t's theory with a somewhat altered conclusion.
It is not true, as a matter of recorded fact, that Swift was incapable
of passion, for when a boy at college he was sought out by various
young women, and he sought them out in turn. His fiery letter to Miss
Waring points to the same conclusion. When Esther Johnson began to love
him he was heart-free, yet unable, because of his straitened means, to
marry. But Esther Johnson always appealed more to his reason, his
friendship, and his comfort, than to his love, using the word in its
material, physical sense. This love was stirred in him by Vanessa. Yet
when he met Vanessa he had already gone too far with Esther Johnson to
break the bond which had so long united them, nor could he think of a
life without her, for she was to him his other self.

At the same time, his more romantic association with Vanessa roused
those instincts which he had scarcely known himself to be possessed of.
His position was, therefore, most embarrassing. He hoped to end it when
he left London and returned to Ireland; but fate was unkind to him in
this, because Vanessa followed him. He lacked the will to be frank with
her, and thus he stood a wretched, halting victim of his own dual
nature.

He was a clergyman, and at heart religious. He had also a sense of
honor, and both of these traits compelled him to remain true to Esther
Johnson. The terrible outbreak which brought about Vanessa's death was
probably the wild frenzy of a tortured soul. It recalls the picture of
some fierce animal brought at last to bay, and venting its own anguish
upon any object that is within reach of its fangs and claws.

No matter how the story may be told, it makes one shiver, for it is a
tragedy in which the three participants all meet their doom--one
crushed by a lightning-bolt of unreasoning anger, the other wasting
away through hope deferred; while the man whom the world will always
hold responsible was himself destined to end his years blind and
sleepless, bequeathing his fortune to a madhouse, and saying, with his
last muttered breath:

"I am a fool!"

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY AND MARY GODWIN

A great deal has been said and written in favor of early marriage; and,
in a general way, early marriage may be an admirable thing. Young men
and young women who have no special gift of imagination, and who have
practically reached their full mental development at twenty-one or
twenty-two--or earlier, even in their teens