But, notwithstanding his misanthropical feelings towards mankind in general, and his “scorn of fools by fools mistook for pride,” there never existed a warmer or sincerer friend to those whom he loved—­witness the regard in which he was held by Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, Gay, Arbuthnot, and Congreve, and his readiness to assist those who needed his help, without thought of party or politics.  Although, in some of his poems, Swift rather severely exposed the follies and frailties of the fair sex, as in “The Furniture of a Woman’s Mind,” and “The Journal of a Modern Lady,” he loved the companionship of beautiful and accomplished women, amongst whom he could count some of his dearest and truest friends; but
  He loved to be bitter at
  A lady illiterate;
and therefore delighted in giving them literary instruction, most notably in the cases of Stella and Vanessa, whose relations with him arose entirely from the tuition in letters which they received from him.  Again, when on a visit at Sir Arthur Acheson’s, he insisted upon making Lady Acheson read such books as he thought fit to advise, and in the doggerel verses entitled “My Lady’s Lamentation,” she is supposed to resent his “very imperious” manner of instruction: 

No book for delight
Must come in my sight;
But instead of new plays,
Dull Bacon’s Essays,
And pore every day on
That nasty Pantheon.

As a contrast to his imperiousness, there is an affectionate simplicity in the fancy names he used to bestow upon his female friends.  Sir William Temple’s wife, Dorothea, became Dorinda; Esther Johnson, Stella; Hester Vanhomrigh, Vanessa; Lady Winchelsea, Ardelia; while to Lady Acheson he gave the nicknames of Skinnybonia, Snipe, and Lean.  But all was taken by them in good part; for his rather dictatorial ways were softened by the fascinating geniality and humour which he knew so well how to employ when he used to “deafen them with puns and rhyme.”

Into the vexed question of the relations between Swift and Stella I do not purpose to enter further than to record my conviction that she was never more to him than “the dearest friend that ever man had.”  The suggestion of a concealed marriage is so inconsistent with their whole conduct to each other from first to last, that if there had been such a marriage, instead of Swift having been, as he was, a man of intense sincerity, he must be held to have been a most consummate hypocrite.  In my opinion, Churton Collins settled this question in his essays on Swift, first published in the “Quarterly Review,” 1881 and 1882.  Swift’s relation with Vanessa is the saddest episode in his life.  The story is amply told in his poem, “Cadenus and Vanessa,” and in the letters which passed between them:  how the pupil became infatuated with her tutor; how the tutor endeavoured to dispel her passion, but in vain, by reason; and how, at last, she died from love for the man who was unable to give love in return.