their insolence to their sovereign. But, above all, the king of Spain would certainly be against them, when he considers with how scandalous a neglect his interests have been managed; and that the full possession of his kingdom was made a sacrifice to those, whose private or party interest swayed them to the continuance of the war. The author had reason to omit the grand seignior and czar in the list of his judges; the decrees of those princes are too sudden and sanguinary; and their lessons to instruct subjects in behaviour to their princes, by strangling them with a bowstring, or flinging them to be devoured alive by hogs, were enough to deter them from submitting to their jurisdiction.

A NEW

JOURNEY TO PARIS:

TOGETHER WITH SOME

SECRET TRANSACTIONS

BETWEEN

THE FRENCH KING

AND

AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN.

BY

THE SIEUR DU BAUDRIER.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.

"I had rather be thought a good Englishman, than the best Poet, or the greatest Scholar, that ever wrote."

PRIOR, Preface to "SOLOMON."

A NEW JOURNEY TO PARIS, &c.

IN 1710-11, the Tory ministry, whose principles and situation laid them under a necessity of making peace with France, contrived to open a communication with that country by means of the Abbé Gualtier, an obscure priest, agent for the French prisoners of war. When matters were thus prepared for the intervention of a more accredited envoy, the celebrated Matthew Prior, whose previous acquaintance with diplomacy fitted him for such a trust, and whose rank was not such as to make his motions observed, was dispatched by the British ministry upon a secret embassy to France. It is said, that this step was proposed by Mons. de Torcy, through the medium of the Earl of Jersey, and that Mr Prior held an interview with that minister at or near Calais, and immediately returned to England. Notwithstanding every precaution which had been taken to prevent discovery, Prior was recognized upon his landing, and detained by the custom-house officers at Deal, until released by orders from their superiors. This discovery was likely to prove embarrassing to the ministers, who neither were in a situation to avow the negociation, nor durst venture to leave unappeased the feverish thirst for political intelligence, which always has characterized the English nation. In this dilemma, Swift," who oiled many a spring that Harley moved," came to the assistance of his patrons with the following pamphlet, which, without communicating a syllable of real intelligence, had the effect of at once amusing the idle, confusing the suspicious, and sounding the temper of the nation at large upon the subject of a negociation. He himself gives the following account of the piece.

"I have just thought of a project to bite the town. I have told you, that it is now known that Mr Prior has been lately in France. I will make a printer of my own sit by me one day; and will dictate to him a formal relation of Prior's journey, with several particulars, all pure invention; and I doubt not but it will take." Journal to Stella, Aug. 31, 1711.

"This morning the printer sent me an accourt of Prior's jour ney; it makes a twopenny pamphlet: I suppose you will see it,

for I dare say it will run. It is a formal grave lie, from the beginning to the end. I wrote all but the last page; that I dictated, and the printer wrote. Mr Secretary sent to me, to dine where he did it was at Prior's. When I came in, Prior showed me the pamphlet, seemed to be angry, and said, ' Here is our English liberty!' I read some of it; said, I liked it mightily, and envied the rogue the thought; for, had it come into my head, I should certainly have done it myself."-Ibid. Sept. 11.

"The printer told me he sold yesterday a thousand of Prior's Journey, and had printed five hundred more. It will do rarely, I believe, and is a pure bite."-Ibid. Sept. 12.

"Prior's Journey sells still; they have sold two thousand, although the town is empty."Ibid. Sept. 24.

"There came out some time ago an account of Mr Prior's jour ney to France, pretended to be a translation; it is a pure inven tion from the beginning to the end. I will let your Grace into the secret of it. The clamours of a party against any peace without Spain, and railing at the ministry as if they designed to ruin us, occasioned that production, out of indignity and contempt, by way. of furnishing fools with something to talk of; and it has had very great effect."-Letter to Abp. King, Oct. 1, 1711.

Although Swift, even to Stella, represents the " Journey to Paris" as mere pleasantry, it was certainly written with a more serious purpose. The cession of Spain to the House of Austria, upon which the former treaty at Gertruydenberg had broken of, is artfully alluded to; and, from the mode in which that part of Mr Prior's supposed conference should be received, ministers might be. enabled to judge whether they might venture to abandon Spain to the House of Bourbon in the event of a peace. In other respects, the high tone imputed to the British agent, was calculated to as sure the public, that their rights were under the management of those who would not compromise the national dignity, while the extreme anxiety of the French king and ministers for a peace, necessarily inferred that Britain might have one on her own terms.

When the imposition was discovered, the Whig pamphleteers were outrageous. At first, they doubted whether to fix the pamph let upon Swift or De Foe: and indeed the minute incidents in the narrative of the Sieur du Baudrier, being such as seemingly would never have occurred to the author of a fiction, have much of the art with which De Foe has given circumstantial authenticity to "Robinson Crusoe," the " Memoirs of a Cavalier," and his other romances. But, as the pen of this author, however excellent in its line, was unequal to the fineness of the raillery preserved through the " Journey to Paris," it failed not soon to be ascribed to the right author. The writer of "Seasonable Remarks on a late Joutney to Paris," thus notices Swift's pamphlet; upon which, indeed,