Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/326

318 now, in his printed narrative, he contradicts that essential circumstance of my lord Sussex coming in along with Mr. Skelton; so that we are here to suppose that this discourse passed only between him and Mr. Skelton, without any third person for a witness, and therefore he thought he might safely affirm what he pleased. Besides, the nature of their discourse, as Mr. Levi reports it, makes this part of his narrative impossible and absurd, because the truth of it turns upon Mr. Skelton's mistaking him for the real Mr. Lewis; and it happens that seven persons of quality were by in a room, where Mr. Lewis and Mr. Skelton were half an hour in company, and saw them talk together. It happens likewise, that the real and counterfeit Lewis have no more resemblance to each other in their persons, than they have in their understandings, their truth, their reputation, or their principles. Besides, in this narrative, Mr. Levi directly affirms what he directly denied to the earl of Peterborough, Mr. Ford, and Mr. Lewis himself; to whom he twice or thrice expressly affirmed, that Mr. Skelton had not named either place or person.

There is one circumstance in Levi's narrative, which may deceive the reader. He says, "Mr. Skelton was taken into the dining-room;" this dining-room is a ground-room next the street, and Mr. Skelton never went farther than the door of it. His many prevarications in this whole affair, and the many thousand various ways of telling his story, are too tedious to be related. I shall therefore conclude with one remark: By the true account given in this paper, it appears that Mr. Skelton finding his mistake before he spoke a word, begged Mr. Levi's