ute a year or more"), and the verses abound
in laughing allusions to her advancing years and wasting form. Hers was
"an angel's face a little cracked," but all men would crowd to her door
when she was fourscore. His verses to her had always been

"Without one word of Cupid's darts,
Of killing eyes, or bleeding hearts;
With friendship and esteem possessed,
I ne'er admitted Love a guest."

Her only fault was that she could not bear the lightest touch of blame.
Her wit and sense, her loving care in illness--to which he owed that
fact that he was alive to say it--made her the "best pattern of true
friends." She replied, in lines written on Swift's birthday in 1721,
that she was his pupil and humble friend. He had trained her judgment
and refined her fancy and taste:--

"You taught how I might youth prolong
By knowing what was right and wrong;
How from my heart to bring supplies
Of lustre to my fading eyes;
How soon a beauteous mind repairs
The loss of changed or falling hairs;
How wit and virtue from within
Send out a smoothness o'er the skin
Your lectures could my fancy fix,
And I can please at thirty-six."

In 1723 Vanessa is said to have written to Stella or to Swift--there are
discrepancies in the versions given by Sheridan and Lord Orrery, both
of whom are unreliable--asking whether the report that they were married
was true. Swift, we are told, rode to Celbridge, threw down Vanessa's
letter in a great rage, and left without speaking a word.(9) Vanessa,
whose health had been failing for some time, died shortly afterwards,
having cancelled a will in Swift's favour. She left "Cadenus and
Vanessa" for publication, and when someone said that she must have been
a remarkable woman to inspire such a poem, Stella replied that it was
well known that the Dean could write finely upon a broomstick.

Soon after this tragedy Swift became engrossed in the Irish agitation
which led to the publication of the Drapier's Letters, and in 1726 he
paid a long-deferred visit to London, taking with him the manuscript
of Gulliver's Travels. While in England he was harassed by bad news of
Stella, who had been in continued ill-health for some years. His letters
to friends in Dublin show how greatly he suffered. To the Rev. John
Worrall he wrote, in a letter which he begged him to burn, "What you
tell me of Mrs. Johnson I have long expected with great oppres