Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/240

228 she had so long nourished in her bosom, and which, he wisely apprehended, would at some future period kindle a conflagration, from which effects the most fatal were justly to be dreaded. Dazzled at first by the splendour of his conquest, he was prevented from seeing his own conduct in a proper point of view; but when the death of the queen reminded him that Ireland was to be the scene of his remaining years, the thought of wounding her, whom he had invited to that country, by the presence of her rival, shocked the delicacy of his feelings; while the idea of Stella, neglected and forsaken, returned with redoubled force, and once more possessed itself of his mind.

Yet at the moment when he recommended to Vanessa forgetfulness of the past, it is certain he taught what he could not practise, and that what was right was preferred to what was pleasant. In the eye of justice, the claims of Stella were highly forcible. She had, at an early period of life, yielded her affections to the assiduities of Swift. To enjoy his society, she had sacrificed her country and her connexions, and had fixed her abode in a part of the world where people were by no means inclined to put the best construction on the face of things. And it must be owned, that to those who were not behind the curtain, matters wore not an appearance highly favourable to delicacy.

In circumstances like these, to have finally deserted Stella was a piece of cruelty and of villany of which her lover was utterly incapable. His return to Ireland certainly lessened her anxiety, and rendered her situation more tolerable than it could be during his absence. Whatever she might think of the state