ESTC, B.L. and NUC enter this letter under the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper; H&L attributes it to Robert Hunter, governor of Jamaica, and gives the recipient as Lord Somers, citing Nichol's Lit. Anec. 1. 339; a note is added: 'Ascribedalso to Swift, and to the Earl of Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper)'; it is not listed among Swift's certain or doubtful works in Teerink.

The DNB article on the third Earl of Shaftesbury includes this letter among the list of his publications, and states that it is 'addressed to Lord Somers (whose name is not given)', and that it was 'suggested by the 'French prophets'' The same source, describing Robert Hunter, governor of New York and Jamaica, records that 'he was an acquaintance of Addison and Swift. The latter appears not to have known Hunter personally in 1708, but in January-March 1709 two letters written by the dean to Hunter in Paris rallied him pleasantly on his social successes there, and falsely suggested that Hunter was the author of the famous 'Letter concerning Enthusiasm' (London, 1708) which had been attributed to Swift'.[DNB] It is thus that Nichol must have acquired his apparently misleading information, cited in H&L.

Main text follows short address 'To The Reader'.

ESTC3844C6 [under Cooper]; ESTC1394L18 [under Letter].