[Footnote 1: Astore, means my dear, my heart.]
[Footnote 2: The Tholsel, where criminals for the city were tried, and
where proclamations, etc., were posted. It was invariably called the
Touls'el by the lower class.]
[Footnote 3: It would appear that the chorus here introduced, was
intended to chime with the howl, the ululatus, or funeral cry, of the
Irish.]
[Footnote 4: Swift, it is said, caused a muffled peal to be rung from the
steeple of St. Patrick's, on the day of the proclamation, and a black
flag to be displayed from its battlements.—Scott.]
[Footnote 5: The big man of straw, means the Duke of Dorset,
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; he had only the name of authority, the
essential power being vested in the primate.]
[Footnote 6: Jug-Joulter means Primate Boulter, whose name is played
upon in the succeeding line. In consequence of the public dissatisfaction
expressed at the lowering the gold coin, the primate became very
unpopular.]
[Footnote 7: "Footmen" alludes to a supporter of the measure, said to
have been the son or grandson of a servant.]
[Footnote 8: Means "my hundred thousand hearty curses on the feeders of
swine.">[
A WICKED TREASONABLE LIBEL[1]
While the king and his ministers keep such a pother,
And all about changing one whore for another,
Think I to myself, what need all this strife,
His majesty first had a whore of a wife,
And surely the difference mounts to no more
Than, now he has gotten a wife of a whore.
Now give me your judgment a very nice case on;
Each queen has a son, say which is the base one?
Say which of the two is the right Prince of Wales,
To succeed, when, (God bless him,) his majesty fails;
Perhaps it may puzzle our loyal divines
To unite these two Protestant parallel lines,
From a left-handed wife, and one turn'd out of doors,
Two reputed king's sons, both true sons of whores;
No law can determine it, which is first oars.
But, alas! poor old England, how wilt thou be master'd;
For, take which you please, it must needs be a bastard.
[Footnote 1: So the following very remarkable verses are entitled, in a
copy which exists in the Dean's hand-writing bearing the following
characteristic memorandum on the back: "A traitorous libel, writ several
years ago. It is inconsistent with itself. Copied September 9, 1735. I
wish I knew the author, that I might hang him." And at the bottom of the
paper is subjoined this postscript. "I copied out this wicked paper many
years ago, in hopes to discover the traitor of an author, that I might
inform against him." For the foundation of the scandals current during
the reign of George I, to which the lines allude, see Walpole's
Reminiscences of the Courts of George the first and second, chap, ii, at
p. cii, Walpole's Letters, edit. Cunningham.—W. E. B.]
EPIGRAMS AGAINST CARTHY BY SWIFT AND OTHERS
CHARLES CARTHY, a schoolmaster in the city of Dublin, was publisher of a
translation of Horace, in which the Latin was printed on the one side,
and the English on the other, whence he acquired the name of Mezentius,
alluding to the practice of that tyrant, who chained the dead to the
living.
Carthy was almost continually involved in satirical skirmishes with
Dunkin, for whom Swift had a particular friendship, and there is no doubt
that the Dean himself engaged in the warfare.—Scott.