_Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Selbridge, 1720._ "Believe me, it is with the utmost regret that I now write to you, because I know your good-nature such that you cannot see any human creature miserable without being sensibly touched. Yet what can I do? I must either unload my heart, and tell you all its griefs, or sink under the inexpressible distress I now suffer by your prodigious neglect of me. It is now ten long weeks since I saw you, and in all that time I have never received but one letter from you, and a little note with an excuse. Oh, have you forgot me? You endeavour by severities to force me from you. Nor can I blame you; for, with the utmost distress and confusion, I behold myself the cause of uneasy reflections to you. Yet I cannot comfort you, but here declare that it is not in the power of art, time, or accident, to lessen the inexpressible passion I have for ----. Put my passion under the utmost restraint, send me as distant from you as the earth will allow; yet you cannot banish those charming ideas which will ever stick by me whilst I have the use of memory. Nor is the love I bear you only seated in my soul; for there is not a single atom of my frame that is not blended with it. Therefore do not flatter yourself that separation will ever change my sentiments; for I find myself unquiet in the midst of silence, and my heart is at once pierced with sorrow and love. For Heaven's sake, tell me what has caused this prodigious change in you which I have found of late."
_Miss Vanhomrigh to Swift: Dublin, 1720._ * * "I believe you thought I only rallied when I told you the other night that I would pester you with letters. Once more I advise you, if you have any regard for your quiet, to alter your behaviour quickly; for I do assure you I have too much spirit to sit down contented with this treatment. Because I love frankness extremely, I here tell you now that I have determined to try all manner of human arts to reclaim you; and, if all these fail, I am resolved to have recourse to the black one, which, it is said, never does. Now see what inconveniency you will bring both yourself and me unto * *. When I undertake a thing, I don't love to do it by halves."
_Swift to Miss Vanhomrigh: Dublin, 1720._ "If you write as you do, I shall come the seldomer on purpose to be pleased with your letters, which I never look into without wondering how a brat that cannot read can possibly write so well. * * Raillery apart, I think it inconvenient, for a hundred reasons, that I should make your house a sort of constant dwelling-place. I will certainly come as often as I conveniently can; but my health and the perpetual run of ill weather hinder me from going out in the morning, and my afternoons are taken up I know not how; so that I am in rebellion with a hundred people besides yourself for not seeing them. For the rest, you need make use of no other black art besides your ink. It is a pity your eyes are not black, or I would have said the same; but you are a white witch, and can do no mischief."