never regards how many worthy citizens he hinders from making up their
plum. And surely there is one thing never to be forgiven him, that he
delights to have his table filled with black coats, whom he uses as if
they were gentlemen.

My Lord D[artmouth][24] is a man of letters, full of good sense, good
nature and honour, of strict virtue and regularity in life; but labours
under one great defect, that he treats his clerks with more civility and
good manners, than others, in his station, have done the Qu[een].[25]

Omitting some others, I will close this character of the present
ministry, with that of Mr. S[t. John],[26] who from his youth applying
those admirable talents of nature and improvements of art to public
business, grew eminent in court and Parliament at an age when the
generality of mankind is employed in trifles and folly. It is to be
lamented, that he has not yet procured himself a busy, important
countenance, nor learned that profound part of wisdom, to be difficult of
access. Besides, he has clearly mistaken the true use of books, which he
has thumbed and spoiled with reading, when he ought to have multiplied
them on his shelves:[27] not like a great man of my acquaintance, who
knew a book by the back, better than a friend by the face, though he
had never conversed with the former, and often with the latter.

[Footnote 1: No. 26 in the reprint. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2: Writing to Stella, under date February 3rd, 1710/1, Swift
says: "They are plaguy Whigs, especially the sister Armstrong [Mrs.
Armstrong, Lady Lucy's sister], the most insupportable of all women
pretending to wit, without any taste. She was running down the last
'Examiner,' the prettiest I had read, with a character of the present
ministry" (vol. ii., p. 112 of present edition.) [T.S.]]

[Footnote 3: "For that is true glory and praise for noble deeds that
deserve well of the state, when they not only win the approval of the
best men but also that of the multitude." [T.S.]]

[Footnote 4: It was reported that the author of "The Examiner" was
Matthew Prior, late under-secretary of state. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 5: To Stella Swift wrote in his "Journal," under date February
9th:--"The account you give of that weekly paper [_i.e._ 'The Examiner,']
agrees with us here. Mr. Prior was like to be insulted in the street for
being supposed the author of it, but one of the last papers cleared him.
Nobody knows who it is, but those few in the secre