Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/432

424 of your intended representatives; and I find several passages in it which want explanation, especially to you in the country: for we in town, have a way of talking and writing, which is very little understood beyond the bills of mortality. I have therefore made bold to send you here a second letter, by way of comment upon the former.

In order to this, "You, Mr. Bailiff, and at the same time the whole borough," may please to take notice, that London writers often put titles to their papers and pamphlets, which have little or no reference to the main design of the work: so, for instance, you will observe in reading, that the letter called, "The Importance of Dunkirk," is wholly taken up in showing you the importance of Mr. Steele; wherein it was indeed reasonable your borough should be informed, which had chosen him to represent them.

I would therefore place the importance of this gentleman before you, in a clearer light than he has given himself the trouble to do; without running into his early history, because I owe him no malice.

Mr. Steele is author of two tolerable plays, or at least of the greatest part of them; which, added to the company he kept, and to the continual conversation and friendship of Mr. Addison, has given him the character of a wit. To take the height of his learning, you are to suppose a lad just fit for the university, and sent early from thence into the wide world, where he followed every way of life, that might least improve, or preserve, the rudiments he had got. He has no invention, nor is master of a tolerable style; his chief talent is humour, which he sometimes discovers both in writing and course