Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/88

76 ears of all Europe by their enemies, both foreign and domestick; and thereby gained credit, more or less, on account of not having been sufficiently controverted or refuted in time. Their constant misfortunes have given a sort of sanction to all this imposture and iniquity. They could not defend themselves, in the midst of so much division at home, from so many powerful and confederated enemies, who had alienated the hearts of their very sovereigns from them, in order to make him the first, and them the last victims of the tragedy. In the mean time they were involved in too much war, or in too much misery, to be the relaters of their own story with any advantage; or found the English language as backward as the English nation and government, to do them common justice. Their enemies have spared them the labour with a vengeance.

The mongrel historians of the birth of Ireland, from Stanihurst and Dr. King down to the most wretched scribbler, cannot afford them a good word, in order to curry favour with England. Our callow bards of the drama, with the same view, draw their first pens against their country, and force their way into the world through their mother's womb. The English writers take the hints from them with pleasure; and delight in grafting the flattest nonsense, and most silly artifices, upon teigueism, to divert that honest generation of numskulls, the mobs of England, from the Land's End to Berwick upon Tweed. In regard of improprieties in the turn of a foreign speech or accent, totus mundus egit histrionem; but the genuine characters of a nation ought to be as sacred, even upon the stage, as in history. In the days of king Charles the second, the Irish bravery and