Note 202 — MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.

The authority for considering this "Account" to be the work of Swift is Mr. Deane Swift, the editor of the edition of 1765 of Swift's works. It is included in the eighth volume of the quarto edition issued that year. Burke also seems to have had no doubt at all about the authorship. Referring to the Dean's disposition to defend Queen Anne and to ridicule her successor, he says, "it is probable that the pieces in which he does it ('Account of the Court of Japan,' and 'Directions for making a Birth-day Song') were the occasion of most of the other posthumous articles having been so long withheld from the publick." Undoubtedly, there is much in this piece that savours of Swift's method of dealing with such a subject; but that could easily be imitated by a clever reader of "Gulliver." The style, however, in which it is written is not distinctly Swift's.

At the time this tract was written (1728) the Tory party was anxiously hoping that the accession of George II. would see the downfall of Walpole. But the party was doomed to a bitter disappointment. Walpole not only maintained but added to the power he enjoyed under George I. By what means this was accomplished the writer of this piece attempts to hint. Sir Walter Scott thinks the piece was probably left imperfect, "when the crisis to which the Tories so anxiously looked forward terminated so undesirably, in the confirmation of Walpole's power." [T. S.]