[Footnote 3:  See No. 40, ante, and note, p. 259. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 4:  In “A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions ...  Athens and Rome,” 1701 (vol. i., pp. 227-270, of present edition).  See also Swift’s reference to this pamphlet in his “Memoirs Relating to that Change,” etc. (vol. v., p. 379). [T.S.]]

[Footnote 5:  “The Medley,” under Maynwaring, with occasional help from Addison and Steele, seems to have been published for the sole purpose of replying to the “Examiner.”  No. 40 (July 2nd, 1711) begins:  “The ‘Examiner’ is grown so insipid and contemptible that my acquaintance are offended at my troubling myself about him.”  No. 45 (the final number, August 6th, 1711) expresses the writer’s “deep concern” for the loss of his “dear friend ‘The Examiner,’ who has at once left the world and me, quite unprovided for so great a blow.”  When the “Examiner” was revived by W. Oldisworth in December, 1711, it was soon followed by a reappearance of “The Medley.”  It started afresh with Numb.  I. on March 3rd, 1712 (i.e. 1711/2), and continued until August 4th, 1712, the date of the publication of Numb.  XLV. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 6:  See No. 16, ante, and note p. 85. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 7:  The two paragraphs appeared in No. 32 of “The Medley,” and the writer introduces them by a reference to “praise and censure, which I choose out of all the rest, because it only concerns the ‘Examiner’ to be well instructed in them, he having no other business but to flatter the new m[inistry], and abuse the old.”  The first paragraph runs: 

“In the first place, whenever any body would praise another, all he can say will have no weight or effect, if it be not true or probable.  If therefore, for example, my friend should take it into his head to commend a man, for having been an instrument of great good to a nation, when in truth that very person had brought that same nation under great difficulties, to say no more; such ill-chosen flattery would be of no use or moment, nor add the least credit to the person so commended.  Or if he should take that occasion to revive any false and groundless calumny upon other men, or another party of men; such an instance of impotent but inveterate malice, would make him still appear more vile and contemptible.  The reason of all which is, that what he said was neither just, proper, nor real, and therefore must needs want the force of true eloquence, which consists in nothing else but in well representing things as they really are.  I advise therefore my friend, before he praises any more of his heroes, to learn the common rules of writing; and particularly to read over and over a certain chapter in Aristotle’s first book of Rhetoric, where are given very proper and necessary directions, for praising a man who has done nothing that he ought to be praised for.”

There is no reference here to the Speaker.  The reference is to the “Examiner”; nor is there any mention of Providence having wonderfully preserved him from some unparalleled attempts.