Sheridan he said, "I look upon this to be the greatest event that can ever
happen to me; but all my preparation will not suffice to make me bear it like
a philosopher nor altogether like a Christian. There hath been the most
intimate friendship between us from our childhood, and the greatest merit on
her side that ever was in one human creature towards another."[10] Pope
alludes in a letter to Sheridan to the illness of Swift's "particular friend,"
but with the exception of another reference by Pope, and of a curiously
flippant remark by Bolingbroke, the subject is nowhere mentioned in Swift's
correspondence with his literary and fashionable friends in London.

Swift crossed to Ireland in August, fearing the worst; but Stella rallied, and
in the spring of 1727 he returned to London. In August, however, there came
alarming news, when Swift was himself suffering from giddiness and deafness.
To Dr. Sheridan he wrote that the last act of life was always a tragedy at
best: "it is a bitter aggravation to have one's best friend go before one."
Life was indifferent to him; if he recovered from his disorder it would only
be to feel the loss of "that person for whose sake only life was worth
preserving. I brought both those friends over that we might be happy together
as long as God should please; the knot is broken, and the remaining person you
know has ill answered the end; and the other, who is now to be lost, is all
that was valuable." To Worrall he again wrote (in Latin) that Stella ought
not to be lodged at the Deanery; he had enemies who would place a bad
interpretation upon it if she died there.

Swift left London for Dublin in September; he was detained some days at
Holyhead by stress of weather, and in the private journal which he kept during
that time he speaks of the suspense he was in about his "dearest friend."[11]
In December Stella made a will--signed "Esther Johnson, spinster"--disposing
of her property in the manner Swift had suggested. Her allusions to Swift are
incompatible with any such feeling of resentment as is suggested by Sheridan.