Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/227

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N°46.
THE EXAMINER.
213

parties, which are otherwise apt to make head, and infest the neighbourhood. This case exactly resembles mine. I count the main body of the whigs entirely subdued; at least, till they appear with new reinforcements, I shall reckon them as such; and therefore do now find myself at leisure to examine inferiour abuses. The business I have left is, to fall on those wretches that will be still keeping the war on foot, when they have no country to defend, no forces to bring into the field, nor any thing remaining, but their bare good will toward faction and mischief: I mean the present set of writers, whom I have suffered, without molestation, so long to infest the town. Were there not a concurrence from prejudice, party, weak understanding, and misrepresentation, I should think them too inconsiderable in themselves to deserve correction. But as my endeavour has been to expose the gross impositions of the fallen party, I will give a taste, in the following petition, of the sincerity of these their factors, to show how little those writers for the whigs were

    to him." In a note on this passage, Mr. Deane Swift has observed, "that the doctor's memory failed him a little; and that he should have said, the first twelve were written by several hands, and the next thirty-two by one person." — The Dean, however, was right. The original volume of Examiners consists of fifty-two numbers. It appears above, the last six were written by a woman [Mrs. Manley]; consequently Dr. Swift ended with No. 46. Our author, in the Journal of July 15, says, "I do not like any thing in the Examiner after the 45th, except the first part of the 46th." And on the 22d of June (the day after No. 47 was published) he says, "Yesterday's was a sad Examiner; and last week's was very indifferent, though some scraps of the old spirit, as if he had given hints." — But, as that paper will best speak for itself, we shall not apologize for copying the first part of No. 46, to complete those which have been inserted in our third volume.

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