Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 11.djvu/14

fined humour, is a much greater hindrance than any fear of that which is the subject of your letter; I shall speak plainly to you, that the very ordinary observations I made with going half a mile beyond the university, have taught me experience enough not to think of marriage till I settle my fortune in the world, which I am sure will not be in some years; and even then itself, I am so hard to please, that I suppose I shall put it off to the other world. — How all that suits with my behaviour to the woman in hand, you may easily imagine, when you know, that there is something in me which must be employed, and when I am alone turns all, for want of practice, into speculation and thought; insomuch that these seven weeks I have been here, I have writ and burnt, and writ again upon all manner of subjects, more than perhaps any man in England. And this is it which a person of great honour in Ireland (who was pleased to stoop so low as to look into my mind) used to tell me, that my mind was like a conjured spirit, that would do mischief if I would not give it employment. It is this humour that makes me so busy, when I am in company, to turn all that way; and since it commonly ends in talk, whether it be love, or common conversation, it is all alike. This is so common, that I could remember twenty women in my life, to whom I have behaved myself just the same way; and I profess, without any other design than that of entertaining myself when I am very idle, or when something goes amiss in my affairs. This I always have done as a man of the world, when I had no design for any thing grave in it, and what I thought at worst a harmless impertinence; but, whenever I begin to

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