THE EXAMINER, CONTINUED. No. XXVIII. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1710-11. Inultus ut tu riseris Cotyttia? Shall you Cotytto's feasts deride, [In answer to the Letter to the Examiner.] SIR, London, Feb. 15, 1710-11. ALTHOUGH I have wanted leisure to acknowledge the honour of a letter you were pleased to write to me about six months ago;* yet I have been very careful in obeying some of your commands, * A letter to the Examiner, which occurs in the beginning of the work, before Swift had taken the management of it. It was written by Henry St John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, and pointed out the objects to which the Examiner's attention should be directed, and am going on as fast as I can with the rest. I wish you had thought fit to have conveyed them to me by a more private hand than that of the printing-house: for, although I was pleased with a pattern of style and spirit which I proposed to imitate, yet I was sorry the world should be a witness how far I fell short in both. I am afraid you did not consider what an abundance of work you have cut out for me; neither am I at all comforted by the promise you are so kind to make, that when I have performed my task, "D-n shall blush in his grave among the dead, Walpole among the living, and even Volpone shall feel some remorse." How the gentleman in his grave may have kept his countenance, I cannot inform you, having no acquaintance at all with the sexton; but for the other two, I take leave to assure you, there have not yet appeared the least signs of blushing or remorse in either, although some very good opportunities have offered, if they had thought fit to accept them; so that, with your permission, I would rather engage to continue this work until they be in their graves too; which I am sure will happen much sooner than the other. You desire I would collect some of those indignities offered last year to her majesty. I am ready to oblige you; and have got a pretty tolerable collection by me, which I am in doubt whether to publish by itself in a large volume in folio, or scatter them here and there occasionally in my papers; although indeed I am sometimes thinking to stifle them altogether; because such a history will be apt to give foreigners a monstrous opinion of our country. But since it is your absolute opinion, that, the world should be informed, I will, with the first occasion, pick out a few choice instances, and let them take their chance in the ensuing papers. I have likewise in my cabinet certain quires of paper, filled with facts of corruption, mismanagement, cowardice, treachery, avarice, ambition, and the like; with an alphabetical table, to save trouble. And perhaps you will not wonder at the care I take to be so well provided, when you consider the vast expense I am at. I feed weekly two or three wit-starved writers, who have no visible support; beside several others, who live upon my offals. In short, I am like a nurse who suckles twins at one time; and has besides one or two whelps constantly to draw her breasts. I must needs confess, (and it is with grief I speak it,) that I have been the innocent cause of a great circulation of dulness; at the same time, I have often wondered how it has come to pass, that these industrious people, after poring so constantly upon the Examiner, a paper writ with plain sense, and in a tolerable style, have made so little improvement. I am sure it would have fallen out quite otherwise with me; for, by what I have seen of their performances, (and I am credibly informed they are all of a piece,) if I had perused them until now, I should have been fit for little, but to make an advocate in the same cause. You, sir, perhaps will wonder, as most others do, what end these angry folks propose in writing perpetually against the Examiner it is not to beget a better opinion of the late ministry, or with any hope to convince the world, that I am in the wrong in any one fact I relate; they know all that to be lost labour, and yet their design is important enough; they would fain provoke me, by all sorts of methods within the length of their capacity, to answer their papers; which would render mine wholly useless to the public; for, if it once came to rejoinder and reply, we should be all upon a level; and then their work would be done. There is one gentleman* indeed, who has written three small pamphlets upon the management of the war, and the treaty of peace. These I had intended to have bestowed a paper in examining; and could easily have made it appear, that whatever he says of truth, relates not at all to the evils we complain of, or controls one syllable of what I have ever advanced. Nobody, that I know of, did ever dispute the Duke of Marlborough's courage, conduct, or success; they have been always unquestionable, and will continue to be so, in spite of the malice of his enemies, or, which is yet more, the weakness of his advocates. The nation only wishes to see him taken out of ill hands, and put into better. But what is all this to the conduct of the late ministry, the shameful mismanagements in Spain, or the wrong steps in the treaty of peace; the secret of which will not bear the light, and is consequently by this author very poorly defended? These, and many other things, I would have shown; but, upon second thoughts, determined to have it done in a discourse by itself, rather than take up room here, and break into the design of this paper, whence I have resolved to banish controversy as much as possible. But the postscript to his third pamphlet was enough to disgust me from having 4 * Dr Hare, afterward bishop of Chichester, chaplain to the Duke of Marlborough, published four several tracts on the management of the war, under the title of " Letters to a Tory." |