letters to her are unintelligible. He repeatedly alludes to his absence from her as only tolerable because it was for her sake no less than his own, and the details of his petty economies would be merely vulgar except to her for whom their motive gave them a sweetness of humorous pathos. The evidence of the marriage seems to be as conclusive as that of a secret can well be. Dr. Delany, who ought to have been able to judge of its probability, and who had no conceivable motive of misstatement, was assured of it by one whose authority was Stella herself. Mr. Monck-Berkeley had it from the widow of Bishop Berkeley, and she from her husband, who had it from Dr. Ashe, by whom they were married. These are at least unimpeachable witnesses. The date of the marriage is more doubtful, but Sheridan is probably not far wrong when he puts it in 1716. It was simply a reparation, and no union was implied in it. Delany intimates that Vanessa, like the young Chevalier, vulgarized her romance in drink. More than this, however, was needful to palliate even in Swift the brutal allusion to her importunacy in "Gulliver," unless, as is but too possible, the passage in question be an outbreak of ferocious spleen against her victorious rival. Its coarseness need not make this seem impossible, for that was by no means a queasy age, and Swift continued on intimate terms with Lady Betty Germaine after the publication of the nasty verses on her father. The communication of the secret to Bishop Berkeley (who was one of Vanessa's executors) may have been the condition of the suppressing Swift's correspondence with her, and would have exasperated him to ferocity. II