in a tavern three hours after he could not speak.’  He had long been a prominent figure among wits and humorists.  His most important recent performances had been his Art of Cookery and his Art of Love, published respectively in 1708 and in 1709.  In the latter year he had, much to the disgust of Sir John Soames, issued some very amusing parodies of the Philosophical Transactions, which he entitled Useful Transactions in Philosophy and other sorts of Learning, to be continued as long as it could find buyers.  It ceased apparently to find buyers, and after reaching three numbers had collapsed.  When the Examiner was started in August 1710, King was one of the chief contributors.  Latterly, however, things had been going very badly with this ‘poor starving wit,’ as Swift called him.  He was either imprisoned or on the point of being imprisoned in the Fleet, but death freed him from his troubles at the end of 1712.  John Ozell was, perhaps, the most ridiculous of the scribblers then before the public, maturing steadily for the Dunciad, where, many years afterwards, he found his proper place.  He rarely aspired beyond ‘translations,’ and the Monthly Amusement referred to is not, as might be supposed, a periodical, but simply his frequent appearances as a translator.  Gay next passes to periodicals and newspapers.  De Foe is treated as he was always treated by the wits.  Pope’s lines are well known, and the only reference to him in Swift is:  ’The fellow who was pilloried—­I forget his name.’  Posterity has done him more justice.  The ‘poor Review’ is of course the Weekly Review, started by De Foe in 1704, the first number of which appeared on Saturday, February 19th of that year.  It had been continued weekly, and still continued, till 1712, extending to nine volumes, eight of which are extant.[3] The Observator, which is also described as in its decline, had been set up by John Tutchin in imitation of the paper issued by Sir Roger L’Estrange in 1681, its first number appearing April 1st, 1702.  Tutchin, dying in 1707, the paper was continued for the benefit of his widow, under the management of George Ridpath, the editor of the Flying Post, and it continued to linger on till 1712, when it was extinguished by the Stamp Tax.  The first number of the Examiner appeared on the 3rd of August 1710, and it was set up by the Tories to oppose the Tatler, the chief contributors to it being Dr. King, Bolingbroke, then Henry St. John, Prior, Atterbury, and Dr. Freind.  With No. 14 (Thursday, October 26th, 1710), Swift assumed the management, and writing thirty-two papers successively, made it the most influential political journal in the kingdom.  The ‘Letter to Crassus’ appeared on February 1st, 1711, and was written by Swift.  To oppose the Examiner, the Whigs set up what, after the second number, they called the Whig Examiner, the first number of which appeared on September 14th,