MRS. MANLEY'S MEMOIRS.

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account for me to come to England. I would not trouble you for advice if I knew where else to ask it. We expect every day to hear of my Lord President's removal. If he were to continue, I might, perhaps, hope for some of his good offices. You ordered me to give you a memorial of what I had in my thoughts. There were two things.1 Dr. South's prebend and sinecure, or the place of Historiographer. But, if things go on in the train they are now, I shall only beg you, when there is an account to be depended on for a new Government here, that you will give me early notice to procure an addition to my fortunes. And with saying so, I take my leave of troubling you with myself.

I do not desire to hear from you till you are out of hearing at Malmsbury. I long till you have some good account of your Indian affairs, so as to make public business depend upon you, and not you upon that. I red your character in Mrs. Manly's noble [notable?] Memoirs of Europe. It seems to me as if she had about two thousand epithets and fine words packed up in a bag; aud that she pulled them out by handfuls and strewed them on her paper, where about once in five hundred times they happen to be right. My Lord Lieutenant, we reckon, will leave us in a fortnight. I led him, by a question, to tell me he did not expect to continue in the Government, nor would, when all his friends were out. Pray, take some occasion to let my Lord Halifax know the sense I have of the favour he intended me. I am, with great respect, &c.

1 Places, i.e., which Swift would be ready to accept.

2 For which borough Addison was then a candidate, and afterwards member.-S.

TO DEAN STERNE.

London, September 26, 1710.

One would think this an admirable place from whence to fill a letter. Yet, when I come to examine particulars, I find they either consist of news, which you hear as soon by the public papers, or of persons and things to which you are a stranger, and are the wiser and happier for being so.

2

Here have been great men every day resigning their places; a resignation as sincere as that of a usurer on his death-bed. Here are some that fear being whipped because they have broken their rod1; and some that may be called to an account, because they could not cast one up. There are now not much above a dozen great employments to be disposed of; which, according to our computation, may be done in as many days. Patrick assures me his acquaintance are all very well satisfied without these changes, which I take for no ill-symptom; and it is certain the Queen has never appeared so easy or so cheerful. I found my Lord Godolphin the worst dissembler of any of them that I have talked to; and no wonder, since his loss and danger are greater, besides the addition of age and complexion. My Lord-Lieutenant [Wharton] is gone to the country, to bustle about elections. He is not yet removed, because they say it will be requisite to supersede him by a successor, which the Queen has not fixed on; nor is it agreed whether the Duke of Shrewsbury, or Ormond, stands fairest. I speak only for this morning, because reports change every twenty-four hours.

Meantime the pamphlets and half-sheets grow so upon our

1 Alluding to the forced resignation of Sidney Godolphin, the Lord Treasurer or Premier, the outward and visible sign of whose office was a Staff. Upon this fact Swift founded his political squib-Sid Hamet's Rod-brought out soon after this date.

2 Compare his Journal to Stella under this date. Patrick was his Irish manscrvant, who figures so frequently in that series of letters.

PRESTIGE OF PLACE AND POWER.

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hands, it will very well employ a man every day from morning till night to read them; and so, out of perfect despair, I never read any at all. The Whigs, like an army beat three-quarters out of the field, begin to skirmish, but faintly; and deserters daily come over. We are amazed to find our mistakes, and how it was possible to see so much merit where there was none, and to overlook it where there was so much. When a great Minister has lost his place, immediately virtue, honour, and wit, fly over to his successor, with the other ensigns of his office. Since I left off writing, I received a letter from my Lord Archbishop of Dublin, or rather two letters, upon these memorials. I think immediately to begin my soliciting, though they are not very perfect, for I would be glad to know whether my Lord Archbishop would have the same method taken here that has been done in England, and settle it by Parliament. But, however, that will be time enough thought of this good while. . . . . I would much rather be now in Ireland drinking your good wine, looking over while you lost a crown at penny ombre. I am weary of the caresses of great men out of place. The Comptroller 2 expects every day the Queen's commands to break his staff. He is the best great Household Officer they intend to turn out. My Lord-Lieutenant is yet in, because they cannot agree about his successor.

To MISS JOHNSON.

London, September 21, 1710.

Here must I begin another letter on a whole sheet, for fear saucy little MD3 should be angry, and think much that the

1 On behalf of the Irish Church. See Life and Writings of Swift.

2 Sir John Holland, Bart.

Initials, apparently, of My Dear, or of some similar term of endearment.

paper is too little. I had your letter this night, as I told you just and no more in my last; for this must be taken up in answering yours, saucebox. I believe I told you where I dined to-day; and to-morrow I go out of town for two days to dine with the same company on Sunday, Molesworth, the Florence Envoy, Stratford, and some others. I heard to-day that a gentleman from Lady Giffard's house had been at the coffeehouse to enquire for me. It was Stella's mother, I suppose. I shall send her a penny post letter to-morrow, and contrive to see her without hazarding seeing Lady Giffard, which I will not do until she begs my pardon. 2

September 23.

Here is such a stir and bustle with this little MD of ours, and I must be writing every night. I cannot go to bed without a word to them. I cannot put out my candle till I have bid them good-night. O Lord, O Lord! Well, I dined, the first time to-day, with Will Frankland and his fortune; she is not very handsome. Did I not say I would go out of town to-day? I hate lying abroad and clutter. I go to-morrow in Frankland's chariot, and come back at night. Lady Berkeley has invited me to Berkeley Castle, and Lady Betty Germaine to Drayton, in Northamptonshire, and I will go to neither. Let me alone; I

4

1 Envoy-Extraordinary to the Gran Duca of Tuscany. He afterwards succeeded to the peerage as second Viscount Molesworth. Stratford, an old school and college friend of Swift, according to The Spectator (cccliii.), "with the abilities of a common scrivener," was worth £100,000. He lent the Government £40,000.

2 With Sir William Temple's sister Swift had quarrelled, on the matter of his publication of Temple's posthumous writings. In his second letter (Sept. 9) he had reported: "I hear my Lady Giffard is much at Court, and Lady Wharton [the wife of the late Lord-Lieutenant] was ridiculing it the other day. So I have lost a friend there. I have not yet seen her, nor intend it; but I will contrive to see Stella's mother some other way." Mrs. Johnson still lived with Lady Giffard as her companion.

3 Son of the Postmaster General.

4 Wife of the late Lord-Lieutenant, to whom Swift had been Chaplain.

A PAPER IN THE TATLER.

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must finish my pamphlet. I have sent a long letter to Bikerstaff. Let the Bishop of Clogher smoke it if he can. Well, I will write to the Bishop of Killala; but you might have told him how sudden and unexpected my journey was though. Deuce take Lady S-; and, if I know Dy, he is a rawboned faced fellow, not handsome, nor visibly so young as you say. She sacrifices £2,000, and keeps only £600. Well, you have had all my land journey, and so much for that. So you have got into Presto's 2 lodgings-very fine truly. We have had a fortnight of the most glorious weather on earth, and it still

1 Steele, the editor of the Tatler. The paper in question ridiculed the corruptions of the English language, and introduction of new-fangled words. "Some words," says the essayist, "are, hitherto, but fairly split, and, there. fore, only in the way to perfection, as Incog. and Plenipo. But in a short time, 'tis to be hoped, they will be further docked to Inc. and Plen. This reflection has made me of late years very impatient for a Peace, which, I believe, would save the lives of many brave words as well as men. The War has introduced abundance of p lysyllables, which will never be able to live many more campaigns-Speculations, Operations, Preliminaries, Ambassadors, Pallisadoes, Communications, Circumvallation, Battalions. . . .' Among the new.fangled words he protests against, "invented by some pretty fellows," are: Banter, Bamboozle, Kidney, and Mob. In his Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue, addressed in the following year to Harley, he singles out for condemnation as "montrous productions," and "conceited appellations," trip and amusement (the orthodox equivalent for which was diversion, a word, by the way, which held its own to nearly the end of the century). In the Tatler he proceeds to administer castigation to "several young readers in our churches, who, coming up from our Universities, full fraught with admiration of our town politeness, will needs correct the style of their prayer-book. In reading the Absolution,' they are very careful to say pardons and absolves [in place of pardoneth and absolveth], and in the prayer for the Royal Family it must be endue'um, enrich'um, prosper'um, and bring'um. Then, in their sermons, they use all the modern terms of art-sham, banter, mob, bubble, bully, cutting, shufling, and palming: all which, and many more of the like stamp, as I have heard them often in the pulpit from such young sophisters, so I have read them in some of those sermons that have male most noise of iate."— [Sacheverell's, to wit.]

Presto, like Stella, has been introduced into the printed copies by the editors, although it does not appear in the MS. until the twenty-seventh letter (August 2, 1711), when the Duchess of Shrewsbury, an Italian, so trans. lated the English equivalent. In the MS. the initials P. D. F. R. (presumably, or, rather, conjecturally, doing duty for "poor, dear, foolish, rogue," or for some such expression) alone appear.