[Footnote 3:  Cicero, “Pro Sestio,” 65.  “But that is not a remedy when the knife is applied to some sound and healthy part of the body; that is the act of an executioner and mere inhumanity.  Those are the men who really apply healing remedies to the republic, who cut out some pestilence as if it were a wen on the person of the state.”—­C.D.  YONGE. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 4:  This refers to the attempted assassination of Harley and St. John by the Marquis de Guiscard.  See Swift’s “Memoirs Relating to that Change,” etc. (vol. v., pp. 387-9 of present edition). [T.S.]]

[Footnote 5:  Henri III. was assassinated by Jacques Clement, a Dominican friar, August 1st, 1589.  Henri IV. was assassinated by Francois Ravaillac, May 14th, 1610. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 6:  George Villiers, fourth Duke of Buckingham, was stabbed by Lieut.  John Felton, August 23rd, 1628. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 7:  Admiral de Coligny was assassinated August 23rd, 1572. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 8:  Francois de Lorraine, Due de Guise, was shot in 1563.  His son and successor (Henri le Balafre) was killed December 23rd, 1588. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 9:  Davila was the author of “Historia delle Guerre Civili di Francia” (c. 1630).  He was assassinated in 1631. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 10:  “The first thing I would beg of this libeller,” asks “The Medley” (No. 25, March 19th, 1711), “is to make out what he affirms of his being ‘invited over.’  If he would but prove that one particular, I would forgive him all his lies past and yet to come.”

Of course.  Swift’s extreme phrase of “invited over” referred to the fact that Guiscard had a Whig commission in the army. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 11:  Antoine de Guiscard, at one time Abbe de la Bourlie, was born in 1658.  For misconduct he was compelled, in 1703, to forsake his benefice and his country, and he undertook the cause of the Protestant Camisards in the Cevennes, in their insurrection against Louis XIV.  It is known that he had been envoy to Turin, and had received a pension from Holland.  On taking refuge in England he obtained a pension from the government, and by means of the influence of the Duke of Ormonde, who was his brother’s friend, became a frequenter in fashionable circles.  The death, however, of his friend Count Briancon seems to have deprived him of means.  He fell into bad ways, became poor, and solicited a pension from the Queen, through St. John whose acquaintance he had made.  A pension of L500 was granted him; but this sum Harley reduced.  Afraid that even this means of a livelihood would be taken from him he opened a treasonable correspondence with one Moreau, a Parisian banker.  The rest of the story of this poor wretch’s life may be gathered from the excellent account of the Harley-Guiscard incident given by W. Sichel in his “Bolingbroke and his Times” (pp. 308-313).

N. Luttrell has several entries in his Diary relating to Guiscard and the attempted assassination of Harley, and there is a long account of him in Boyer’s “Political State” (vol. i., pp. 275-314).  See also Portland MS., vol. iv., Wentworth Papers, and Swift’s “Journal to Stella,” and “Some Remarks,” etc. (vol. v. of present edition). [T.S.]]