Chapter XXXIII (3)

“In the Life of Mrs. Manley, published under the title of ‘The
Adventures of Rivella,’ printed in 1714, in pages 14 and 15, it
is said, That her father, Sir Roger Manley, was the genuine
author of the first volume of the Turkish Spy. Dr. Midgley, an
ingenious physician, related to the family by marriage, had the
charge of looking over his papers, among which he found that
manuscript, which he easily reserved to his proper use: and both
by his own pen and the assistance of some others, continued the
work until the eighth volume, without ever having the justice to
name the author of the first.” MS. note in the copy of the
Turkish Spy (edit. 1732), in the British Museum.

Another MS. note in the same volume gives the following extract
from Dunton’s Life and Errors. “Mr. Bradshaw is the best
accomplished hackney writer I have met with; his genius was quite
above the common size, and his style was incomparably fine.... So
soon as I saw the first volume of the Turkish Spy, the very style
and manner of writing convinced me that Bradshaw was the
author.... Bradshaw’s wife owned that Dr. Midgley had engaged him
in a work which would take him some years to finish, for which
the Doctor was to pay him 40s. per sheet.... So that ’tis very
probable (for I cannot swear I saw him write it), that Mr.
William Bradshaw was the author of the Turkish Spy; were it not
for this discovery, Dr. Midgley had gone off with the honour of
that performance.” It thus appears that in England it was looked
upon as an original work; though the authority of Dunton is not
very good for the facts he tells, and that of Mrs. Manley much
worse. But I do not quote them as evidence of such facts, but of
common report. Mrs. Manley, who claims for her father the first
volume, certainly written by Marana, must be set aside; as to Dr.
Midgley and Mr. Bradshaw, I know nothing to confirm or refute
what is here said.

|Swift’s Tale of a Tub.|

61. It would not, perhaps, be unfair bring within the pale of the seventeenth century an effusion of genius, sufficient to redeem our name in its annals of fiction. The Tale of a Tub, though not published till 1704, was chiefly written, as the author declares, eight years before; and the Battle of the Books subjoined to it, has every appearance of recent animosity against the opponents of Temple and Boyle, is the question of Phalaris. The Tale of a Tub is, in my apprehension, the masterpiece of Swift; certainly Rabelais has nothing superior, even in invention, nor anything so condensed, so pointed, so full of real meaning, of biting satire, of felicitous analogy. The Battle of the Books is such an improvement of the similar combat in the Lutrin, that we can hardly own it is an imitation.