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MEMOIRS OF

ON JEALOUSY.

" O shield me from his rage, celestial Powers !

This tyrant that embitters all my hours.

Ah Love ! you ' ve poorly play ' d the hero ' s part ;

You conquered, but you can ' t defend my heart.

When first I bent beneath your gentle reign,

I thought this monster banish ' d from your train :

But you would raise him to support your throne,

And now he claims your empire as his own ;

Or tell me, tyrants, have you both agreed

That where one reigns, the other shall succeed ? "

The mind pauses on this mysterious story, with

an anxious wish to ascertain its secret causes : and

though time and death have destroyed the perfect

clew to the labyrinth, a few speculations may be ha

zarded from the facts, so far as they are ascertained.

The reasons alleged by Swift himself for the extraor

dinary conditions which he attached to his marriage,

seem merely ostensible ; at least they are such as

never influenced any reasonable being in the same si

tuation ; for they resolve into a desire to conceal

from the world his having had the weakness to break

two private resolutions concerning matrimony, of

which resolutions the world could know nothing.

Terror for the effects the news of his marriage might

produce on the irritable feelings of Vanessa, and a

consciousness that his long concealment of the cir

cumstances which led to it, placed his conduct towards

her in a culpable point of view, must be allowed as