ng we know to the contrary.

Mr. Forster brings down his biography no farther than the early part of
1710, so that we have no means of judging what his opinion would be of
the conduct of Swift during the three years that preceded the death of
Queen Anne. But he has told us what he thinks of his relations with
Esther Johnson; and it is in them, as it seems to us, that we are to
seek the key to the greater part of what looks most enigmatical in his
conduct. At first sight, it seems altogether unworthy of a man of
Swift's genius to waste so much of it and so many of the best years of
his life in a sordid struggle after preferment in the church--a career
in which such selfish ambitions look most out of place. How much better
to have stayed quietly at Laracor and written immortal works! Very good:
only that was not Swift's way of looking at the matter, who had little
appetite for literary fame, and all of whose immortal progeny were
begotten of the moment's overmastering impulse, were thrown nameless
upon the world by their father, and survived only in virtue of the vigor
they had drawn from his stalwart loins. But how if Swift's worldly
aspirations, and the intrigues they involved him in, were not altogether
selfish? How if he was seeking advancement, in part at least, for
another, and that other a woman who had sacrificed for him not only her
chances of domestic happiness, but her good name? to whom he was bound
by gratitude? and the hope of repairing whose good fame by making her
his own was so passionate in that intense nature as to justify any and
every expedient, and make the patronage of those whom he felt to be his
inferiors endurable by the proudest of men? We believe that this was the
truth, and that the woman was Stella. No doubt there were other motives.
Coming to manhood with a haughtiness of temper that was almost savage,
he had forced himself to endure the hourly humiliation of what could not
have been, however Mr. Forster may argue to the contrary, much above
domestic servitude. This experience deepened in him the prevailing
passions of his life, first for independence and next for consideration,
the only ones which could, and in the end perhaps did, obscure the
memory and hope of Stella. That he should have longed for London with a
persistency that submitted to many a rebuff and overlived continual
disappointment will seem childish only to those who do not consider that
it was a longing for life. It was there