the high society into which his talents and his political connexions had introduced him; and for her, he neglected, as he tells us— Whate'er the world thinks wise and grave, My useful books and serious muse, to bury himself with her in some low tavern for weeks together. Once when they quarrelled, she ran away and carried off his plate; but even this could not shake his constancy: at his death he left her all he possessed, and she-his Chloe-at whose command and in whose honour he wrote his "Henry and Emma,”-married a cobler!* Such was Prior's Chloe. Is it surprising that the works of a poet once so popular, should now be banished from a Lady's library?—a banishment from which all his sprightly wit cannot redeem him.-But because Prior's love for this woman was real, and that he was really a man of feeling and genius, though debased by low and irregular habits, there are some sweet * Spence's Anecdotes. touches scattered through his poetry, which show how strong was the illusion in his fancy:--as in "Chloe Jealous." Reading thy verse, "who " said I, cares, "If here or there his glances flew ? O free for ever be his eye, Whose heart to me is always true!" And in his “Answer to Chloe Jealous.” O when I am wearied with wandering all day, To thee, my delight, in the evening I come. They were but my visits, but thou art my home! The address to Chloe, with which the "Nutbrown Maid" commences, Thou, to whose eyes I bend, &c. will ever be admired, and the poem will always find readers among the young and gentle-hearted, who have not yet learned to be critics or to tremble at the fiat of Dr. Johnson. It is perhaps one of the most popular poems in the language. 240 CHAPTER XIV. STELLA AND VANESSA. So Though IT is difficult to consider Swift as a poet. many unamiable, disagreeable, unpoetical ideas. are connected with his name, that, great as he was in fame and intellectual vigour, he seems as misplaced in the temple of the muses as one of his own yahoos. But who has not heard of "Swift's Stella ?" and of Cadenus and Vanessa? all will confess that the two devoted women, who fell victims to his barbarous selfishness, and whose names are eternally linked with the history of our literature, are far more interesting, from their ill-bestowed, ill-requited and passionate attachment to him, than by any thing he ever sung or said of them.* Nay, his longest, his most elaborate, and his most admired poem-the avowed history of one of his attachments-with its insipid tawdry fable, its conclusion, in which nothing is concluded, and the inferences we are left to draw from it, would have given but an ignominious celebrity to poor Vanessa, if truth and time, and her own sweet nature, had not redeemed her. I pass over Swift's early attachment to Jane Waryng, whom he deserted after a seven years' engagement: she is not in any way connected with his literary history,-and what became of her afterwards is not known. He excused himself by * As Swift said truly and wittily of himself: some pitiful subterfuges about fortune; but it appears, from a comparison of dates, that the occasion of his breaking off with her, was his rising partiality for another. When Swift was an inmate of Sir William Temple's family at Moor Park, he met with Esther Johnson, who appears to have been a kind of humble companion to Sir William's niece, Miss Gifford. She is said by some to have been the daughter of Sir William's steward; by others we are told that her father was a London merchant, who had failed in business. This was the interesting and ill-fated woman, since renowned as "Swift's Stella." She was then a blooming girl of fifteen, with silky black hair, brilliant eyes, and delicate features. Her disposition was gentle and affectionate; and she had a mind of no common order. Swift sometimes employed his leisure in instructing Sir William's niece, and Stella was the companion of her studies. Her beauty, talents, and docility, interested her preceptor, who, though considerably older than herself, was in the vigour |