The Journal to Stella | Page 4

curious. On Swift's death twenty-five of the letters, forming the closing
portion of the series, fell into the hands of Dr. Lyon, a clergyman who
had been in charge of Swift for some years. The letters passed to a man
named Wilkes, who sold them for publication. They accordingly

appeared in 1766 in the tenth volume of Dr. Hawkesworth's quarto
edition of Swift's works; but the editor made many changes in the text,
including a suppression of most of the "little language." The publishers,
however, fortunately for us, were public-spirited enough to give the
manuscripts (with one exception) to the British Museum, where, after
many years, they were examined by John Forster, who printed in his
unfinished "Life of Swift" numerous passages from the originals,
showing the manner in which the text had been tampered with by
Hawkesworth. Swift himself, too, in his later years, obliterated many
words and sentences in the letters, and Forster was able to restore not a
few of these omissions. His zeal, however, sometimes led him to make
guesses at words which are quite undecipherable. Besides Forster's
work, I have had the benefit of the careful collation made by Mr.
Ryland for his edition of 1897. Where these authorities differ I have
usually found myself in agreement with Mr. Ryland, but I have felt
justified in accepting some of Forster's readings which were rejected by
him as uncertain; and the examination of the manuscripts has enabled
me to make some additions and corrections of my own. Swift's writing
is extremely small, and abounds in abbreviations. The difficulty of
arriving at the true reading is therefore considerable, apart from the
erasures.
The remainder of the Journal, consisting of the first forty letters, was
published in 1768 by Deane Swift, Dr. Swift's second cousin. These
letters had been given to Mrs. Whiteway in 1788, and by her to her
son-in-law, Deane Swift. The originals have been lost, with the
exception of the first, which, by some accident, is in the British
Museum; but it is evident that Deane Swift took even greater liberties
with the text than Hawkesworth. He substituted for "Ppt" the word
"Stella," a name which Swift seems not to have used until some years
later; he adopted the name "Presto" for Swift, and in other ways tried to
give a greater literary finish to the letters. The whole of the
correspondence was first brought together, under the title of the
"Journal to Stella", in Sheridan's edition of 1784.
Previous editions of the Journal have been but slightly annotated.
Swift's letters abound with allusions to people of all classes with whom
he came in contact in London, and to others known to Esther Johnson
in Ireland; and a large proportion of these persons have been passed

over in discreet silence by Sir Walter Scott and others. The task of the
annotator has, of course, been made easier of late years by the
publication of contemporary journals and letters, and of useful works of
reference dealing with Parliament, the Army, the Church, the Civil
Service, and the like, besides the invaluable Dictionary of National
Biography. I have also been assisted by a collection of MS. notes
kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. Thomas Seccombe. I have aimed
at brevity and relevance, but it is hoped that the reader will find all the
information that is necessary. Here and there a name has baffled
research, but I have been able to give definite particulars of a very large
number of people-- noblemen and ladies in society in London or
Dublin, Members of Parliament, doctors, clergymen, Government
officials, and others who have hitherto been but names to the reader of
the Journal. I have corrected a good many errors in the older notes, but
in dealing with so large a number of persons, some of whom it is
difficult to identify, I cannot hope that I myself have escaped pitfalls.
G. A. A.

INTRODUCTION.
When Swift began to write the letters known as the Journal to Stella, he
was forty-two years of age, and Esther Johnson twenty-nine. Perhaps
the most useful introduction to the correspondence will be a brief
setting forth of what is known of their friendship from Stella's
childhood, the more specially as the question has been obscured by
many assertions and theories resting on a very slender basis of fact.
Jonathan Swift, born in 1667 after his father's death, was educated by
his uncle Godwin, and after a not very successful career at Trinity
College, Dublin, went to stay with his mother, Abigail Erick, at
Leicester. Mrs. Swift feared that her son would fall in love with a girl
named Betty Jones, but, as Swift told a friend, he had had experience
enough "not to think of marriage till I settle my fortune in the