Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/226

212 necessary to send out small bodies, in order to take in petty castles and forts, and beat little straggling On the third of August 1710, appeared the first number of The Examiner, the ablest vindication of the measures of the queen and her new ministry. "About a dozen of these papers," Dr. Swift tells us, "written with much spirit and sharpness, some by secretary St. John, since lord Bolingbroke; others by Dr. Atterbury, since bishop of Rochester; and others again by Mr. Prior, Dr. Freind, &c. were published with great applause. But these gentlemen being grown weary of the work, or otherwise employed, the determination was, that I should continue it; which I did accordingly eight months. But, my style being soon discovered, and having contracted a great number of enemies, I let it fall into other hands, who held it up in some manner until her majesty's death." The original institutors are supposed to have employed Dr. King as their publisher, or ostensible author, before they prevailed on their great champion to undertake that task. Mr. Oldmixon thought that Mr. Prior had a principal hand in the early numbers; and it is well known that he wrote No. 6, professedly against Dr. Garth. Dr. King was the author of No. 11, October 12: and of No. 12, October 19. Who was the author of No. 13, does not appear; but it is remarkable that, when the Examiners were first collected by Mr. Barber into a volume. No. 13 was omitted; the original 14 being then marked 13; and so on to 45 inclusive, which is marked 44; and this misarrangement has of course been continued by Dr. Hawkesworth and Mr. Sheridan. No. 14, which was published Nov. 2, was written by Dr. Swift, who aided in writing a part of No. 46, when Mrs. Manley took it up, and finished the first volume. Mr. Prior, however, was by many still considered as the author, as appears by the Journal to Stella, Feb. 9, 1710-11. — In a subsequent letter, Nov. 3, 1711, Swift says "The first thirteen Examiners were written by several hands, some good, some bad; the next three and thirty were all by one hand; that makes forty-six: then the author, whoever he was, laid it down, on purpose to confound guessers; and the last six were written by a woman. The printer is going to print them in a small volume; it seems the author is too proud to have them printed by subscription, though his friends offered, they say, to make it worth five hundred pounds parties,

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