Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/371

Rh had never so much as seen her person. Can there be the least doubt then which of them is most likely to be the true one? But not to rest upon authority alone, I will now show that there could not have been the least foundation for some of the blackest calummies cast on the character of this unfortunate lady, in the above quoted passage. The author there says, "That she was happy in the thoughts of being reputed Swift's concubine, but still aiming and intending to be his wife." Now we have already seen what uncommon precautions Swift took on her arrival in Dublin, to conceal from the world all the knowledge of his visiting her; so that it became necessary to her to be as secret as possible on that head, as she knew with certainty, that if it once became a town talk, she should never see him more, and that he would at once drop all correspondence with her, which was the only consolation left her, in that distressed state of mind so feelingly set forth in her letters. So that if she had been so thoroughly depraved, as to place any part of her happiness in a publick loss of character, she could not have been gratified in so singular a taste, without parting with the substance for the shadow: for, in the same sentence it is said, "that she still aimed and intended to be his wife." I believe so preposterous a plan of bringing about a marriage with a man of the smallest degree of honour and character in the world, that of the lady's boasting of being his concubine, never entered into the head of any mortal, but that of the noble remarker on Swift's Life. And indeed the assertion is so utterly void of foundation, that all the intercourse between them, either by visits or letters, was carried on in so VOL. I.