will score up my offences five fold. If I betake myself to the library, Ridley's ghost will haunt me, for scandalizing hin with the name of freemason. If I fly to the divines for succour, Dean Manby and Archdeacon Baynard will pervert me; Dr King will break my head because I am a Priscian; and Dr Foy is so full of spleen he'll worry me. Mrs Horncastle and Sir Maddison will talk with me. Mother Jenkin

son won't furnish me with cale and bacon on Christmasday, and Dr Loftus will bite me. The Virtuosi will set their brains a work for gimcracks to pull my eyes out. The freemasons will banish me their lodge, and bar me the happiness of kissing long Laurence. And the astronomers won't allow me one good star, nor inform me when the sun will be totally eclipsed, that I may provide myself with candles. Mr Loftus and Mr Lloyd will nose me; Mr Allen will eat me without salt; Dr Acton, too, I fear, will fall on me. Nay, the very provost will shake his head at me, and scour away from me but that which makes my calamity most insupportable, and me weary of your company, is, that, in all my tribulation, you do nothing but laugh at me; and therefore I take my leave.

APPENDIX, No. III.

THE PRESENT STATE OF WIT.

In a Letter to a Friend in the Country. First printed in May 1711.

This tract, ascribed to Gay, from the initials J. G. being placed at the conclusion, has been received into former editions of Swift as throwing light upon the periodical papers during Oxford's administration. He himself mentions it in the Journal to Stella,

14th May 1711:"Dr Friend was with me, and pulled out just published, called The State of Wit,' all the papers that have come out of late.

VOL. I.

d

a twopenny pamphlet giving a character of The author seems to

be a Whig; yet he speaks very highly of a paper called The Examiner,' and says he supposes the author of it is Dr Swift. But above all things he praises the Tatlers and Spectators; and I believe Steele and Addison were privy to the printing of it. Thus one is treated by those impudent dogs !"-Vol. II. p. 257.

SIR, Westminster, May 3, 1711. You acquaint me, in your last, that your are still so busy building at that your friends must not hope to see you in town this year; at the same time you desire me, that you may not be quite at a loss in conversation among the beau monde next winter, to send you an account of the present state of wit in town; which, without further preface, I shall therefore endeavour to perform, and give you the histories and characters of all our periodical papers, whether monthly, weekly, or diurnal, with the same freedom I used to send you our other town news.

I shall only premise, that, as you know I never cared one farthing either for Whig or Tory, so I shall consider our writers purely as they are such, without any respect to which party they may belong.

Dr King has for some time lain down his Monthly Philosophical Transactions, which, the title-page informed us at first, were only" to be continued as they sold ;" and though that gentleman has a world of wit, yet, as it lies in one particular way of raillery, the town soon grew weary of his writings; though I cannot but think that their author deserves a much better fate than to languish out the small remainder of his life in the Fleet prison,

About the same time that the doctor left off writing, one Mr Ozell + put out his Monthly Amusement, which is still continued; and, as it is generally some French novel or

The witty Dr William King published, in 1709, three parts of a pe riodical work, entitled, "Useful Transactions in Philosophy, and other sorts of Learning," a burlesque satire of considerable merit.

↑ John Ozell, a voluminous translator. He was auditor-general of the City and Bridge accounts, of St Paul's cathedral, and of St Thomas's hospital. His periodical paper above mentioned was a very dull one. He died October 15,

1743.

play indifferently translated, is more or less taken notice of as the original piece is more or less agreeable.

As to our weekly papers, the poor Review* is quite exhausted, and grown so very contemptible, that though he has provoked all his brothers of the quill round, none of them will enter into controversy with him. This fellow, who had excellent natural parts, but wanted a small foundation of learning, is a lively instance of those wits, who, as an ingenious author says, "will endure but one skimming."

The Observator was almost in the same condition; but, since our party struggles have run so high, he is much mended for the better; which is imputed to the charitable assistance of some outlying friends These two authors might, however, have flourished some time longer, had not the controversy been taken up by much abler hands.

The Examiner is a paper which all men, who speak without prejudice, allow to be well written. Though his subject will admit of no great variety, he is continually placing it in so many different lights, and endeavouring to inculcate the same thing by so many beautiful changes of expression, that men who are concerned in no party may read him with pleasure. His way of assuming the question in debate is extremely artful; and his letter to Crassus is, I think, a masterpiece. As these papers are supposed to have been written by several hands, the critics will tell you, that they can discern a difference in their styles and beauties, and pretend to observe, that the first Examiners abound chiefly in wit, the last in humour.

Soon after their first appearance, came out a paper from

The Review was conducted by the celebrated Daniel De Foe, who contrived, about this time, by a real or affected impartiality, to make himself odious both to Whigs and Tories.

+ The Observator was conducted by the unfortunate John Tutchin, from 1702 to 1707, and afterwards by George Redpath, a Scotchman. Both felt the hand of power and party-wrath. Tutchin was condemned, for his share in Monmouth's rebellion, to repeated flagellation, a punishment so cruel that he petitioned to have it changed into hanging. In 1707 he was way-laid, and cruelly beaten, by some persons who were offended by his political zeal, and died of the bruises he had sustained. Redpath, his successor as conductor of the Observator, came off very little better. Pope has recorded, that he and Abel Roper, who conducted the war with the same scurrility on the Tory side, equally and alternately deserved to be cudgelled, and had their deserts accordingly.

the other side, called the Whig Examiner,* written with so much fire, and in so excellent a style, as put the Tories in no small pain for their favourite hero. Every one cried Bickerstaff must be the author; and people were the more confirmed in this opinion upon its being so soon laid down, which seemed to show that it was only written to bind the Examiners to their good behaviour, and was never designed to be a weekly paper. The Examiners, therefore, have no one to combat with at present, but their friend the Medley; the author of which paper, though he seems to be a man of good sense, and expresses it luckily enough now and then, is, I think, for the most part, perfectly a stranger to fine writing. I presume I need not tell you, that the Examiner carries much the more sail, as it is supposed to be written by the direction, and under the eye, of some great persons who sit at the helm of affairs, and is consequently looked on as a sort of public notice which way they are steering us. The reputed author is Dr Swift, with the assistance some times of Dr Atterbury and Mr Prior.

The Medley is said to be written by Mr Oldmixon, and supervised by Mr Maynwaring, who perhaps might entirely write those few papers which are so much better than the

rest.

Before I proceed further in the account of our weekly papers, it will be necessary to inform you, that, at the beginning of the winter, to the infinite surprise of all men, Mr Steele flung up his Tatler; and, instead of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. subscribed himself Richard Steele to the last of those papers, after a handsome compliment to the town, for their kind acceptance of his endeavours to divert them. The chief reason he thought fit to give, for his leaving off writing, was, that, having been so long looked on in all public places and companies as the author of those papers, he found that his most intimate friends and acquaintance were in pain to act or speak before him. The town was

* Written by Mr Addison and Mr Mainwaring. Only five numbers appeared, which are reprinted in the same volume with the Medley.

+ The Medley was chicfly conducted by Oldmixon. But Mainwaring, Steele, Henley, and Keunet, gave him great assistance. See Memoirs, p 129, and Note.

very far from being satisfied with this reason; and most people judged the true cause to be, either that he was quite spent, and wanted matter to continue his undertaking any longer, or that he laid it down as a sort of submission to, or composition with, the government, for some past offences; or, lastly, he had a mind to vary his shape, and appear again in some new light.

However that were, his disappearing seemed to be bewailed as some general calamity. Every one wanted so agreeable an amusement; and the coffee-houses began to be sensible, that the esquire's lucubrations alone had brought them more customers than all their other newspapers put together.

It must, indeed, be confessed, that never man threw up his pen under stronger temptations to have employed it longer; his reputation was at a greater height than, I believe, ever any living author's was before him. It is reasonable to suppose that his gains were proportionably considerable; every one read him with pleasure and good-will; and the Tories, in respect to his other good qualities, had almost forgiven his unaccountable imprudence in declaring against them. Lastly, it was highly improbable, if he threw off a character, the ideas of which were so strongly impressed in every one's mind, however finely he might write in any new form, that he should meet with the same reception.

To give you my own thoughts of this gentleman's writings, I shall, in the first place, observe, that there is this noble difference between him and all the rest of our polite and gallant authors: the latter have endeavoured to please the age by falling in with them, and encouraging them in their fashionable vices, and false notions of things. It would have been a jest some time since, for a man to have asserted that any thing witty could be said in praise of a married state; or that devotion and virtue were any way necessary to the character of a fine gentleman. Bickerstaff ventured to tell the town, that they were a parcel of fops, fools, and vain coquettes; but in such a manner as even pleased them, and made them more than half inclined to believe that he spoke truth.

Instead of complying with the false sentiments, or vicious tastes of the age, either in morality, criticism, or good-breeding, he has boldly assured them, that they were altogether