of symmetry and form, to charm some eyes. But those who have the taste never lose it, never change it, never are weary of gratifying it. Of irony, as of hardly any other thing under the sun, cometh no satiety to the born ironist. It may be well to end this brief preface by a few words on the principles of editing which I have adopted. There is no omission whatever, except of a very few words—not, I think, half a score in all—which were barely permissible to mouths polite even then, and which now are almost banished from even free conversation. Nor have even these omissions been allowed to mutilate the passages in which they occur; for on Mr. Wagstaff’s own excellent principle, the harmless necessary “blank, which the sagacious reader may fill up in his own mind,” has replaced them. In respect of annotation the methods of the collection in which this book appears did not permit of any very extensive commentary; and I could not be sorry for this. Anything like full _scholia_ on the proverbs, catchwords, and so forth used, would be enormously voluminous, and a very dull overlaying of matter ill-sortable with dulness. Besides, much of the phraseology is intelligible to anybody intelligent, and not a very little is not yet obsolete in the mouths of persons of no particular originality. You may still hear men and women, not necessarily destitute either of birth, breeding, or sense, say of such a thing that “they like it, but it does not like them,” that such another thing “comes from a hot place,” with other innocent _clichés_ of the kind. But in some places where assistance seemed really required I have endeavoured to give it. Among such cases I have not included the attempt to identify “the D. of R.,” “the E. of E.,” “Lord and Lady H.,” etc. I am afraid it would be falling too much into the humour of good Mr. Wagstaff himself to examine with the help of much Collins the various persons whose initials and titles might possibly correspond with these during the nearly sixty years between Mr. Wagstaff’s coming of age and the appearance of his work at the Middle Temple Gate in Fleet Street. The persons named at full length are generally, if not universally real, and more or less well known. Enough to inform or remind the reader of these has, I hope, been inserted in the Notes. But the fact is, that, like most great writers, though not all, Swift is really not in need of much annotation. It is not that he is not allusive—I hardly know any great writer who is not—but that his allusions explain themselves to a reader of average intelligence quite sufficiently for the understanding of the context, though not, it may be, sufficiently to enable him to “satisfy the examiners.” It does not, for instance, matter in the least whether the “infamous Court chaplain,” who taught the maids of honour not to believe in Hell was Hoadley, or who he was. His cap may even have fitted several persons at different times. In