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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2021
Swift probably began working on Conduct of the Allies in either August or September 1711. Allusions to ‘some business’ in his letters to Stella appear as early as 6 August; on 25 August, Swift wrote that ‘[t]here is now but one business the ministry wants me for’ (Williams, JSt, pp. 327, 343; Ehrenpreis, vol. II, p. 483). There are similar cryptic references during September: ‘something I am doing’ (9 September), ‘a plaguy deal of business’ (21 September), ‘something of weight I have upon my hands, and which must soon be done’ (29 September) (Williams, JSt, pp. 356, 365, 373). By 13 October, Swift hoped that his busyness ‘will be over’ within a fortnight (p. 383). Five days later, Swift visited ‘a printer’ (presumably John Barber rather than, as Williams surmises, John Morphew) to settle ‘some things’; on 30 October, he again visited ‘a printer’ and was to meet with Henry St John the following day ‘about the same [matter]’ (pp. 386, 397). By 10 November, this work – still unnamed and undescribed – was nearing publication:
something is to be published of great moment, and three or four great people are to see there are no mistakes in point of fact: and ‘tis so troublesome to send it among them, and get their corrections, that I am weary as a dog. I dined to-day with the printer, and was there all the afternoon; and it plagues me, and there's an end, and what would you have?
(Williams, JSt, p. 408)One of those ‘great people’ was St John, who on 17 November returned a sheet, ‘which is I think very correct’, to Swift; St John had initially written on 16 November but enclosed the wrong papers (Woolley, Corr., vol. I, pp. 396–7). This was, as Woolley suggests, probably the corrected ‘fifth sheet’ – sheet E – that Swift gave to Barber on 21 November (Williams, JSt, p. 417). On 24 November, Swift finished ‘my pamphlet’ (the first time it was so styled), ‘which has cost me so much time and trouble; it will be published in three or four days, when the parliament begins sitting’ (p. 420).
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