[Footnote 1:  Samuel Buckley, publisher of “The Crisis.”]

[Footnote 2:  This is said to be a plot of a comedy with which Mr. Steele has long threatened the town.—­Swift.]

[Footnote 3:  Alluding to Steele’s advice in “The Tatler” to distressed females, in his character of Bickerstaff.]

[Footnote 4:  The borough which, for a very short time, Steele represented in Parliament.]

[Footnote 5:  Abel Roper, the printer and publisher of a Tory newspaper called “The Post Boy,” often mentioned by Swift, who contributed news to it.  See “Prose Works,” ii, 420; v, 290; ix, 183.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 6:  The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough then resided at Antwerp.]

[Footnote 7:  General Macartney, second to Lord Mohun, in the fatal duel with the Duke of Hamilton.  For an account of the duel, see Journal to Stella of Nov. 15, 1712, “Prose Works,” ii, and x, xxii, and 178.—­W.  E. B._]

DENNIS’ INVITATION TO STEELE

HORACE, BOOK I, EP.  V

JOHN DENNIS, THE SHELTERING POET’S INVITATION TO RICHARD STEELE, THE SECLUDED PARTY-WRITER AND MEMBER,
TO COME AND LIVE WITH HIM, IN THE MINT 1714

Fit to be bound up with “The Crisis”

If thou canst lay aside a spendthrift’s air,
And condescend to feed on homely fare,
Such as we minters, with ragouts unstored,
Will, in defiance of the law, afford: 
Quit thy patrols with Toby’s Christmas box,[1]
And come to me at The Two Fighting Cocks;
Since printing by subscription now is grown
The stalest, idlest cheat about the town;
And ev’n Charles Gildon, who, a Papist bred,
Has an alarm against that worship spread,
Is practising those beaten paths of cruising,
And for new levies on proposals musing. 
  ’Tis true, that Bloomsbury-square’s a noble place: 
But what are lofty buildings in thy case? 
What’s a fine house embellish’d to profusion,
Where shoulder dabbers are in execution? 
Or whence its timorous tenant seldom sallies,
But apprehensive of insulting bailiffs? 
This once be mindful of a friend’s advice,
And cease to be improvidently nice;
Exchange the prospects that delude thy sight,
From Highgate’s steep ascent and Hampstead’s height,
With verdant scenes, that, from St. George’s Field,
More durable and safe enjoyments yield. 
  Here I, even I, that ne’er till now could find
Ease to my troubled and suspicious mind,
But ever was with jealousies possess’d,
Am in a state of indolence and rest;
Fearful no more of Frenchmen in disguise,
Nor looking upon strangers as on spies,[2]
But quite divested of my former spleen,
Am unprovoked without, and calm within: 
And here I’ll wait thy coming, till the sun
Shall its diurnal course completely run. 
Think not that thou of sturdy bub shalt fail,
My landlord’s cellar stock’d with beer