he does not prevail; but with regard to wit, I am afraid none of Swift's papers will be found equal to those by which Addifon oppofed him.

Early in the next year he published a Propofal for correlling, improving, and afcertaining the English Tongue, in a Letter to the Earl of Oxford; written without much knowledge of the general nature of language, and without any accurate enquiry into the hiftory of othertongues. The certainty and stability which, contrary to all experience, he thinks attainable, he propofes to fecure by inftituting an academy; the decrees of which every man would have been willing, and many would have been proud to disobey, and which, being renewed.

newed by fucceffive elections, would in a fhort time have differed from itself.

He wrote the fame year a Letter to the October Club, a number of Tory Gentlemen fent from the country to Parlialiament, who formed themselves into a club, to the number of about a hundred, and met to animate the zeal and raise the expectations of each other. They thought, with great reafon, that the Ministers were lofing opportunities; that fufficient ufe was not made of the general ardour of the nation; they called loudly for more changes, and stronger efforts; and demanded the punishment of part, and the difmiffion of the reft, of those whom they confidered as publick robbers.

Their eagerness was not gratified by the Queen, or by Harley. The Queen was probably flow because she was afraid, and Harley was flow because he was doubtful; he was a Tory only by neceffity, or for convenience; and when he had power in his hands, had no fettled purpose for which he fhould employ it; forced to gratify to a certain degree the Tories who fupported him, but unwilling to make his reconcilement to the Whigs utterly defperate, he correfponded at once with the two expectants of the Crown, and kept, as has been obferved, the fucceffion undetermined. Not knowing what to do, he did nothing; and with the fate of a double-dealer, at last he loft his power, but kept his enemies.

Swift

Swift feems to have concurred in opinion with the October Club; but it was not in his power to quicken the tardinefs of Harley, whom he ftimulated as much as he could, but with little effect. He that knows not whither to go, is in no hafte to move. Harley, who was perhaps not quick by nature, became yet more flow by irrefolution; and was content to hear that dilatorinefs lamented as natural, which he applauded in himself as politick.

Without the Tories, however, nothing could be done; and as they were not to be gratified, they must be appeased; and the conduct of the Minifter, if it could not be vindicated, was to be plaufibly excufed.

Swift now attained the zenith of his political importance: he published (1712) the Conduct of the Allies, ten days before the Parliament affembled. The purpose was to perfuade the nation to a peace, and never had any writer more fuccefs. The people, who had been

amufed with bonfires and triumphal proceffions, and looked with idolatry on the General and his friends, who, as they thought, had made England the arbitrefs of nations, were confounded between fhame and rage, when they found that mines had been exhausted, and millions destroyed, to fecure the Dutch or aggrandife the Emperor, without any advantage to ourselves'; that we had been bribing our neighbours to fight

their