you suspected of folly; think of my pleasure when I entered the list for your justification! Indeed, I was a little disconcerted to find Mr. Pope took the same side; I for I would have had the man of wit, the dignified divine, the Irish Drapier have found no friend, but the silly woman and the courtier. . . . Now to my mortification, I find every body inclined to think you had no hand in writing these letters."
This impotent attack upon the dean, we find, was stifled in its birth. What shall we say then to the attempt made by Dr. Johnson to revive it at this distance of time, in order to level him with the lowest of mankind, by three gross imputations, each, of which is utterly incompatible with the whole of his character? And these are, no less than folly, falsehood, and cowardice. Folly in the extreme, in supposing him to write such letters, as could only reflect disgrace on himself, without any assignable motive for his doing so: falsehood of the worst kind, as prevarication is worse than lying; and cowardice in not daring to own what he had done. Who is there that knows any thing of Swift, his utter abhorrence of every species of falshood; his courage to speak the truth in the face of majesty, with the same freedom as before the meanest subject; but must be shocked at the audacity of the man, who dared to say of him — "He shuffles between cowardice and veracity, and talks big when he says nothing?"
The only reasons assigned by the doctor for his believing that the letters were really written by Swift, are these:
