had unhesitatingly made it clear to her that he could
not return her passion, and that if she could not be satisfied with
friendship the intimacy must cease. To quote Sir Henry Craik, "The
friendship had begun in literary guidance: it was strengthened by
flattery: it lived on a cold and almost stern repression, fed by
confidences as to literary schemes, and by occasional literary
compliments: but it never came to have a real hold over Swift's heart."

With 1716 we come to the alleged marriage with Stella. In 1752, seven
years after Swift's death, Lord Orrery, in his Remarks on Swift, said
that Stella was "the concealed, but undoubted, wife of Dr. Swift....
If my informations are right, she was married to Dr. Swift in the year
1716, by Dr. Ashe, then Bishop of Clogher." Ten years earlier, in 1742,
in a letter to Deane Swift which I have not seen quoted before, Orrery
spoke of the advantage of a wife to a man in his declining years; "nor
had the Dean felt a blow, or wanted a companion, had he been married,
or, in other words, had Stella lived." What this means is not at all
clear. In 1754, Dr. Delany, an old friend of Swift's, wrote, in comment
upon Orrery's Remarks, "Your account of his marriage is, I am satisfied,
true." In 1789, George Monck Berkeley, in his Literary Relics, said
that Swift and Stella were married by Dr. Ashe, "who himself related
the circumstances to Bishop Berkeley, by whose relict the story was
communicated to me." Dr. Ashe cannot have told Bishop Berkeley by
word of mouth, because Ashe died in 1717, the year after the supposed
marriage, and Berkeley was then still abroad. But Berkeley was at
the time tutor to Ashe's son, and may therefore have been informed by
letter, though it is difficult to believe that Ashe would write about
such a secret so soon after the event. Thomas Sheridan, on information
received from his father, Dr. Sheridan, Swift's friend, accepted the
story of the marriage in his book (1784), adding particulars which are
of very doubtful authenticity; and Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets,
says that Dr. Madden told him that Stella had related her "melancholy
story" to Dr. Sheridan before her death. On the other hand, Dr. Lyon,
Swift's attendant in his later years, disbelieved the story of the
marriage, which was, he said, "founded only on hearsay"; and Mrs.
Dingley "laughed at it as an idle tale," founded on suspicion.

Sir Henry Craik is satisfied with the evidence for the marriage