ABSTRACT
The first two extracts are by Swift: (a) from A Letter Concerning the Sacramental Test (1709), and (b) from the Examiner, no. 15 (16 November 1710). In both cases Swift is comparing Defoe’s Review with the rival Observator newspaper. Quotations from The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. H. Davis (Oxford, 1939–67), vol. ii, p. 113; vol. iii, p. 13. Passage (c) is from John Gay’s The Present State of Wit (1711), a relaxed look at the current journalistic scene. Text from the Augustan Reprint Society edition by D. F. Bond, (Ann Arbor, 1947), p. 1. Passages (d) and (e) are from The Dunciad Variorum of 1729, with subsequent notes where relevant. Passage (f) comes from Pope’s conversation as reported by Joseph Spence in Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, ed. J. M. Osborn (Oxford, 1966), vol. i, p. 213. The following extract (g) is from An Author to be Lett (1729), probably by the dissolute poet Richard Savage (?1697–1742) with the certain connivance and likely assistance of Pope himself. Quotation from p. 4. Extract (h) is taken from the pro-Pope organ, Grub-street Journal, no. 69 (29 April 1731).
