The affair ended in the further ridicule of Bettesworth, who complained in the Irish House of Commons that the lampoon had cost him L1,200 a year.  A full account of Swift’s interview with Bettesworth is given by Swift in a letter to the Duke of Dorset, dated January, 1733-1734; and the “Grub Street Journal” for August 9th, 1734, tells how the inhabitants of the City of Dublin came to Swift’s aid.  Perhaps Bettesworth finally found consolation in the thought, satirically suggested by Dr. William Dunkin, that, after all, it might be worth the loss of money to be “transmitted to posterity in Dr. Swift’s works.”

  “For had he not pointed me out, I had slept till
  E’en Doomsday, a poor insignificant reptile;
  Half lawyer, half actor, pert, dull, and inglorious,
  Obscure, and unheard of—­but now I’m notorious: 
  Fame has but two gates, a white and a black one;
  The worst they can say is, I got in at the back one: 
  If the end be obtained ’tis equal what portal
  I enter, since I’m to be render’d immortal: 
  So clysters applied to the anus, ’tis said,
  By skilful physicians, give ease to the head—­
  Though my title be spurious, why should I be dastard,
  A man is a man though he should be a bastard. 
  Why sure ’tis some comfort that heroes should slay us,
  If I fall, I would fall by the hand of Aeneas;
  And who by the Drapier would not rather damn’d be,
  Than demigoddized by madrigal Namby."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Namby was the nickname for Ambrose Philips.]

Scott, and all Swift’s editors and biographers, state that “The Presbyterians’ Plea of Merit” was first published in 1731.  What authority they have for this statement, I have not been able to discover.  My own research has, so far, failed to find a copy of it with the date, 1731, on the title-page.  The edition upon which the present text is based, is that printed by Faulkner in 1733, of the title-page of which, a facsimile is here given.  This, I believe to be the first edition.  Scott, following Nichols, states that in the first edition of “The Plea,” the “Ode to Humphry French, Esq.,” appeared, and that in the second edition, this ode was omitted to make room for the “Narrative of the Several Attempts made for the Repeal of the Test Act.”  Now in the British Museum, there are two undated editions of “The Plea,” which bear out this statement; but these, as the title-pages inform us, are London reprints of Dublin editions.  Since, however, no one has recorded dated Dublin editions corresponding exactly to these London reprints, the evidence of the reprints counts for very little.  Monck Mason, a very accurate authority, usually, says distinctly, “The Plea” was printed in 1731, and a second edition issued in 1733; but one gathers from his note that the only edition in his possession was that of 1733, and this has neither the “Ode” nor the “Narrative”; the last page consisting of an advertisement of the