Could there be a greater candour? It is an outlaw, who says, "These are my brains; with these I'll win titles and compete with fortune. These are my bullets; these I'll turn into gold;" and he hears the sound of coaches and six, takes the road like Macheath, and makes society stand and deliver. They are all on their knees before him. Down go my lord bishop's apron, and his Grace's blue riband, and my lady's brocade petticoat in the mud. He eases the one of a living, the other of a patent place, the third of a little snug post about the Court, and gives them over to followers of his own. The great prize has not come yet. The coach with the mitre and crosier in it, which he intends to have for his share, has been delayed on the way from St. James's; and he waits and waits until nightfall, when his runners come and tell him that the coach has taken a different road, and escaped him. So he fires his pistols into the air with a curse, and rides away into his own country.[1]
- ↑ The war of pamphlets was carried on fiercely on one side and the other: and the Whig attacks made the ministry Swift served very sore. Bolingbroke laid hold of several of the Opposition pamphleteers, and bewails their "factiousness" in the following letter:
their books and poems, the vilest I ever saw; but I have given their names to my man, never to let them see me."—Journal to Stella.
The following curious paragraph illustrates the life of a courtier:—
"Did I ever tell you that the Lord Treasurer hears ill with the left ear just as I do ?. . . . . .I dare not tell him that I am so, sir; for fear he should think that I counterfeited to make my court!"—Journal to Stella.
