“There cannot be a greater instance of the power of action than in little parson Dapper,[5] who is the common relief to all the lazy pulpits in town.  This smart youth has a very good memory, a quick eye, and a clean handkerchief.  Thus equipped, he opens his text, shuts his book fairly, shows he has no notes in his Bible, opens both palms, and shows all is fair there too.  Thus, with a decisive air, my young man goes on without hesitation; and though from the beginning to the end of his pretty discourse, he has not used one proper gesture, yet at the conclusion, the churchwarden pulls his gloves from off his head; ’Pray, who is this extraordinary young man?’ Thus the force of action is such, that it is more prevalent (even when improper) than all the reason and argument in the world without it.”  This gentleman concluded his discourse by saying, “I do not doubt but if our preachers would learn to speak, and our readers to read, within six months’ time we should not have a dissenter within a mile of a church in Great Britain.”

[Footnote 1:  In his original preface to the fourth volume, Steele explains that “the amiable character of the Dean in the sixty-sixth ‘Tatler,’ was drawn for Dr. Atterbury.”  Steele cites this as a proof of his impartiality.  Scott thinks that it must have cost him “some effort to permit insertion of a passage so favourable to a Tory divine.”  At the time the character was published Atterbury was Dean of Carlisle and one of the Queen’s chaplains.  He was later created Bishop of Rochester.  There is no doubt that Atterbury was deeply implicated in the various Jacobite plots for the bringing in of the Pretender.  Under a bill of pains and penalties he was condemned and deprived of all his ecclesiastical offices.  In 1723 he left England and died in exile in 1732.  His body, however, was privately buried in Westminster Abbey. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2:  “De Sublimitate,” viii. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 3:  For twenty years Atterbury was preacher at the chapel of Bridewell Hospital. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 4:  Daniel Burgess (1645-1713), the son of a Wiltshire clergyman, was a schoolmaster in Ireland before he became minister to the Presbyterian meeting-house people in Brydges Street, Covent Garden.  A chapel was built for him in New Court, Carey Street, Lincoln’s Inn, and this was destroyed during the Sacheverell riots in 1710. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 5:  Dr. Joseph Trapp (1679-1747), professor of poetry at Oxford, where he published his “Praelectiones Poeticae” (1711-15), He assisted Sacheverell and became a strong partisan of the High Church party.  Swift thought very little of him.  To Stella he writes, he is “a sort of pretender to wit, a second-rate pamphleteer for the cause, whom they pay by sending him to Ireland” (January 7th, 1710/1, see vol. ii., p. 96).  This sending to Ireland refers to his chaplaincy to Sir Constantine Phipps, Lord Chancellor of Ireland (1710-12).  On July 17th, 1712, Swift again speaks of him to Stella:  “I have made Trap chaplain to Lord Bolingbroke, and he is mighty happy and thankful for it” (ibid., p. 379).  Trapp afterwards held several preferments in and near London. [T.S.]]