The directions to Servants is evidently an unfinished performance; some parts of it containing merely rough outlines. Mr. Faulkner, who printed it in 1745, observes, "it may be seen from scattered papers, wherein were given hints for a dedication and preface, and a list of all degrees of servants, that the author intended to have gone through all their characters." Lord Orrery says, "the manuscript was handed about, and much applauded in the dean's life time;" and that it is "written in so facetious a kind of low humour, that it must please many readers; nor is it without some degree of merit, try pointing out with an amazing exactness (and what in a less trivial case must have been called judgment) the faults, blunders, tricks, lies, and various knaveries of domestick servants."
