Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/361

Rh in another of October 15, 1720, he says, "When I am not so good a correspondent as I could wish, you are not to quarrel, and be governour, but to impute it to my situation, and to conclude infallibly, that I have the same respect and kindness for you I ever professed to have, and shall ever preserve; because you will always merit the utmost that can be given you; especially if you go on to read, and still farther improve your mind, and the talents that nature has given you."

Indeed the most probable solution of this intricate affair is, that Swift, having lived to such an advanced time of life in a state of continence, and a constant habit of suppressing his desires, at last lost the power of gratifying them: a case by no means singular, as more than one instance of the kind has fallen within my knowledge. This will appear the more probable, when we reflect, that in the letter to his kinsman before cited, he acknowledges himself to be naturally of a temperate constitution with regard to women, and that he had never indulged himself in illicit amours. Nor did it ever appear, even from report, that he had any commerce of that kind with any of the sex, which, after the conspicuous figure he made in life, could not fail of being related by some of his companions in his early pleasures, had there been any foundation for it. This alone can account for his singular conduct with regard to the two ladies: for his coldness to Vanessa, and constant endeavours to bring down the ardours of her passion, and lower them to friendship, or a love more of the platonick kind, and for his abstaining from the lawful pleasures of connubial love with Stella. And I think there is one Rh