Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/284

276 writer to be encouraged, and accordingly many thousand copies were bespoke. Neither could this be sufficient; for when we expected to have our bundles delivered us, all was stopped; the friends to the cause sprang a new project; and it was advertised that the Crisis could not appear, till the ladies had shown their zeal against the pretender, as well as the men; against the pretender, in the bloom of his youth, reported to be handsome, and endued with an understanding, exactly of a size to please the sex. I should be glad to have seen a printed list of the fair subscribers prefixed to this pamphlet; by which the chevalier might know, he was so far from pretending to a monarchy here, that he could not so much as pretend to a mistress.

At the destined period, the first news we hear, is of a huge train of dukes, earls, viscounts, barons, knights, esquires, gentlemen, and others, going to Sam. Buckley's, the publisher of the Crisis, to fetch home their cargoes, in order to transmit them by dozens, scores, and hundreds, into the several counties, and thereby to prepare the wills and understandings of their friends, against the approaching sessions. Ask any of them, whether they have read it, they will answer, no; but they have sent it every where, and it will do a world of good. It is a pamphlet they hear against the ministry; talks of slavery, France, and the pretender; they desire no more; it will settle the wavering, confirm the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, inflame the clamorous, although it never be once looked into. I am told by those who are expert in the trade, that the author and bookseller of this twelvepenny treatise, will be greater gainers, than from one edition of any folio that