s, signed
by Philander, Armenia, and the like, and chiefly on the tender passion;
and the paper wound up with a letter from Leghorn, an account of the Duke
of Marlborough and Prince Eugene before Lille, and proposals for
publishing two sheets on the present state of Aethiopia, by Mr. Hill; all
of which is printed for the authors by J. Mayo, at the Printing Press
against Water Lane in Fleet Street. What a change it must have been--how
Apollo's oracles must have been struck dumb, when the _Tatler_ appeared,
and scholars, gentlemen, men of the world, men of genius, began to speak!

Shortly before the Boyne was fought, and young Swift had begun to make
acquaintance with English Court manners and English servitude, in Sir
William Temple's family, another Irish youth was brought to learn his
humanities at the old school of Charterhouse, near Smithfield; to which
foundation he had been appointed by James Duke of Ormond, a governor of
the House, and a patron of the lad's family. The boy was an orphan, and
described, twenty years after, with a sweet pathos and simplicity, some of
the earliest recollections of a life which was destined to be chequered by
a strange variety of good and evil fortune.

I am afraid no good report could be given by his masters and ushers of
that thick-set, square-faced, black-eyed, soft-hearted little Irish boy.
He was very idle. He was whipped deservedly a great number of times.
Though he had very good parts of his own, he got other boys to do his
lessons for him, and only took just as much trouble as should enable him
to scuffle through his exercises, and by good fortune escape the flogging
block. One hundred and fifty years after, I have myself inspected, but
only as an amateur, that instrument of righteous torture still existing,
and in occasional use, in a secluded private apartment of the old
Charterhouse School; and have no doubt it is the very counterpart, if not
the ancient and interesting machine itself, at which poor Dick Steele
submitted himself to the tormentors.

Besides being very kind, lazy, and good-natured, this boy went invariably
into debt with the tart-woman; ran out of bounds, and entered into
pecuniary, or rather promissory, engagements with the neighbouring
lollipop-vendors and piemen--exhibited an early fondness and capacity for
drinking mum and sack, and borrowed from all his comrades who had money to
lend. I have no sort of authority for the statements here made of Steele's