this town. He has been many years under your grace's direction, and has a very good title to your favour; so that I believe it will be unnecessary to add how much I should be obliged to your grace's compliance in this matter: and I flatter myself that his being agreeable to me, will be no disadvantage to him in your grace's opinion. I am, with the greatest respect, my Lord, and most humble servant, JON. SWIFT. TO LORD CHANCELLOR HARCOURT. MY LORD, May, 1713. I WONDER your lordship would presume to go out of town and leave me in fear that I should not see you before I go to Ireland, which will be in a week. It is a strange thing you should prefer your own health, and ease, and convenience, before my satisfaction. I want your lordship for my solicitor. I want your letter to your younger brother of Ireland, to put him under my government: I want an opportunity of giving your lordship my humblest thanks, for a hundred favours you have done me: I wanted the sight of your lordship this day in York buildings. † Pray, my lord, come to town before I leave it, and supply all my wants. * * i. e. the chancellor of that kingdom. + Lord-treasurer Oxford then lived there.-F. My lord-treasurer uses me barbarously: appoints to carry me to Kensington, and makes me walk four miles at midnight. He laughs when I mention a thousand pounds which he gives me; though a thousand pounds is a very serious thing, &c. JON. SWIFT. SIR, 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, in several parts of it, insinuated with the utmost malice, that I was author of the Examiner; * and abused me in the grossest manner he could possibly invent, and sent 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 my style? Has he never heard that the author of of * In the Guardian, No. LIII. Mr Steele says, "Though sometimes I have been told by familiar friends, that they saw me such a time talking to the Examiner; others who have rallied me for the sins of my youth, tell me it is credibly reported that I have formerly lain with the Examiner. I have carried my point; and it is nothing to me whether the Examiner writes in the character of an estranged friend, or an exasperated mistress.”—The allu sion is to Swift and Mrs Manley, 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 expostulated 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 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 indulgence, &c. FROM MR STEELE. JON. SWIFT. May 19, 1713. SIR, 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 my office. If you have spoken in my behalf at any time, I am glad I have always treated you with respect; though I believe you an accomplice of the Examiner's. In the letter you are angry at, you see I have no reason for being so merciful to him, but out of regard to the imputation you lie under. You do not in direct terms say you are not concerned with him; 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 putting my name in his paper: but the English would laugh at us, should we argue in so The case was thus: I did, with the utmost application, and desiring to lay all my credit upon it, desire Mr Harley (as he was then called) to show you mercy. He said, "He would, and wholly upon my account: that he would appoint you a day to see him: that he would not expect you should quit any friend or principle." Some days after, he told me, "He had appointed you a day, and you had not kept it:" upon which he reproached me, as engaging for more than I could answer; and advised me to more caution another time. I told him, and desired my lord chancellor and Lord Bolingbroke to be witnesses, that I would never speak for, or against you, as long as I lived: + It has unluckily happened that two or three lines have been torn by accident from the beginning of this letter; and, by the same accident, two or three lines are missing toward the latter part, which were written on the back part of the paper which was torn off. But what remains of this letter, will, I presume, be very satisfactory to the intelligent reader.-D. S. only I would add, that it was still my opinion, you should have mercy till you gave further provocations. 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 ill office. Next I desire to know, whether the greatest services ever done by one man to another, may not have the same turn as properly applied to them? And, once more, suppose they did laugh at me, I ask whether my inclinations to serve you, merit to be rewarded by the vilest treatment, whether they succeeded or not? If your interpretation were true, I was laughed at only for your sake; which, I think, is going pretty far to serve a friend. As to the letter I complain of, I appeal to your most partial friends, whether you ought not either to have asked, or written to me, or desired to have been informed by a third hand, whether I were any way concerned in writing the Examiner? And if I had shuffled, or answered indirectly, or affirmed it, or said I would not give you satisfaction; you might then have wreaked your revenge with some colour of justice. I have several times assured Mr Addison, and fifty others, "That I had not the least hand in writing any of those papers; and that I had never exchanged one syllable with the supposed author * in my life, that I can remember, nor ever seen him above twice, and that in mixed company, in a place where he came to pay his attendance." One thing more I must observe to you, that a year or * John Oldisworth, to whose management the Examiner had been for some time resigned by Swift. |
