Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/45

N° 17. into history for some character bearing a resemblance to the person we would describe; and with the absolute power of altering, adding, or suppressing what circumstances we please, I conceive we must have very bad luck, or very little skill, to fail. However, some days ago in a coffee-house looking into one of the politick weekly papers, I found the writer had fallen into this scheme; and I happened to light on that part, where he was describing a person, who, from small beginnings, grew (as I remember) to be constable of France, and had a very haughty imperious wife. I took the author as a friend to our faction; for so, with great propriety of speech, they call the queen and ministry, almost the whole clergy, and nine parts in ten of the kingdom; and I said to a gentleman near me, that although I knew well enough what persons the author meant, yet there were several particulars in the husband's character, which I could not reconcile; for that of the lady, it was just and adequate enough. But it seems I mistook the whole matter, and applied all I had read to a couple of persons, who were not at that time in the writer's thoughts.

Now, to avoid such a misfortune as this, I have been for some time consulting Livy and Tacitus, to find out a character of a princeps senatus, a prætor urbanus, a quæstor ærarius, a Cæsari ab epistolis, and a proconsul: but among the worst of them, I cannot discover one, from whom to draw a parallel without doing injury to a Roman memory: so that I am compelled to have recourse to Tully. But, this author relating facts only as an orator, I thought it would be best to observe his method, and make an extract from six harangues of his against Verres, only Rh