Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/288

280 This last, according to the Latin phrase, is spoken ad invidiam; for he knows well enough, they have not the twentieth: but if you take it in his own way, the landlord has nine parts in ten of the people's minds under his direction. Upon this rock the author before us is perpetually splitting, as often as he ventures out beyond the narrow bounds of his literature. He has a confused remembrance of words since he left the university, but has lost half their meaning, and puts them together with no regard, except to their cadence; as I remember a fellow nailed up maps in a gentleman's closet, some sidelong, others upside down, the better to adjust them to the pannels.

I am sensible it is of little consequence to their cause, whether this defender of it understands grammar or not; and if what he would fain say, discovered him to be a well wisher to reason or truth, I would be ready to make large allowances. But, when with great difficulty I descry a composition of rancour and falsehood, intermixed with plausible nonsense, I feel a struggle between contempt and indignation, at seeing the character of a Censor, a guardian, an Englishman, a commentator on the laws, an instructor of the clergy, assumed by a child of obscurity, without one single qualification to support them.

This writer, who either affects, or is commanded, of late to copy after the bishop of Sarum, has, out of the pregnancy of his invention, found out an old way of insinuating the grossest reflections, under the appearance of admonitions; and is so judicious a follower of the prelate, that he taxes the clergy for inflaming their people with apprehensions of danger to