Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/455

Rh was shown into the street parlour, and the dean called out to him from the back room, where he was sitting after dinner with Worrall and his wife. Upon entering the room, Swift desired to know his commands. "Sir," says he, "I am sergeant Bet-tes-worth," (which was always his pompous way of pronouncing his own name in three distinct syllables). "Of what regiment, pray?" says Swift. "O, Mr. Dean, we know your powers of raillery; you know me well enough, that I am one of his majesty's sergeants at law." "What then, Sir?" "Why then, Sir, I am come to demand of you, whether you are the author of this poem (producing it) and these villanous lines on me?" At the same time reading them aloud with great vehemence of emphasis, and much gesticulation. "Sir," said Swift, "it was a piece of advice given me in my early days by lord Somers, never to own or disown any writing laid to my charge; because if I did this, in some cases, whatever I did not disown afterward, would infallibly be imputed to me as mine. Now, Sir, I take this to have been a very wise maxim, and as such have followed it ever since; and I believe it will hardly be in the power of all your rhetoric, as great a master as you are of it, to make me swerve from that rule." Many other things passed as related in the above-mentioned letter. But when Bettesworth was going away, he said, "Well, since you will give me no satisfaction in this affair, let me tell you, your gown is your protection; under the sanction of which, like one of your own Yahoos who had climbed up to the top of a high tree, you sit secure, and squirt your filth round on all mankind." Swift had candour enough not Rh