galling to a proud man
than the feeling that he had been betrayed by his vanity. It is commonly
assumed that pride is incompatible with its weaker congener. But pride,
after all, is nothing more than a stiffened and congealed vanity, and
melts back to its original ductility when exposed to the milder
temperature of female partiality. Swift could not deny himself the
flattery of Vanessa's passion, and not to forbid was to encourage. He
could not bring himself to administer in time the only effectual remedy,
by telling her that he was pledged to another woman. When at last he did
tell her it was too late; and he learned, like so many before and since,
that the most dangerous of all fires to play with is that of love. This
was the extent of his crime, and it would have been none if there had
been no such previous impediment. This alone gives any meaning to what
he says when Vanessa declared her love:

Cadenus felt within him rise
_Shame_, disappointment, _guilt_, surprise.

[Footnote 1: Most of the authorities conclude that Swift never married
Stella. A.M.]

Shame there might have been, but surely no guilt on any theory except
that of an implicit engagement with Stella. That there was something of
the kind, more or less definite, and that it was of some ten years'
standing when the affair with Vanessa came to a crisis, we have no
doubt. When Tisdall offered her marriage in 1704, and Swift wrote to him
"that if my fortunes and humor served me to think of that state, I
should certainly, among all persons on earth, make your choice," she
accepted the implied terms and rejected her suitor, though otherwise not
unacceptable to her. She would wait. It is true that Swift had not
absolutely committed himself, but she had committed him by dismissing
Tisdall. Without assuming some such tacit understanding, his letters to
her are unintelligible. He repeatedly alludes to his absence from her as
only tolerable because it was for her sake no less than his own, and the
details of his petty economies would be merely vulgar except to her for
whom their motive gave them a sweetness of humorous pathos. The evidence
of the marriage seems to be as conclusive as that of a secret can well
be. Dr. Delany, who ought to have been able to judge of its probability,
and who had no conceivable motive of misstatement, was assured of it by
one whose authority was Stella herself. Mr. Monck-Berkeley had it from
the widow of Bishop Berkeley, and she