"THE INTELLIGENCER" was published in Dublin, commencing May 11th, 1728,
and continued for nineteen numbers. On June 12th, 1731, Swift, writing to
Pope, gives some account of its inception, and the amount of writing he
did for it: "Two or three of us had a fancy, three years ago, to write a
weekly paper, and call it an 'Intelligencer.' But it continued not long;
for the whole volume (it was reprinted in London, and I find you have
seen it) was the work only of two, myself, and Dr. Sheridan. If we could
have got some ingenious young man to have been the manager, who should
have published all that might be sent him, it might have continued
longer, for there were hints enough. But the printer here could not
afford such a young man one farthing for his trouble, the sale being so
small, and the price one halfpenny; and so it dropped. In the volume you
saw, (to answer your questions,) the 1, 3, 5, 7, were mine. Of the 8th I
writ only the verses, (very uncorrect, but against a fellow we all hated
[Richard Tighe],) the 9th mine, the 10th only the verses, and of those
not the four last slovenly lines; the 15th is a pamphlet of mine printed
before, with Dr. Sheridan's preface, merely for laziness, not to
disappoint the town: and so was the 19th, which contains only a parcel of
facts relating purely to the miseries of Ireland, and wholly useless and
unentertaining" (Scott's edition, xvii. 375-6).
Of the contributions thus acknowledged, Nos. 1, 3, and 19 are reprinted
here from the original edition; Nos. 5 and 7 were included by Pope in the
fourth volume of "Miscellanies," under the title "An Essay on the Fates
of Clergymen"; No. 9 he entitled "An Essay on Modern Education"; No. 15
was a reprint of the pamphlet "A Short View of the State of Ireland"--
these will be found in this edition under the above titles. The verses in
No. 8 ("Mad Mullinix and Timothy") and in No. 10 ("Tim and the Fables")
are in Swift's "Poems," Aldine edition, vol. iii., pp. 132-43.
The nineteen numbers of "The Intelligencer" were collected and published
in one volume, which was reprinted in London in 1729, "and sold by A.
Moor in St. Paul's Church-yard." Monck Mason never saw a copy of the
London reprint referred to by Swift. He had in his possession the
original papers; "they are twenty in number," he says; "the last is
double." The second London edition, published in 12mo in 1730, as
"printed for Francis Cogan, at the Middle-Temple-Gate in Fleet-street,"
includes No. 20, "Dean Smedley, gone to seek his Fortune," and also a
poem, "The Pheasant and the Lark. A Fable." In the poem, several writers
are compared to birds, Swift being the nightingale:
"At length the nightingale was heard,
For voice and wisdom long revered,
Esteemed of all the wise and good,
The guardian genius of the wood;" etc.
The poem was written by Swift's friend, Dr. Delany. The title-page of
this second edition ascribes the authorship, "By the Author of a Tale
of a Tub."
"The Intelligencer," in the words of W. Monck Mason, "served as a vehicle
of satire against the Dean's political and literary enemies; of these the
chief were, Richard Tighe, Sir Thomas Prendergast, and Jonathan Smedley,
Dean of Clogher" ("Hist, and Antiq. of St. Patrick's," pp. 376-7). [T.S.]