empowering him to coin one hundred and eighty thousand pounds of half-pence and farthings for the kingdom of Ireland, in which there was a very inconvenient and embarrassing scarcity of copper coin, so that it was possible to run in debt upon the credit of a piece of money; for the cook or keeper of an alehouse could not refuse to supply a man that had silver in his hand, and the buyer would not leave his money without change. 76 The project was therefore plausible. The scarcity, which was already great, Wood took care to make greater by agents who gathered up the old half-pence; and was about to turn his brass into gold by pouring the treasures of his new mint upon Ireland, when Swift, finding that the metal was debased to an enormous degree3, wrote Letters, under the name of M. B., Drapier, to shew the folly of receiving, and the mischief that must ensue, by giving gold and silver for coin worth perhaps not a third part of its nominal value. 77 The nation was alarmed; the new coin was universally refused; but the governors of Ireland considered resistance to the King's patent as highly criminal; and one Whitshed, then Chief Justice, who had tried the printer of the former pamphlet, and sent out the Jury nine times, till by clamour and menaces they were frighted into a special verdict 5, now 'had great friends; and, it seems, knew very well where to give money to those that would speak to others that could speak to the King, and would tell a fair story.' Works, vi. 342. See also ib. p. 399. Sunderland, when First Lord of the Treasury, had given the disposal of the patent to the Duchess, who sold it to Wood. Walpole, his successor, saw the danger; but from fear of her influence with the King, from which he had suffered, ' reluctantly submitted.' Coxe's Walpole, i. 218. See also ib. ii. 409. The patent passed on July 12, 1722. Craik, p. 347. 1 See Appendix F. 2 'Wood by his emissaries-enemies to God and this kingdom-has taken care to buy up as many of our old half-pence as he could.' Works, vi. 355, 391. 3 See Appendix G. The Chancellor Middleton's op position to the project led to his resignation. Coxe's Walpole, i. 219, 228. (See also Swift's Works, vii. 5.) On Sept. 1, 1724, Walpole wrote that 'the Lords Justices refuse to signify his Majesty's pleasure to the people.' Coxe's Walpole, ii. 364. 5 Works, vii. 248, xvi. 338; Letters to Chetwode, pp. 129-33; ante, SWIFT, 71. Blackstone defines a special verdict as one 'setting forth all the circumstances of the case, and praying the judgment of the Court, whether, for instance, on the facts stated, it be murder, manslaughter, or no crime at all. This is where they doubt the matter of law, and therefore choose to leave it to the determination of the Court.' Com. iv. 361. The printer escaped in the end, as the Lord Lieutenant granted a nolle prosequi. Works, vii. 249, 274, xvi. 339. Charles Stewart Parnell was descended from Whitshed's daughter, I presented the Drapier, but could not prevail on the Grand Jury to find the bill 2. Lord Carteret and the Privy Council published a proclama- 78 tion, offering three hundred pounds for discovering the author of The Fourth Letter. Swift had concealed himself from his printers, and trusted only his butler, who transcribed the paper 5. The man, immediately after the appearance of the proclamation, strolled from the house, and staid out all night and part of the next day. There was reason enough to fear that he had betrayed his master for the reward; but he came home, and the Dean ordered him to put off his livery and leave the house, 'for,' says he, 'I know that my life is in your power, and I will not bear, out of fear, either your insolence or negligence.' The who married the poet's brother John. N.&Q.6 S. viii. 510. * It is not the Judge that ' presents,' but the Grand Jury. Johnson defines present:- To lay before a Court of Judicature as an object of enquiry,' and quotes from Swift:-'The Grand Juries were practised effectually with to present the said pamphlet, with all aggravating epithets.' [Works, xvi. 338, where it is printed "to represent."] 2 The 'bill' is the indictment. 'If the Jury are satisfied of the truth of the accusation they then endorse upon it, "a true bill"; anciently "billa vera." The indictment is then said to be found, and the party stands indicted.' Blackstone's Com. iv. 305. Whitshed discharged the Jury in a rage. For Swift's attacks on him for this see Works, vi. 441-59. The next Grand Jury, on Nov. 28, made a presentment against Wood's halfpence. Ib. p. 460. 3 In a dispute with Swift 'he replied with a mastery and strength of reason. Swift cried out:-"What the vengeance brought you amongst us? Get you gone, get you gone; pray God Almighty send us our boobies back again." Delany, p. 24. Carteret wrote to him on March 6, 1734-5-As for futurity, I know your name will be remembered, when the names of kings, lord-lieutenants, archbishops and parliament politicians will be forgotten.' Works, xviii. 252. Swift had written to him about Wood as early as April 28, 1724. Ib. xvi. 420. 4 Swift wrote on March 23, 17334:-'My old friend, my Lord Carteret, was forced to consent to the proclamation.' Ib. xviii. 185. A Dublin merchant told T. Sheridan that at the levee, the day after the proclamation, he heard Swift,' with the voice of a Stentor,' upbraid Carteret for it, who replied:: 'Res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt Moliri* Works, 1803, i. 292. We find, however, Carteret on Oct. 31, 1724-seven days after the letter appeared-informing the English Secretary of State, that if he discovered the author-he suspected Swift-and if the law allowed it, he would keep him in custody without bail. Coxe's Walpole, ii. 366. See also Letters to Chetwode, p. 181. For an earlier reward of £300 see ante, SWIFT, 59. 5 Swift makes the 'Drapier' write to the printer:-'My custom is to dictate to a prentice, who can write in a feigned hand, and what is written we send to your house by a blackguard boy.' Works, vi. 465. * Aeneid, i. 563. DRYDEN, i. 790. 79 man excused his fault with great submission, and begged that he might be confined in the house while it was in his power to endanger his master; but the Dean resolutely turned him out, without taking further notice of him, till the term of information had expired, and then received him again. Soon afterwards he ordered him and the rest of the servants into his presence, without telling his intentions, and bade them take notice that their fellow-servant was no longer Robert the butler, but that his integrity had made him Mr. Blakeney, verger of St. Patrick's, an officer whose income was between thirty and forty pounds a year; yet he still continued for some years to serve his old master as his butler'. Swift was known from this time by the appellation of 'The Dean.' He was honoured by the populace as the champion, patron, and instructor of Ireland, and gained such power as, considered both in its extent and duration, scarcely any man has ever enjoyed without greater wealth or higher station 2.' 80 He was from this important year the oracle of the traders and the idol of the rabble, and by consequence was feared and courted by all to whom the kindness of the traders or the populace was necessary. The Drapier was a sign; the Drapier was a health; and which way soever the eye or the ear was turned some tokens were found of the nation's gratitude to the Drapier 3. 'Johnson follows Deane Swift's version of the story (Essay, p. 190), though with slight variations. Sheridan, who had the story from his father, who was sent for by Mrs. Johnson 'to try to make up matters,' says that the Dean at once pardoned the man, on hearing that 'he was walking about the hall, shedding abundance of tears,' and chiefly grieving that 'his master should suppose him capable of betraying him for any reward whatever.' When the place of verger became vacant, Swift ordered him to strip off his livery and put on common clothes. The poor fellow begged to know what crime he had committed. "Well, do as I order you." The story goes on as in the text. The butler's name was Blakely. Works, 1803, i. 289. Swift, perhaps, exaggerated the danger. Bolingbroke wrote to Pope on Feb. 18, 1723-4:-'The poor dean dreams of gibbets and halters.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 397. He goes on to praise a comparison of Arbuthnot's, who, in Nov. 1723, wrote to Swift :-'You are in the case of the man who held the whole night by a broom bush, and found, when daylight appeared, he was within two inches of the ground.' Works, xvi. 412. 2'He was known over the whole kingdom by the title of THE DEAN; and when THE DEAN was mentioned, it always carried with it the idea of the first and greatest man in the kingdom.' T. SHERIDAN, Works, 1803, i. 314. See also Orrery, p. 72; ante, SWIFT, 33 n., and Pope's Imit. Hor., Epis. ii. 1. 221. 3 Orrery, p. 73. Swift wrote to Pope on Feb. 9, 1735-6:- My popularity is wholly confined to the common people, who are more constant than those we miscall their betters. The benefit was indeed great; he had rescued Ireland from 81 a very oppressive and predatory invasion: and the popularity which he had gained he was diligent to keep by appearing forward and zealous on every occasion where the publick interest was supposed to be involved. Nor did he much scruple to boast his influence; for when, upon some attempts to regulate the coin, Archbishop Boulter, then one of the Justices 1, accused him of exasperating the people, he exculpated himself by saying, 'If I had lifted up my finger, they would have torn you to pieces.' But the pleasure of popularity was soon interrupted by domestick 82 misery. Mrs. Johnson, whose conversation was to him the great softener of the ills of life, began in the year of the Drapier's triumph to decline2; and two years afterwards was so wasted with sickness that her recovery was considered as hopeless. Swift was then in England 3, and had been invited by Lord 83 Bolingbroke to pass the winter with him in France; but this call of calamity hastened him to Ireland, where perhaps his I walk the streets, and so do my lower friends, from whom, and from whom alone, I have a thousand hats and blessings upon old scores, which those we call the gentry have forgot.' Works, xix. 33. See also ib. xvii. 123, xix. 4. 'A few years after his death Dr. John Lyon was one of the Committee, along with Judge Marshall and Faulkner the printer, that used to meet in Sheridan's house on the Blind Quay (nearly opposite Stella's old lodgings) for the purpose of getting up a national memorial to the Dean. The effort came to nothing.' W. G. Carroll's Succession of Clergy, &c., P. 26. For The Drapier's Triumph, an allegorical picture by Vertue, see Letters to Chetwode, p. 175. * The Lords Justices. Ante, TIC- But if I say the word-take care of For Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh, see ib. vi. 420; post, A. PHILIPS, 28; Craik, p. 363, and Boswell's Johnson, i. 318. Orrery, p. 27. Swift, in a prayer written on Oct. 17, 1727, describes her as 'afflicted with a long, constant, weakly state of health.' Works, ix. 291. 3 Pope wrote on March 22, 17256:-'He [Swift] is in perfect health and spirits, the joy of all here who know him, as he was eleven years ago.' Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), viii. 221. + Swift wrote on July 8, 1726, that he would certainly have accepted the invitation, ‘if Mrs. Johnson were not so out of order.' Works, xvii. 39. 5 He did not hasten back at once. He knew of her danger by July 15, on which day he wrote:-I am determined not to go to Ireland, to find her just dead or dying.. I have (till I know farther) fixed on August 15 to set out for Ireland.' Ib. xvii. 41. He started on Aug. 17. Ib. p. 50. In all his distress he gave a thought to scandal. If, during his absence, she came to Dublin she 'should be lodged in some airy healthy part, and not in the Deanery: which besides, you know, cannot but be a very improper thing for that house to breathe her last in. Ib. p. 40. 85 presence contributed to restore her to imperfect and tottering health. 84 He was now so much at ease that (1727) he returned to England', where he collected three volumes of Miscellanies in conjunction with Pope, who prefixed a querulous and apologetical Preface 2. This important year sent likewise into the world Gulliver's Travels, a production so new and strange that it filled the reader with a mingled emotion of merriment and amazement. It was received with such avidity that the price of the first edition was raised before the second could be made; it was read by the high and the low, the learned and illiterate *. Criticism was for a while lost in wonder: no rules of judgement were applied to a book written in open defiance of truth and regularity. But when distinctions came to be made the part which gave least pleasure was that which describes the Flying Island, and that which gave most disgust must be the history of the Houyhnhnms 5. 1 On April 8 he wrote:-'I am just going for England.' Works, xvii. 100. In the Spiritual Quixote (1773, iii. 217) Wildgoose finds in The George in the Tree, a public-house near Menden [Meriden] on the Chester road, the following inscription on the parlour window-pane : J. S. D. S. P. D. hospes ignotus, A.D. 17-. 'Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's in Dublin, here a stranger unknown, but in his own country (such as it now is) better known than he would wish to be, being driven by a storm, lodged here all night, in the year of our Lord 17 2 Post, POPE, 141. Ford described these Miscellanies to Swift in 1733 as 'that jumble with Pope, &c., in three volumes, which put me in a rage whenever I meet them.' Works, xviii. 158. See also ib. xvii. 88, 98, 117, and Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 84. 'The copy-right money was divided between Pope, Arbuthnot, Gay and Swift; but Swift's portion was sent to the widow of a Dublin bookseller.' N.&Q. I S. xii. 198. See also post, POPE, 141 n. 3 See Appendix H. 4 It has been the conversation of the whole town,' wrote Gay. 1b. xvii. 81. See ante, GAY, 31. 5 Arbuthnot wrote to Swift:-'I tell you freely, the part of the projectors is the least brilliant.' Ib. xvii. 71. Gay and Pope wrote:-'As to other critics, they think the flying island is the least entertaining;-it is agreed that part was not writ by the same hand, though this has its defenders.' lb. p. 83; Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), vii. 90. Voltaire wrote from England on Feb. 2, 1726-7:-' Le second tome roule sur des choses particulières à l'Angleterre et indifférentes à la France.... Le premier tome est fait pour plaire à toutes les nations.' Euvres, xlvi. 157. Dr. Young wrote of it :-' Before a character is established merit makes fame; afterwards fame makes merit. Swift is not commended for this piece, but this piece for Swift.' Young's Works, 1770, iv. 283. I wondered to hear Johnson say of it :-"When once you have thought of big men |