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It is hard to say which is most worthy of contempt the appalling cynicism that prompted such scurrilities, or the amazing folly which mistook their vulgarity for wit.
This modest and submissive answer of mine to all the scurrilities heaped upon me for a fortnight together by the First President and the President de Mesmes had an excellent effect upon the members, and obliterated for a long time the suspicion that I aimed to govern them by my cabals. The President de Mesmes would have replied, but his words were drowned in the general clamour.
A tyrannical Scottish dog. Swift. Swift. Oh! if the whole nation, to a man, were just so treated! begin with Argyle, and next with the fanatic dogs who teased him with their kirk scurrilities. Swift. Most treacherous, damnable, infernal Scots for ever! Swift. A perfect hero; wholly un-Scotified. Swift. A very seasonable prayer, but never performed.
To do the rest of the French justice, I mean such as like us, they adopt only our egregious follies, and in particular the flower of them, horse-racing! Le Roi Pepin, a racer, is the horse in fashion. I suppose the next shameful practice of ours they naturalize will be the personal scurrilities in the newspapers, especially on young and handsome women, in which we certainly are originals!
In the prologue to his Satires, having occasion to notice the lampooners of the times, who had represented his father as "a mechanic, a hatter, a farmer, nay a bankrupt," he feels himself called upon to state the truth about his parents; and naturally much more so at a time when the low scurrilities of these obscure libellers had been adopted, accredited, and diffused by persons so distinguished in all points of personal accomplishment and rank as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lord Harvey: "hard as thy heart" was one of the lines in their joint pasquinade, " hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure."
The licensing system continued in force, but was not made much use of, although the scurrilities of the press roused the Parliament every now and then into spasmodic efforts of repression. In addition to measures of this kind, Nedham's paper, from its official character, was doubtless looked upon by the legislature as a sort of antidote to the poison diffused by other journalists.
They were often the owners as well as the writers of their respective papers, and they indulged for the advantage of the community the rancorous rivalries, recriminations, and scurrilities which often form the charm, if not the chief use, of our contemporaneous journals.
According to the official explanation "The Dunciad" was composed with the most laudable motive of damaging those writers of "abusive falsehoods and scurrilities" who "had aspersed almost all the great characters of the age; and this with impunity, their own persons and names being utterly secret and obscure."
This modest and submissive answer of mine to all the scurrilities heaped upon me for a fortnight together by the First President and the President de Mesmes had an excellent effect upon the members, and obliterated for a long time the suspicion that I aimed to govern them by my cabals. The President de Mesmes would have replied, but his words were drowned in the general clamour.
Often I cannot help dreading that some evil angel is persecuting us. For some ribaldry or petty spite or silly jest in fact, for any reason whatsoever you invite hirelings to address you, and laugh at their scurrilities." He points to the fate of all the cities whom Philip flattered. "In all of them the patriots advised increased taxation the traitors said it was not necessary.
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