It was a necessary part of his case to impute at least a breach of confidence to his victim.

He therefore took the attitude--it must, one hopes, have cost him a blush--of one who is seriously aggrieved, but who is generously anxious to shield a friend in consideration of his known infirmity.

He is forced, in sorrow, to admit that Swift has erred, but he will not allow himself to be annoyed.

The most humiliating words ever written by a man not utterly vile, must have been those which Pope set down in a letter to Nugent, after giving his own version of the case: "I think I can make no reflections upon this strange incident but what are truly melancholy, and humble the pride of human nature.

That the greatest of geniuses, though prudence may have been the companion of wit (which is very rare) for their whole lives past, may have nothing left them but their vanity.