cimen.

The reader of Swift's "Letter to a Lady on her Marriage," may be allowed
to doubt whether his opinion of female excellence ought implicitly to
be admitted; for, if his general thoughts on women were such as he
exhibits, a very little sense in a lady would enrapture, and a very
little virtue would astonish him. Stella's supremacy, therefore, was
perhaps only local; she was great because her associates were little.

In some Remarks lately published on the Life of Swift, his marriage
is mentioned as fabulous, or doubtful; but, alas! poor Stella, as Dr.
Madden told me, related her melancholy story to Dr. Sheridan, when
he attended her as a clergyman to prepare her for death; and Delany
mentions it not with doubt, but only with regret. Swift never mentioned
her without a sigh. The rest of his life was spent in Ireland, in a
country to which not even power almost despotic, nor flattery almost
idolatrous, could reconcile him. He sometimes wished to visit England,
but always found some reason of delay. He tells Pope, in the decline
of life, that he hopes once more to see him; "but if not," says he, "we
must part as all human beings have parted."

After the death of Stella, his benevolence was contracted, and his
severity exasperated; he drove his acquaintance from his table, and
wondered why he was deserted. But he continued his attention to the
public, and wrote from time to time such directions, admonitions, or
censures, as the exigence of affairs, in his opinion, made proper; and
nothing fell from his pen in vain. In a short poem on the Presbyterians,
whom he always regarded with detestation, he bestowed one stricture upon
Bettesworth, a lawyer eminent for his insolence to the clergy, which,
from very considerable reputation, brought him into immediate and
universal contempt. Bettesworth, enraged at his disgrace and loss, went
to Swift, and demanded whether he was the author of that poem? "Mr.
Bettesworth," answered he, "I was in my youth acquainted with great
lawyers, who, knowing my disposition to satire, advised me, that if any
scoundrel or blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, 'Are you the
author of this paper?' I should tell him that I was not the author;
and therefore, I tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, that I am not the author of
these lines."

Bettesworth was so little satisfied with this account, that he publicly
professed his resolution of a violent and corporal revenge; but the
inhabitants of St. Patric