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the queen horribly. The Examiner[1] has cleared me to day of being author of his paper, and done it with great civilities to me. I hope it will stop people's mouths; if not, they must go on and be hanged, I care not. 'Tis terrible rainy weather. I'll go sleep. Night, dearest MD.
24. It rained all this day, and ruined me in coachhire. I went to colonel Disney, who is past danger. Then I visited lord keeper, who was at dinner; but I would not dine with him, but drove to lord treasurer (Eltee I mean); paid the coachman and went in; but he dined abroad: so I was forced to call the coachman again, and went to lord Bolingbroke's.
- ↑ In the original Examiner, vol. iii, no. 35, the passage is as follows: "They have been a long time laying a load upon a gentleman of the first character for learning, good sense, wit, and more virtues, than even they can set off and illustrate by all the opposition and extremes of vice, which are the compounds of their party. He is indeed fully accomplished to be mortally hated by them, and they needed not to charge him with writing the Examiner, as if that were a sufficient revenge; in which they show as little judgment as truth. I here pronounce him clear of that imputation; and, out of pure regard to justice, strip myself of all the honour that lucky untruth did this paper, reserving to myself the entertaining reflection, that I was once taken for a man, who has a thousand other recommendations, beside the malice of the worst men, to make him loved and esteemed by the best: This is the second time I have humoured that party, by publickly declaring who is not the author of the Examiner. I will lend them no more light, because they do not love it. I could only wish, that their invectives against that gentleman had been considerable enough to call forth his publick resentments; and I stand amazed at their folly, in provoking so much ruin to their party. Their intellectuals must be as stupid as their consciences, not to dread the terrours of his pen, though they met him with all that spite to his person, which they ever expressed against his order."
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