a veritable dictator. For several years, especially from 1710
to 1713, Swift was one of the most important figures in London. The Whigs
feared the lash of his satire; the Tories feared to lose his support. He
was courted, flattered, cajoled on every side; but the use he made of his
new power is sad to contemplate. An unbearable arrogance took possession of
him. Lords, statesmen, even ladies were compelled to sue for his favor and
to apologize for every fancied slight to his egoism. It is at this time
that he writes in his _Journal to Stella:_

Mr. Secretary told me the Duke of Buckingham had been talking much about me
and desired my acquaintance. I answered it could not be, for he had not yet
made sufficient advances; then Shrewsbury said he thought the Duke was not
used to make advances. I said I could not help that, for I always expected
advances in proportion to men's quality, and more from a Duke than any
other man.

Writing to the Duchess of Queensberry he says:

I am glad you know your duty; for it has been a known and established rule
above twenty years in England that the first advances have been constantly
made me by all ladies who aspire to my acquaintance, and the greater their
quality the greater were their advances.

When the Tories went out of power Swift's position became uncertain. He
expected and had probably been promised a bishopric in England, with a seat
among the peers of the realm; but the Tories offered him instead the place
of dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. It was galling to a man of
his proud spirit; but after his merciless satire on religion, in _The Tale
of a Tub_, any ecclesiastical position in England was rendered impossible.
Dublin was the best he could get, and he accepted it bitterly, once more
cursing the fate which he had brought upon himself.

With his return to Ireland begins the last act in the tragedy of his life.
His best known literary work, _Gulliver's Travels_, was done here; but the
bitterness of life grew slowly to insanity, and a frightful personal
sorrow, of which he never spoke, reached its climax in the death of Esther
Johnson, a beautiful young woman, who had loved Swift ever since the two
had met in Temple's household, and to whom he had written his _Journal to
Stella_. During the last years of his life a brain disease, of which he had
shown frequent symptoms, fastened its terrible hold upon Swift, and he
became by turns an idiot and a madman. He died in