respect, yet everyone was at ease in her society.  She preserved her wit, judgment, and vivacity to the last, but often complained of her memory.  She chose men rather than women for her companions, “the usual topic of ladies’ discourse being such as she had little knowledge of and less relish.”  “Honour, truth, liberality, good nature, and modesty were the virtues she chiefly possessed, and most valued in her acquaintance.”  In some Prayers used by Swift during her last sickness, he begged for pity for “the mournful friends of Thy distressed servant, who sink under the weight of her present condition, and the fear of losing the most valuable of our friends.”  He was too ill to be present at the funeral at St. Patrick’s.  Afterwards, we are told, a lock of her hair was found in his desk, wrapped in a paper bearing the words, “Only a woman’s hair.”

Swift continued to produce pamphlets manifesting growing misanthropy, though he showed many kindnesses to people who stood in need of help.  He seems to have given Mrs. Dingley fifty guineas a year, pretending that it came from a fund for which he was trustee.  The mental decay which he had always feared—­ “I shall be like that tree,” he once said, “I shall die at the top”—­became marked about 1738.  Paralysis was followed by aphasia, and after acute pain, followed by a long period of apathy, death relieved him in October 1745.  He was buried by Stella’s side, in accordance with his wishes.  The bulk of his fortune was left to found a hospital for idiots and lunatics.

There has been much rather fruitless discussion respecting the reason or reasons why Swift did not marry Stella; for if there was any marriage, it was nothing more than a form.  Some have supposed that Swift resolved to remain unmarried because the insanity of an uncle and the fits and giddiness to which he was always subject led him to fear insanity in his own case.  Others, looking rather to physical causes, have dwelt upon his coldness of temperament and indisposition to love; upon the repugnance he often showed towards marriage, and the tone of some of the verses on the subject written in his later years.  Others, again, have found a cause in his parsimonious habits, in his dread of poverty, the effects of which he had himself felt, and in the smallness of his income, at least until he was middle-aged.[12] It may well be that one or all of these things influenced Swift’s action.  We cannot say more.  He himself, as we have seen, said, as early as 1704, that if his humour and means had permitted him to think of marriage, his choice would have been Stella.  Perhaps, however, there is not much mystery in the matter.  Swift seems to have been wanting in passion; probably he was satisfied with the affection which Stella gave him, and did not wish for more.  Such an attachment as his usually results in marriage, but not necessarily.  It is not sufficiently remembered that the affection began in Stella’s childhood.  They were