The Works of Jonathan Swift Author:Jonathan Swift Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Stella. Nor would he have omitted so good an opportunity to shew his zeal for his political party, as this event afforded, had there not occurred a delicacy in d... more »rawing up the narrative, which, in fact, occasioned the first coldness between St John and Hurley. The former affected to regard himself as the primary object of Guiscard's violence. This was probably true; forGuiscard considered himself as deserted, and even betrayed by St John, who had been formerly his intimate, and against Harley he had no personal subject of animosity. Indeed the whole story tends to confirm the opinion of those who held that St John was the principal object of the assassin's vengeance : But still Harley had suffered the effects of it; and as he and his party unanimously ascribed the frantic violence of a desperate man to a serious intention of relieving France from her most dangerous enemy, Harley and his friends resented St John's attempt to deprive him of a merit acquired at the risque of his life.t To avoid committing himself on so ticklish a point of competition, Swift entrusted Mrs Man- ley, author of the " New Atalantis," with'the task of composing the following narrative, from the facts with which he furnished her. This appears from the following passages in his journal. " Yesterday was sent me a narrative printed, with all the circumstances of Mr Hurley's stabbing. I had not time to do it myself-: so I sent my hints to the author of the Atalantis; and she has cooked it into a sixpenny pamphlet, in her own style; only the first page is left as I was beginning it. But 1 am afraid of disobliging Mr Harley or Mr St. John, in one critical point, about it, and so would not do it myself. It is worth your reading, for the circumstances are all true." Journal to Stella, April 16, 1711.—" Guiscard, ...« less