In respect of annotation the methods of the collection in which this book appears did not permit of any very extensive commentary; and I could not be sorry for this. Anything like full scholia on the proverbs, catchwords, and so forth used, would be enormously voluminous, and a very dull overlaying of matter ill-sortable with dulness. Besides, much of the phraseology is intelligible to anybody intelligent, and not a very little is not yet obsolete in the mouths of persons of no particular originality. You may still hear men and women, not necessarily destitute either of birth, breeding, or sense, say of such a thing that “they like it, but it does not like them,” that such another thing “comes from a hot place,” with other innocent clichés of the kind. But in some places where assistance seemed really required I have endeavoured to give it. Among such cases I have not included the attempt to identify “the D. of R.,” “the E. of E.,” “Lord and Lady H.,” etc. I am afraid it would be falling too much into the humour of good Mr. Wagstaff himself to examine with the help of much Collins the various persons whose initials and titles might possibly correspond with these during the nearly sixty years between Mr. Wagstaff’s coming of age and the appearance of his work at the Middle Temple Gate in Fleet Street. The persons named at full length are generally, if not universally real, and more or less well known. Enough to inform or remind the reader of these has, I hope, been inserted in the Notes. But the fact is, that, like most great writers, though not all, Swift is really not in need of much annotation. It is not that he is not allusive—I hardly know any great writer who is not—but that his allusions explain themselves to a reader of average intelligence quite sufficiently for the understanding of the context, though not, it may be, sufficiently to enable him to “satisfy the examiners.” It does not, for instance, matter in the least whether the “infamous Court chaplain,” who taught the maids of honour not to believe in Hell was Hoadley, or who he was. His cap may even have fitted several persons at different times. In such a display of literary skill at arms as this the glitter of the blade and the swashing blow of its wielder are the points of interest, not the worthless carrion into which it was originally thrust. But “worthless carrion” is not Polite Conversation: so let me leave the reader to what is.[1]
George Saintsbury.
[1] The piece is on the whole fairly well printed; but the speeches are sometimes wrongly assigned. Attention is called to this in the notes; but the real speaker is generally evident.
A Complete
COLLECTION
Of Genteel and Ingenious
CONVERSATION,
According to the Most
Polite Mode and Method
Now USED
At COURT, and in the BEST
COMPANIES of England.
In THREE DIALOGUES.
By SIMON WAGSTAFF, Esq.;
LONDON:
Printed for B. Motte, and C. Bathurst, at
the Middle Temple-Gate in Fleet-Street.
M.dcc.xxxviii.