Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/313

 hope you will forgive this trouble; and so, with my service to your good wife, I am, good cousin,

"Your very affectionate friend and servant,

"J. ."

This letter was an answer to one from Mr. Kendall, in which he informs him of the reports spread at Leicester that he had paid serious addresses there to an unworthy object, and which Swift therefore thought required this explicit answer. Here we see that he had no other idea of gallantry with the sex, than what served for mere amusement; that he had rather a dread of matrimony, and that he had never engaged in illicit amours, from which he claims no merit, but imputes it to his being naturally of a temperate constitution. This ingenuous letter, written at the most vigorous time of life, will serve as a clue to his conduct toward women ever after.

The only instance that appears of his having any serious thoughts of matrimony, was with regard to a miss Waryng, a lady of the North of Ireland, possessed of a moderate fortune. The circumstances of that affair are laid open in the following letter to that lady, written by Swift in the year 1700, when he was in his 33d year: