such a confirmation of his acts set the seal of public authority which was desirable, even if not necessary, to a man of Swift’s temper.  He could save himself much trouble by merely pointing to the gold box which was presented to him with the freedom.  Even in this last moment, however, of public recognition, he was not allowed to receive it without a snarl from one of the crowd of the many slanderers who found it safer to backbite him.  Lord Allen may have been wrong in his head, or ill-advised, or foolishly over-zealous, but his ill-tempered upbraiding of the Dublin Corporation for what he called their treasonable extravagance in thus honouring Swift, whom he deemed an enemy of the King, was the act of a fool.  Swift was not the man to let the occasion slip by without advantage.  In the substance of what he said to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of Dublin in accepting their gift, he replied to the charges made by Lord Allen, and also issued a special advertisement by way of defence against what the lord had thought fit to say.

* * * * *

     Both these pieces are here reprinted; the first from a broadside in
     the British Museum, and the second from a manuscript copy in the
     Forster Collection at South Kensington.

     [T.  S.]

THE SUBSTANCE OF WHAT WAS SAID BY THE DEAN OF ST. PATRICK’S

TO THE LORD MAYOR AND SOME OF THE ALDERMEN, WHEN HIS
LORDSHIP CAME TO PRESENT THE SAID DEAN WITH HIS FREEDOM
IN A GOLD BOX.

When his Lordship had said a few words, and presented the instrument, the Dean gently put it back, and desired first to be heard.  He said, “He was much obliged to his lordship and the city for the honour they were going to do him, and which, as he was informed, they had long intended him.  That it was true, this honour was mingled with a little mortification by the delay which attended it, but which, however, he did not impute to his lordship or the city; and that the mortification was the less, because he would willingly hope the delay was founded on a mistake;—­for which opinion he would tell his reason.”

He said, “It was well known, that, some time ago, a person with a title[106] was pleased, in two great assemblies, to rattle bitterly somebody without a name, under the injurious appellations of a Tory, a Jacobite, an enemy to King George, and a libeller of the government; which character,” the Dean said that, “many people thought was applied to him.  But he was unwilling to be of that opinion, because the person who had delivered those abusive words, had, for several years, caressed, and courted, and solicited his friendship more than any man in either kingdom had ever done,—­by inviting him to his house in town and country,—­by coming to the Deanery often, and calling or sending almost every day when the Dean was sick,—­with many other particulars of the same nature, which continued