STELLA

Three essays (lectures) given by the new president of Smith College who is an authority on Dean Swift. In these lectures his is the tone of authoritative scholarship, wit and keen perception of the three salient factors in the relationship between Swift and his Stella, -- satire, comedy and sentiment. Satire in the gentle raillery of their relationship, in which he replaces the chivalric tradition of Sidney and treats her as a free, intelligent, essentially modern gentlewoman. Comedy, in the domestic pattern of their life, played by Stella with discretion, wit and humor; sentiment, in the very genuine warmth of feeling revealed in his writings to her.