Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/292

282 British dominions must, next after Holland, have been compelled to submit, whereby the protestant religion would be rooted out of the world.

A design of this vast importance, after long consultation among the Jacobite grandees with the earl of Oxford at their head, was at last determined to be carried on by the same method with the former: it was therefore again put in practice; but the conduct of it was chiefly left to chosen men, whose voices were louder and stronger than those of the other sex; and upon this occasion was first instituted in London that famous cry of. But the criers were particularly directed to pronounce the word Flaunders, and not flounders. For, the country which we now by corruption call Flanders, is in its true orthograghy spelt Flaunders, as may be obvious to all who read old English books. I say, from hence began that thundering cry, which has ever since stunned the ears of all London, made so many children fall into fits, and women miscarry; come buy my fresh flaunders, curious flaunders, charming flaunders, alive, alive, ho; which last words can, with no propriety of speech, be applied to fish manifestly dead (as I observed before in herrings and salmon) but very justly to ten provinces containing many millions of living Christians. But the application is still closer, when we consider that all the people were to be taken like fishes in a net; and by assistance of the pope, who sets up to be the universal fisher of men, the whole innocent nation was, according to our common expression, to be laid as flat as a flounder.

I remember, myself, a particular crier of flounders in London, who arrived at so much fame for the loudness