great people, nor will see Lord Treasurer any more, if I go. Lord Treasurer told Mr. Lewis it should be done to-night. So he said five nights ago. Night, MD.

April 21.

The Duke of Ormond has told the Queen he is satisfied Sterne should be Bishop, and she consents I should be Dean; and I suppose the warrants will be drawn in a day or two. I dined at an alehonse with Parnell and Berkeley, for I am not in humour to go among the Ministers, though Lord Dartmouth invited me to dine with him to-day, and Lord Treasurer was to be there. I said I would, if I were out of suspense.

April 22.

The Queen says warrants shall be drawn, but she will dispose of all in England and Ireland at once, to be teazed no more. This will delay it sometime, and, while it is delayed, I am not sure of the Queen, my enemies being busy. I hate this suspense. Night, dear MD.1

TO MR. ADDISON.

May 13, 1713.

I was told yesterday, by several persons, that Mr. Steele had reflected upon me in his Guardian, which I could hardly believe, until, sending for the paper of the day, I found he had,

1 The warrants were at length formally drawn, and the Deanery of St. Patrick's was granted to Swift, on the 25th of April. On the 6th of June the Dean elect writes to Esther Johnson, from Chester, that, after six days' riding on horseback, he has arrived at that city en route for Holyhead and Dublin.

in several parts of it, insinuated, with the utmost malice, that I was author [editor] of the Examiner, and abused me in the grossest manner he could possibly invent, and set his name to what he had written. Now, Sir, if I am not author of the Examiner, how will Mr. Steele be able to defend himself from the imputation of the highest degree of baseness, ingratitude, and injustice?

Is he so ignorant of my temper and of my style? Has he never heard that the author of the Examiner-to whom I am altogether a stranger-did, a month or two ago, vindicate me from having any concern in it? Should not Mr. Steele have first espostulated with me as a friend? Have I deserved this usage from Mr. Steele, who knows very well that my Lord Treasurer has kept him in his employment,1 upon my entreaty and intercession? My Lord Chancellor and Lord Bolingbroke will be witnesses how I was reproached by my Lord Treasurer, upon the ill returns Mr. Steele made to his Lordship's indulgences.

To MR. STEELE.

London, May 27, 1713.

The reason I give you the trouble of this reply to your letter, is because I am going in a very few days to Ireland; and, although I intended to return toward winter, yet it may happen, from the common accidents of life, that I may never see you again.

In your yesterday's letter you are pleased to take the com

1 Of Commissioner in the Stamp Office.

QUARREL WITH STEELE.

143

plaining side, and think it hard I should write to Mr. Addison, as I did, only for an allusion.1 This allusion was only calling a clergyman of some distinction an infidel—a clergyman who was your friend, who always loved you, who had endeavoured, at least, to serve you; and who, whenever he did write anything, made it sacred to himself never to fling out the least hint against you.

One thing you are pleased to fix on me, as what you are sure of that the Examiner had talked after [at the bidding of] me, when he said, Mr. Addison had bridled you in point of party. I do not read one in six of those papers, nor ever knew he had such a passage; and I am so ignorant of this, that I cannot tell what it means—whether that Mr. Addison kept you close to a Party, or that he hindered you from writing about Party. I

1 The former of the two letters from Steele to Swift, in regard to the remonstrance of the latter to Addison, is dated May 19. He writes: "Mr. Addison shewed me your letter wherein you mention me. They laugh at you, if they make you believe your interposition has kept me thus long in office. I am glad I have always treated you with respect, though I believe you an accomplice of the Examiner's. . . . You do not, in direct terms, say you are not concerned with him [the editor]; but make it an argument of your innocence that the Examiner has declared you have nothing to do with him. I believe I could prevail upon the Guardian to say there was a mistake in put. ting my name in his paper; but the English would laugh at us, should we argue in so Irish a manner. I am heartily glad," concludes Steele, " of your being made Dean of St. Patrick's."

Swift's reply to this letter is, in the MS., mutilated at the beginning and end. He reaffirms his interposition with the Ministry, and adds: "this is the history of what you think fit to call, in the spirit of insulting, their laughing at me, and you may do it securely; for, by the most inhuman dealings, you have wholly put it out of my power, as a Christian, to do you the least illoffice. ... I have several times assured Mr. Addison and fifty others, that I had not the least hand in writing any of these papers, and that I had never exchanged one syllable with the supposed author in my life, that I can remember.... I protest I never saw anything more liable to exception than every part of the letter you were pleased to write me. You plead that I do not in mine to Mr. Addison, in direct terms, say I am not concerned in the Examiner. And is that an excuse for the most savage injuries in the world, a week before? How far you can prevail with the Guardian I shall not trouble myself to inquire; and am more concerned how you will clear your own honour and conscience than my reputation."

till

never talked or writ to that author1 in my life; so that he could not have learned it from me. And, in short, I solemnly affirm that, with relation to every friend I have, I am as innocent as it is possible for a human creature to be. And, whether you believe me or not, I think, with submission, you ought to act as if believed me, you you have demonstration to the contrary. I have all the Ministry to be my witnesses, that there is hardly a man of wit of the adverse Party whom I have not been so bold as to recommend often, and with earnestness, to them. For I think principles, at present, are quite out of the case, and that we dispute wholly about persons. In these last you and I differ; but, in the other, I think we agree-for I have, in print, professed myself in politics to be what we formerly called a Whig.

As to the great man,2 whose defence you undertake, though I do not think so well of him as you do, yet I have been the cause of preventing five hundred hard things being said against him.

I am sensible I have talked too much, when myself is the subject; therefore I conclude, with sincere wishes for your health and prosperity, and am, Sir, yours, &c.

You cannot but remember that, in the only thing I ever pub. lished with my name, I took care to celebrate you as much as I could, and in as handsome a manner, though it was in a letter to the present Lord Treasurer.3

1 He means the then editor or conductor of the Examiner. Grammatically, Addison, is "that author;" but that, of course, is not so in fact.

2 The Duke of Marlborough. Swift seems to have reserved to himself the right to vituperate the great Whig General; for the earlier Examiners contain a sufficient amount of strong language against him.

3 A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue, printed in May, 1712. Steele is "celebrated" in his character of editor of The Spectator. In a letter to Esther Johnson, May 31, of the same year, Swift writes: "Have you seen my Letter to the Lord Treasurer? There are two answers come out to it already, though it is no politics, but a harmless proposal about the improvement of the English tongue. I believe, if I writ an essay upon a straw, some fool would answer it."

BADINAGE WITH HESTER VANHOMRIGH.

145

To MRS. VANHOMRIGH.'

Chester, June 6, 1713.

You heard of me from Dunstable, by the way of Hessy. I have had a sad time since. If Moll's even so had been there, she would have none left. Now Hessy grumbles that I talk of Moll. I have resolved upon the direction of my letter already; for I reckon Hessy and Moll are widows as well as you, or at least half widows. Davila 2 goes off rarely now. I have often wished for a little of your ratsbane. What I met on the road does not deserve the name of ratsbane.

I have told Mr. Lewis the circumstances of my journey, and the curious may consult him upon it. Who will Hessy get now to chide, or Moll to tell her stories, and bring her sugar-plums? We never know anything enough till we want it. I design to send Hessy a letter in print from Ireland, because she cannot read writing-hand, except from Mr. Partington. I hope you have heard again from the Colonel, and that he is fully cured of —, I don't know what, I forget. It was under cover to Mr. Lewis that I writ to you from Dunstable. I writ to Hessy, by Barber, from St. Albans. I left London without taking leave of Sir John. I fear a person of his civility will never pardon me.

1 Addressed to "Madame Van. [the mother of Hester], at the sign of the Three Widows, in Pom-roy Alley. With care and speed."

2 Hester Vanhomrigh and he, apparently, had been reading the Italian historian of The Civil Wars of France (1630), together. In a letter of the same date as this of Swift's to her mother, she wrote to him: "Pray why did you not remember me at Dunstable as well as Moll? Lord! what a monster is Moll grown since. But nothing of poor Hess, except that the mark will be in the same place of Davila where you left it. Indeed, it is not much advanced yet, for I have been studying of Rochefoucauld, to see if he described as much of love as I found in myself on Sunday; and I find he falls very short of it."

3 Coffee, probably.-S.

L