From every day a lordly banquet To half a joint--and God be thanket! From partridges and venison with the right _fumette_,--to Small beer, a herring, and the Dean. And this was all the sentiment, all the poetry with which the occasion inspired him! Stella naturally hoped, that when her rival was no more, and Swift no longer exposed to her torturing reproaches, that he would do her tardy justice, and at length acknowledge her as his wife. But no;--it would have cost him some little mortification and inconvenience; and on such a paltry pretext he suffered this amiable and admirable woman, of whom he had said, that "her merits towards him were greater than ever was in any human being towards another;" and "that she excelled in every good quality that could possibly accomplish a human creature,"--this woman did he suffer to languish into the grave, broken in heart and blighted in name. When Stella was on her death-bed, some conversation passed between them upon this sad subject. Only Swift's reply was audible: he said, "Well, my dear, it shall be acknowledged, if you wish it." To which she answered with a sigh, "It is _now_ too late!"[122] It _was_ too late!-- What now to her was womanhood or fame? She died of a lingering decline, in January, 1728, four years after the death of Miss Vanhomrigh. Thus perished these two innocent, warm-hearted and accomplished women;--so rich in all the graces of their sex--so formed to love and to be loved, to bless, and to be blessed,--sacrifices to the demoniac pride of the man they had loved and trusted. But it will be said, "si elles n'avaient point aime, elles seraient moins connues:" they have become immortal by their connection with genius; they are celebrated, merely through their attachment to a celebrated man. But, good God! what an immortality! won by what martyrdom of the heart!--And what a celebrity! not that with which the poet's love, and his diviner verse, crown the deified object of his homage, but a celebrity, purchased with their life-blood and their tears! I quit the subject with a sense of relief:--yet one word more.