were universally condemned. This I knew would be done; and the chief cause of my writing was, not to let such a queen and ministry lie under such a load of infamy, or posterity be so ill informed, &c. Lord Oxford is in the wrong, to be in pain about his father's character, or his proceedings in his ministry; which is so drawn, that his greatest admirers will rather censure me for partiality: neither can he tell me any thing material out of his papers, which I was not then informed of: nor do I know any body but yourself who could give me more light than what I then received; for I remember I often consulted with you, and took memorials of many important particulars which you told me, as I did of others, for four years together. I can find no way to have the original delivered to lord Oxford, or to you; for the person who has it will not trust it out of his hands; but, I believe, would be contented to let it be read to either of you, if it could be done without letting it out of his hands[1], although perhaps that may be too late. If my health would have permitted me, for some years past, to have ventured as far as London, I would have satisfied both my lord and you. I believe you know that lord Bolingbroke is now busy in France, writing the History of his own Time; and how much he grew to hate the treasurer you know too
- ↑ As a little before this period, the great abilities of Dr. Swift had begun to fail; he had, in order to gratify some of his acquaintance, called for the History of the Four Last Years of the Oueen's Reign once or twice out of his friend's hands, and lent it abroad; by which means part of the contents were whispered about the town, and several had pretended to have read it, who perhaps had not seen one line of it.
