The Poems of Jonathan Swift

-The South Sea Project

1721

Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto,

Arma virum, tabulaeque, et Troia gaza per undas.--VIRGIL

For particulars of this famous scheme for reducing the National Debt, projected by Sir John Blunt, who became one of the Directors of it, and ultimately one of the greatest sufferers by it, when the Bubble burst, see Smollett's "History of England," vol. ii; Pope's "Moral Essays," Epist. iii, and notes; and Gibbon's "Memoirs," for the violent and arbitrary proceedings against the Directors, one of whom was his grandfather.--W. E. B.

[Footnote 1: Phaethon. Ovid, "Metam.," lib. ii.--W. E. B.]

[Footnote 2: See the fable of Midas. Ovid, "Metam.," lib. xi.--W. E. B.]

[Footnote 3: Ecclesiastes, xi, I.]

[Footnote 4: Psalm cvii, 26, 27.]

[Footnote 5: Garraway's auction room and coffee-house, closed in 1866.--W. E. B.]