He had not been in Ireland more than a fortnight when he returned to England for the purpose of attempting, but in vain, a reconciliation between the Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke. While in England, he wrote his ‘Free Thoughts on the Present State of Affairs.’ He was probably still watching the issues of time or chance; but the Queen’s death sealed his political and clerical doom, and he returned to Ireland. To the interval between 1714 and 1720 Lord Orrery ascribes ‘Gulliver’s Travels.’ His mind was at this time much engrossed by a remarkable circumstance. He had formed an intimacy in England with the family of a Dutch merchant, named Vanhomrigh. The eldest daughter, strangely enough, became enamoured of Swift’s mind, for it could not be of a most homely person, nearly fifty years of age. She proposed marriage: this he declined, and wrote his poem of ‘Cadenus and Vanessa’ on the occasion. On her mother’s death, the young lady and her sister followed him to Ireland; the intercourse was continued, and the proposal renewed on her part. This it was absolutely necessary to decline, as the Dean was already married; but he lived with Stella on the same distant footing as before, and was reluctant either to inflict pain, or to forego his own pleasure, by an avowal of the insuperable obstacle. Vanessa continued to receive his visits, but so guardedly as not absolutely to forfeit her good name. She became however more and more urgent; and peremptorily pressed him to accept or reject her as his wife. Failing to obtain a direct answer, she addressed a note to Miss Johnson, desiring to know whether she were married to him, or not. Stella sent this note to Swift, who in a paroxysm of anger rode to Vanessa’s house, threw a paper containing her own note on the table, and quitted her without a word. This blow she did not survive many weeks. She died in 1723, having first cancelled a will in the Dean’s favour. Vanessa by will ordered her correspondence with Swift to be published, as well as ‘Cadenus and Vanessa,’ in which he had proclaimed her excellence and confessed his love. The letters were suppressed; the poem was published. This, whether meant as an apology for herself, or as a posthumous triumph over her more successful rival, occasioned a great shock and distress both to Stella and the Dean. It is said that at length, probably as a softening to the mortification incident to the public discovery of his passion for Vanessa, he desired that Stella might be publicly owned as his wife; but her health was rapidly declining. She said, perhaps petulantly, “It is too late,” and insisted that they should continue to live as before. To this the Dean consented, and allowed her to dispose of her fortune, by her own name, in public charity. She died in 1727.