Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/224

216 attempts; with more to the same purpose. I immediately computed, by rules of arithmetick, that in the last cited words there was something more intended than the attempt of Guiscard, which, I think, can properly pass but for one of the some. And although I dare not pretend to guess the author's meaning; yet the expression allows such a latitude, that I would venture to hold a wager, most readers, both whig and tory, have agreed with me, that this plural number must in all probability, among other facts, take in the business of Greg.

See now the difference of styles. Had I been to have told my thoughts on this occasion; instead of saying how Mr. Harley was treated by some persons and preserved from some unparallelled attempts, I should, with intolerable bluntness and ill manners, have told a formal story of a committee sent to a condemned criminal in Newgate, to bribe him with pardon, on condition he would swear high treason against his master, who discovered his correspondence and secured his person, when a certain grave politician had given him warning to make his escape: and by this means I should have drawn a whole swarm of hedge-writers, to exhaust their catalogue of scurrilities against me, as a liar and slanderer. But, with submission to the author of that forementioned paper, I think he has carried that expression to the utmost it will bear; for, after all this notice, I know of but two attempts against Mr. Harley, that can really be called unparallelled, which are those aforesaid of Greg and Guiscard; and as to the rest, I will engage to parallel them from the story of Cataline, and others I could produce. However,