repairing an old one that has already failed. You know the honest
man who kept the office is gone already."

[Footnote 335: The authorship of the greater part of this paper is
uncertain; see note on next page.]

[Footnote 336: "Reddere" (Horace).]

[Footnote 337: See No. 9.]

[Footnote 338: See Nos. 120, 122. In the continuation of the Tatler
which Swift and Harrison conducted (No. 28, March 24, 1710-11) there is
this passage: "The person produced as mine in the playhouse, last
winter, did in no wise appertain to me. It was such a one, however, as
agreed well with the impression my writings had made, and served the
purpose I intended it for: which was to continue the awe and reverence
due to the character I was vested with, and at the same time to let my
enemies see how much I was the delight and favourite of this town," &c.]

[Footnote 339: This letter, in ridicule of Harley's newly formed
Ministry, has been attributed to the joint authorship of Anthony Henley
(see No. 11) and Temple Stanyan. Harley is supposed to be the gentleman
referred to in the letter, and Downes, it has been suggested, is Thomas
Osborne, first Duke of Leeds. Steele expressly disavowed responsibility
for the letter from Downes the prompter. In No. 53 of the _Guardian_ he
wrote: "Old Downes is a fine piece of raillery, of which I wish I had
been author. All I had to do in it, was to strike out what related to a
gentlewoman about the Queen, whom I thought a woman free from ambition,
and I did it out of regard to innocence." And in the Preface to the
_Tatler_, he said that this letter was by an unknown correspondent. A
writer in the _Examiner_ (vol. iv. No. 2) mentions Old Downes among the
sufferers of figure under our author's satire. The same writer, or
another in the same paper, expresses himself in the following words:
"Steele broke his own maxim for trifles in which his country had no
manner of concern; and by entering into party disputes, violated the
most solemn repeated promises and that perfect neutrality he had engaged
to maintain. As a proof that I did not wrong him, he now openly takes
upon himself Downes' letter, by wishing the raillery (as he calls it)
were his own." In the "Essays Divine, Moral, and Political" (1714), p.
42, Swift is made to say, "I advised him [Steele] to the publishing that
letter from Downes the prompter, which was the beginning of his ruin,
though I here declare I did not write it." Forster ("Biog