rage, and left without speaking a word.[9] Vanessa, whose health had been
failing for some time, died shortly afterwards, having cancelled a will in
Swift's favour. She left "Cadenus and Vanessa" for publication, and when
someone said that she must have been a remarkable woman to inspire such a
poem, Stella replied that it was well known that the Dean could write finely
upon a broomstick.

Soon after this tragedy Swift became engrossed in the Irish agitation which
led to the publication of the Drapier's Letters, and in 1726 he paid a long-
deferred visit to London, taking with him the manuscript of Gulliver's
Travels. While in England he was harassed by bad news of Stella, who had been
in continued ill-health for some years. His letters to friends in Dublin show
how greatly he suffered. To the Rev. John Worrall he wrote, in a letter which
he begged him to burn, "What you tell me of Mrs. Johnson I have long expected
with great oppression and heaviness of heart. We have been perfect friends
these thirty-five years. Upon my advice they both came to Ireland, and have
been ever since my constant companions; and the remainder of my life will be a
very melancholy scene, when one of them is gone, whom I most esteemed, upon
the score of every good quality that can possibly recommend a human creature."
He would not for the world be present at her death: "I should be a trouble to
her, and a torment to myself." If Stella came to Dublin, he begged that she
might be lodged in some airy, healthy part, and not in the Deanery, where too
it would be improper for her to die. "There is not a greater folly," he
thinks, "than to contract too great and intimate a friendship, which must
always leave the survivor miserable." To Dr. Stopford he wrote in similar
terms of the "younger of the two" "oldest and dearest friends I have in the
world." "This was a person of my own rearing and instructing from childhood,
who excelled in every good quality that can possibly accomplish a human
creature. . . . I know not what I am saying; but believe me that violent
friendship is much more lasting and as much engaging as violent love." To Dr.