“I GUESS my daughter's in here,” the old man said, leading the way into the little salon de lecture. He was not of the most advanced age, but that is the way George Flack considered him, and indeed he looked older than he was. George Flack had found him sitting in the court of the hotel (he sat a great deal in the court of the hotel), and had gone up to him with characteristic directness and asked him for Miss Francina. Poor Mr. Dosson had with the greatest docility disposed himself to wait upon the young man: he had as a matter of course got up and made his way across the court, to announce to the personage in question that she had a visitor. He looked submissive, almost servile, as he preceded the visitor, thrusting his head forward in his quest; but it was not in Mr. Flack's line to notice that sort of thing. He accepted the old gentle-man's good offices as he would have accepted those of a waiter, murmur-ing no protest for the sake of making it appear that he had come to see him as well. An observer of these two persons would have assured himself that the degree to which Mr. Dosson thought it natural that any one should want to see his daughter was only equalled by the degree to which the young man thought it natural her father should find her for him. There was a superfluous drapery in the doorway of the salon de lecture, which Mr. Dosson pushed aside while George Flack stepped in after him.

The reading-room of the Hôtel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham was not of great proportions, and had seemed to Mr. Dosson from the first to consist principally of a bare, highly-polished floor, on which it was easy for a relaxed elderly American to slip. It was composed further, to his percep-tion, of a table with a green velvet cloth, of a fireplace with a great deal of fringe and no fire, of a window with a great deal of curtain and no light, and of the Figaro, which he couldn't read, and the New York Herald, which he had already read.

Headnote

Published 11 May 1728; copy text 1728 (see Textual Account).

In the opening number, Swift follows the introductory form for a journal, established by Steele, Addison and others, and familiar from Swift's years of political journalism in England. The paper offers a rationale of the journal's ambitions and approach, a description of its intended readership, and a general encouragement to contributors, while stressing its consistent promotion of virtue and appropriate moral considerations.

THE INTELLIGENCER.

It may be said, without offence to other Cities, ofmuch greater consequence in the World, that our Town of Dublin doth not want it's due proportion of Folly, and Vice, both Native and Imported; And as to those Imported, we have the advantage to receive them last, and consequently after our happy manner to improve, and refine upon them.

But, because there are many Effects of Folly and Vice among us, whereof some are general, others confined to smaller Numbers, and others again, perhaps to a few individuals; There is a Society lately established, who at great expence, have Erected an Office of Intelligence, from which they are to receive Weekly Information of all Important Events and Singularities, which this famous Metropolis can furnish. Strict injunctions are given to have the truest Information: In order to which, certain qualified Persons are employed to attend upon Duty in their several Posts; some at the Play-house, others in Churches, some at Balls, Assemblees, Coffee-houses, and meetings for Quadrille; some at the several Courts of Justice, both Spiritual and Temporal, some at the College, some upon my Lord Mayor and Aldermen in their publick Affairs; lastly, some to converse with favourite Chamber-maids, and to frequent those Ale-houses, and Brandy-Shops, where the Footmen of great Families meet in a Morning; only the Barracks and Parliament-house are excepted; because we have yet found no enfans perdus bold enough to venture their Persons at either. Out of these and some other Store-houses, we hope to gather Materials enough to Inform, or Divert, or Correct, or Vex the Town.

Headnote

Probably composed 1729; published posthumously, 1765; copy text 1765a (see Textual Account); the footnote that forms part of this text was provided by the editor, Deane Swift.

Hints of the process behind this unfinished essay can be found in a manuscript in the John Rylands Library, Manchester (see Associated Materials I, pp. 324–7). Maxims is usually dated to 1729, not least because of its connection to Swift's other writings of the time (for speculations, see Ferguson, p. 148, and Ehrenpreis, vol. III, p. 575). Swift is listing a number of supposedly axiomatic statements concerning the economy, which are inapplicable in Ireland because of the problems of governance and constitution he had previously discussed in other Irish texts of this period. The contemporary idea of using the supposedly incontrovertible maxim as a way of making plain Ireland's anomalous plight can be seen in pamphlets such as Remarks on some Maxims, Peculiar to the Ancient, as well asModern Inhabitants of Ireland. With a Seasonable Hint to G Bn about the Woollen trade, Dublin, 1730, otherwise unconnected to Swift, and signed by ‘Hibernicus’, following the pseudonym adopted by James Arbuckle in his influential letters in the Dublin Journal.

MAXIMS CONTROLLED IN IRELAND.

The Truth of some Maxims in State and Government, examined with reference to Ireland.

There are certainMaxims of State, founded upon long observation and experience, drawn from the constant practice of the wisest nations, and from the very principles of government, nor ever controlled by any writer upon politics. Yet all these Maxims do necessarily presuppose a kingdom, or commonwealth, to have the same natural rights common to the rest of mankind who have entered into civil society. For, if we could conceive a nation where each of the inhabitants had but one eye, one leg, and one hand, it is plain that, before you could institute them into a republic, an allowance must be made for those material defects, wherein they differed from other mortals. Or, imagine a legislator forming a system for the government of Bedlam, and, proceeding upon the maxim that man is a sociable animal, should draw them out of their cells, and form them into corporations or general assemblies; the consequence might probably be, that they would fall foul on each other, or burn the house over their own heads.

Headnote

Composed after February 1733; published 1733; copy text 1733 (see Textual Account).

The death of the incumbent, Swift's friend Alderman Francis Stoyte, in February 1733, dates this brief statement on the desired prerequisites in the Dublin Recorder, and the choice of his successor.

Swift's successful recommendation of Eaton Stannard, a lawyer and ‘patriot’ MP was a deliberate intervention (for Swift's wider support of Stannard, see Introduction, pp. xxxiii, lxxxviii, xci, xcviii). The Recorder's position within Dublin politics was an important one: he was not an MP, and the position was partly honorary, but for Swift the Recorder would nonetheless play an important role in representing the city during a time of considerable political agitation, and the securing of a ‘patriot’ as Recorder was of symbolic and possible political significance, given coming Mayoral and Aldermanic elections (and the possibility of a parliamentary election too).

SOME CONSIDERATIONS HUMBLY OFFERED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD-MAYOR, THE COURT OF ALDERMEN, AND COMMON COUNCIL OF THE HONOURABLE CITY OF DUBLIN, IN THE CHOICE OF A RECORDER.

The Office of Recorder to this City, being vacant by the Death of a very worthy Gentleman, it is said that five or six Persons are solliciting to succeed him in the Employment. I am a Stranger to all their Persons, and to most of their Characters; which latter, I hope, will, at this Time, be canvassed with more Decency, than it sometimes happens upon the like Occasions.

Therefore, as I am wholly impartial, I can with more Freedom deliver my Thoughts, how the several Persons and Parties concerned ought to proceed, in electing a Recorder for this great and antient City.

And, first, as it is a very natural, so I can, by no Means, think it an unreasonable Opinion, that the Sons, or near Relations of Aldermen, and other deserving Citizens, should be duly regarded as proper Competitors for an Employment in the City's Disposal, provided they be equally qualified with other Candidates; and provided, that such Employments require no more than common Abilities, and common Honesty. But in the Choice of a Recorder, the Case is entirely different.

Headnote

Composed May–June 1730; published posthumously, 1765; copy text 1765a (see Textual Account); the footnotes that form part of this text were provided by the editor, Deane Swift.

This record of what Swift supposedly said when receiving the freedom of Dublin and a gold box on 27 May 1730 was presumably written soon after and was arguably not really intended for a wide audience; Ehrenpreis suggests it was only written for friends and allies (vol. III, p. 655).

After the corporation had voted to present Swift with his freedom, the dean proposed what Marmaduke Coghill called an ‘arrogant’ inscription, the terms of which gave the corporation pause, and resulted in the deferral of the presentation. The phrasing (which had probably been communicated to the corporation by Patrick Delany on Swift's behalf) would have cited the dean's ‘great zeal, unequalled abilities and distinguished munificence in asserting the rights, defending the liberties, and encouraging the manufactures of the kingdom’ and declared that he was ‘justly esteemed the most eminent patriot and greatest ornament of his native city and country’. When the mayor and aldermen eventually presented him with his gold box, there was no inscription, and, to make matters worse, a presentation had already been made to the archbishop ofDublin. Hence Swift's self-righteous outburst, and the recitation of his achievements as an Irish ‘patriot’ which would otherwise have been engraved for posterity (see Coghill to Edward Southwell, 21 Feb. 1729[/30] (Coghill Letters, pp. 91–2); Ehrenpreis, vol. III, pp. 650–5).

THE SUBSTANCE OF WHAT WAS SAID BY THE DEAN OF ST. PATRICK's TO THE LORD MAYOR AND SOME OF THE ALDERMEN, WHEN HIS LORDSHIP CAME TO PRESENT THE SAID DEAN WITH HIS FREEDOM IN A GOLD-BOX.

When his Lordship had said a few words, and presented the instrument, the Dean gently put it back, and desired first to be heard. He said, He was much obliged to his Lordship and the city for the honour theywere going to do him, and which, as he was informed, they had long intended him: That it was true this honour was mingled with a little mortification, by the delay which attended it; but which, however, he did not impute to hisLordship or the city: And that themortification was the less, because he would willingly hope the delay was founded on a mistake; for which opinion he would tell his reason.

Headnote

Composed 1729; published October 1729; copy text 1729a (see Textual Account).

A Modest Proposal has become Swift's most famous pamphlet satire, but also reflects the general direction of Swift's Irish prose writings in the years 1728–9 in its depiction of the present state of Ireland, and the impossibility of its being improved, without some fundamental reappraisal of the Anglo-Irish constitutional relationship (albeit a premise in the pamphlet veiled in complex and contentious layers of irony). It also reflects particular issues which were heavily discussed in 1729, particularly the emigration ofUlster Presbyterians to North America, as well as the ongoing problem of vagrancy inDublin, and the countryside at large. Ironically perhaps, it appeared after the first good harvest in four years, which would in due course relieve some of the stress in the Irish economy. It may also be significant that it appeared at the beginning of the Parliamentary session of 1729–30, during whichMPs would be considering a range of initiatives designed for Irish economic recovery.

It was published in Dublin before the end of October 1729, and quickly reprinted (in slightly different versions) in London; the edition reprinted in London in A Libel on Dr Delany (1730) was the first to add the qualifier ‘in Ireland’ to its title. Henceforth the pamphlet was included in every significant edition of Swift's writings, from the Miscellanies of 1732 and the Faulkner Works of 1735 onwards. For further context and discussion, see Introduction, pp. lxxiv–lxxxvii.

A MODEST PROPOSAL &c

It is a melancholly Object to those, who walk through this great Town, or travel in the Country, when they see the Streets, the Roads, and Cabbin- Doors, crowded with Beggars of the female Sex, followed by three, four, or six Children, all in Rags, and importuning every Passenger for an Alms. These Mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelyhood, are forced to employ all their time in Stroling, to beg Sustenance for their helpless Infants, who, as they grow up either turn Thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native Country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

Headnote

Composed April 1730; published April 1730; copy text 1730a (see Textual Account).

Swift's friendship with John Carteret, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1724 to 1730, dated back to Queen Anne's reign, when the young Carteret had been a Hanoverian Tory. It was renewed when Carteret came over to Ireland as viceroy in 1725, and Swift was able to secure from him some small items of patronage for his friends. But in general terms, Carteret pursued a political course in Ireland which involved the maintenance of local Whig interests in power; in 1730, he had ended his last parliamentary session in Ireland on a popular note.

Swift's ostensible and unnecessary defence of Carteret from the charge that he only gave advancement to Tories and Jacobites was also an opportunity to attack several enemies (Joshua Allen and Richard Tighe, appearing as Traulus and Pistorides, respectively, and unidentified in Irish editions of Swift during his lifetime) aligned to the Whig interest. Swift's pamphlet is more an attack on Whig paranoia (either real or affected) about Tory advancement under Carteret: the latter had been a Tory, and there had been a temporary recrudescence of the Tory interest in some boroughs after his arrival in 1725. By 1730, such charges were obviously unreasonable.

The pamphlet is internally dated by Swift's reference to the time of writing as 13 April 1730 (below, p. 214), and was published to coincide with the proroguing of Parliament on 15 April (see Woolley, Corr., vol. III, p. 310 fn. 9, and Ehrenpreis, vol. III, p. 658).

A VINDICATION OF HIS EX – -Y THE LORD C—, &c

In order to Treat this important Subject with the greatest Fairness and Impartiality, perhaps it may be convenient to give some Account of his E——, in whose Life and Character there are certain Particulars, which might give a very just Suspicion of some Truth in the Accusation he lyes under.

He is descended from two Noble, Antient, and most loyal Families, the Carterets and the Granvilles.

[Question marks in square brackets (in some, but not all, cases following ellipses) mark words or passages in the texts below which are not clearly legible in their original printed form.]

Sunday 24 October 1886, p. 9.

LOWELL IN A CHATTY MOOD. HE TALKS FREELY TO JULIAN HAWTHORNE ABOUT HIS ENGLISH EXPERIENCES.

Boston, Oct. 22 – Mr. James Russell Lowell, freed from official restraints, seems to feel like one who, after long struggling with the perplexities of a foreign language, at length finds himself at liberty to use his native tongue oncemore. This is strictly a simile. Few languages are foreign to Mr. Lowell, and he certainly speaks English of notable purity. The Spanish hidalgos discovered no flaws in his Castilian; and those who have perused the lucubrations of Mr. Hosea Bigelow will be willing to admit that Mr. Lowell can talk American. But the language of diplomacy, thoroughly though he is versed in it, has never, I think, been altogether agreeable to him. A man who can put a truth with such exquisite plainness and point as Mr. Lowell can, must sometimes have groaned in spirit over the ambiguous innuendoes of official phraseology. But if, in the course of human events, there should ever arise the need to send an ambassador to Europe to offer some impertinent nation the alternative of peace or war, then the public choice might well fall on Mr. Lowell. No other man could speak the momentous words with firmer emphasis or with such unerring aim.

Meanwhile he expands and invites his soul. It is his design to spend his summers in England and his winters in this country. ‘In fact,’ said he, ‘if I could afford it, I would live altogether on the other side. The climate suits me. I remember when I first landed at Liverpool, years and years ago, I said to myself, “This is my native air!” and then,’ he added, ‘I have more personal friends now in England than I have here. If I were to stay here I should be alone.’ Mr. Lowell’swife died a little while ago and his only daughter has been married upward of a dozen years.

Headnote

Probably composed 1732; published 1733; copy text 1733a (see Textual Account).

This satire on modern Dublin fashion is based around the genuine contemporary ambivalence towards footmen, who were regularly accused of impudence and of aping their social betters. This general attitude of dislike and suspicion is inverted into a critique of modern manners, with the earnest footmen outraged that young men about town, their alleged social superiors, are behaving like them.

Themock-solemn Humble Petition is an apparent jeu d’esprit, though there is possible contemporary political significance in the derogatory use of ‘Toupees’ (see above, p. 46, and below, notes, p. 266). Although the Humble Petition is internally dated 1732, no edition from that year has ever been found, and the first extant published version dates from 1733, printed with A Serious and Useful Scheme to Make a Hospital for Incurables, usually attributed to Matthew Pilkington.

TO THE HONOURABLE HOUSE OF COMMONS, &c. THE HUMBLE PETITION OF THE FOOTMEN IN AND ABOUT THE CITY OF DUBLIN.

Humbly Sheweth,

That your Petitioners are a great and numerous Society, endowed with several Privileges, Time out of Mind.

That certain lewd, idle, and disorderly Persons, for several Months past, as it is notoriously known, have been daily seen in the publick Walks of this City, habited sometimes in Green-Coats, and sometimes in laced, with long Oaken Cudgels in their Hands, and without Swords, in hopes to procure Favour, by that Advantage, with a great Number of Ladies who frequent those Walks, pretending and giving themselves out to be true genuine Irish Footmen. Whereas they can be proved to be no better than common Toupees; as a judicious Eye may soon discover, by their aukward, clumsy, ungenteel Gait and Behaviour; by their Unskilfulness in Dress, even with the Advantage of wearing our Habits; by their ill favoured Countenances, with an Air of Impudence and Dullness peculiar to the rest of their Brethren: Who have not yet arrived at that transcendent Pitch of Assurance. Although, it may be justly apprehended, that they will do so in time, if these Counterfeits shall happen to succeed in their evil Design, of passing for real Footmen, thereby to render themselves more amiable to the Ladies.

The issue of the journal that was the origin of Swift's The Answer to the Craftsman (above, pp. 218–27).

CRAFTSMAN's First Letter of ADVICE,

To the People of GREAT-BRITAIN, and IRELAND, with Respect to some French-Officers being arrived in that Kingdom, in order to raise Recruits, for his Gallick Majesty.

By CALEB D’ANVERS of Gray's Inn, Esq.; Saturday November 7th. 1730

The following Article, which hath lately appeared in the News-Papers,1 deserveth our immediate Consideration, viz.

“THEY write from Dublin, that an Officer from every Regiment in the French Service is arrived there, in order to raise Recruits for their respective Corps; which is not to be done in a clandestine Manner as formerly, when several Persons suffer’d Death for it, but publickly. These Gentlemen are to disperse themselves into the several Counties, where They have the best Interest; and a Field Officer is to reside constantly at Dublin, to hear all Complaints, which may be made by any of the Recruits against their Officers; and also to prepare for sending them off – Count Broglio hath been solliciting an Order, to this Purpose, these two Years.”

When I first read this Account in the publick Prints, I look’d upon it as a common Piece of false Intelligence, and was in full Expectation of seeing it contradicted in the next Day's Papers, according to frequent Custom; but having since heard it confidently affirm’d to be true, (although I can hardly believe it; especially, as to every Part) the Duty, which I owe my Country, and my Zeal for the present Establishment oblige me to take some Notice of an Affair, which I apprehend to be of very great Importance to both.

It will be necessary, in the first Place, to give the Reader a short Account of the Nature of these Troops, as They are now established in France.

They consist, as we have been infor’ed, of one Regiment of Horse, and five Regiments of Foot, all doubly or trebly Officer’d; so that They are, of Themselves, a very considerable Body of Men.

But their Number is the least Point to be consider’d in thisAffair. There are other Circumstances, which render these Troops infinitely more formidable to Great Britain.

Henry James's New York Edition Prefaces are collected in Volume XXXIII of The Complete Fiction of Henry James. The editor of that volume, Oliver Herford, has excerpted and prepared the text for this Appendix, and has supplied essential annotations; more extensive notes can be found in The Prefaces.

‘The Reverberator’: NYE XIII, v–xviii

I have gathered into this volume some early brevities, the third in order of which dates from further back than any tale comprised in the Edition. The first in order appeared considerably later, but I have given it precedence in this group by reason of its greatest length. It is the most recent in the list, but, as having originally (in the good old days, though they are as yet none so remote, of “pleasant” publication) enjoyed the honour of two pretty little volumes “all to itself,” it falls into the category of Shorter Novels—under an indulgence not extended to several of its compeers. “The Reverberator,” which figured at birth (1888) in half a dozen numbers of “Macmillan's Magazine” may be described, I suppose, beyond any fiction here reproduced, as a jeu d’esprit: I can think at least of none other on the brow of which I may presume to place that laurel. And yet as I cast about me for the nameable grounds of the hospitality I thus give it I find myself think of it in other rich lights as well; quite in the light of an exemplary anecdote, and at the same time quite in that of a little rounded drama. This is to press hard, it might seem, on so slight a composition; but I brave the extravagance under the interest of recognising again how the weight of expatiation is ever met in such cases—that of the slender production equally with that of the stout—by a surface really much larger than the mere offered face of the work. The face of the work may be small in itself, and yet the surface, the whole thing, the associational margin and connexion, may spread, beneath the fond remembering eye, like nothing more noble than an insidious grease-spot.

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift is the first fully annotated scholarly edition ever undertaken of Swift's complete works in both verse and prose. The great editions of Swift by Herbert Davis and Harold Williams have remained standard for over half a century.We are all greatly indebted to them, but the time has come to replace or revise their texts and commentary in the light of subsequent historical, biographical and textual knowledge. Davis's fourteen-volume edition of the Prose Writings offered valuable introductions but no annotation. The commentary to his separate edition of the Drapier's Letters, and Williams's commentaries to the Poems and Journal to Stella, though excellent in their time, must now be supplemented by a considerable body of more recent scholarship. The Cambridge Edition's detailed introductions, notes and appendices aim to provide an informed understanding of Swift's place in the political and cultural history of England and Ireland, and to establish the historical, literary and bibliographical contexts of his immense achievement as a prose satirist, poet and political writer. The editors of individual volumes include distinguished historians, as well as leading scholars of eighteenth-century literature.

For the Cambridge Edition, Swift's texts will be collated and analysed afresh, with attention to new evidence of drafts, autographs, transcripts and printed editions, including revisions of Swift's own Works. All lifetime editions will be investigated for their authority. The choice of the version to be printed will be based on an assessment of the work's nature and of the particularities of its history. As a general rule the last authoritative version of the work will be chosen, but in the case of works that are bound in tightly to an immediate context of controversy (polemical tracts, for example), the first edition will usually be chosen instead. In all cases editors will have regard to Swift's overall conception of his text, including issues of typography and illustration. All substantial authorial variants will be recorded in the apparatus, along with those accidental variants editors deem significant, and full introductions will provide the history of the text and the rationale for editorial decisions.

Headnote

Composed 1729; published posthumously, 1765; copy text 1765a (see Textual Account).

Usually dated towards the end of 1729, and another piece that was unpublished in Swift's lifetime (eventually appearing first in Deane Swift's Works of 1765), the Proposal responded in part to the possibility of imported wine duty being increased, and its publication was partly obviated by the tax being voted through in December 1729 (see Ferguson, p. 156; Ehrenpreis, vol. III, pp. 644, 646, who finds the worry over wine duty incongruous), which is also why the pamphlet seems possibly unfinished.

Swift was not alone in his general argument about trade and patriotism, and there were many contemporaneous attempts to promote Irish manufacture: the funeral in 1729 of the Speaker of the Irish Commons, William Conolly, was marked by his wife distributing scarves as a patriotic statement (see Patrick McNally, ‘William Conolly’, DIB). Moreover, on 10 November 1731, a bill in the Irish Parliament obliging all persons to be buried in woollen cloth was introduced by Swift's friend Eaton Stannard. It was not successful.

A PROPOSAL THAT ALL THE LADIES AND WOMEN OF IRELAND SHOULD APPEAR CONSTANTLY IN IRISH MANUFACTURES. WRITTEN IN THE YEAR M DCC XXIX.

There was a treatise written about nine years ago to persuade the people of Ireland to wear their own manufactures. This treatise was allowed to have not one syllable in it of party or disaffection, but was wholly founded upon the growing poverty of the nation, occasioned by the utter want of trade in every branch, except that ruinous importation of all foreign extravagancies from other countries. This treatise was presented, by the Grand-jury of the city and county of Dublin, as a scandalous, seditious, and factious pamphlet. I forget who was the foreman of the city Grand-jury, but the foreman for the county, was one Doctor Seal, register to the Archbishop of Dublin, wherein he differed much from the sentiments of his Lord. The Printer was tried before the late Mr. Whitchet, that famous Lord Chief-Justice; who, on the bench, laying his hand on his heart, declared upon his salvation that the Author was a Jacobite, and had a design to beget a quarrel between the two nations.

Headnote

The Intelligencer, the journal jointly written by Swift and Thomas Sheridan, consisted of twenty papers published in 1728–9 in Dublin. Swift made seven prose contributions, one of which (No. 15) was a reprint of A Short View of the State of Ireland, with an introduction by Sheridan. (In this volume, Sheridan's introduction is provided in the textual apparatus, pp. 357–9.)

The Intelligencer was not the first periodical in Ireland: it followed the Dublin Journal in importing from England the format of the Spectator, Tatler and Examiner (which Swift had edited from 1710 to 1711, and contributed to thereafter). The rationale for The Intelligencer is explained by Swift in the first number: topics were to be miscellaneous, but able to include observations on contemporary political and cultural issues as well as arguments concerning education, agriculture, economics and emigration.

The Dublin printings by Sarah Harding published each number as a separate pamphlet. There were collected London editions in 1729 and 1730; numbers 5, 7 and 9 were included in the so-called ‘Third’ volume of the Pope– Swift Miscellanies of 1732; and all Swift's papers, save the first, in Faulkner's 1735 Works. For plans of potential Intelligencer papers, see Associated Materials I, pp. 283–6, ‘Hints for Intelligencer Papers’.

Headnote

Probably composed early 1732; published c.March 1732; copy text 1732a (see Textual Account).

A mock-description of supposedly treasonous Jacobite messages encoded in the cries of street-sellers and shop-signs, examined to the point of absurdity, An Examination of Certain Abuses is one of Swift's last prose works to be based upon the ironies that can extend from a credulous narrator. It is possible that (like the Vindication of Carteret) it was directed against exaggerated anti- Jacobite rhetoric, shown, for instance, in the lordmayor of Dublin's forbidding of the wearing of white roses and similar symbols on 10 June, the Pretender's birthday (see Introduction, p. xciv).

The pamphlet's general target is theWhig use of old-fashioned shibboleths to keep Tories out of office, and to advance themselves, through the indiscriminate accusation of Jacobitism against political enemies. It is not always clear whether any persons in Ireland suffered damage to their political careers as a result of such abuse: the satire is more pertinent to England than Ireland, as some of Swift's English friends (such as Bolingbroke and the second Earl of Oxford) were in permanent political exclusion because of their Toryism.

It was published in Dublin in 1732 as An Examination of Certain Abuses, Corruptions, and Enormities in the City of Dublin. The London edition was retitled City Cries, Instrumental and Vocal: or, An Examination of Certain Abuses Corruptions, and Enormities in London andDublin. This also added three pages at the end of the pamphlet (giving another example of alleged Jacobitism, connected to London sign-posts), an addition made presumably by Swift as an acknowledgement of the different audience in England.

AN EXAMINATION OF CERTAIN ABUSES, &c.

Nothing is held more commendable in all great Cities, especially the Metropolis of a Kingdom, than what the French call the Police; by which Word is meant the Government thereof, to prevent the many Disorders occasioned by great Numbers of People and Carriages, especially thro’ narrow Streets. In this Government our famous City of Dublin is said to be very defective, and universally complained of. Many wholesome Laws have been enacted to correct these Abuses, but are ill executed; and many more are wanting, which I hope the united Wisdom of the Nation (whereof so many good Effects have already appeared this Session) will soon take into their most profound Consideration.

THE court was roofed with glass; the April air was mild; the cry of women selling violets came in from the street and, mingling with the rich hum of Paris, seemed to bring with it faintly the odour of the flowers. There were other odours in the place, warm, succulent and Parisian, which ranged from fried fish to burnt sugar; and there were many things besides: little tables for the post-prandial coffee; piles of luggage inscribed (after the initials, or frequently the name, R. P. Scudamore or D. Jackson Hatch), Philadelphia, Pa., or St. Louis, Mo., rattles of unregarded bells, flittings of tray-bearing waiters, conversations with the second-floor windows of admonitory landladies, arrivals of young women with coffin-like bandboxes covered with black oilcloth and depending from a strap, sallyings forth of persons staying and arrivals, just afterwards, of other persons to see them; together with vague prostrations on benches of tired heads of American families. It was to this last element that Mr. Dosson himself in some degree contributed, but it must be added that he had not the extremely bereft and exhausted appearance of certain of his fellows. There was an air of meditative patience, of habitual accommodation in him; but you would have guessed that he was enjoying a holiday rather than panting for a truce, and he was not so enfeebled but that he was able to get up from time to time and stroll through the porte cochère to have a look at the street.

He gazed up and down for five minutes, with his hands in his pockets, and then came back; that appeared to content him; he asked for very little— had no restlessness that these small excursions would not assuage. He looked at the heaped-up luggage, at the tinkling bells, at the young woman from the lingère, at the repudiated visitors, at everything but the other American parents. Something in his breast told him that he knew all about these. It is not upon each other that the animals in the same cage, in a zoological collection, most turn their eyes.