Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/354

346 of writing; and sir William Temple is not only the first, but I think the only Englishman (at least of any consequence) who ever attempted it. The best French memoirs are writ by such persons as were the principal actors in those transactions they pretend to relate, whether of wars or negotiations. Those of sir William Temple are of the same nature; and therefore, in my judgment, the publisher (who sent them into the world without the author's privity) gave them a wrong title, when he called them "Memoirs of what passed in Christendom, &c." whereas it should rather have been, "Memoirs of the Treaty at Nimeguen," which was plainly the sense of the author, who in the epistle tells his son, that "in compliance with his desire, he will leave him some memoirs of what passed in his publick employments abroad;" and in the book itself, when he deduces an account of the state of war in Christendom, he says, it is only to prepare the reader for a relation of that famous treaty; where he and sir Lionel Jenkins were the only mediators that continued any considerable time; and as the author was first in commission, so in point of abilities or credit, either abroad or at home, there was no sort of comparison between the two persons. Those memoirs, therefore, are properly a relation of a general treaty of peace, wherein the author had the principal as well as the most honourable part in quality of mediator; so that the frequent mention of himself seems not only excusable but necessary. The same may be offered in defence of the following papers; because, during