Sir William had left Swift some money; he had also left some to Esther Johnson, the little girl Swift used to teach.  She had grown into a beautiful and witty woman and now she too, with a friend, went to Ireland, and for the rest of her life lived there near Swift.

The strange friendship between these two, between Esther Johnson and Swift, is one of the puzzles in Swift’s life.  That they loved each other, that they were life-long friends, every one knows.  But were they ever married?  Were they man and wife?  That question remains unanswered.

Esther is the Persian word for star; Stella the Latin.  Swift called his girl-friend Stella, and as Stella she has become famous in our literature.  For when Swift was away from home he wrote letters to her which we now have under the name of the Journal to Stella.  Here we see the great man in another light.  Here he is no longer armed with lightning, his pen is no longer dipped in poison, but in friendly, simple fashion he tells all that happens to him day by day.  He tells what he thinks and what he feels, where and when he dines, when he gets up, and when he goes to bed, all the gossiping details interesting to one who loves us and whom we love.  And with it all we get a picture of the times in which he lived, of the politics of the day, of the great men he moved among.  Swift always addresses both Stella and her companion Mistress Dingley, and the letters are everywhere full of tender, childish nonsense.  He invented what he called a “little language,” using all sorts of quaint and babyish words and strange strings of capital letters, M. D., for instance, meaning my dears, M. E., Madam Elderly, or D. D., Dear Dingley, and so on.  Throughout, too, we come on little bits of doggerel rimes, bad puns, simple jokes, mixed up with scraps of politics, with threatenings of war, with party quarrels, with all kinds of stray fragments of news which bring the life of the times vividly before us.  The letters were never meant for any one but Stella and Mistress Dingley to see, and sometimes when we are reading the affectionate nonsense we feel as if no one ought to have seen it but these two.  And yet it gives us one whole side of Swift that we should never have known but for it.  It is not easy to give an idea of this book, it must be read to be understood, but I will give you a few extracts from it:—­

“Pshaw, I must be writing to those dear saucy brats every night, whether I will or no, let me have what business I will, or come home ever so late, or be ever so sleepy; but an old saying and a true one,

    ’Be you lords, or be you earls,
    You must write to saucy girls.’

“I was to-day at Court and saw Raymond among the beefeaters, staying to see the Queen; so I put him in a better station, made two or three dozen of bows, and went to Church, and then to Court again to pick up a dinner, as I did with Sir John Stanley, and then we went to visit Lord Mountjoy, and just now left him, and ’tis near eleven at night, young women.”