As a contrast to his imperiousness, there is an affectionate simplicity in the fancy names he used to bestow upon his female friends. Sir William Temple's wife, Dorothea, became Dorinda; Esther Johnson, Stella; Hester Vanhomrigh, Vanessa; Lady Winchelsea, Ardelia; while to Lady Acheson he gave the nicknames of Skinnybonia, Snipe, and Lean. But all was taken by them in good part; for his rather dictatorial ways were softened by the fascinating geniality and humour which he knew so well how to employ when he used to "deafen them with puns and rhyme." Into the vexed question of the relations between Swift and Stella I do not purpose to enter further than to record my conviction that she was never more to him than "the dearest friend that ever man had." The suggestion of a concealed marriage is so inconsistent with their whole conduct to each other from first to last, that if there had been such a marriage, instead of Swift having been, as he was, a man of _intense sincerity_, he must be held to have been a most consummate hypocrite. In my opinion, Churton Collins settled this question in his essays on Swift, first published in the "Quarterly Review," 1881 and 1882. Swift's relation with Vanessa is the saddest episode in his life. The story is amply told in his poem, "Cadenus and Vanessa," and in the letters which passed between them: how the pupil became infatuated with her tutor; how the tutor endeavoured to dispel her passion, but in vain, by reason; and how, at last, she died from love for the man who was unable to give love in return. That Swift ought, as soon as Hester disclosed her passion for him, at once to have broken off the intimacy, must be conceded; but how many men possessed of his kindness of heart would have had the courage to have acted otherwise than he did? Swift seems, in fact, to have been constitutionally incapable of the _passion_ of love, for he says, himself, that he had never met the woman he wished to marry. His annual tributes to Stella on her birthdays express the strongest regard and esteem, but he "ne'er admitted love a guest," and he had been so long used to this Platonic affection, that he had come to regard women as friends, but never as lovers. Stella, on her part, had the same feeling, for she never expressed the least discontent at her position, or ever regarded Swift otherwise than as her tutor, her counsellor, her friend. In her verses to him on his birthday, 1721, she says: Long be the day that gave you birth Sacred to friendship, wit, and mirth; Late dying may you cast a shred Of your rich mantle o'er my head; To bear with dignity my sorrow One day alone, then die tomorrow. Stella naturally expected to survive Swift, but it was not to be. She died in the evening of the 28th January 1727-8; and on the same night he began the affecting piece, "On the Death of Mrs. Johnson." (See "Prose Works," vol. xi.)