Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/335

Rh Yet, now and then, your men of wit, Will condescend to pick a bit. So when  could not hide, He chose to justify his pride; Construing the passion she had shown, Much to her praise, more to his own. Nature, in him, had merit plac'd, In her, a most judicious taste.

Having thus artfully brought over his pride and self-love to her party, and corrupted his judgment by the most flattering arguments, the lady found no difficulty to make a conquest of his now unguarded heart, which, however reluctantly, he was obliged to surrender at discretion. He now for the first time felt what the passion of love was, with all its attendant symptoms, which he had before known only from description, and which he was now enabled to describe himself in the strongest colours:

Love! why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet: Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.

To his lot indeed there fell a much greater proportion of the bitter ingredients, than of the sweets of love. He might say with Othello,

Oh now for ever Farewel the tranquil mind, farewel content!

All the pleasing scenes of sober sedate happiness, which he had formed to himself for the rest of his days, in the society of Stella, were now overshadowed and eclipsed by the intervention of a brighter ject,