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cities as London and Westminster." A clause was added "impowering the King to order his officers to fire upon and sink any ship coming from an infected place." Happily the British Isles escaped the visitation. "The two pair of Shoes extraordry" which Swift bespoke were, no doubt, by way of preparation for the worst. If the plague came he would do his best to preserve his health by exercise. Twelve years later he wrote to a London merchant : Oppressed beggars are always knaves; and I believe there hardly are any other among us. They had rather gain a shilling by knavery than five pounds by honest dealing. They lost £30,000 a year for ever in the time of the plague at Marseilles, when the Spaniards would have bought all their linen from Ireland; but the merchants and the weavers sent over such abominable linen, that it was all returned back, or sold for a fourth part of the value."

XXV.

[Indorsed, “a very merry pleast letter."]

DUBLIN. Mar 13th 1721-2.

SIR, I had a letter from you some time ago, when I was in no Condition for any Correspondence or Conversation; But I thank God for some time past I am pretty well recovered, and am able to hear my Friends without danger of putting

them into Consumptions. My Remedy was given me by my Tayler, who had been four years deaf, and cured himself as I have done, by a Clove of Garlick Steeped in Honey, and put into his Ear, for Wch I gave him half a Crown after it had cost me 5 or 6 Pounds in Drugs and Doctors to no PurposeSurely you in the Country have got the London Fancy, that I am Author of all the Scurvy Things that come out here; the Slovenly Pages called the Benefit of was writt by one Dobbs a Surgeon. Mr Sheridan sometimes entertains the World and I pay for all. So that they have a Miscellany of my works in England, whereof you and I are equally Authors. But I lay all those Things at the Back of my Book, which swells so much, that I am hardly able to write any thing on the Forepart. I think we are got off the Plague, tho I hear an Act of Parl was read in Churches (not in mine) concerning it, and the Wise say, we are in more danger than ever, because infected Goods are more likely to be brought us. For my Part, I have the Courage of a Coward, never to think of Dangers till they arrive, and then I shall begin to squeak. The Whigs are grown such disaffected People that I dare not converse with them; and who your Britton Esq' is, I cannot tell. I hear there is an Irish Paper called the Reformer. I saw part of one Paper, but

it did not encourage me to enquire after more: I keep the fewest Company of any man in this Town, and read nothing that hath been written on this Side 1500 Years; So you may judge what an Intelligencer I am like to be to a Gentleman in the Country, who wants to know how the World goes.

Thus much for your first Letter, your last which came just now is a Condolence on my Deafness. Mr Le brunt was right in my Intentions, if it had continued, but the Effect is removed with the Cause. My Friends shall see me while I am neither troublesome to them nor my self. I was less melancholy than I thought I should have been, and less curious to know what people said, when they talked before me; but I saw very few, and suffered hardly any to stay-People whisper here too, just as they have whispered these 30 years, and to as little Purpose.

I have the best Servant in the World dying in the House, which quite disconcerts me. He was the first good one I ever had, and I am sure will be the last. I know few greater Losses in Life. I know not how little you may make of Stone walls, I am onely going to dash one in the Garden, and think I shall be undone.

I hope y' Lady and Fire side are well.

I am ever &c.

NOTES ON XXV.

Swift, it is said, only once directly owned any piece of writing as his. An Irish bishop, speaking to him of a new pamphlet, said that Burnet was the author. "When Swift seemed to doubt Burnet's right to the work, he was told by the bishop that he was a young man'; and, still persisting to doubt, that he was 'a very positive young man.' 'Then pray,' said the bishop, who writ it?' Swift answered, My Lord, I writ it.' It is to be supposed," adds Sheridan, "that the confession was drawn from him by the heat of the argument." He often complained that pieces were attributed to him which he had never written. "Since I left England," he wrote, "such a parcel of trash has been there fathered upon me, that nothing but the good judgment of my friends could hinder them from thinking me the greatest dunce alive." "Not a few of these alleged productions," writes Mr. Forster, "have found their way into his collected writings by the carelessness of his editors. Anything in the shape of a pun or indecency it was long the fashion to father on him without the least regard to either truth or probability."

So early as 1711 Swift wrote to Stella: "That villain Curll has scraped up some trash, and calls it Dr. Swift's Miscellanies, with the name at large, and I can get no satisfaction of him." A volume of his writings published a little earlier, was genuine, and

had, it seems probable, his approval. Tooke," he wrote, "is going on with my Miscellany." It was brought out by Morphew. "Some bookseller," he continued, "has raked up everything I writ and published it t'other day in one volume; but I know nothing of it; 'twas without my knowledge or consent; it makes a four shilling book, and is called Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. Tooke pretends he know nothing of it, but I doubt he is at the bottom. One must have patience with these things; the best of it is, I shall be plagued no more. However I'll bring a couple of them over with me for M.D. [Stella and her friend], perhaps you may desire to see them. I hear they sell mightily."

Before the beginning of the eighteenth century, according to Bishop Burnet, "the only division in Ireland was that of English and Irish, Protestants and Papists; but of late an animosity came to be raised there like that we labour under in England, between Whig and Tory." Of the terms "Whig and Tory," he says: "I have spoken much against them, and even hated them; but I must use them, they being now become as common as if they had been words of our language."

Swift, writing to Pope about the Irish Whigs, said: I was discoursing some years ago with a certain minister about that Whiggish, or fanatical genius, so prevalent among the English of this Kingdom; his lordship accounted for it by that number of