Or again:—­

“The Queen was abroad to-day in order to hunt, but finding it disposed to rain she kept in her coach; she hunts in a chaise with one horse, which she drives herself, and drives furiously, like Jehu, and is a mighty hunter, like Nimrod.  Dingley has heard of Nimrod, but not Stella, for it is in the Bible. . . .  The Queen and I were going to take the air this afternoon, but not together:  and were both hindered by a sudden rain.  Her coaches and chaises all went back, and the guards too; and I scoured into the marketplace for shelter.”

Another day he writes:—­

“Pish, sirrahs, put a date always at the bottom of your letter, as well as the top, that I may know when you send it; your last is of November 3, yet I had others at the same time, written a fortnight after. . . .  Pray let us have no more bussiness, busyness.  Take me if I know how to spell it!  Your wrong spelling, Madam Stella, has put me out:  it does not look right; let me see, bussiness, busyness, business, bisyness, bisness, bysness; faith, I known not which is right, I think the second; I believe I never writ the word in my life before; yes, sure I must, though; business, busyness, bisyness.—­ I have perplexed myself, and can’t do it.  Prithee ask Walls.  Business, I fancy that’s right.  Yes it is; I looked in my own pamphlet, and found it twice in ten lines, to convince you that I never writ it before.  O, now I see it as plain as can be; so yours is only an s too much.”

Chapter LXIV SWIFT—­“GULLIVER’S TRAVELS”

DURING the years in which Swift found time to write these playful letters to Stella he was growing into a man of power.  Like Defoe he was a journalist, but one of far more authority.  The power of his pen was such that he was courted by his friends, feared by his enemies.  He threw himself into the struggle of party, first as a Whig, then as a Tory; but as a friend said of him later, “He was neither Whig nor Tory, neither Jacobite nor Republican.  He was Dr. Swift."* He was now, he says:—­

Lord Orrery.

    “Grown old in politicks and wit,
    Caress’d by ministers of State,
    Of half mankind the dread and hate."*

    Cadenus and Vanessa.

And he felt that he deserved reward for what he had done for his party.  He thought that he should have been made a bishop.  But even in those days, when little thought was given to the fitness of a man for such a position, the Queen steadily refused to make the author of A Tale of a Tub a bishop.

Again Swift felt that he was unjustly treated, and even when he was at length made Dean of St. Patrick’s that consoled him little.  He longed for power, and owned that he was never so happy as when treated like a lord.  He longed for wealth, for “wealth,” he said, “is liberty, and liberty is a blessing fittest for a philosopher.”  And if Swift was displeased at being made only a Dean, the Irish people were equally displeased with him as their Dean.  As he rode through the streets of Dublin to take possession of his Deanery, the people threw stones and mud at him and hooted him as he passed.  The clergy, too, made his work as Dean as hard as possible.  But Swift set himself to conquer them, and soon he had his own way even in trifles.