Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/88

36 he is absolutely mistaken in all his conjectures; and surely conjectures are, at best, too light a pretence to allow a man to assign a name in publick. He condemns a book, and consequently the author, of whom he is utterly ignorant; yet at the same time fixes, in print, what he thinks a disadvantageous character upon those who never deserved it. A man, who receives a buffet in the dark, may be allowed to be vexed; but it is an odd kind of revenge, to go to cuffs in broad day, with the first he meets, and lay the last night's injury at his door. And thus much for this discreet, candid, pious, and ingenious answerer.

How the author came to be without his papers, is a story not proper to be told, and of very little use, being a private fact; of which the reader would believe as little, or as much, as he thought good. He had however a blotted copy by him, which he intended to have written over with many alterations, and this the publishers were well aware of, having put it into the bookseller's preface, that they apprehended a surreptitious copy, which was to be altered, &c. This, though not regarded by readers, was a real truth, only the surreptitious copy was rather that which was printed; and they made all the haste they could, which indeed was needless, the author not being at all prepared: but he has been told, the bookseller was in much pain, having given a good sum of money for the copy.

In the author's original copy, there were not so many chasms as appear in the book; and why some of them were left, he knows not: had the publication been trusted to him, he would have made several corrections of passages, against which nothing Rh