._

"I am plagued with bad authors, verse and prose, who send me their
books and poems, the vilest I ever saw; but I have given their names
to my man, never to let them see me."--_Journal to Stella._

The following curious paragraph illustrates the life of a courtier:--

"Did I ever tell you that the lord treasurer hears ill with the left
ear just as I do?... I dare not tell him that I am so, sir; _for
fear he should think that I counterfeited to make my
court!_"--_Journal to Stella._

32 The war of pamphlets was carried on fiercely on one side and the
other; and the Whig attacks made the ministry Swift served very
sore. Bolingbroke laid hold of several of the Opposition
pamphleteers, and bewails their "factitiousness" in the following
letter:--

"BOLINGBROKE TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

"Whitehall, July 23rd, 1712.

"It is a melancholy consideration that the laws of our country are
too weak to punish effectually those factitious scribblers, who
presume to blacken the brightest characters, and to give even
scurrilous language to those who are in the first degrees of honour.
This, my lord, among others, is a symptom of the decayed condition
of our Government, and serves to show how fatally we mistake
licentiousness for liberty. All I could do was to take up Hart, the
printer, to send him to Newgate, and to bind him over upon bail to
be prosecuted; this I have done; and if I can arrive at legal proof
against the author Ridpath, he shall have the same treatment."

Swift was not behind his illustrious friend in this virtuous
indignation. In the history of the four last years of the queen, the
Dean speaks in the most edifying manner of the licentiousness of the
press and the abusive language of the other party:

"It must be acknowledged that the bad practices of printers have
been such as to deserve the severest animadversion from the
public.... The adverse party, full of rage and leisure since their
fall, and unanimous in their cause, employ a set of writers by
subscription, who are well versed in all the topics of defamation,
and have a style and genius levelled to the generality of their
readers.... However, the mischiefs of the press were too exorbitant
to be cured by such a remedy as a tax upon sma