Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/383

Rh you, is owing to her solicitation." No wonder therefore if the doctor's humanity was shocked at the last scene which he saw pass between her and the dean, and which affected him so much, that it was a long time before he could be thoroughly reconciled to him.

Yet on the dean's part it may be said, that he was taken by surprise, and had no reason to expect such an attack at that time. We have already seen the motives which induced him to go through the ceremony, and the conditions upon which it was performed. After several years passed without any consequence from it, or any reason offered for publishing this to the world, it seems to have been agreed between them that the whole should be buried in oblivion, as if no such thing had ever happened. Insomuch, that he had recommended it to her to make her will, and bequeath her fortune to a charitable use which he had pointed out to her. The marriage was evidently a mere matter of form, intended only to satisfy some vain scruples of the lady, without any view to the usual ends of matrimony, and therefore was in fact no marriage at all. To acknowledge her as his wife, when in reality she never had been such, would be to give sanction to a falsehood, and at the same time afford an opportunity to busy tongues to draw a thousand inferences prejudicial to his character. Or, if the real state of the case were known, and it were believed that no consummation ever followed on this marriage, yet he thought it would ill become the character of a dignitary of the church, to have it known to the world that he had made a mockery of so sacred a ceremony, though he might reconcile it to himself upon