“These notices may serve to give the learned reader an idea, as well as taste, of what the whole work is likely to produce, wherein I have now altogether circumscribed my thoughts and my studies; and, if I can bring it to a perfection before I die, I shall reckon I have well employed the poor remains of an unfortunate life.  This indeed is more than I can justly expect, from a quill worn to the pith in the service of the state, in pros and cons upon popish plots, and meal tubs, and exclusion bills, and passive obedience, and addresses of lives and fortunes, and prerogative, and property and liberty of conscience, and letters to a friend:  from an understanding and a conscience, threadbare and ragged with perpetual turning; from a head broken in a hundred places by the malignants of the opposite factions; and from a body spent with poxes ill cured, by trusting to bawds and surgeons, who, as it afterwards appeared, were professed enemies to me and the government, and revenged their party’s quarrel upon my nose and shins.  Fourscore and eleven pamphlets have I written under three reigns, and for the service of six and thirty factions.  But finding the state has no farther occasion for me and my ink, I retire willingly to draw it out into speculations more becoming a philosopher; having, to my unspeakable comfort, passed a long life with a conscience void of offence.” [See Appendix, vol. xviii., art.  “Dryden and Swift.”—­ED.]

[4] [The exact sentence seems to have been “a Pindaric poet.”  But as Swift had tried nothing but Pindarics, it was nearly if not quite as severe as the more usually quoted and more sweeping verdict.—­ED.]

[5] Robert Gould, author of that scandalous lampoon against Dryden, entitled “The Laureat,” inscribes his collection of poems, printed 1688-9, to the Earl of Abingdon; and it contains some pieces addressed to him and to his lady.  He survived also to compose, on the Earl’s death, in 1700, “The Mourning Swan,” an eclogue to his memory, in which a shepherd gives the following account of the proximate cause of that event: 

“Menaleus.  To tell you true (whoe’er it may displease), He died of the Physician—­a disease That long has reigned, and eager of renown, More than a plague depopulates the town.  Inflamed with wine, and blasting at a breath, All its prescriptions are receipts for death.  Millions of mischiefs by its rage are wrought, Safe where ’tis fled, but barbarous where ’tis sought; A cursed ingrateful ill, that called to aid, Is still most fatal where it best is paid.”

[6] How far this was necessary, the reader may judge from Mirana, a funeral eclogue; sacred to the memory of that excellent lady, Eleonora, late Countess of Abingdon, 1691, 4th Aug., which concludes with the following singular imprecation: 

  “Hear, friend, my sacred imprecation hear,
  And let both of us kneel, and both be bare. 
  Doom me (ye powers) to misery and shame,
  Let mine be the most ignominious name,
  Let me, each day, be with new griefs perplext,
  Curst in this life, nor blessed in the next,
  If I believe the like of her survives,
  Or if I think her not the best of mothers, and of wives.”