Abel Roper conducted the Tory paper called “The Post Boy.” (See note on p. 290 of vol. v. of present edition.) [T.S.] ]
[Footnote 6: Two of these pamphlets were already referred to in a postscript to No. 24 of “The Examiner” (see note, p. 151). The third was “The Negotiations for a Treaty of Peace, in 1709. Consider’d, In a Third Letter to a Tory-Member. Part the First.” Dated December 22nd, 1710, The “Fourth Letter” was dated January 10th, 1710/11. [T.S.]]
[Footnote 7: It may be that Swift’s intention was carried out in two pamphlets, one entitled, “An Examination of the Management of the War. In a Letter to My Lord * * *,” published March 3rd, 1710/1; and the other styled, “An Examination of the Third and Fourth Letters to a Tory Member, relating to the Negociations for a Treaty of Peace in 1709. In a Second Letter to My Lord * * ” [With a Postscript to the Medley’s Footman], published March 15th of the same year. [T.S.]]
[Footnote 8: The postscript to “An Examination of the Third and Fourth Letters” mentions a pamphlet, “An Answer to the Examination of the Management of the War,” by the Medley’s Footman. “The Medley,” No. 21 (February 19th), remarks: “He could also prove there were wrong steps in the Treaty of Peace, the Allies would have all; but he won’t do it, because he is treated like a footman.” [T.S.]]
[Footnote 9: I. e. Dr. Francis Hare. [T.S.]]
[Footnote 10: Dr. Hare, in the postscript to his third pamphlet, said: “The Examiner is extremely mistaken, if he thinks I shall enter the lists with so prostitute a writer, who can neither speak truth, nor knows when he hears it.” He calls the writer “a mercenary scribbler,” and speaks of his paper as “weekly libels.” He then quotes an expression from the fourth number (published before Swift undertook “The Examiner"), and concludes by saying that he had met more than his match in the ingenious writer of “The Medley,” even were he much abler than he is.
The fourth “Examiner” had printed a “Letter from the Country,” in which the following passage occurs: “Can any wise people think it possible, that the Crown should be so mad as to choose ministers, who would not support public credit? ... This is such a wildness as is never ... to be met with in the Roman story; except in a devouring Sejanus at home, or an ambitious Catiline at the head of a mercenary army.”
The writer of “An Examination of the Third and Fourth Letters,” says: “The words indeed are in the paper quoted, that is, ‘The Examiner,’ No. 4, but the application is certainly the proper thought of the author of the postscript” (p. 28). [T.S.]]
[Footnote 11: I. e. Prior. See No. 27, p. 168. [T.S.]]
[Footnote 12: Horace, “Odes,” II.
xiii. 31-2.
“Tyrants
slain,
In thicker crowds the shadowy throng
Drink deeper down the martial song.”—P.
FRANCIS.
[T.S.]]