SWIFT AND THE MOHOCKS.

The Mohocks were a society formed by young rakehells of the town; the president was "the Emperor of the Mohocks," and wore as his badge of office, a crescent engraven upon his forehead. Their avowed design was mischief: after drinking themselves mad, they would sally forth, knock down, stab, cut, and carbonado all peaceful passengers they could overtake. Swift half doubted, yet went in some apprehension of these gentlemen. He writes :

Grub-street

Here is the devil and all to do with these Mohocks. papers about them fly like lightning, and a list printed of nearly eighty put into several prisons, and all alive; and I begin to think there is no truth, or very little, in the whole story. He that abused Davenant was a drunken gentleman; none of that gang. My man tells me that one of the lodgers heard in a coffee-house, publicly, that one design of the Mohocks was upon me, if they could catch me; and though I believe nothing of it, I forbear walking late; and they have put me to the charge of some shillings already.-Journal to Stella, 1712.

Swift mentions, among their villanies, "two of the Mohocks caught a maid of old Lady Winchilsea's at the door of her house in the Park with a candle, and had just lighted out somebody. They cut all her face, and beat her without any provocation." A proclamation was made for the suppression of the Mohocks, but with little effect: Swift exclaims, "They go on still, and cut people's faces every night! but they shan't cut mine;-I like it better as it is."

WHO WAS VANESSA?

The young woman Esther Vanhomrigh, who lived five doors from Swift's lodging in Bury-street, and who flattered him and made love to him most desperately. The Dean romantically called her Vanessa. Stella appears to have scented this lady as her rival from the first. Her mother, Mrs. Vanhomrigh, was the widow of a Dutch merchant who held lucrative appointments in King William's time; the family settled in London in 1709, and had a house in Burystreet. In one of his letters Swift tells Stella that he has "visited a lady just come to town," whose name somehow is not mentioned. The Dean did not keep Stella's letters to him in reply to those he wrote to her, so that we can only infer her reception of the above intelligence from Swift's own letters, which Stella kept very carefully. In one, he enters a query of hers-"What do you mean that boards near me,

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that I dine with now and then?' What the deuce! You know whom I have dined with every day since I left you, better than I do." Swift, of course, has not the slightest idea of what she means; but in a few letters more the Doctor tells Stella that he has been to dine " gravely" with a Mrs. Vanhomrigh; then that he has been to "his neighbour;" then that he has been unwell, and means to dine for the whole week with his neighbour! Stella was quite right in her previsions she saw from the very first what was going to happen. The rival is at the Dean's feet. The pupil and teacher are reading together, and drinking tea together, and going to prayers together, and learning Latin together.

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Swift kept up the intimacy after he left his lodgings in Bury-street; for in 1710, when he lodged at Chelsea, we find him leaving his gown and periwig at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, who had now removed to Suffolk-street. Again, the Dean says: "I am so hot and lazy after my morning's walk, that I loitered at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, where my best gown and periwig was, and out of mere idleness dine there, very often; so I did to-day."-Journal to Stella.

Esther Vanhomrigh was under twenty years of age, not remarkable for beauty, but well educated, lively, graceful, spirited; and, unfortunately for Swift, with a taste for reading. He became the director of her studies, and their friendly intercourse was continued until Miss Vanhomrigh made a declaration of affection for him, and proposed marriage. How that declaration was received is related in Swift's poem of Cadenus and Vanessa. Cadenus is decanus (dean) by transposal of letters. His portrait of the lady is not to be trusted. Lord Orrery tells us that

"Vanessa was excessively vain. The character given of her by Cadenus is fine painting, but in general fictitious. She was fond of dress; impatient to be admired; very romantic in her turn of mind; superior, in her own opinion, to all her sex ; full of pertness, gaiety, and pride; not without some agreeable accomplishments, but far from being either beautiful or genteel; .. happy in the thoughts of being reported Swift's concubine, but still aiming and intending to be his wife."

In poor Vanessa's vehement expostulatory verses and letters to Swift, she adores him, admires him, and only prays to be admitted to lie at his feet. She writes:

"You bid me be easy, and you would see me as often as you could. You had better have said, as often as you can get the better of your inclinations so much; or as often as you remember there was such a one in the world. If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be

made uneasy by me long. It is impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw you last: I am sure I could have borne the rack much better than those killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die without seeing you more; but those resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long; for there is something in human nature that prompts one so to find relief in this world I must give way to it, and beg you would see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you'd not condemn any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason I write to you is, because I cannot tell it to you, should I see you, for when I begin to complain, then you are angry, and there is something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb. Oh! that you may have but so much regard for me left that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can; did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me; and believe I cannot help telling you this and live."

The lady's proposal of marriage was declined: but the Dean from vanity, or fondness, or both, had not sufficient firmness to relinquish their affectionate intercourse.

Swift now returned to Ireland, and conscious of his imprudence, endeavoured to limit, as much as possible, the correspondence between himself and Vanessa, probably expecting that their attachment would be diminished by absence; but he was mistaken: she wrote to him frequently, and complained bitterly of his not replying to her letters.

At length Mrs. Vanhomrigh died: her two sons died soon afterwards; and the circumstances of the two sisters being somewhat embarrassed, they resolved to retire to Ireland, where their father had left a small property, near Cellbridge. We have seen that Stella had been from the first suspicious of the intercourse in Bury-street; and in 1714, Vanessa arrived in Dublin, to the annoyance of the Dean, and dread of Stella. Swift saw her very seldom he introduced to her Dean Winter, a gentleman of fortune, and suitor for her hand; but this, and a similar offer, were rejected. Stella's jealousy at length became so restless, that Swift is said to have consented to their marriage, and the ceremony was performed in 1716, in the garden of the Deanery, by the bishop of Clogher; but Swift never acknowledged the marriage. Her subsequently signing her will with her maiden name "Esther Johnson" disproves her marriage with Swift; but this fact, though known to his biographers, was not allowed its due weight against such strong positive evidence as exists on the other side.

In 1717, Vanessa and her sister retired to Marley Abbey, near Cellbridge, of which retreat a Correspondent of Sir Walter

Scott's furnished him with the materials on which to found the following passage :

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"Marley Abbey is built much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external appearance. An aged man (upwards of ninety, by his own account), showed the grounds to my Correspondent. He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh's gardener, and used to work with his father in the garden while a boy. He remembered the unfortunate Vanessa weli; and his account of her corresponded with the usual description of her person, especially as to her embonpoint. He said she went seldom abroad, and saw little company: her constant amusement was reading, or walking in the garden. She avoided company, and was always melancholy, save when Dean Swift was there, and then she seemed happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels. The old man said that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean she always planted with her own hand a laurel or two against his arrival. He showed her favourite seat, still called 'Vanessa's bower.' Three or four trees and some laurels indicate the spot. There were two seats and a rude table within the bower, the opening of which commanded a view of the Liffey. In this sequestered spot, according to the old gardener's account, the Dean and Vanessa used often to sit, with books and writing materials on the table before them.

"But Miss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a union with the object of her affections-to the hope of which she had clung amid every vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most probable bar was his undefined connexion with Mrs. Johnson, which, as it must have been perfectly known to her, had, doubtless, long elicited her secret jealousy, although only a single hint to that purpose is to be found in their correspondence, and that so early as 1713, when she writes to him-then in Ireland—If you are very happy, it is ill-natured of you not to tell me so, except 'tis what is inconsistent with mine.' Her silence and patience under this state of uncertainty for no less than eight years, must have been partly owing to her awe of Swift, and partly, perhaps, to the weak state of her rival's health, which, from year to year, seemed to announce speedy dissolution. At length, however, Vanessa's impatience prevailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. Johnson herself, requesting to know the nature of that connexion. Stella, in reply, informed her of her marriage with the Dean; and full of the highest resentment against Swift for having given another female such a right in him as Miss Vanhomrigh's inquiries implied, she sent to him her rival's letter of interrogatories, and, without seeing him, or awaiting his reply, retired to the house of Mr. Ford, near Dublin. Every reader knows the consequence. Swift, in one of those paroxysms of fury to which he was liable, both from temper and disease, rode instantly to Marley Abbey. As he entered the apartment, the sternness of his countenance, which was peculiarly formed to express the fiercer passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa with such terror that she could scarce ask whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter on the table, and, instantly leaving the house, remounted his horse, and returned to Dublin. When Vanessa opened the packet, she only found her own letter to Stella. It was her death-warrant. She sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed, yet cherished hopes which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained

wrath of him for whose sake she had indulged them. How long she survived the last interview is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few weeks."-And she died in 1723.

When Vanessa died, and Stella heard that Swift had written beautifully regarding her, "That does not surprise me," said Stella, "for we all know that the Dean could write beautifully about a broomstick."

SWIFT'S ANTIPATHY TO PROJECTORS.

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This unconquerable aversion of the Dean is traceable to the ill success of the speculative and expensive projects of his uncle Godwin, by which he became greatly embarrassed. One of these projects was the iron manufactory at Swandlingbar, which the Dean sarcastically describes, in his Essay on "Barbarous Denominations in Ireland," as a most witty conceit of four gentlemen, who ruined themselves with this iron project. Sw. stands for Swift, And. for Sanders, Ling. for Darling, and Bar for Barry. Methinks I see the four loggerheads, sitting in consult, like Smectymnuus, each gravely contributing a part of his own name, to make up one for their place in the iron work; and could wish they had been hanged as well as undone for their wit." He strongly expressed similar feeling upon the following occasion:

"The Dean was at Holyhead, waiting for a fair wind to sail for Ireland, when one Welldon, an old seafaring man, sent him a letter that he had found out the Longitude, and would convince him of it; to which the Dean answered, in writing, that if he had found it out he must apply to the Lords of the Admiralty, of whom, perhaps, one might be found who knew something of navigation, of which he was totally ignorant; and that he never knew but two projectors, one of whom (meaning his uncle Godwin) ruined himself and family, and the other hanged himself; and desired him to desist, lest one or other might happen to him."-Swiftiana. The other unfortunate projector was probably Joseph Beaumont, often mentioned in Swift's Journal, who committed suicide.

That monstrous scheme of commercial gambling, which reached its climax in 1720, in "the South Sea Bubble," was unsparingly lashed by Swift's satire. The caricatures of the Bubble, its knaves and fools, have become rare, and shut up in the cabinets of print-collectors, but Swift's satire is accessible to all well may he exclaim, comparing Exchange Alley to a gulf in the South Sea,

"Subscribers here by thousands float,

And jostle one another down,

Each paddling in his leaky boat,

And here they fish for gold, and drown."