“But what success Vanessa met
      Is to the world a secret yet. 
      Whether the nymph to please her swain
      Talks in a high romantic strain;
      Or whether he at last descends
      To act with less seraphic ends;
      Or, to compound the business, whether
      They temper love and books together,
      Must never to mankind be told,
      Nor shall the conscious Muse unfold.”

Such is the poem as we now have it, written, it must be remembered, for Vanessa’s private perusal.  It is to be regretted, for her own sake, that she did not destroy it.

Swift received the reward of his services to the Government—­the Deanery of St. Patrick’s, Dublin—­in April 1713.  Disappointed at what he regarded as exile, he left London in June.  Vanessa immediately began to send him letters which brought home to him the extent of her passion; and she hinted at jealousy in the words, “If you are very happy, it is ill-natured of you not to tell me so, except ’tis what is inconsistent with my own.”  In his reply Swift dwelt upon the dreariness of his surroundings at Laracor, and reminded her that he had said he would endeavour to forget everything in England, and would write as seldom as he could.

Swift was back again in the political strife in London in September, taking Oxford’s part in the quarrel between that statesman and Bolingbroke.  On the fall of the Tories at the death of Queen Anne, he saw that all was over, and retired to Ireland, not to return again for twelve years.  In the meantime the intimacy with Vanessa had been renewed.  Her mother had died, leaving debts, and she pressed Swift for advice in the management of her affairs.  When she suggested coming to Ireland, where she had property, he told her that if she took this step he would “see her very seldom.”  However, she took up her abode at Celbridge, only a few miles from Dublin.  Swift gave her many cautions, out of “the perfect esteem and friendship” he felt for her, but he often visited her.  She was dissatisfied, however, begging him to speak kindly, and at least to counterfeit his former indulgent friendship.  “What can be wrong,” she wrote, “in seeing and advising an unhappy young woman?  You cannot but know that your frowns make my life unsupportable.”  Sometimes he treated the matter lightly; sometimes he showed annoyance; sometimes he assured her of his esteem and love, but urged her not to make herself or him “unhappy by imaginations.”  He was uniformly unsuccessful in stopping Vanessa’s importunity.  He endeavoured, she said, by severities to force her from him; she knew she was the cause of uneasy reflections to him; but nothing would lessen her “inexpressible passion.”