Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/109

Rh to a man, were engaged to be there)? I do not see how the city could have escaped destruction. There were many to kindle fires, none to put them out. The Spectator, who ought to be but a looker on, was to have been an assistant, that, seeing London in a flame, he might have opportunity to paint after the life, and remark the behaviour of the people in the ruin of their country, so to have made a diverting Spectator. But I cannot but look up to God Almighty with praise for our deliverance, and really think we have very much need of a thanksgiving; for, in all probability, the mischief had been universal and irremediable. I tremble to think what lengths they would have gone: I dare not so much as imagine it. They had taken Massaniello's insurrection for a precedent, by which all who were not directly of their own party had suffered, as may be gathered from what we know of their nature, and by what is already discovered, though there is doubtless a great deal more behind. As soon as the figures were seized, they dispatched away a messenger express to the place where it was known the duke intended to land, to tell him he might now take his own time; there was no occasion "for his being on the seventeenth instant, by seven at night, at Aldgate;" and so he lay that night five miles short of the town.

However the viceroy may value himself upon this design, he seems but to have copied my lord Shaftesbury in 1679, on the same anniversary. It is

l'Estrange,