The Journal to Stella is interesting from many points of view: for its
bearing upon Swift's relations with Stella and upon his own character; for the
light which it throws upon the history of the time and upon prominent men of
the day; and for the illustrations it contains of the social life of people of
various classes in London and elsewhere. The fact that it was written without
any thought of publication is one of its greatest attractions. Swift jotted
down his opinions, his hopes, his disappointments, without thought of their
being seen by anybody but his correspondents. The letters are transparently
natural. It has been said more than once that the Journal, by the nature of
the case, contains no full-length portraits, and hardly any sketches. Swift
mentions the people he met, but rarely stops to draw a picture of them. But
though this is true, the casual remarks which he makes often give a vivid
impression of what he thought of the person of whom he is speaking, and in
many cases those few words form a chief part of our general estimate of the
man. There are but few people of note at the time who are not mentioned in
these pages. We see Queen Anne holding a Drawing-room in her bedroom: "she
looked at us round with her fan in her mouth, and once a minute said about
three words to some that were nearest her." We see Harley, afterwards the
Earl of Oxford, "a pure trifler," who was always putting off important
business; Bolingbroke, "a thorough rake"; the prudent Lord Dartmouth, the
other Secretary of State, from whom Swift could never "work out a dinner."
There is Marlborough, "covetous as Hell, and ambitious as the prince of it,"
yet a great general and unduly pressed by the Tories; and the volatile Earl of
Peterborough, "above fifty, and as active as one of five-and-twenty"--"the
ramblingest lying rogue on earth." We meet poor Congreve, nearly blind, and
in fear of losing his commissionership; the kindly Arbuthnot, the Queen's
physician; Addison, whom Swift met more and more rarely, busy with the
preparation and production of Cato; Steele, careless as ever, neglecting
important appointments, and "governed by his wife most abominably"; Prior,