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Les Âges de la vie en Grande-Bretagne au XVIIIe siècle

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Serge Soupel

Deuxième partie. Aspects littéraires

Computing the Semantic Network of Age in Early Eighteenth-Century Political Writing

Fritz-Wilhelm Neumann

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  • 1 See Rosanne G. Potter’s survey articles, “Literary Criticism and Literary Computing: The Difficult (...)

1Reviewing computer applications in the study of English literature state-of-the art papers increasingly tend towards pessimistic conclusions about the work in prospect1. This is the more astonishing, as many of the private workstations have got the storage capacity for an extensive collection of literary texts and the Processing power to do anything at an absolutely vertiginous speed. Nevertheless, as soon as one is aware of the real State of the art, a growing number of voices reminds one that there is indeed a marked contrast between the rapid evolution of our gadgets and the lack of conceptual framework in the numerous statistical studies of style which have been produced. Accordingly postmodern approaches prevail in the professional periodicals, and hardly anyone in the humanities seems to be really interested in the computer, except using it as an intelligent typewriter.

2But ‘computer positivism’ will rapidly gather momentum in the near future, for by the end of this century the computer corpus of English literature will be accomplished. The scholar’s library will not vanish, but the computerized work of literature will become an important tool of research. To get there, one important step was achieved recently: CETH — The Rutgers CENTRE OF ELECTRONIC TEXTS IN THE HUMANITIES (sponsored by Princeton University and directed by Susan Hockey) — is compiling an Inventory of Machine-Readable Texts world-wide. The existence of a large number of corpora may not be obvious yet, and the mailing list of the Oxford Text Archive still offers no more than a random collection of samples drawn from English literature. The complete works of Shakespeare, however, are available in machine-readable form. As the foremost commercial publisher, Chadwyck-Healey are on schedule again—meaning their breathtaking stunt of producing the English poetry corpus which is to comprise all the entries in the New Cambridge Bibliography up to 1900 (nearly 1400 authors). There is further evidence, indeed, that a considerable number of English literature corpora are rapidly coming into existence especially in Japan and the United States. In five years’ time most of the standard texts will be stored and delivered on diskette. Furthermore, a large number of specialised corpora will be available.

3ECCOP, i.e., the Eighteenth-Century Corpus of Pamphlets was founded by Prof. Mullenbrock in 1986. The corpus extends over the peace debate from 1710 to 1713 and includes genres like pamphlets, sermons, broadsides, periodicals and poems, well-known works such as Pope’s Windsor Forest and Swift’s Conduct of the Allies as well as completely unknown ballads and addresses. Most of the materials were published anonymously. As far as authors have been identified, all are represented in this collection of about 160 machine-readable texts, periodicals not included in this number. The whole of the corpus amounts to 1.3 mio. words. Authorship detection studies based on stylo-statistics might appear helpful, but for the time being they are beyond the scope of our project—which is to reconstruct the debate in all its ramifications. One is, of course, immediately reminded of the lot of dubious pieces attributed to Defoe, who is by far the most important author in this corpus as he was the most prolific writer of the epoque in general, Ned Ward the arch-Tory being the second in rank. It took quite a time to build this corpus, as only a very few works could be scanned. We started some years ago on the Kurzweil Data Entry Machine, and sometimes we were able to scan up to thirty pages per hour. But it is quite impossible, however OCR software (Optical Character Recognition) might have been sophisticated, to scan most of early eighteenth-century printing, and even less so xeroxcopies drawn from microfilms. Thanks to the federal ministry of education and science and to the Volkswagen foundation manpower was made available to have 90% of the materials keyed in.

4This paper is to show that in spite of all the machinery we will continue asking nearly the same questions, but the paths of investigation and the materials are going to be extended. This is where the real change takes place. A corpus is not a book; it is a System you read in selectively and synchronically, but not progressively as in a book. The retrieval System serves to locate likeness and similarities word by word. We do not know how far this will lead us, but in this respect computer positivism will be of more permanent value than other more fashionable approaches to literature. I think that I am on the safe side in predicting that thanks to the computer an extremely precise reconstruction of historical semantics in special fields of interest will provoke or even will prove itself a major change of paradigm. I would like first to describe the epistemological side of the problem before entering into the discussion of life-cycle patterns.

I

5Our notions of reality depend on the amount of data available. This is a truism in mathematics as well as in general history—but unthinkable in the history of literature? Are we really limited to what the act of contemplation yields in the scholar’s library? One has to become aware of how much a text changes its character and thus its form of being read when put into the computer corpus. There are, of course, deep-rooted anxieties about the new media. We love book-thumping as one of the foremost qualities of our civilization. But the age of the book may be drawing towards its end nowadays. A text is a work of art; as an electronic text it forms a segment of an immense string of 1,3 mio. words. Epistemology will accordingly have to revised, if literary history is to be rewritten on the electronic corpus. Consequently the act of contemplation is replaced by a feat of engineering. In an age of transition the bricoleur will rise to the opportunity, although his ingenious way of programming remains hidden. Self-effacement may be unpopular in a profession where interpretation and historical evaluation display the scholar’s tremendous force of intellect. Translating an act of aesthetic contemplation requires a well-written piece of erudition. This is why nearly thirty years of authorship detection studies and stylo-statistics appear inessential. The work of art has to exist as an intricate process of form and meaning and understanding. Nevertheless progress will not have us abandon what we have done so far. As soon as we take into account the new media we broaden our own scope of investigation, which will be changed only insofar as it gets a new prop to build on.

6In a full-text corpus materials are primarily processed for drawing the evidence from an amount of data otherwise unreadable in a lifetime. Statistics generalize the inferences formed on a limited number of samples; the degree of precision arrived at in disclosing a semantic network miraculously contrasts with the vast context it is related to. Retrieval thus leads to close re-reading and the revision of previous attempts at historical explanation.

7Now reading will appropriately be called “pattern matching”, which is exactly what we do when we read; only does the human mind still work a lot faster than the computer, because it employs a neuronal network of many thousands of central Processing units doing the job simultaneously and well co-ordinately instead of the single one the computer is built around. Taking a language such as SNOBOL which provides special functions for word recognition, pattern matching can be performed for retrieving a particular word or, by way of list processing, a complete linguistic register within the corpus.

8Nowadays, one is able to match patterns the complexity of which equals the intricacies of normal text structure. Pre-established registers of Whig and Tory political terms (France, French, Church, constitution, nation, protestant succession, for instance), thematic vocabulary (war, peace, treaty), animal imagery (wolf, lion, sheep, vulture, serpent, snake), life-cycle notions (young, old, grandfather, son, birth, death, ancestors) are checked through in any text of the corpus. Only those entries or paragraphs of the text may be taken into account where the distribution of the above-mentioned notions is more marked than normal—speaking of one register—or where terms of different registers occur within the same entry.

9The pattern-matching approach focusses on the distribution of registers. Distribution must be viewed as an aspect of rhetoric. In political propaganda, at least, one gets more than one’s fill of slogans and other tags. The law of clustering refers to the redundancy strategy especially of the political pamphlet. When the author thinks the moment crucial, he hammers his message home, so that the linguistic registers under consideration densely cluster to convey the importance of the point. If the first law of clustering requires redundancy as a general principle, the second law describes the structure of the cluster itself. In the cluster all the important registers merge, such as, for instance, the language of Tory ideology, the images of the happy life-cycle and the topical references to peace and the end of bloodshed. Frequency and combination of registers within a segment can be easily located and described in their structure and density. Applied on the whole corpus, changes of prevailing imagery, the narrowing and widening of ideological language can be analysed. On the surface register distribution can be made visible by graphs, even if this is only a very poor transcription of rhetorical structure. It is useful as a sort of preliminary x-raying of the text, and as a standardized device applicable on any text in the corpus. I have found very helpful to see how distribution graphs (indicating the frequency of a register within 50 or 100 words) converge. As a rule rhetorical impact is produced by a high occurrence of the so-called ideological language correlating with, for instance, the imagery and the life-cycle register.

II

  • 2 See for a similar approach including statistical control Eva M. Thury, “A Study of Words relating (...)
  • 3 ECCOP is, by the way, run under NOTA BENE TEXTBASE, which is an excellent word Processing System c (...)

10Working on the life-cycle is just one of many possible goals in semantic corpus research2. Let us presume that the life-cycle is a concept fundamentally related to the respective ideology. In preparing this paper I was surprised how often images drawn from the life-cycle are interwoven with the patterns of political language. Starting with the corpus lexicon comprising some 26,000 unlemmatized entries, a life-cycle register was established and the respective entries were retrieved from the corpus3.A reading of the entries—one entry is made up of one paragraph—disclosed the fact that an extension of the register was necessary: several clusters included the idea of posterity which the present generation owes a great deal of foresight to and the judgement of which the present generation particularly fears. This seems to have been a prominent feature in certain turns of the debate, so that in a second retrieval we additionally had to trace this notion. Before taking up the idea of posterity, I want to reconstruct the semantic field of the life-cycle topos.

  • 4 The British Visions: or, Isaac Bickerstaff Senr; Being Twelve Prophecies for the Year 1711 (London (...)

11The life-cycle obviously belongs to the store of rhetorical topoi authors easily draw upon: inexperienced youth, vigorous youth and the authority of age. Topoi of this sort, however, do not regularly appear in the relevant clusters. How cleverly a topos can be taken up is shown by Defoe in The British Visions4. Defoe parodies the well-known contemporary figure of John Partridge, almanack-writer and visionary whose predictions had used to fall short of reality and who had duely been exploded by Steele the year before. Defoe just ridicules the visionary:

Thus have I Bickerstaff the Aged, given you a View of this fatal Year that is yet to come....
France gains at first by exerting herself with uncommon vigor, but loses again both her Glory and her Advantages before the End of the Campaign.
Britain is at vast Expence, rather gains than loses, but not suitable to her Occasion, any more than to her Expectation. (British Visions 16)

  • 5 “The Conduct of the Allies : contexte et originalité”, in Commerce(s) en Grande-Bretagne au XVIIIe(...)

12Somewhat more polemical bite is achieved when Defoe adds the age topos to the immediate concern about the situation. Defoe’s Reasons why This Nation Should Put a Speedy End to This Expensive War was published just five weeks before Swift’s influential Conduct of the Allies, Defoe’s pamphlet being the seminal one, as one may read in Guy Laprevotte’s recent study on the Conduct5. In the following example clustering comprises the ideas of youth (tutelage; instruction, being not of age) and politics (Dutch; peace; articles):

  • 6 Reasons Why This Nation Oughl to Put a Speedy End to this Expensive War (London, 1711) 37.

Nay, as if Britain was under the Tutelage of the Dutch, these People would have all the Articles of Peace concerted and determin’d by them; not instructing us with any Share in them, as People not of Age, and uncapable of acting for our selves6.

13In another pamphlet by Defoe, the topos of authoritative old age is connected with patriotism:

  • 7 Daniel Defoe, Worcestershire Queries about Peace. By Tom Flockmaker (London, 1711) 3.

Says he, I have used this Coffee House Twenty Years, and many Honest men always frequented it, who were Whigs as well as my self. Well said I, and what then? Why says the Old Man, I used to hear them talk honestly, like Men that lov’d and understood the true Interest of Old England7.

14The nucleus of Tory ideology centers on the family and the continuity of life. As a myth it forms a cluster within a cluster of different, but coherent life-cycle images. Creating a State of harmony which, unfortunately, had been destroyed by the machinations of the Whigs, is one of the most important ideological strategies used by Tory pamphleteers. The ideological structures remind one of Max Weber’s famous distinction between the conservative’s keeping up a world of values and the liberal’s instrumental view of politics. As far as the peace debate is concerned, even there the life-cycle expands in a fairly complex semantic field. On the family the different impersonators of the life-cycle converge, obviously enough. In the peace debate of 1710-12 there are three semantic levels: 1) the dynasty or the royal family, 2) the family relations and 3) good and bad mother figures. The life-cycle is viewed as history or vice-versa; history is viewed in terms of family relations; the declining life-cycle of the royal family all too easily lends itself to visions of a nation in danger, obviously enough. Top-level harmony warrants the welfare of the nation. This is reality and at the same time a way of analogical thinking and feeling similar to ritual and deeply rooted in human history. The end of the royal life-cycle draws the nation into a time of crisis and disaster, historically speaking, as the catholic monarchs were threatening the achievements of the Glorious Revolution. I am quoting from another pamphlet illustrating Defoe’s continuous and indefatigable working for peace. In times of crisis, the life-cycle may even have to pass an apocalytic tum of events to overcome the inner divisions of the nation:

  • 8 Essay al a Plain Exposition of that Difficult Phrase, a Good Peace (1711) 14; for a similar lifecy (...)

After the end of this Transaction, Europe was in a perfect Tranquility, I mean as to Nations; for as to Peace at Home, God knows we enjoy’d less of it than ever. But Heaven healed our needless Breaches, by making two real Breaches upon us; and finding the Nation Sick, and Surfeited with the little Peace we had; he visited us with a New War, and the Death of the King8.

15The semantic network will bring the less obvious to the fore, too. If the semantic deployment starts from the life-cycle of the royal family, there are all those relations one should never invite: the Bourbon family and, most disgustingly, the family. Swift dominated the debate, because he spent a great deal of his genius on blackening the Whigs. Within a few seconds’ time the retrieval System will produce ample evidence that Swift was responsible indeed for making this innocuous word especially abusive. Peace was the issue that polarized the parties, and the polemics of this epoque tended to produce extremes even in life-cycle imagery. The good and the bad family, the good and the bad mother divided the nation.

16Royalty impersonates the life-cycle of the nation. In trying to refute Swift’s Conduct ponderous Dr. Hare, Marlborough’s Chaplain-General and personal propagandist, took up the facts which are the case of family history being history as such:

  • 9 Francis Hare, The Allies and the Late Ministry Defended against France, and the Present Friends of (...)

But what puts this Matter past all Dispute, and undeniably proves that... in case the King of Spain should die without Issue, they will with all their Forces assist his Sacred Imperial Majesty, or his Heirs, in taking the Succession of the Spanish Monarchy lawfully belonging to that House. Is this now a new Incident, when it appears ‘tis what the Allies obliged themselves to a dozen Years before; is this the Work of a late Faction, which is plainly as old as the Revolution?9

17If Hare rightly States the facts, other writers of propaganda do not let go unnoticed the emotional or affective potential of the family and the life-cycle concept. To take up just the point discussed by Hare, in the Conduct Swift ingenuously plays upon the reversal of the life cycle:

Is there no Security for the Island of Britain, unless a King of Spain be Dethroned by his Grandfather?... The present King of France has but few Years to live, by the Course of Nature, and, doubtless, would desire to end his days in Peace: Grandfathers in private Families are not observed to have great Influence on their Grandsons, and I believe they have much less among Princes. However, when the Authority of a Parent is gone, is it likely that Philip will be directed by a Brother, against his own Interest, and that of his Subjects. (Conduct 86)

18Many authors hail Queen Anne as the good mother of her country, obviously enough. If Defoe really wrote Oliver’s Pocket Looking-Glass, in creating a devastating image of Sarah Marlborough he surpassed all the allegories he had entertained the readers of the Review with: “Famous Mother Shipton... by the Power and Influence of her Magick Art, had plac’d a Daughter in the same Station at Court with Meretricia...Speaking of the Duke of Marlborough he writes:

  • 10 Oliver's Pocket Looking-Glass, New Frarri d and Clean'd, to Give a Clear View of the Great Modem C (...)

In a former Reign, I just hinted, his Marrying the subtle Daughter of the Renowned Mother Shipton, who in all manner of Respects has answer’d the advantageous Promises of her Birth and Family: her Estate was the least Part of the Fortune which she brought him; and tho’ I cannot call her a sole-Heiress, her Portion of Inheritance was more considerable than most of those that are so; for, besides the Division of Land, she had Bequeath’d intire to her Possession, the matchless Cunning, and most mischievous Witchcraft of her Mother10.

19A political debate is characterized by standardization and repetition. A particular tag or expression is coined with its affective halo at a particular moment and repeated as often as possible, as il has proved once and again an efficient means of slander. In no time at all, the retrieval System helps you to reconstruct this particular process. “The family” was the bad Marlborough clan. Most of the instances occur in The Examiner (1710/11), so that Swift can continue his attacks in the Conduct:

We have been fighting to raise the Wealth and Grandeur of a particular Family; to enrich Usurers and Stock-jobbers; and to cultivate the pernicious Designs of a Faction, by destroying the Landed-Interest. (Conduct 87)

  • 11 A Short Narrative of the Life of His Grace John, D. of Marlborough (London, 1711) 33.
  • 12 See Paula Backscheider, ed., A Short Narrative of the Life of His Grace John, D. of Marlborough, T (...)

20Oliver’s Pocket Looking-Glass followed suite, although at approximately the same time Defoe glorified Marlborough: “His grace governs his family abroad like a wise master, with good order and method; every thing about him shines with a temperate use, and a daily chearful plenty”11. The only possible explanation for Defoe’s versatility has been offered by Paula Backscheider. Harley must have commanded an adulatory biography of the Duke in order to keep him from getting restive and from recovering his sense of forceful and efficient campaigning12.

  • 13 The D. of M.....h's Vindicahon: In Answer to a Pamphlet Lately Publish'd, Call'd [Bouchain, or a D (...)

21The life-cycle clusters throw some light on the particular concern of the writer under consideration. One argument unmistakably originated in Defoe’s Reasons why: the burden of the war everbody and not only the landed families have to carry. Defoe extends the notion of family to a public quite different from Swift’s and Manley’s society. Manley draws attention to the rising number of bankrupts, “the penury of our country-gentlemen with small estates, and numerous families, that pay in such large proportions to the war”13. Defoe reaches beyond the tax-paying Englishman and displaces the myth impersonated by royalty by a shift of perspective:

  • 14 Armageddon; or, the Necessity of Carrying on the War, if Such a Peace Cannot be Obtained as May Re (...)

Trade stagnates and decays under a War; Exportation is straightned and restrain’d; the Manufactures of the Nation lye still; the useful Hands that should work and support Families, stand still for want of Employment, and the Families that depended upon them for their Bread, the Fruit of that Labour, starve and perish for want of necessary Supply, which Labour and Industry always prevented.14

22The first survey of life-cycle and political clusters produced a number of significant passages where different authors referred to “posterity”. Thanks to “generation”, the following passage in a reply to Samuel Clement’s Faults on Both Sides (1710) was located during the first retrieval. It appears that during the part of the peace debate launched by Clement’s pamphlet the “posterity” topos was created as a major reference to the moral framework:

  • 15 Faults in the Fault-Finder; or, a Specimen of Errors in the Pamphlet, Entitul’d Fault on Both Side (...)

You blame the Ministry for Loading Posterity, as you call it, with the Charges of this War: But, pray, Sir, tell me, Why should not Posterity contribute towards it? Since we propose by this War to establish Peace so firmly, that Posterity shall reap a great and lasting Benefit by it? Besides, Can you tell me where, and at what time, a War like this, hath not entailed a great Debt upon Posterity? It would have beggared the present Generation, to have paid it all in their Time; and the Load, as ‘tis called, laid upon Posterity, is so easy a burden, that no Nation in the Universe bears so Light. Nor have our Ancestors (the reign of King Charles II. excepted) ever been so free in their Publick Payments and Taxations, Prerogatives of our former Kings being remembered, as Posterity will be15.

23Thus a second survey ensues for the obviously related concept, which is more sharply focussed. In the peace debate, “posterity” links up with different equally standardized topics: the judgement of posterity, which we would call history, and the entailing of debts on posterity are most frequently and forcefully reverted to. These express the Tory view of things. To quote one example, I will take such a one where posterity links up with another Tory key word. Running into debt means being cheated, being bubbled by the new moneyed class. Time and again Tories try to score a direct hit by calling the English nation bubbled. The word spins off a tremendous emotional impact. In A Letter to Isaac Bickerstaff the author refers to Swift’s Examiner:

  • 16 A Letter to Sir Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq; Occasioned by the Letter to the Examiner (London, 1710) 13

The whole Management of the War, on the Part of the Allies, is treated with ail the Contempt and Ridicule; the Emperor, and the States general, are maliciously traduced, and the British Nation are represented as Bubbles to those Potentates, lavishing their Blood and Treasure to make Acquisitions for them, and only intailing Debts on their own Posterity16.

24Protestantism, the post-revolution order and liberty secured for posterity, although less frequently mentioned, convey the Whig reaction to Tory propaganda. As the Whigs are at a loss watching the tide turn, they tend to take up posterity in more dramatic immediate surroundings. The Whig Bishop Fleetwood’s defense of war of 1712 strangely and strikingly resembles late nineteenth-century chauvinism:

  • 17 Fleetwood, A Sermon on the Fast-Day, January the Sixteenth, 1711/12. Against Such as Delight in Wa (...)

But the blood of a people does sometimes, by standing waters, stagnate, putrify, and breed corrupt and dangerous humours; and though a long and ignominious peace, be easy for that generation which enjoys it, yet it breaks out on their posterity, with greater violence and hazard. And therefore such an obstinate resolution of maintaining peace whatever happens, is really no kindness to a nation in the long run17.

25Considering the period’s rather limited idea of history as a stock of moral examples, the Whig appeal to posterity implies a sense of continuity of the lifecycle as well as some sort of complex process. The experience of menace and crisis is linked with the hope of a better life for posterity. As the conflict which broke out in the English Revolution has not been settled for good yet, a sense of history being open ensued: “the game of chess is left to Posterity to play it out”. (British Visions 7) If there is any purpose in the historical process, it must be liberty:

  • 18 Clement, Faulls on Both Sides: or, an Essay upon the Original Cause, Progress and Mischievous Cons (...)

What could then remain for them to chuse, but either to give up for ever all their Rights and Liberties, and to submit themselves and their Posterity to be govern’d by the Will and Pleasure of all their future Kings: Or to resolve to defend their ancient Laws and Privileges to the utmost, and to oppose force with force?18

26While the Tories idealized the static balance of power in Europe, the Whigs were not only vigorously defending the new order but furthermore were going to change the world as a whole which indeed they achieved during the eighteenth century for the benefit of posterity. Just one generation later the Whig poet James Thomson spoke the language of imperialism pure and simple. The Whig version of posterity prefigures the rise of history as progress: the Whig interpretation of history.

27The semantic network of posterity links up with the origins of a pre-romantic vision of progress. In conclusion, new questions arise: do the Whig pamphlets of the epoque contain further significant links in the evolution of history meant as progress? Another retrieval will have to take place. Another problem is the development of a debate as seen through its key words. I used the System to trace certain key terms as closely as possible. The importance of a term like posterity will help to clarify the statement that a key concept may develop according to the turns the debate takes. This however, may appear less probable than the opposite process of standardization and repetition until a word is gradually emptied of its meaning and its impact.

28Changing one’s mind is always a major step. I have perhaps an exaggerated idea of the future when I believe that a new age of precision in literary criticism is dawning. But imagine you are able to trace a concept such as posterity or the lifecycle, which might be too extensive, through the completed corpus of English literature, philosophy, theology, historical writing included, of course. Your workstation will make the materials available within less than five minutes. The only thing you have to do is sorting it out and piecing the samples together for a paper like this one; you will check the catalogue of CETH for additional corpus materials by on-line connection; you will check the British Library Catalogue for cross-references and for all the helpful works our generation has inundated the libraries with, and finally you type a few notes of your own. With Tennyson, the path of duty was the way to glory. By the turn of this century, on-line will be the way to precision.

Notes

1 See Rosanne G. Potter’s survey articles, “Literary Criticism and Literary Computing: The Difficulties of a Synthesis”, Computers and the Humanities 22 (1988): 91-97; “Statistical Analysis of Literature: A Retrospective on Computers and the Humanities, 1966-1990”, Computers and the Humanities 25 (1991): 401-29.

2 See for a similar approach including statistical control Eva M. Thury, “A Study of Words relating to Youth and Old Age in the Plays of Euripides and Its Special Implications for Euripides’Suppliant Women”, Computers and the Humanities 22 (1988): 293-306.

3 ECCOP is, by the way, run under NOTA BENE TEXTBASE, which is an excellent word Processing System created especially for the humanities.

4 The British Visions: or, Isaac Bickerstaff Senr; Being Twelve Prophecies for the Year 1711 (London, 1711) 16. See also Defoe’s The Second-Sighted Highlander: or, Predictions and Forelold Events: Especially about the Peace. By the Famous Scots Highlander. Being Ten New Visions for the Year 1713 (London, 1713).

5 “The Conduct of the Allies : contexte et originalité”, in Commerce(s) en Grande-Bretagne au XVIIIe siècle, éd. Suzy Halimi (Paris : Publications de la Sorbonne, 1990) 239-60.

6 Reasons Why This Nation Oughl to Put a Speedy End to this Expensive War (London, 1711) 37.

7 Daniel Defoe, Worcestershire Queries about Peace. By Tom Flockmaker (London, 1711) 3.

8 Essay al a Plain Exposition of that Difficult Phrase, a Good Peace (1711) 14; for a similar lifecycle image of crisis see Swift’s The Conduct of the Allies (London, 1711): “We have dieted a Healthy Body into Consumption, by plying it with Physick, instead of Food; Art will help us no longer; and if we cannot recover by letting the Remains of Nature work, we must inevitably die” (85).

9 Francis Hare, The Allies and the Late Ministry Defended against France, and the Present Friends of France (London, 1711) 36.

10 Oliver's Pocket Looking-Glass, New Frarri d and Clean'd, to Give a Clear View of the Great Modem Colossus (London, 1711) 39.

11 A Short Narrative of the Life of His Grace John, D. of Marlborough (London, 1711) 33.

12 See Paula Backscheider, ed., A Short Narrative of the Life of His Grace John, D. of Marlborough, The Augustan Reprint Society 168 (Los Angeles: W. Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1974) 50 f.

13 The D. of M.....h's Vindicahon: In Answer to a Pamphlet Lately Publish'd, Call'd [Bouchain, or a Dialogue between the Medley and the Examiner] (London, 1711) 14.

14 Armageddon; or, the Necessity of Carrying on the War, if Such a Peace Cannot be Obtained as May Render Europe Safe, and Trade Secure (London, 1711).

15 Faults in the Fault-Finder; or, a Specimen of Errors in the Pamphlet, Entitul’d Fault on Both Sides (London, 1710) 11.

16 A Letter to Sir Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq; Occasioned by the Letter to the Examiner (London, 1710) 13.

17 Fleetwood, A Sermon on the Fast-Day, January the Sixteenth, 1711/12. Against Such as Delight in War (London, 1712) 12.

18 Clement, Faulls on Both Sides: or, an Essay upon the Original Cause, Progress and Mischievous Consequences of the Factions of this Nation.... By Way of Answer to The Thoughts of an Honest Tory (London, 1710) 2. See also Hare, The Management of the War in Four Letters to a Tory-Member (London, 1711): “To have been content with a Moiety of what we went into the War for, after so many Successes, and not a few surprizingly Great, would have render d us inexcusable to all Posterity” (7).

Auteur

Université de Göttingen

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