Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/308

272 have purposely reserved to this place the greater part of such private memoirs, as were not meant to meet the publick eye, in order that I might arrange them also in an uninterrupted train. Nothing has more excited the curiosity of mankind at all times, than that desire which prevails of prying into the secret actions of great and illustrious characters; arising in some, from a too general spirit of envy, which hopes to find something in their private conduct that may sully the lustre of their publick fame, and so bring them down more to a level with themselves: and in others, of a more candid disposition, that they might form right judgments of their real characters; as too many, like actors in a theatre, only assume one when they appear on the stage of the world, which they put off, together with their robes and plumes, when retired to the dressing room. But as the readers of the former sort, are infinitely more numerous, in order to gratify their taste, as well, perhaps, as their own congenial disposition, the writers of such memoirs are too apt to lean to the malevolent side, and deal rather in the more saleable commodity of obloquy and scandal, high-seasoned to the taste of vitiated palates, than in the milder and more insipid food of truth and panegyrick. Many have been the misrepresentations made of Swift, from this uncharitable spirit; and though most of them have been proved to be such by his defenders, yet there are several still left in a state of doubt and uncertainty, through the want of proper information. Among these there is no article about which the world is still left so much in the dark, as his amours. A subject, which, in one of his singular character, is Rh