Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/382

374 which, in my humble opinion, are not very consistent: and therefore it is plain, that their fury is real and hearty, their contempt only personated. I have pretty well studied this matter, and would caution writers of their standard, never to engage in that difficult attempt of despising; which is a work to be done in cold blood, and only by a superiour genius, to one at some distance beneath him. I can truly affirm, I have had a very sincere contempt for many of those who have drawn their pens against me; yet I rather chose the cheap way of discovering it by silence and neglect, than be at the pains of new terms to express it: I have known a lady value herself upon a haughty disdainful look, which very few understood, and nobody alive regarded. Those commonplace terms of infamous scribbler, prostitute libeller, and the like, thrown abroad without propriety or provocation, do ill personate the true spirit of contempt, because they are such as the meanest writer, whenever he pleases, may use toward the best. I remember indeed a parish fool, who, with a great deal of deformity, carried the most disdainful look I ever observed in any countenance: and it was the most prominent part of his folly; but he was thoroughly in earnest, which these writers are not: for there is another thing I would observe, that my antagonists are most of them so, in a literal sense; breathe real vengeance, and extend their threats to my person, if they knew where to find it; wherein they are so far from despising, that I am sensible they do me too much honour. The author of the Letter to the Seven Lords, takes upon him the three characters of a despiser, a threatener, and a railer; and succeeds so well in the two last, that it has made him