edited "History of the Four Last Years." Is this the work which Swift
wrote in 1713, which he permitted Pope and Bolingbroke to read in 1727,
and which he prepared for publication in 1737?

In 1758 there was no doubt whatever raised, although there were at least
two persons alive then--Lord Orrery and Dr. William King--who could
easily have proved any forgery, had there been one.

The first suspicion cast on the work came from Dr. Johnson. Writing, in
his life of Swift, of the published version, he remarks, "that it seemed
by no means to correspond with the notions that I had formed of it from
a conversation that I once heard between the Earl of Orrery and old Mr.
Lewis." In what particulars this want of correspondence was made evident
Johnson does not say. In any case, his suspicion cannot be received with
much consideration, since the conversation he heard must have taken
place at least twenty years before he wrote the poet's life, and his
recollection of such a conversation must at least have been very hazy.
Johnson's opinion is further deprived of weight when we read what he
wrote of the History in the "Idler," in 1759, the year after its
publication, that "the history had perished had not a straggling
transcript fallen into busy hands." If the straggling manuscript were
worth anything, it must have had some claims to authenticity; and if it
had, then Johnson's recollection of what he heard Orrery and Lewis say,
twenty years or more after they had said it, goes for very little.

Sir Walter Scott concludes, from the fact that Swift sent the manuscript
to Oxford and Lewis, that it was afterwards altered in accordance with
Lewis's suggestions. But a comparison of Lucas's text with Lewis's
letter shows that nothing of the kind was done.