Pope, in Spence's Anecdotes, has left a little picture of the wits at Button's: "Addison usually studied all the morning, then met his party at Button's; dined there, and stayed five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year," (probably 1713,) "but found it too much for me; it hurt my health, and so I quitted it."

Of the commencement of Swift's club intercourse, Sheridan has given this characteristic sketch:

The knot of wits used at this time to assemble at Button's coffee-house; and I had a singular account of Swift's first appearance there from Ambrose Philips, who was one of Mr. Addison's little senate. He said that they had for several successive days observed a strange clergyman come into the coffee house, who seemed utterly unacquainted with any of those who frequented it; and whose custom it was to lay his hat down on a table, and walk backward and forward at a good pace for half an hour or an hour, without speaking to any mortal, or seeming in the least to attend to anything that was going forward there. He then used to take up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk away without opening his lips. After having observed this singular behaviour for some time, they concluded him to be out of his senses; and the name that he went by among them was that of "the mad parson." This made them more than usually attentive to his motions; and one evening, as Mr. Addison and the rest were observing him, they saw him cast his eyes several times on a gentleman in boots, who seemed to be just come out of the country, and at last advanced toward him as intending to address him. They were all eager to hear what this dumb mad parson had to say, and immediately quitted their seats to get near him. Swift went up to the country gentleman, and in a very abrupt manner, without any previous salute, asked him, "Pray, sir, do you remember any good weather in the world?" The country gentleman, after staring a little at the singularity of his manner, and the oddity of the question, answered, "Yes, sir, I thank God, I remember a great deal of good weather in my time.". "That is more," said Swift, "than I can say; I never remember any weather that was not too hot, or too cold; too wet or too dry; but, however God Almighty contrives it, at the end of the year 'tis all very well." Upon saying this, he took up his hat, and without uttering a syllable more, or taking the least notice of any one, walked out of the coffee-house; leaving all those who had been spectators of this odd scene staring after him, and still more confirmed in the opinion of his being mad.-Life of Swift.

Sir Walter Scott gives, upon the authority of Dr. Wall, of Worcester, who had it from Dr. Arbuthnot himself, the following anecdote-less coarse than the version generally told: Swift was seated by the fire at Button's; there was sand on the floor of the coffee-house; and, Arbuthnot, with a design to play upon this original figure, offered him a letter which he had been just addressing, saying, at the same time,

"There sand that.". "I have got no sand," answered Swift," but I can help you to a little gravel." This he said so significantly, that Arbuthnot hastily snatched back his letter, to save it from the fate of the capital of Lilliput.

The St. James's, the Whig coffee-house, was near to if not upon the site of the present No. 87, St. James's-street: here Swift's letters were addressed, and those from Stella were inclosed under cover to Addison. Elliot, who kept the house, was on occasions, placed on a friendly footing with his distinguished guests. In Swift's Journal to Stella, Nov. 19, 1710, we find: "This evening I christened our coffee-man, Elliot's child; when the rogue had a most noble supper, and Steele and I sat amongst some scurvy company over a bowl of punch." At the St. James's foreign and domestic news was to be had.-(Tatler.) Here was preserved a letter of Stella's, in his Journal to whom Swift says: "I met Mr. Harley, and he asked me how long I had learned the trick of writing to myself? He had seen your letter through the glass-case at the coffee-house, and would swear it was my hand." He also tells Stella that in removing from the St. James's to Button's, he had altered for the better.

The old Saturday Club was another of Swift's resorts. He tells Stella, in 1711, there were "Lord-Keeper, Lord Rivers, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Harley, and I." Of the same Club he writes in 1713:

I dined with Lord Treasurer, and shall again to-morrow, which is his day, when all the ministers dine with him. He calls it whipping day. It is always on Saturday; and we do, indeed, usually rally him about his faults on that day. I was of the original club, when only poor Lord Rivers, Lord-Keeper, and Lord Bolingbroke came; but now Ormond, Anglesey, Lord Steward, Dartmouth, and other rabble intrude, and I scold at it; but now they pretend as good a title as I; and, indeed, many Saturdays I am not there. The company being too many, I don't love it.*

In the same year, Swift framed the rules of the Brothers' Club, which met every Thursday. "The end of our Club,"

Swift appears to have thought little of Will's, and its frequenters. He used to say, "the worst conversation he ever remembered to have heard in his life was at Will's coffee-house, where the wits (as they were called) used formerly to assemble; that is to say, five or six men who had writ plays or at least prologues, or had a share in a miscellany, came thither, and entertained one another with their trifling composures, in so important an air as if they had been the noblest efforts of human nature, or that the fate of kingdoms depended on them."

We

says Swift, "is to advance conversation and friendship, and to reward learning without interest or recommendation. take in none but men of wit or men of interest; and if we go on as we began, no other club in this town will be worth talking of." The Journal about this time is very full of Brothers Arran and Dupplin, Masham and Ormond, Bathurst and Harcourt, Orrery and Jack Hill, and other Tory magnates of the Club, or society, as Swift preferred to call it. We find him entertaining his "brothers" at the Thatched House Tavern, at the cost of seven good guineas. Swift was an influential member: he writes, February, 1712:

"We are now, in all, nine lords and ten commoners. The Duke of Beaufort had the confidence to propose his brother-in-law, the Earl of Danby, to be a member; but I opposed it so warmly that it was waived. Danby is not above twenty, and we will have no more boys; and we want but two to make up our number. I stayed till eight, and then we all went away soberly. The Duke of Ormond's treat last week cost 201., though it was only four dishes, and four without a dessert; and I bespoke it, in order to be cheap. Yet I could not prevail to change the house. Lord-Treasurer is in a rage with us for being so extravagant; and the wine was not reckoned, neither, for that is always brought in by him that is president."

*

"Our society does not meet now, as usual; for which I am blamed,” he writes in 1713; "but till Lord-Treasurer will agree to give us money and employments to bestow, I am averse to it, and he gives us nothing but promises. We now resolve to meet but once a fortnight, and have a committee every other week of six or seven to consult about doing some good. I proposed another message to Lord-Treasurer by three principal members, to give a hundred guineas to a certain person, and they are to urge it as well as they can."

In 1714, Swift was again in London, and formed, with Arbuthnot, Pope, and Gay, the Scriblerus Club, to which the world owes The Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of the Parish, written in ridicule of Burnet's History of his own Times, and perhaps the germs of Gulliver.

Swift was great at the October Club of country Members of Parliament, who were for immediately impeaching every leader of the Whig party, and for turning out, without a day's grace, every placeman who did not wear their colours, and shout their cries. The Dean was employed to talk over those of the Club who were amenable to reason; and there are allusions to such negotiations in more than one passage of the Journal to Stella, in 1711. The Club met at the Bell, afterwards the Crown, in King-street, Westminster: it was named from the fondness of the members for October ale.

SWIFT AND THE MOHOCKS.

The Mohocks were a society formed by young rakehells of the town; the president was "the Emperor of the Mohocks," and wore as his badge of office, a crescent engraven upon his forehead. Their avowed design was mischief: after drinking themselves mad, they would sally forth, knock down, stab, cut, and carbonado all peaceful passengers they could overtake. Swift half doubted, yet went in some apprehension of these gentlemen. He writes:—

Here is the devil and all to do with these Mohocks. Grub-street papers about them fly like lightning, and a list printed of nearly eighty put into several prisons, and all alive; and I begin to think there is no truth, or very little, in the whole story. He that abused Davenant was a drunken gentleman; none of that gang. My man tells me that one of the lodgers heard in a coffee-house, publicly, that one design of the Mohocks was upon me, if they could catch me; and though I believe nothing of it, I forbear walking late; and they have put me to the charge of some shillings already.-Journal to Stella, 1712.

Swift mentions, among their villanies, "two of the Mohocks caught a maid of old Lady Winchilsea's at the door of her house in the Park with a candle, and had just lighted out somebody. They cut all her face, and beat her. without any provocation." A proclamation was made for the suppression of the Mohocks, but with little effect: Swift exclaims, "They go on still, and cut people's faces every night! but they shan't cut mine;-I like it better as it is."

WHO WAS VANESSA!

The young woman Esther Vanhomrigh, who lived five doors from Swift's lodging in Bury-street, and who flattered him and made love to him most desperately. The Dean romantically called her Vanessa. Stella appears to have scented this lady as her rival from the first. Her mother, Mrs Vanhomrigh, was the widow of a Dutch merchant who held lucrative appointments in King William's time; the family settled in London in 1709, and had a house in Burystreet. In one of his letters Swift tells Stella that he has "visited a lady just come to town," whose name somehow is not mentioned. The Dean did not keep Stella's letters to him in reply to those he wrote to her, so that we can only infer her reception of the above intelligence from Swift's own letters, which Stella kept very carefully. In one, he enters a query of hers—" What do you mean that boards near me,

6

that I dine with now and then?' What the deuce! You know whom I have dined with every day since I left you, better than I do." Swift, of course, has not the slightest idea of what she means; but in a few letters more the Doctor tells Stella that he has been to dine "gravely" with a Mrs. Vanhomrigh; then that he has been to "his neighbour;" then that he has been unwell, and means to dine for the whole week with his neighbour! Stella was quite right in her previsions: she saw from the very first what was going to happen. The rival is at the Dean's feet. The pupil and teacher are reading together, and drinking tea together, and going to prayers together, and learning Latin together.

Swift kept up the intimacy after he left his lodgings in Bury-street; for in 1710, when he lodged at Chelsea, we find him leaving his gown and periwig at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, who had now removed to Suffolk-street. Again, the Dean says: "I am so hot and lazy after my morning's walk, that I loitered at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, where my best gown and periwig was, and out of mere idleness dine there, very often; so I did to-day."-Journal to Stella.

Esther Vanhomrigh was under twenty years of age, not remarkable for beauty, but well educated, lively, graceful, spirited; and, unfortunately for Swift, with a taste for reading. He became the director of her studies, and their friendly intercourse was continued until Miss Vanhomrigh made a declaration of affection for him, and proposed marriage. How that declaration was received is related in Swift's poem of Cadenus and Vanessa. Cadenus is decanus (dean) by transposal of letters. His portrait of the lady is not to be trusted. Lord Orrery tells us that

"Vanessa was excessively vain. The character given of her by Cadenus is fine painting, but in general fictitious. She was fond of dress; impatient to be admired; very romantic in her turn of mind; superior, in her own opinion, to all her sex ; full of pertness, gaiety, and pride; not without some agreeable accomplishments, but far from being either beautiful or genteel; . . . : happy in the thoughts of being reported Swift's concubine, but still aiming and intending to be his wife.”

In poor Vanessa's vehement expostulatory verses and letters to Swift, she adores him, admires him, and only prays to be admitted to lie at his feet. She writes :—

"You bid me be easy, and you would see me as often as you could. You had better have said, as often as you can get the better of your inclinations so much; or as often as you remember there was such a one in the world. If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be