[23]: «L'absence de foi est un inconvénient qu'il faut cacher quand on ne peut le vaincre.—Je me regarde, en qualité de prêtre, comme chargé par la Providence de défendre un poste qu'elle m'a confié, et de faire déserter autant d'ennemis qu'il est possible.» (Pensées sur la religion.)
[24]: Je ne crois pas, quoi qu'on ait dit, qu'il fût alors de mauvaise foi. On pouvait croire à une escroquerie ministérielle, et Swift plus qu'un autre. Au fond, Swift me paraît honnête homme.
[25]: Brethren, friends, countrymen, and fellow-subjects, what I intend now to say to you, is, next to your duty to God and the care of your salvation, of the greatest concern to you and your children; your bread and clothing and every common necessary of life depends upon it. Therefore I do most earnestly exhort you, as men, as christians, as parents, and as lovers of your country, to read this paper with the utmost attention, or get it read to you by others; which that you may do at the less expense, I have ordered the printer to sell at it the lowest rate.
[26]: Your paragraph relates farther that sir Isaac Newton reported an essay taken at the Tower of Wood's metal, by which it appears that Wood had in all respects performed his contract. His contract! With whom? Was it with the Parliament or people of Ireland? Are not they to be purchasers? But they detest, abhor, and reject it as corrupt, fraudulent, mingled with dirt and trash.
[27]: His first proposal is that he will be content to coin no more (than forty thousand pounds), unless the exigencies of the trade require it, although his patent empowers him to coin a far greater quantity.... To which if I were to answer, it should be thus: let Mr Wood and his crew of founders and tinkers coin on, till there is not an old kettle left in the kingdom; let them coin old leather, tobacco-pipe clay, or the dirt in the street, and call their trumpery by what name they please, from a guinea to a farthing; we are not under any concern to know how he and his tribe of accomplices think fit to employ themselves; but I hope and trust that we are all, to a man, fully determined to have nothing to do with him or his ware.
[28]: Your newsletter says that an essay was made of the coin. How impudent and insupportable is this! Wood takes care to coin a dozen or two halfpence of good metal, sends them to the Tower, and they are approved; and these must answer all that he has already coined or shall coin for the future. It is true, indeed, that a gentleman often sends to my shop for a pattern of stuff. I cut it fairly off, and if he likes it, he comes or sends and compares the pattern with the whole piece, and probably we come to a bargain. But if I were to buy a hundred sheep, and the grazier should bring me one single wether fat and well fleeced by way of pattern, and expect the same price for the whole hundred, without suffering me to see them before he was paid or giving me good security to restore my money for those that were lean, or shorn or scabby, I would be none of his customers. I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of brick in his pocket, which he showed as a pattern to encourage the purchasers; and this is directly the case in point with Mr Wood's essay.
[29]: The common soldier, when he goes to the market or ale house will offer his money; and if it be refused, he perhaps will swagger and hector, and threaten to beat the butcher or alewife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad half-pence. In this and the like cases, the shop-keeper or victualler, or any other tradesman, has no more to do than to demand ten times the price of his goods, if it is to be paid in Wood's money; for example twenty pence of that money for a quart of ale, and so in all things, and never part with the goods till he gets the money.
[30]: Upon this rock the author is perpetually splitting, as often as he ventures out beyond the narrow bounds of his literature. He has a confused remembrance of words since he left the university, but has lost half their meaning, and puts them together with no regard except to their cadence; as I remember a fellow nailed up maps in a gentleman's closet, some sidelong, others upside down, the better to adjust them to the pannels.
Voyez aussi dans l'Examiner le pamphlet sur Malborough, désigné sous le nom de Crassus, et la comparaison de la générosité romaine et de la ladrerie anglaise.
[31]: I have had the honour of much conversation with his lordship, and am thoroughly convinced how indifferent he is to applause and how insensible of reproach.... He is without the sense of shame or glory, as some men are without the sense of smelling; therefore a good name to him is no more than a precious ointment would be to these. Whoever, for the sake of others, were to describe the nature of a serpent, a wolf, a crocodile or a fox, must be understood to do it without any personal love or hatred for the animals themselves. In the same manner his Excellency is one whom I neither personally love or hate. I see him at court, at his own house, or sometimes at mine, for I have the honour of his visits; and when these papers are public, it is odds but he will tell me, as he once did upon a like occasion, «that he is damnably mauled,» and then with the easiest transition in the world, ask about the weather, or time of the day. So that I enter on the work with more cheerfulness, because I am sure neither to make him angry, nor any way to hurt his reputation; a pitch of happiness and security to which his Excellency has arrived, and which no philosopher before him could reach.—Thomas, Earl of Wharton, lord lieutenant of Ireland, by the force of a wonderful constitution, has some years passed his grand climacterick without any visible effects of old age, either on his body or his mind and in spite of a continual prostitution to those vices which usually wear out both.... Whether he walks or whistles, or swears, or talks bawdy, or calls names, he acquits himself in each beyond a templar of three years standing. With the same grace and in the same style, he will rattle his coachman in the midst of the street, where he is governor of the kingdom; and all this is without consequence, because it is his character, and what every body expects.... The ends he has gained by lying appear to be more owing to the frequency than the art of them, his lies being sometimes detected in an hour, often in a day, and always in a week.... He swears solemnly he loves and will serve you, and your back is no sooner turned, but he tells those about him you are a dog and a rascal. He goes constantly to prayers in the forms of his place, and will talk bawdy and blasphemy at the chapel door. He is a presbyterian in politicks, and an atheist in religion, but he chooses at present to whore with a papist. In his commerce with mankind, his general rule is to endeavour to impose on their understandings, for which he has but a receipt, a composition of lies and oaths.... He bears the gallantries of his lady with the indifference of a stoick, and thinks them well recompensed by a return of children to support his family, without the fatigues of being a father.... He was never known to refuse or to keep a promise, as I remember he told a lady, but with an exception to the promise he then made, which was to get her a pension. Yet he broke even that, and, I confess, deceived us both. But here I desire to distinguish between a promise and a bargain; for he will be sure to keep the latter, when he has the fairest offer.... But here I must desire the reader's pardon, if I cannot digest the following facts in so good a manner as I intended; because it is thought expedient for some reasons, the world should be informed of his Excellency's merits as soon as possible.... As they are, they may serve for hints to any person who may hereafter have a mind to write memoirs of his Excellency's life.