'too,' is colloquial but rather picturesque. Cf. the
famous 'And yet but yaw neither' in _Hamlet_.

III. THE DRAPIER'S LETTERS.

I have not thought it desirable to reproduce the abundance of italics
with which the original is furnished. They no doubt appealed to the
vulgar, as where poor Mr. Wood is described as '_a mean ordinary man,
a hard-ware dealer_.' But the vigour of the onslaught is wholly
independent of them.

_Written_--by Swift himself.

_Bere_, or 'bear,' also 'bigg,' a kind of barley largely cultivated
in Ireland, Scotland, and Northern England. It has six rows in the ear,
and will grow in much poorer ground and a much damper and rougher
climate than the two-rowed variety. It is also, I believe, still thought
to give the best whisky, if not the best beer, when malted.

_Conolly_.--Speaker of the Irish House of Commons.

_Pistole_--about ten shillings.

_Brought to the bullion_ seems here to have the meaning of the
French _billonner_ or _envoyer au billon_, 'to melt for recoining.'

_Our Caesar's statue_.--The statue of George I. on Essex Bridge,
Dublin.

IV. SECOND LETTER ON A REGICIDE PEACE.

_Contignation_.--This rather pedantic, and now, I think, quite
obsolete word (from _tignum_, 'beam') means 'having a common or
continuous roof.'

The slackness of England in taking advantage of the Vendean and Chouan
movements, of which Burke here complains, has never been fully
explained. The poltroonery of the Bourbon princes, and the factions of
the emigrants, throw a certain but not a complete light on it; and
though conjectural explanations are obvious enough, there is little
positive evidence to support them.

_But when the possibility ... that the_.--It will probably seem
to a modern reader that either 'that' or 'the' has crept in improperly.
It might be so; but Burke still maintained the authoritative but rather
inelegant tradition by which 'that,' like the French _que_, could
replace any such antecedent word as 'when,' 'because,' etc.

_Louis the Sixteenth_.--To this is appended a note in the editions
beginning, 'It may be right to do justice to Louis XVI. He did what he
could to destroy the double diplomacy of France.' The subject has of
late years received considerable illustration in the Duke of Broglie's
_Le Secret du Roi_, and other works by the same author.

_Montalembert_.--Marc Rene, Marquis de (1714-1800), a voluminous
military writer.

_Harrington_--of the _Oceana_.

V.