A TALE OF A TUB

Contents The Tale of a Tub: Advert To the Right Honourable John Lord Somers The Bookseller to The Reader The Epistle Dedicatory The Preface Section I. --The Introduction Section II. Section III. --A Digression Concerning Critics Section IV. --A Tale Of A Tub Section V. --A Digression In The Modern Kind Section VI. --A Tale Of A Tub Section VII--A Digression In Praise Of Digressions Section VIII. --A Tale Of A Tub Section IX. --A Digression Concerning The Original . . . Section X. --A Farther Digression Section XI. --A Tale Of A Tub The Conclusion The History Of Martin The History of Martin A Digression On The Nature . . . The History Of Martin--Continued A Project For The Universal Benefit Of Mankind

ADVERT

Treatifes writ by the fame Author, moft of them mentioned in thefollowing Discourfes; which will be fpeedily publifhed. 

A Character of the prefent Set of Wits in this Ifland. A Panegyrical Effay upon the Number THREE. A Differtation upon the principal productions of Grub-ftree. Lectures upon the Diffection of Human Nature. A Panegyrick upon the World. An Analytical Difcourfe upon Zeal, Hiftori-theo-phyfi-logicallyconfidered. A general Hiftory of Ears. A modeft Defence of the Proceedings of the Rabble in all Ages. A Defcription of the Kingdom of Abfurdities. A Voyage into England, by a Perfon of Quality in Terra Auftralisincognita, tranflated from the Original. A Critical Effay upon the Art of Canting, Philofophically, Phyfically, and Mufically confidered. 

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN LORD SOMERS. 

My LORD, Though the author has written a large Dedication, yet that beingaddressed to a Prince whom I am never likely to have the honour ofbeing known to; a person, besides, as far as I can observe, not atall regarded or thought on by any of our present writers; and Ibeing wholly free from that slavery which booksellers usually lieunder to the caprices of authors, I think it a wise piece ofpresumption to inscribe these papers to your Lordship, and toimplore your Lordship's protection of them. God and your Lordshipknow their faults and their merits; for as to my own particular, Iam altogether a stranger to the matter; and though everybody elseshould be equally ignorant, I do not fear the sale of the book atall the worse upon that score. Your Lordship's name on the front incapital letters will at any time get off one edition: neither wouldI desire any other help to grow an alderman than a patent for thesole privilege of dedicating to your Lordship. 

I should now, in right of a dedicator, give your Lordship a list ofyour own virtues, and at the same time be very unwilling to offendyour modesty; but chiefly I should celebrate your liberality towardsmen of great parts and small fortunes, and give you broad hints thatI mean myself. And I was just going on in the usual method toperuse a hundred or two of dedications, and transcribe an abstractto be applied to your Lordship, but I was diverted by a certainaccident. For upon the covers of these papers I casually observedwritten in large letters the two following words, DETUR DIGNISSIMO, which, for aught I knew, might contain some important meaning. Butit unluckily fell out that none of the Authors I employ understoodLatin (though I have them often in pay to translate out of thatlanguage). I was therefore compelled to have recourse to the Curateof our Parish, who Englished it thus, Let it be given to theworthiest; and his comment was that the Author meant his work shouldbe dedicated to the sublimest genius of the age for wit, learning, judgment, eloquence, and wisdom. I called at a poet's chamber (whoworks for my shop) in an alley hard by, showed him the translation, and desired his opinion who it was that the Author could mean. Hetold me, after some consideration, that vanity was a thing heabhorred, but by the description he thought himself to be the personaimed at; and at the same time he very kindly offered his ownassistance gratis towards penning a dedication to himself. Idesired him, however, to give a second guess. Why then, said he, itmust be I, or my Lord Somers. From thence I went to several otherwits of my acquaintance, with no small hazard and weariness to myperson, from a prodigious number of dark winding stairs; but foundthem all in the same story, both of your Lordship and themselves. Now your Lordship is to understand that this proceeding was not ofmy own invention; for I have somewhere heard it is a maxim thatthose to whom everybody allows the second place have an undoubtedtitle to the first. 

This infallibly convinced me that your Lordship was the personintended by the Author. But being very unacquainted in the styleand form of dedications, I employed those wits aforesaid to furnishme with hints and materials towards a panegyric upon your Lordship'svirtues. 

In two days they brought me ten sheets of paper filled up on everyside. They swore to me that they had ransacked whatever could befound in the characters of Socrates, Aristides, Epaminondas, Cato, Tully, Atticus, and other hard names which I cannot now recollect. However, I have reason to believe they imposed upon my ignorance, because when I came to read over their collections, there was not asyllable there but what I and everybody else knew as well asthemselves: therefore I grievously suspect a cheat; and that theseAuthors of mine stole and transcribed every word from the universalreport of mankind. So that I took upon myself as fifty shillingsout of pocket to no manner of purpose. 

If by altering the title I could make the same materials serve foranother dedication (as my betters have done), it would help to makeup my loss; but I have made several persons dip here and there inthose papers, and before they read three lines they have all assuredme plainly that they cannot possibly be applied to any personbesides your Lordship. 

I expected, indeed, to have heard of your Lordship's bravery at thehead of an army; of your undaunted courage in mounting a breach orscaling a wall; or to have had your pedigree traced in a linealdescent from the House of Austria; or of your wonderful talent atdress and dancing; or your profound knowledge in algebra, metaphysics, and the Oriental tongues: but to ply the world with anold beaten story of your wit, and eloquence, and learning, andwisdom, and justice, and politeness, and candour, and evenness oftemper in all scenes of life; of that great discernment indiscovering and readiness in favouring deserving men; with fortyother common topics; I confess I have neither conscience norcountenance to do it. Because there is no virtue either of a publicor private life which some circumstances of your own have not oftenproduced upon the stage of the world; and those few which for wantof occasions to exert them might otherwise have passed unseen orunobserved by your friends, your enemies have at length brought tolight. 

It is true I should be very loth the bright example of yourLordship's virtues should be lost to after-ages, both for their sakeand your own; but chiefly because they will be so very necessary toadorn the history of a late reign; and that is another reason why Iwould forbear to make a recital of them here; because I have beentold by wise men that as dedications have run for some years past, agood historian will not be apt to have recourse thither in search ofcharacters. 

There is one point wherein I think we dedicators would do well tochange our measures; I mean, instead of running on so far upon thepraise of our patron's liberality, to spend a word or two inadmiring their patience. I can put no greater compliment on yourLordship's than by giving you so ample an occasion to exercise it atpresent. Though perhaps I shall not be apt to reckon much merit toyour Lordship upon that score, who having been formerly used totedious harangues, and sometimes to as little purpose, will be thereadier to pardon this, especially when it is offered by one who is, with all respect and veneration, My LORD, Your Lordship's most obedientand most faithful Servant, THE BOOKSELLER. 

THE BOOKSELLER TO THE READER

It is now six years since these papers came first to my hand, whichseems to have been about a twelvemonth after they were written, forthe Author tells us in his preface to the first treatise that he hadcalculated it for the year 1697; and in several passages of thatdiscourse, as well as the second, it appears they were written aboutthat time. 

As to the Author, I can give no manner of satisfaction. However, Iam credibly informed that this publication is without his knowledge, for he concludes the copy is lost, having lent it to a person sincedead, and being never in possession of it after; so that, whetherthe work received his last hand, or whether he intended to fill upthe defective places, is like to remain a secret. 

If I should go about to tell the reader by what accident I becamemaster of these papers, it would, in this unbelieving age, pass forlittle more than the cant or jargon of the trade. I thereforegladly spare both him and myself so unnecessary a trouble. Thereyet remains a difficult question--why I published them no sooner? Iforbore upon two accounts. First, because I thought I had betterwork upon my hands; and secondly, because I was not without somehope of hearing from the Author and receiving his directions. But Ihave been lately alarmed with intelligence of a surreptitious copywhich a certain great wit had new polished and refined, or, as ourpresent writers express themselves, "fitted to the humour of theage, " as they have already done with great felicity to Don Quixote, Boccalini, La Bruyere, and other authors. However, I thought itfairer dealing to offer the whole work in its naturals. If anygentleman will please to furnish me with a key, in order to explainthe more difficult parts, I shall very gratefully acknowledge thefavour, and print it by itself. 

THE EPISTLE DEDICATORYTOHIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE POSTERITY

SIR, I here present your Highness with the fruits of a very few leisurehours, stolen from the short intervals of a world of business, andof an employment quite alien from such amusements as this; the poorproduction of that refuse of time which has lain heavy upon my handsduring a long prorogation of Parliament, a great dearth of foreignnews, and a tedious fit of rainy weather. For which, and otherreasons, it cannot choose extremely to deserve such a patronage asthat of your Highness, whose numberless virtues in so few years, make the world look upon you as the future example to all princes. For although your Highness is hardly got clear of infancy, yet hasthe universal learned world already resolved upon appealing to yourfuture dictates with the lowest and most resigned submission, fatehaving decreed you sole arbiter of the productions of human wit inthis polite and most accomplished age. Methinks the number ofappellants were enough to shock and startle any judge of a geniusless unlimited than yours; but in order to prevent such glorioustrials, the person, it seems, to whose care the education of yourHighness is committed, has resolved, as I am told, to keep you inalmost an universal ignorance of our studies, which it is yourinherent birthright to inspect. 

It is amazing to me that this person should have assurance, in theface of the sun, to go about persuading your Highness that our ageis almost wholly illiterate and has hardly produced one writer uponany subject. I know very well that when your Highness shall come toriper years, and have gone through the learning of antiquity, youwill be too curious to neglect inquiring into the authors of thevery age before you; and to think that this insolent, in the accounthe is preparing for your view, designs to reduce them to a number soinsignificant as I am ashamed to mention; it moves my zeal and myspleen for the honour and interest of our vast flourishing body, aswell as of myself, for whom I know by long experience he hasprofessed, and still continues, a peculiar malice. 

It is not unlikely that, when your Highness will one day peruse whatI am now writing, you may be ready to expostulate with your governorupon the credit of what I here affirm, and command him to show yousome of our productions. To which he will answer--for I am wellinformed of his designs--by asking your Highness where they are, andwhat is become of them? and pretend it a demonstration that therenever were any, because they are not then to be found. Not to befound! Who has mislaid them? Are they sunk in the abyss of things?It is certain that in their own nature they were light enough toswim upon the surface for all eternity; therefore, the fault is inhim who tied weights so heavy to their heels as to depress them tothe centre. Is their very essence destroyed? Who has annihilatedthem? Were they drowned by purges or martyred by pipes? Whoadministered them to the posteriors of -------. But that it may nolonger be a doubt with your Highness who is to be the author of thisuniversal ruin, I beseech you to observe that large and terriblescythe which your governor affects to bear continually about him. Be pleased to remark the length and strength, the sharpness andhardness, of his nails and teeth; consider his baneful, abominablebreath, enemy to life and matter, infectious and corrupting, andthen reflect whether it be possible for any mortal ink and paper ofthis generation to make a suitable resistance. Oh, that yourHighness would one day resolve to disarm this usurping maitre depalais of his furious engines, and bring your empire hors du page. 

It were endless to recount the several methods of tyranny anddestruction which your governor is pleased to practise upon thisoccasion. His inveterate malice is such to the writings of our age, that, of several thousands produced yearly from this renowned city, before the next revolution of the sun there is not one to be heardof. Unhappy infants! many of them barbarously destroyed before theyhave so much as learnt their mother-tongue to beg for pity. Some hestifles in their cradles, others he frights into convulsions, whereof they suddenly die, some he flays alive, others he tears limbfrom limb, great numbers are offered to Moloch, and the rest, tainted by his breath, die of a languishing consumption. 

But the concern I have most at heart is for our Corporation ofPoets, from whom I am preparing a petition to your Highness, to besubscribed with the names of one hundred and thirty-six of the firstrace, but whose immortal productions are never likely to reach youreyes, though each of them is now an humble and an earnest appellantfor the laurel, and has large comely volumes ready to show for asupport to his pretensions. The never-dying works of theseillustrious persons your governor, sir, has devoted to unavoidabledeath, and your Highness is to be made believe that our age hasnever arrived at the honour to produce one single poet. 

We confess immortality to be a great and powerful goddess, but invain we offer up to her our devotions and our sacrifices if yourHighness's governor, who has usurped the priesthood, must, by anunparalleled ambition and avarice, wholly intercept and devour them. 

To affirm that our age is altogether unlearned and devoid of writersin any kind, seems to be an assertion so bold and so false, that Ihave been sometimes thinking the contrary may almost be proved byuncontrollable demonstration. It is true, indeed, that althoughtheir numbers be vast and their productions numerous in proportion, yet are they hurried so hastily off the scene that they escape ourmemory and delude our sight. When I first thought of this address, I had prepared a copious list of titles to present your Highness asan undisputed argument for what I affirm. The originals were postedfresh upon all gates and corners of streets; but returning in a veryfew hours to take a review, they were all torn down and fresh onesin their places. I inquired after them among readers andbooksellers, but I inquired in vain; the memorial of them was lostamong men, their place was no more to be found; and I was laughed toscorn for a clown and a pedant, devoid of all taste and refinement, little versed in the course of present affairs, and that knewnothing of what had passed in the best companies of court and town. So that I can only avow in general to your Highness that we doabound in learning and wit, but to fix upon particulars is a tasktoo slippery for my slender abilities. If I should venture, in awindy day, to affirm to your Highness that there is a large cloudnear the horizon in the form of a bear, another in the zenith withthe head of an ass, a third to the westward with claws like adragon; and your Highness should in a few minutes think fit toexamine the truth, it is certain they would be all chanced in figureand position, new ones would arise, and all we could agree uponwould be, that clouds there were, but that I was grossly mistaken inthe zoography and topography of them. 

But your governor, perhaps, may still insist, and put the question, What is then become of those immense bales of paper which must needshave been employed in such numbers of books? Can these also bewholly annihilated, and to of a sudden, as I pretend? What shall Isay in return of so invidious an objection? It ill befits thedistance between your Highness and me to send you for ocularconviction to a jakes or an oven, to the windows of a bawdyhouse, orto a sordid lanthorn. Books, like men their authors, have no morethan one way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand togo out of it and return no more. 

I profess to your Highness, in the integrity of my heart, that whatI am going to say is literally true this minute I am writing; whatrevolutions may happen before it shall be ready for your perusal Ican by no means warrant; however, I beg you to accept it as aspecimen of our learning, our politeness, and our wit. I dotherefore affirm, upon the word of a sincere man, that there is nowactually in being a certain poet called John Dryden, whosetranslation of Virgil was lately printed in large folio, well bound, and if diligent search were made, for aught I know, is yet to beseen. There is another called Nahum Tate, who is ready to make oaththat he has caused many reams of verse to be published, whereof bothhimself and his bookseller, if lawfully required, can still produceauthentic copies, and therefore wonders why the world is pleased tomake such a secret of it. There is a third, known by the name ofTom Durfey, a poet of a vast comprehension, an universal genius, andmost profound learning. There are also one Mr. Rymer and one Mr. Dennis, most profound critics. There is a person styled Dr. Bentley, who has wrote near a thousand pages of immense erudition, giving a full and true account of a certain squabble of wonderfulimportance between himself and a bookseller; he is a writer ofinfinite wit and humour, no man rallies with a better grace and inmore sprightly turns. Further, I avow to your Highness that withthese eyes I have beheld the person of William Wotton, B. D. , who haswritten a good-sized volume against a friend of your governor, fromwhom, alas! he must therefore look for little favour, in a mostgentlemanly style, adorned with utmost politeness and civility, replete with discoveries equally valuable for their novelty and use, and embellished with traits of wit so poignant and so apposite, thathe is a worthy yoke-mate to his fore-mentioned friend. 

Why should I go upon farther particulars, which might fill a volumewith the just eulogies of my contemporary brethren? I shallbequeath this piece of justice to a larger work, wherein I intend towrite a character of the present set of wits in our nation; theirpersons I shall describe particularly and at length, their geniusand understandings in miniature. 

In the meantime, I do here make bold to present your Highness with afaithful abstract drawn from the universal body of all arts andsciences, intended wholly for your service and instruction. Nor doI doubt in the least but your Highness will peruse it as carefullyand make as considerable improvements as other young princes havealready done by the many volumes of late years written for a help totheir studies. 

That your Highness may advance in wisdom and virtue, as well asyears, and at last outshine all your royal ancestors, shall be thedaily prayer of, SIR, Your Highness's most devoted, &c. Decemb. 1697. 

THE PREFACE. 

The wits of the present age being so very numerous and penetrating, it seems the grandees of Church and State begin to fall underhorrible apprehensions lest these gentlemen, during the intervals ofa long peace, should find leisure to pick holes in the weak sides ofreligion and government. To prevent which, there has been muchthought employed of late upon certain projects for taking off theforce and edge of those formidable inquirers from canvassing andreasoning upon such delicate points. They have at length fixed uponone, which will require some time as well as cost to perfect. Meanwhile, the danger hourly increasing, by new levies of wits, allappointed (as there is reason to fear) with pen, ink, and paper, which may at an hour's warning be drawn out into pamphlets and otheroffensive weapons ready for immediate execution, it was judged ofabsolute necessity that some present expedient be thought on tillthe main design can be brought to maturity. To this end, at a grandcommittee, some days ago, this important discovery was made by acertain curious and refined observer, that seamen have a custom whenthey meet a Whale to fling him out an empty Tub, by way ofamusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the Ship. This parable was immediately mythologised; the Whale was interpretedto be Hobbes's "Leviathan, " which tosses and plays with all otherschemes of religion and government, whereof a great many are hollow, and dry, and empty, and noisy, and wooden, and given to rotation. This is the Leviathan from whence the terrible wits of our age aresaid to borrow their weapons. The Ship in danger is easilyunderstood to be its old antitype the commonwealth. But how toanalyse the Tub was a matter of difficulty, when, after long inquiryand debate, the literal meaning was preserved, and it was decreedthat, in order to prevent these Leviathans from tossing and sportingwith the commonwealth, which of itself is too apt to fluctuate, theyshould be diverted from that game by "A Tale of a Tub. " And mygenius being conceived to lie not unhappily that way, I had thehonour done me to be engaged in the performance. 

This is the sole design in publishing the following treatise, whichI hope will serve for an interim of some months to employ thoseunquiet spirits till the perfecting of that great work, into thesecret of which it is reasonable the courteous reader should havesome little light. 

It is intended that a large Academy be erected, capable ofcontaining nine thousand seven hundred forty and three persons, which, by modest computation, is reckoned to be pretty near thecurrent number of wits in this island {50}. These are to bedisposed into the several schools of this Academy, and there pursuethose studies to which their genius most inclines them. Theundertaker himself will publish his proposals with all convenientspeed, to which I shall refer the curious reader for a moreparticular account, mentioning at present only a few of theprincipal schools. There is, first, a large pederastic school, withFrench and Italian masters; there is also the spelling school, avery spacious building; the school of looking-glasses; the school ofswearing; the school of critics; the school of salivation; theschool of hobby-horses; the school of poetry; the school of tops;the school of spleen; the school of gaming; with many others tootedious to recount. No person to be admitted member into any ofthese schools without an attestation under two sufficient persons'hands certifying him to be a wit. 

But to return. I am sufficiently instructed in the principal dutyof a preface if my genius, were capable of arriving at it. Thricehave I forced my imagination to take the tour of my invention, andthrice it has returned empty, the latter having been wholly drainedby the following treatise. Not so my more successful brethren themoderns, who will by no means let slip a preface or dedicationwithout some notable distinguishing stroke to surprise the reader atthe entry, and kindle a wonderful expectation of what is to ensue. Such was that of a most ingenious poet, who, soliciting his brainfor something new, compared himself to the hangman and his patron tothe patient. This was insigne, recens, indictum ore alio {51a}. When I went through that necessary and noble course of study, {51b}I had the happiness to observe many such egregious touches, which Ishall not injure the authors by transplanting, because I haveremarked that nothing is so very tender as a modern piece of wit, and which is apt to suffer so much in the carriage. Some things areextremely witty to-day, or fasting, or in this place, or at eighto'clock, or over a bottle, or spoke by Mr. Whatdyecall'm, or in asummer's morning, any of which, by the smallest transposal ormisapplication, is utterly annihilate. Thus wit has its walks andpurlieus, out of which it may not stray the breadth of a hair, uponperil of being lost. The moderns have artfully fixed this Mercury, and reduced it to the circumstances of time, place, and person. Such a jest there is that will not pass out of Covent Garden, andsuch a one that is nowhere intelligible but at Hyde Park Corner. Now, though it sometimes tenderly affects me to consider that allthe towardly passages I shall deliver in the following treatise willgrow quite out of date and relish with the first shifting of thepresent scene, yet I must need subscribe to the justice of thisproceeding, because I cannot imagine why we should be at expense tofurnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sortof provision for ours; wherein I speak the sentiment of the verynewest, and consequently the most orthodox refiners, as well as myown. However, being extremely solicitous that every accomplishedperson who has got into the taste of wit calculated for this presentmonth of August 1697 should descend to the very bottom of all thesublime throughout this treatise, I hold it fit to lay down thisgeneral maxim. Whatever reader desires to have a thoroughcomprehension of an author's thoughts, cannot take a better methodthan by putting himself into the circumstances and posture of lifethat the writer was in upon every important passage as it flowedfrom his pen, for this will introduce a parity and strictcorrespondence of ideas between the reader and the author. Now, toassist the diligent reader in so delicate an affair--as far asbrevity will permit--I have recollected that the shrewdest pieces ofthis treatise were conceived in bed in a garret. At other times(for a reason best known to myself) I thought fit to sharpen myinvention with hunger, and in general the whole work was begun, continued, and ended under a long course of physic and a great wantof money. Now, I do affirm it will be absolutely impossible for thecandid peruser to go along with me in a great many bright passages, unless upon the several difficulties emergent he will please tocapacitate and prepare himself by these directions. And this I laydown as my principal postulatum. 

Because I have professed to be a most devoted servant of all modernforms, I apprehend some curious wit may object against me forproceeding thus far in a preface without declaiming, according tocustom, against the multitude of writers whereof the whole multitudeof writers most reasonably complain. I am just come from perusingsome hundreds of prefaces, wherein the authors do at the verybeginning address the gentle reader concerning this enormousgrievance. Of these I have preserved a few examples, and shall setthem down as near as my memory has been able to retain them. 

One begins thus: "For a man to set up for a writer when the pressswarms with, " &c. 

Another: "The tax upon paper does not lessen the number ofscribblers who daily pester, " &c. 

Another: "When every little would-be wit takes pen in hand, 'tis invain to enter the lists, " &c. 

Another: "To observe what trash the press swarms with, " &c. 

Another: "Sir, it is merely in obedience to your commands that Iventure into the public, for who upon a less consideration would beof a party with such a rabble of scribblers, " &c. 

Now, I have two words in my own defence against this objection. First, I am far from granting the number of writers a nuisance toour nation, having strenuously maintained the contrary in severalparts of the following discourse; secondly, I do not well understandthe justice of this proceeding, because I observe many of thesepolite prefaces to be not only from the same hand, but from thosewho are most voluminous in their several productions; upon which Ishall tell the reader a short tale. 

A mountebank in Leicester Fields had drawn a huge assembly abouthim. Among the rest, a fat unwieldy fellow, half stifled in thepress, would be every fit crying out, "Lord! what a filthy crowd ishere. Pray, good people, give way a little. Bless need what adevil has raked this rabble together. Z----ds, what squeezing isthis? Honest friend, remove your elbow. " At last a weaver thatstood next him could hold no longer. "A plague confound you, " saidhe, "for an overgrown sloven; and who in the devil's name, I wonder, helps to make up the crowd half so much as yourself? Don't youconsider that you take up more room with that carcass than any fivehere? Is not the place as free for us as for you? Bring your ownguts to a reasonable compass, and then I'll engage we shall haveroom enough for us all. "

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereofI hope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where Iam not understood, it shall be concluded that something very usefuland profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word orsentence is printed in a different character shall be judged tocontain something extraordinary either of wit or sublime. 

As for the liberty I have thought fit to take of praising myself, upon some occasions or none, I am sure it will need no excuse if amultitude of great examples be allowed sufficient authority; for itis here to be noted that praise was originally a pension paid by theworld, but the moderns, finding the trouble and charge too great incollecting it, have lately bought out the fee-simple, since whichtime the right of presentation is wholly in ourselves. For thisreason it is that when an author makes his own eulogy, he uses acertain form to declare and insist upon his title, which is commonlyin these or the like words, "I speak without vanity, " which I thinkplainly shows it to be a matter of right and justice. Now, I dohere once for all declare, that in every encounter of this naturethrough the following treatise the form aforesaid is implied, whichI mention to save the trouble of repeating it on so many occasions. 

It is a great ease to my conscience that I have written so elaborateand useful a discourse without one grain of satire intermixed, whichis the sole point wherein I have taken leave to dissent from thefamous originals of our age and country. I have observed somesatirists to use the public much at the rate that pedants do anaughty boy ready horsed for discipline. First expostulate thecase, then plead the necessity of the rod from great provocations, and conclude every period with a lash. Now, if I know anything ofmankind, these gentlemen might very well spare their reproof andcorrection, for there is not through all Nature another so callousand insensible a member as the world's posteriors, whether you applyto it the toe or the birch. Besides, most of our late satiristsseem to lie under a sort of mistake, that because nettles have theprerogative to sting, therefore all other weeds must do so too. Imake not this comparison out of the least design to detract fromthese worthy writers, for it is well known among mythologists thatweeds have the pre-eminence over all other vegetables; and thereforethe first monarch of this island whose taste and judgment were soacute and refined, did very wisely root out the roses from thecollar of the order and plant the thistles in their stead, as thenobler flower of the two. For which reason it is conjectured byprofounder antiquaries that the satirical itch, so prevalent in thispart of our island, was first brought among us from beyond theTweed. Here may it long flourish and abound; may it survive andneglect the scorn of the world with as much ease and contempt as theworld is insensible to the lashes of it. May their own dulness, orthat of their party, be no discouragement for the authors toproceed; but let them remember it is with wits as with razors, whichare never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they havelost their edge. Besides, those whose teeth are too rotten to biteare best of all others qualified to revenge that defect with theirbreath. 

I am not, like other men, to envy or undervalue the talents I cannotreach, for which reason I must needs bear a true honour to thislarge eminent sect of our British writers. And I hope this littlepanegyric will not be offensive to their ears, since it has theadvantage of being only designed for themselves. Indeed, Natureherself has taken order that fame and honour should be purchased ata better pennyworth by satire than by any other productions of thebrain, the world being soonest provoked to praise by lashes, as menare to love. There is a problem in an ancient author whydedications and other bundles of flattery run all upon stale mustytopics, without the smallest tincture of anything new, not only tothe torment and nauseating of the Christian reader, but, if notsuddenly prevented, to the universal spreading of that pestilentdisease the lethargy in this island, whereas there is very littlesatire which has not something in it untouched before. The defectsof the former are usually imputed to the want of invention amongthose who are dealers in that kind; but I think with a great deal ofinjustice, the solution being easy and natural, for the materials ofpanegyric, being very few in number, have been long since exhausted;for as health is but one thing, and has been always the same, whereas diseases are by thousands, besides new and daily additions, so all the virtues that have been ever in mankind are to be countedupon a few fingers, but his follies and vices are innumerable, andtime adds hourly to the heap. Now the utmost a poor poet can do isto get by heart a list of the cardinal virtues and deal them withhis utmost liberality to his hero or his patron. He may ring thechanges as far as it will go, and vary his phrase till he has talkedround, but the reader quickly finds it is all pork, {56a} with alittle variety of sauce, for there is no inventing terms of artbeyond our ideas, and when ideas are exhausted, terms of art must beso too. 

But though the matter for panegyric were as fruitful as the topicsof satire, yet would it not be hard to find out a sufficient reasonwhy the latter will be always better received than the first; forthis being bestowed only upon one or a few persons at a time, issure to raise envy, and consequently ill words, from the rest whohave no share in the blessing. But satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any, since every individualperson makes bold to understand it of others, and very wiselyremoves his particular part of the burden upon the shoulders of theWorld, which are broad enough and able to bear it. To this purposeI have sometimes reflected upon the difference between Athens andEngland with respect to the point before us. In the Attic {56b}commonwealth it was the privilege and birthright of every citizenand poet to rail aloud and in public, or to expose upon the stage byname any person they pleased, though of the greatest figure, whethera Creon, an Hyperbolus, an Alcibiades, or a Demosthenes. But, onthe other side, the least reflecting word let fall against thepeople in general was immediately caught up and revenged upon theauthors, however considerable for their quality or their merits;whereas in England it is just the reverse of all this. Here you maysecurely display your utmost rhetoric against mankind in the face ofthe world; tell them that all are gone astray; that there is nonethat doeth good, no, not one; that we live in the very dregs oftime; that knavery and atheism are epidemic as the pox; that honestyis fled with Astraea; with any other common-places equally new andeloquent, which are furnished by the splendida bills {56c}; and whenyou have done, the whole audience, far from being offended, shallreturn you thanks as a deliverer of precious and useful truths. Nay, further, it is but to venture your lungs, and you may preach inCovent Garden against foppery and fornication, and something else;against pride, and dissimulation, and bribery at Whitehall. You mayexpose rapine and injustice in the Inns-of-Court chapel, and in aCity pulpit be as fierce as you please against avarice, hypocrisy, and extortion. It is but a ball bandied to and fro, and every mancarries a racket about him to strike it from himself among the restof the company. But, on the other side, whoever should mistake thenature of things so far as to drop but a single hint in public howsuch a one starved half the fleet, and half poisoned the rest; howsuch a one, from a true principle of love and honour, pays no debtsbut for wenches and play; how such a one runs out of his estate; howParis, bribed by Juno and Venus, loath to offend either party, sleptout the whole cause on the bench; or how such an orator makes longspeeches in the Senate, with much thought, little sense, and to nopurpose;--whoever, I say, should venture to be thus particular, mustexpect to be imprisoned for scandalum magnatum, to have challengessent him, to be sued for defamation, and to be brought before thebar of the House. 

But I forget that I am expatiating on a subject wherein I have noconcern, having neither a talent nor an inclination for satire. Onthe other side, I am so entirely satisfied with the whole presentprocedure of human things, that I have been for some years preparingmaterial towards "A Panegyric upon the World;" to which I intendedto add a second part, entitled "A Modest Defence of the Proceedingsof the Rabble in all Ages. " Both these I had thoughts to publish byway of appendix to the following treatise; but finding my common-place book fill much slower than I had reason to expect, I havechosen to defer them to another occasion. Besides, I have beenunhappily prevented in that design by a certain domestic misfortune, in the particulars whereof, though it would be very seasonable, andmuch in the modern way, to inform the gentle reader, and would alsobe of great assistance towards extending this preface into the sizenow in vogue--which by rule ought to be large in proportion as thesubsequent volume is small--yet I shall now dismiss our impatientreader from any further attendance at the porch; and having dulyprepared his mind by a preliminary discourse, shall gladly introducehim to the sublime mysteries that ensue. 

SECTION I. --THE INTRODUCTION. 

Whoever has an ambition to be heard in a crowd must press, andsqueeze, and thrust, and climb with indefatigable pains, till he hasexalted himself to a certain degree of altitude above them. Now, inall assemblies, though you wedge them ever so close, we may observethis peculiar property, that over their heads there is room enough;but how to reach it is the difficult point, it being as hard to getquit of number as of hell. 

"--Evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est. " {59}

To this end the philosopher's way in all ages has been by erectingcertain edifices in the air; but whatever practice and reputationthese kind of structures have formerly possessed, or may stillcontinue in, not excepting even that of Socrates when he wassuspended in a basket to help contemplation, I think, with duesubmission, they seem to labour under two inconveniences. First, that the foundations being laid too high, they have been often outof sight and ever out of hearing. Secondly, that the materialsbeing very transitory, have suffered much from inclemencies of air, especially in these north-west regions. 

Therefore, towards the just performance of this great work thereremain but three methods that I can think on; whereof the wisdom ofour ancestors being highly sensible, has, to encourage all aspiringadventures, thought fit to erect three wooden machines for the useof those orators who desire to talk much without interruption. These are the Pulpit, the Ladder, and the Stage-itinerant. For asto the Bar, though it be compounded of the same matter and designedfor the same use, it cannot, however, be well allowed the honour ofa fourth, by reason of its level or inferior situation exposing itto perpetual interruption from collaterals. Neither can the Benchitself, though raised to a proper eminency, put in a better claim, whatever its advocates insist on. For if they please to look intothe original design of its erection, and the circumstances oradjuncts subservient to that design, they will soon acknowledge thepresent practice exactly correspondent to the primitive institution, and both to answer the etymology of the name, which in thePhoenician tongue is a word of great signification, importing, ifliterally interpreted, "The place of sleep, " but in commonacceptation, "A seat well bolstered and cushioned, for the repose ofold and gouty limbs;" senes ut in otia tuta recedant {60}. Fortunebeing indebted to them this part of retaliation, that as formerlythey have long talked whilst others slept, so now they may sleep aslong whilst others talk. 

But if no other argument could occur to exclude the Bench and theBar from the list of oratorical machines, it were sufficient thatthe admission of them would overthrow a number which I was resolvedto establish, whatever argument it might cost me; in imitation ofthat prudent method observed by many other philosophers and greatclerks, whose chief art in division has been to grow fond of someproper mystical number, which their imaginations have renderedsacred to a degree that they force common reason to find room for itin every part of Nature, reducing, including, and adjusting, everygenus and species within that compass by coupling some against theirwills and banishing others at any rate. Now, among all the rest, the profound number THREE {61} is that which has most employed mysublimest speculations, nor ever without wonderful delight. Thereis now in the press, and will be published next term, a panegyricalessay of mine upon this number, wherein I have, by most convincingproofs, not only reduced the senses and the elements under itsbanner, but brought over several deserters from its two greatrivals, SEVEN and NINE. 

Now, the first of these oratorical machines, in place as well asdignity, is the Pulpit. Of pulpits there are in this island severalsorts, but I esteem only that made of timber from the SylvaCaledonia, which agrees very well with our climate. If it be uponits decay, it is the better, both for conveyance of sound and forother reasons to be mentioned by and by. The degree of perfectionin shape and size I take to consist in being extremely narrow, withlittle ornament, and, best of all, without a cover; for, by ancientrule, it ought to be the only uncovered vessel in every assemblywhere it is rightfully used, by which means, from its nearresemblance to a pillory, it will ever have a mighty influence onhuman ears. 

Of Ladders I need say nothing. It is observed by foreignersthemselves, to the honour of our country, that we excel all nationsin our practice and understanding of this machine. The ascendingorators do not only oblige their audience in the agreeable delivery, but the whole world in their early publication of their speeches, which I look upon as the choicest treasury of our British eloquence, and whereof I am informed that worthy citizen and bookseller, Mr. John Dunton, has made a faithful and a painful collection, which heshortly designs to publish in twelve volumes in folio, illustratedwith copper-plates, --a work highly useful and curious, andaltogether worthy of such a hand. 

The last engine of orators is the Stage-itinerant, erected with muchsagacity, sub Jove pluvio, in triviis et quadriviis. {62a} It isthe great seminary of the two former, and its orators are sometimespreferred to the one and sometimes to the other, in proportion totheir deservings, there being a strict and perpetual intercoursebetween all three. 

From this accurate deduction it is manifest that for obtainingattention in public there is of necessity required a superiorposition of place. But although this point be generally granted, yet the cause is little agreed in; and it seems to me that very fewphilosophers have fallen into a true natural solution of thisphenomenon. The deepest account, and the most fairly digested ofany I have yet met with is this, that air being a heavy body, andtherefore, according to the system of Epicurus {62b}, continuallydescending, must needs be more so when laden and pressed down bywords, which are also bodies of much weight and gravity, as ismanifest from those deep impressions they make and leave upon us, and therefore must be delivered from a due altitude, or else theywill neither carry a good aim nor fall down with a sufficient force. 

"Corpoream quoque enim vocem constare fatendum est, Et sonitum, quoniam possunt impellere sensus. "- Lucr. Lib. 4. {62c}

And I am the readier to favour this conjecture from a commonobservation, that in the several assemblies of these orators Natureitself has instructed the hearers to stand with their mouths openand erected parallel to the horizon, so as they may be intersectedby a perpendicular line from the zenith to the centre of the earth. In which position, if the audience be well compact, every onecarries home a share, and little or nothing is lost. 

I confess there is something yet more refined in the contrivance andstructure of our modern theatres. For, first, the pit is sunk belowthe stage with due regard to the institution above deduced, thatwhatever weighty matter shall be delivered thence, whether it belead or gold, may fall plump into the jaws of certain critics, as Ithink they are called, which stand ready open to devour them. Thenthe boxes are built round and raised to a level with the scene, indeference to the ladies, because that large portion of wit laid outin raising pruriences and protuberances is observed to run much upona line, and ever in a circle. The whining passions and littlestarved conceits are gently wafted up by their own extreme levity tothe middle region, and there fix and are frozen by the frigidunderstandings of the inhabitants. Bombast and buffoonery, bynature lofty and light, soar highest of all, and would be lost inthe roof if the prudent architect had not, with much foresight, contrived for them a fourth place, called the twelve-penny gallery, and there planted a suitable colony, who greedily intercept them intheir passage. 

Now this physico-logical scheme of oratorical receptacles ormachines contains a great mystery, being a type, a sign, an emblem, a shadow, a symbol, bearing analogy to the spacious commonwealth ofwriters and to those methods by which they must exalt themselves toa certain eminency above the inferior world. By the Pulpit areadumbrated the writings of our modern saints in Great Britain, asthey have spiritualised and refined them from the dross andgrossness of sense and human reason. The matter, as we have said, is of rotten wood, and that upon two considerations: because it isthe quality of rotten wood to light in the dark; and secondly, because its cavities are full of worms--which is a type with a pairof handles, having a respect to the two principal qualifications ofthe orator and the two different fates attending upon his works. {63}

The Ladder is an adequate symbol of faction and of poetry, to bothof which so noble a number of authors are indebted for their fame. Of faction, because . (Hiatus in MS. ). Of poetry, because itsorators do perorare with a song; and because, climbing up by slowdegrees, fate is sure to turn them off before they can reach withinmany steps of the top; and because it is a preferment attained bytransferring of propriety and a confounding of meum and tuum. 

Under the Stage-itinerant are couched those productions designed forthe pleasure and delight of mortal man, such as "Six Pennyworth ofWit, " "Westminster Drolleries, " "Delightful Tales, " "CompleteJesters, " and the like, by which the writers of and for Grub Streethave in these later ages so nobly triumphed over time, have clippedhis wings, pared his nails, filed his teeth, turned back his hour-glass, blunted his scythe, and drawn the hobnails out of his shoes. It is under this class I have presumed to list my present treatise, being just come from having the honour conferred upon me to beadopted a member of that illustrious fraternity. 

Now, I am not unaware how the productions of the Grub Streetbrotherhood have of late years fallen under many prejudices, nor howit has been the perpetual employment of two junior start-upsocieties to ridicule them and their authors as unworthy theirestablished post in the commonwealth of wit and learning. Their ownconsciences will easily inform them whom I mean; nor has the worldbeen so negligent a looker-on as not to observe the continualefforts made by the societies of Gresham and of Will's {64}, toedify a name and reputation upon the ruin of ours. And this is yeta more feeling grief to us, upon the regards of tenderness as wellas of justice, when we reflect on their proceedings not only asunjust, but as ungrateful, undutiful, and unnatural. For how can itbe forgot by the world or themselves, to say nothing of our ownrecords, which are full and clear in the point, that they both areseminaries, not only of our planting, but our watering too. I aminformed our two rivals have lately made an offer to enter into thelists with united forces and challenge us to a comparison of books, both as to weight and number. In return to which, with license fromour president, I humbly offer two answers. First, we say theproposal is like that which Archimedes made upon a smaller affair{65a}, including an impossibility in the practice; for where canthey find scales of capacity enough for the first, or anarithmetician of capacity enough for the second. Secondly, we areready to accept the challenge, but with this condition, that a thirdindifferent person be assigned, to whose impartial judgment it shallbe left to decide which society each book, treatise, or pamphlet domost properly belong to. This point, God knows, is very far frombeing fixed at present, for we are ready to produce a catalogue ofsome thousands which in all common justice ought to be entitled toour fraternity, but by the revolted and newfangled writers mostperfidiously ascribed to the others. Upon all which we think itvery unbecoming our prudence that the determination should beremitted to the authors themselves, when our adversaries by briguingand caballing have caused so universal a defection from us, that thegreatest part of our society has already deserted to them, and ournearest friends begin to stand aloof, as if they were half ashamedto own us. 

This is the utmost I am authorised to say upon so ungrateful andmelancholy a subject, because we are extremely unwilling to inflamea controversy whose continuance may be so fatal to the interests ofus all, desiring much rather that things be amicably composed; andwe shall so far advance on our side as to be ready to receive thetwo prodigals with open arms whenever they shall think fit to returnfrom their husks and their harlots, which I think, from the presentcourse of their studies {65b}, they most properly may be said to beengaged in, and, like an indulgent parent, continue to them ouraffection and our blessing. 

But the greatest maim given to that general reception which thewritings of our society have formerly received, next to thetransitory state of all sublunary things, has been a superficialvein among many readers of the present age, who will by no means bepersuaded to inspect beyond the surface and the rind of things;whereas wisdom is a fox, who, after long hunting, will at last costyou the pains to dig out. It is a cheese which, by how much thericher, has the thicker, the homelier, and the coarser coat, andwhereof to a judicious palate the maggots are the best. It is asack-posset, wherein the deeper you go you will find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen whose cackling we must value and consider, becauseit is attended with an egg. But then, lastly, it is a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay youwith nothing but a worm. In consequence of these momentous truths, the Grubaean sages have always chosen to convey their precepts andtheir arts shut up within the vehicles of types and fables; whichhaving been perhaps more careful and curious in adorning than wasaltogether necessary, it has fared with these vehicles after theusual fate of coaches over-finely painted and gilt, that thetransitory gazers have so dazzled their eyes and filled theirimaginations with the outward lustre, as neither to regard norconsider the person or the parts of the owner within. A misfortunewe undergo with somewhat less reluctancy, because it has been commonto us with Pythagoras, AEsop, Socrates, and other of ourpredecessors. 

However, that neither the world nor ourselves may any longer sufferby such misunderstandings, I have been prevailed on, after muchimportunity from my friends, to travail in a complete and laboriousdissertation upon the prime productions of our society, which, besides their beautiful externals for the gratification ofsuperficial readers, have darkly and deeply couched under them themost finished and refined systems of all sciences and arts, as I donot doubt to lay open by untwisting or unwinding, and either to drawup by exantlation or display by incision. 

This great work was entered upon some years ago by one of our mosteminent members. He began with the "History of Reynard the Fox, "but neither lived to publish his essay nor to proceed farther in souseful an attempt, which is very much to be lamented, because thediscovery he made and communicated to his friends is now universallyreceived; nor do I think any of the learned will dispute that famoustreatise to be a complete body of civil knowledge, and therevelation, or rather the apocalypse, of all state arcana. But theprogress I have made is much greater, having already finished myannotations upon several dozens from some of which I shall impart afew hints to the candid reader, as far as will be necessary to theconclusion at which I aim. 

The first piece I have handled is that of "Tom Thumb, " whose authorwas a Pythagorean philosopher. This dark treatise contains thewhole scheme of the metempsychosis, deducing the progress of thesoul through all her stages. 

The next is "Dr. Faustus, " penned by Artephius, an author bonaenotae and an adeptus; he published it in the nine hundred andeighty-fourth year {67a} of his age; this writer proceeds wholly byreincrudation, or in the via humida; and the marriage betweenFaustus and Helen does most conspicuously dilucidate the fermentingof the male and female dragon. 

"Whittington and his Cat" is the work of that mysterious Rabbi, Jehuda Hannasi, containing a defence of the Gemara of the JerusalemMisna, and its just preference to that of Babylon, contrary to thevulgar opinion. 

"The Hind and Panther. " This is the masterpiece of a famous writernow living {67b}, intended for a complete abstract of sixteenthousand schoolmen from Scotus to Bellarmine. 

"Tommy Potts. " Another piece, supposed by the same hand, by way ofsupplement to the former. 

The "Wise Men of Gotham, " cum Appendice. This is a treatise ofimmense erudition, being the great original and fountain of thosearguments bandied about both in France and England, for a justdefence of modern learning and wit, against the presumption, thepride, and the ignorance of the ancients. This unknown author hathso exhausted the subject, that a penetrating reader will easilydiscover whatever has been written since upon that dispute to belittle more than repetition. An abstract of this treatise has beenlately published by a worthy member of our society. 

These notices may serve to give the learned reader an idea as wellas a taste of what the whole work is likely to produce, wherein Ihave now altogether circumscribed my thoughts and my studies; and ifI can bring it to a perfection before I die, shall reckon I havewell employed the poor remains of an unfortunate life. This indeedis more than I can justly expect from a quill worn to the pith inthe service of the State, in pros and cons upon Popish Plots, andMeal Tubs, and Exclusion Bills, and Passive Obedience, and Addressesof Lives and Fortunes; and Prerogative, and Property, and Liberty ofConscience, and Letters to a Friend: from an understanding and aconscience, threadbare and ragged with perpetual turning; from ahead broken in a hundred places by the malignants of the oppositefactions, and from a body spent with poxes ill cured, by trusting tobawds and surgeons, who (as it afterwards appeared) were professedenemies to me and the Government, and revenged their party's quarrelupon my nose and shins. Fourscore and eleven pamphlets have Iwritten under three reigns, and for the service of six-and-thirtyfactions. But finding the State has no farther occasion for me andmy ink, I retire willingly to draw it out into speculations morebecoming a philosopher, having, to my unspeakable comfort, passed along life with a conscience void of offence towards God and towardsmen. 

But to return. I am assured from the reader's candour that thebrief specimen I have given will easily clear all the rest of oursociety's productions from an aspersion grown, as it is manifest, out of envy and ignorance, that they are of little farther use orvalue to mankind beyond the common entertainments of their wit andtheir style; for these I am sure have never yet been disputed by ourkeenest adversaries; in both which, as well as the more profound andmost mystical part, I have throughout this treatise closely followedthe most applauded originals. And to render all complete I havewith much thought and application of mind so ordered that the chieftitle prefixed to it (I mean that under which I design it shall passin the common conversation of court and town) is modelled exactlyafter the manner peculiar to our society. 

I confess to have been somewhat liberal in the business of titles{69a}, having observed the humour of multiplying them, to bear greatvogue among certain writers, whom I exceedingly reverence. Andindeed it seems not unreasonable that books, the children of thebrain, should have the honour to be christened with variety ofnames, as well as other infants of quality. Our famous Dryden hasventured to proceed a point farther, endeavouring to introduce alsoa multiplicity of godfathers {69b}, which is an improvement of muchmore advantage, upon a very obvious account. It is a pity thisadmirable invention has not been better cultivated, so as to grow bythis time into general imitation, when such an authority serves itfor a precedent. Nor have my endeavours been wanting to second souseful an example, but it seems there is an unhappy expense usuallyannexed to the calling of a godfather, which was clearly out of myhead, as it is very reasonable to believe. Where the pinch lay, Icannot certainly affirm; but having employed a world of thoughts andpains to split my treatise into forty sections, and having entreatedforty Lords of my acquaintance that they would do me the honour tostand, they all made it matter of conscience, and sent me theirexcuses. 

SECTION II. 

Once upon a time there was a man who had three sons by one wife {70}and all at a birth, neither could the midwife tell certainly whichwas the eldest. Their father died while they were young, and uponhis death-bed, calling the lads to him, spoke thus:-

"Sons, because I have purchased no estate, nor was born to any, Ihave long considered of some good legacies to bequeath you, and atlast, with much care as well as expense, have provided each of you(here they are) a new coat. Now, you are to understand that thesecoats have two virtues contained in them; one is, that with goodwearing they will last you fresh and sound as long as you live; theother is, that they will grow in the same proportion with yourbodies, lengthening and widening of themselves, so as to be alwaysfit. Here, let me see them on you before I die. So, very well!Pray, children, wear them clean and brush them often. You will findin my will (here it is) full instructions in every particularconcerning the wearing and management of your coats, wherein youmust be very exact to avoid the penalties I have appointed for everytransgression or neglect, upon which your future fortunes willentirely depend. I have also commanded in my will that you shouldlive together in one house like brethren and friends, for then youwill be sure to thrive and not otherwise. "

Here the story says this good father died, and the three sons wentall together to seek their fortunes. 

I shall not trouble you with recounting what adventures they met forthe first seven years, any farther than by taking notice that theycarefully observed their father's will and kept their coats in verygood order; that they travelled through several countries, encountered a reasonable quantity of giants, and slew certaindragons. 

Being now arrived at the proper age for producing themselves, theycame up to town and fell in love with the ladies, but especiallythree, who about that time were in chief reputation, the Duchessd'Argent, Madame de Grands-Titres, and the Countess d'Orgueil {71}. On their first appearance, our three adventurers met with a very badreception, and soon with great sagacity guessing out the reason, they quickly began to improve in the good qualities of the town. They wrote, and rallied, and rhymed, and sung, and said, and saidnothing; they drank, and fought, and slept, and swore, and tooksnuff; they went to new plays on the first night, haunted thechocolate-houses, beat the watch; they bilked hackney-coachmen, ranin debt with shopkeepers, and lay with their wives; they killedbailiffs, kicked fiddlers down-stairs, ate at Locket's, loitered atWill's; they talked of the drawing-room and never came there; dinedwith lords they never saw; whispered a duchess and spoke never aword; exposed the scrawls of their laundress for billet-doux ofquality; came ever just from court and were never seen in it;attended the levee sub dio; got a list of peers by heart in onecompany, and with great familiarity retailed them in another. Aboveall, they constantly attended those committees of Senators who aresilent in the House and loud in the coffeehouse, where they nightlyadjourn to chew the cud of politics, and are encompassed with a ringof disciples who lie in wait to catch up their droppings. The threebrothers had acquired forty other qualifications of the like stamptoo tedious to recount, and by consequence were justly reckoned themost accomplished persons in town. But all would not suffice, andthe ladies aforesaid continued still inflexible. To clear up whichdifficulty, I must, with the reader's good leave and patience, haverecourse to some points of weight which the authors of that age havenot sufficiently illustrated. 

For about this time it happened a sect arose whose tenets obtainedand spread very far, especially in the grand monde, and amongeverybody of good fashion. They worshipped a sort of idol {72a}, who, as their doctrine delivered, did daily create men by a kind ofmanufactory operation. This idol they placed in the highest partsof the house on an altar erected about three feet. He was shown inthe posture of a Persian emperor sitting on a superficies with hislegs interwoven under him. This god had a goose for his ensign, whence it is that some learned men pretend to deduce his originalfrom Jupiter Capitolinus. At his left hand, beneath the altar, Hellseemed to open and catch at the animals the idol was creating, toprevent which, certain of his priests hourly flung in pieces of theuninformed mass or substance, and sometimes whole limbs alreadyenlivened, which that horrid gulph insatiably swallowed, terrible tobehold. The goose was also held a subaltern divinity or Deusminorum gentium, before whose shrine was sacrificed that creaturewhose hourly food is human gore, and who is in so great renownabroad for being the delight and favourite of the EgyptianCercopithecus {72b}. Millions of these animals were cruellyslaughtered every day to appease the hunger of that consuming deity. The chief idol was also worshipped as the inventor of the yard andthe needle, whether as the god of seamen, or on account of certainother mystical attributes, hath not been sufficiently cleared. 

The worshippers of this deity had also a system of their beliefwhich seemed to turn upon the following fundamental. They held theuniverse to be a large suit of clothes which invests everything;that the earth is invested by the air; the air is invested by thestars; and the stars are invested by the Primum Mobile. Look onthis globe of earth, you will find it to be a very complete andfashionable dress. What is that which some call land but a finecoat faced with green, or the sea but a waistcoat of water-tabby?Proceed to the particular works of the creation, you will find howcurious journeyman Nature hath been to trim up the vegetable beaux;observe how sparkish a periwig adorns the head of a beech, and whata fine doublet of white satin is worn by the birch. To concludefrom all, what is man himself but a microcoat, or rather a completesuit of clothes with all its trimmings? As to his body there can beno dispute, but examine even the acquirements of his mind, you willfind them all contribute in their order towards furnishing out anexact dress. To instance no more, is not religion a cloak, honestya pair of shoes worn out in the dirt, self-love a surtout, vanity ashirt, and conscience a pair of breeches, which, though a cover forlewdness as well as nastiness, is easily slipped down for theservice of both. 

These postulata being admitted, it will follow in due course ofreasoning that those beings which the world calls improperly suitsof clothes are in reality the most refined species of animals, or toproceed higher, that they are rational creatures or men. For is itnot manifest that they live, and move, and talk, and perform allother offices of human life? Are not beauty, and wit, and mien, andbreeding their inseparable proprieties? In short, we see nothingbut them, hear nothing but them. Is it not they who walk thestreets, fill up Parliament-, coffee-, play-, bawdy-houses. It istrue, indeed, that these animals, which are vulgarly called suits ofclothes or dresses, do according to certain compositions receivedifferent appellations. If one of them be trimmed up with a goldchain, and a red gown, and a white rod, and a great horse, it iscalled a Lord Mayor; if certain ermines and furs be placed in acertain position, we style them a judge, and so an apt conjunctionof lawn and black satin we entitle a Bishop. 

Others of these professors, though agreeing in the main system, wereyet more refined upon certain branches of it; and held that man wasan animal compounded of two dresses, the natural and the celestialsuit, which were the body and the soul; that the soul was theoutward, and the body the inward clothing; that the latter was extraduce, but the former of daily creation and circumfusion. Thislast they proved by Scripture, because in them we live, and move, and have our being: as likewise by philosophy, because they are allin all, and all in every part. Besides, said they, separate thesetwo, and you will find the body to be only a senseless unsavourycarcass. By all which it is manifest that the outward dress mustneeds be the soul. 

To this system of religion were tagged several subaltern doctrines, which were entertained with great vogue; as particularly thefaculties of the mind were deduced by the learned among them in thismanner: embroidery was sheer wit, gold fringe was agreeableconversation, gold lace was repartee, a huge long periwig washumour, and a coat full of powder was very good raillery. All whichrequired abundance of finesse and delicatesse to manage withadvantage, as well as a strict observance after times and fashions. 

I have with much pains and reading collected out of ancient authorsthis short summary of a body of philosophy and divinity which seemsto have been composed by a vein and race of thinking very differentfrom any other systems, either ancient or modern. And it was notmerely to entertain or satisfy the reader's curiosity, but rather togive him light into several circumstances of the following story, that, knowing the state of dispositions and opinions in an age soremote, he may better comprehend those great events which were theissue of them. I advise, therefore, the courteous reader to perusewith a world of application, again and again, whatever I havewritten upon this matter. And so leaving these broken ends, Icarefully gather up the chief thread of my story, and proceed. 

These opinions, therefore, were so universal, as well as thepractices of them, among the refined part of court and town, thatour three brother adventurers, as their circumstances then stood, were strangely at a loss. For, on the one side, the three ladiesthey addressed themselves to (whom we have named already) were everat the very top of the fashion, and abhorred all that were below itbut the breadth of a hair. On the other side, their father's willwas very precise, and it was the main precept in it, with thegreatest penalties annexed, not to add to or diminish from theircoats one thread without a positive command in the will. Now thecoats their father had left them were, it is true, of very goodcloth, and besides, so neatly sewn you would swear they were all ofa piece, but, at the same time, very plain, with little or noornament; and it happened that before they were a month in towngreat shoulder-knots came up. Straight all the world was shoulder-knots; no approaching the ladies' ruelles without the quota ofshoulder-knots. "That fellow, " cries one, "has no soul: where ishis shoulder-knot?" {75} Our three brethren soon discovered theirwant by sad experience, meeting in their walks with fortymortifications and indignities. If they went to the playhouse, thedoorkeeper showed them into the twelve-penny gallery. If theycalled a boat, says a waterman, "I am first sculler. " If theystepped into the "Rose" to take a bottle, the drawer would cry, "Friend, we sell no ale. " If they went to visit a lady, a footmanmet them at the door with "Pray, send up your message. " In thisunhappy case they went immediately to consult their father's will, read it over and over, but not a word of the shoulder-knot. Whatshould they do? What temper should they find? Obedience wasabsolutely necessary, and yet shoulder-knots appeared extremelyrequisite. After much thought, one of the brothers, who happened tobe more book-learned than the other two, said he had found anexpedient. "It is true, " said he, "there is nothing here in thiswill, totidem verbis, making mention of shoulder-knots, but I dareconjecture we may find them inclusive, or totidem syllabis. " Thisdistinction was immediately approved by all; and so they fell againto examine the will. But their evil star had so directed the matterthat the first syllable was not to be found in the whole writing;upon which disappointment, he who found the former evasion tookheart, and said, "Brothers, there is yet hopes; for though we cannotfind them totidem verbis nor totidem syllabis, I dare engage weshall make them out tertio modo or totidem literis. " This discoverywas also highly commended, upon which they fell once more to thescrutiny, and soon picked out S, H, O, U, L, D, E, R, when the sameplanet, enemy to their repose, had wonderfully contrived that a Kwas not to be found. Here was a weighty difficulty! But thedistinguishing brother (for whom we shall hereafter find a name), now his hand was in, proved by a very good argument that K was amodern illegitimate letter, unknown to the learned ages, noranywhere to be found in ancient manuscripts. "It is true, " said he, "the word Calendae, had in Q. V. C. {76} been sometimes writ with aK, but erroneously, for in the best copies it is ever spelt with aC; and by consequence it was a gross mistake in our language tospell 'knot' with a K, " but that from henceforward he would takecare it should be writ with a C. Upon this all further difficultyvanished; shoulder-knots were made clearly out to be jure paterno, and our three gentlemen swaggered with as large and as flauntingones as the best. 

But as human happiness is of a very short duration, so in those dayswere human fashions, upon which it entirely depends. Shoulder-knotshad their time, and we must now imagine them in their decline, for acertain lord came just from Paris with fifty yards of gold lace uponhis coat, exactly trimmed after the court fashion of that month. Intwo days all mankind appeared closed up in bars of gold lace. Whoever durst peep abroad without his complement of gold lace was asscandalous as a ----, and as ill received among the women. Whatshould our three knights do in this momentous affair? They hadsufficiently strained a point already in the affair of shoulder-knots. Upon recourse to the will, nothing appeared there but altumsilentium. That of the shoulder-knots was a loose, flying, circumstantial point, but this of gold lace seemed too considerablean alteration without better warrant. It did aliquo modo essentiaeadhaerere, and therefore required a positive precept. But aboutthis time it fell out that the learned brother aforesaid had read"Aristotelis Dialectica, " and especially that wonderful piece deInterpretatione, which has the faculty of teaching its readers tofind out a meaning in everything but itself, like commentators onthe Revelations, who proceed prophets without understanding asyllable of the text. "Brothers, " said he, "you are to be informedthat of wills, duo sunt genera, nuncupatory and scriptory, {77a}that in the scriptory will here before us there is no precept ormention about gold lace, conceditur, but si idem affirmetur denuncupatorio negatur. For, brothers, if you remember, we heard afellow say when we were boys that he heard my father's man say thathe heard my father say that he would advise his sons to get goldlace on their coats as soon as ever they could procure money to buyit. " "That is very true, " cries the other. "I remember itperfectly well, " said the third. And so, without more ado, they gotthe largest gold lace in the parish, and walked about as fine aslords. 

A while after, there came up all in fashion a pretty sort of flame-coloured satin {77b} for linings, and the mercer brought a patternof it immediately to our three gentlemen. "An please yourworships, " said he, "my Lord C--- and Sir J. W. Had linings out ofthis very piece last night; it takes wonderfully, and I shall nothave a remnant left enough to make my wife a pin-cushion by to-morrow morning at ten o'clock. " Upon this they fell again torummage the will, because the present case also required a positiveprecept, the lining being held by orthodox writers to be of theessence of the coat. After long search they could fix upon nothingto the matter in hand, except a short advice in their father's willto take care of fire and put out their candles before they went tosleep {78a}. This, though a good deal for the purpose, and helpingvery far towards self-conviction, yet not seeming wholly of force toestablish a command, and being resolved to avoid farther scruple, aswell as future occasion for scandal, says he that was the scholar, "I remember to have read in wills of a codicil annexed, which isindeed a part of the will, and what it contains hath equal authoritywith the rest. Now I have been considering of this same will herebefore us, and I cannot reckon it to be complete for want of such acodicil. I will therefore fasten one in its proper place verydexterously. I have had it by me some time; it was written by adog-keeper of my grandfather's, and talks a great deal, as good luckwould have it, of this very flame-coloured satin. " The project wasimmediately approved by the other two; an old parchment scroll wastagged on according to art, in the form of a codicil annexed, andthe satin bought and worn. 

Next winter a player, hired for the purpose by the Corporation ofFringemakers, acted his part in a new comedy, all covered withsilver fringe {78b}, and according to the laudable custom gave riseto that fashion. Upon which the brothers, consulting their father'swill, to their great astonishment found these words: "Item, Icharge and command my said three sons to wear no sort of silverfringe upon or about their said coats, " &c. , with a penalty in caseof disobedience too long here to insert. However, after some pause, the brother so often mentioned for his erudition, who was wellskilled in criticisms, had found in a certain author, which he saidshould be nameless, that the same word which in the will is calledfringe does also signify a broom-stick, and doubtless ought to havethe same interpretation in this paragraph. This another of thebrothers disliked, because of that epithet silver, which could not, he humbly conceived, in propriety of speech be reasonably applied toa broom-stick; but it was replied upon him that this epithet wasunderstood in a mythological and allegorical sense. However, heobjected again why their father should forbid them to wear a broom-stick on their coats, a caution that seemed unnatural andimpertinent; upon which he was taken up short, as one that spokeirreverently of a mystery which doubtless was very useful andsignificant, but ought not to be over-curiously pried into or nicelyreasoned upon. And in short, their father's authority being nowconsiderably sunk, this expedient was allowed to serve as a lawfuldispensation for wearing their full proportion of silver fringe. 

A while after was revived an old fashion, long antiquated, ofembroidery with Indian figures of men, women, and children {79a}. Here they had no occasion to examine the will. They remembered buttoo well how their father had always abhorred this fashion; that hemade several paragraphs on purpose, importing his utter detestationof it, and bestowing his everlasting curse to his sons whenever theyshould wear it. For all this, in a few days they appeared higher inthe fashion than anybody else in the town. But they solved thematter by saying that these figures were not at all the same withthose that were formerly worn and were meant in the will; besides, they did not wear them in that sense, as forbidden by their father, but as they were a commendable custom, and of great use to thepublic. That these rigorous clauses in the will did thereforerequire some allowance and a favourable interpretation, and ought tobe understood cum grano salis. 

But fashions perpetually altering in that age, the scholasticbrother grew weary of searching further evasions and solvingeverlasting contradictions. Resolved, therefore, at all hazards tocomply with the modes of the world, they concerted matters together, and agreed unanimously to lock up their father's will in a strong-box, brought out of Greece or Italy {79b} (I have forgot which), andtrouble themselves no farther to examine it, but only refer to itsauthority whenever they thought fit. In consequence whereof, awhile after it grew a general mode to wear an infinite number ofpoints, most of them tagged with silver; upon which the scholarpronounced ex cathedra {80a} that points were absolutely jurepaterno as they might very well remember. It is true, indeed, thefashion prescribed somewhat more than were directly named in thewill; however, that they, as heirs-general of their father, hadpower to make and add certain clauses for public emolument, thoughnot deducible todidem verbis from the letter of the will, or elsemulta absurda sequerentur. This was understood for canonical, andtherefore on the following Sunday they came to church all coveredwith points. 

The learned brother so often mentioned was reckoned the best scholarin all that or the next street to it; insomuch, as having runsomething behindhand with the world, he obtained the favour from acertain lord {80b} to receive him into his house and to teach hischildren. A while after the lord died, and he, by long practiceupon his father's will, found the way of contriving a deed ofconveyance of that house to himself and his heirs; upon which hetook possession, turned the young squires out, and received hisbrothers in their stead. 

SECTION III. --A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS. 

Though I have been hitherto as cautious as I could, upon alloccasions, most nicely to follow the rules and methods of writinglaid down by the example of our illustrious moderns, yet has theunhappy shortness of my memory led me into an error, from which Imust immediately extricate myself, before I can decently pursue myprincipal subject. I confess with shame it was an unpardonableomission to proceed so far as I have already done before I hadperformed the due discourses, expostulatory, supplicatory, ordeprecatory, with my good lords the critics. Towards some atonementfor this grievous neglect, I do here make humbly bold to presentthem with a short account of themselves and their art, by lookinginto the original and pedigree of the word, as it is generallyunderstood among us, and very briefly considering the ancient andpresent state thereof. 

By the word critic, at this day so frequent in all conversations, there have sometimes been distinguished three very different speciesof mortal men, according as I have read in ancient books andpamphlets. For first, by this term were understood such persons asinvented or drew up rules for themselves and the world, by observingwhich a careful reader might be able to pronounce upon theproductions of the learned, form his taste to a true relish of thesublime and the admirable, and divide every beauty of matter or ofstyle from the corruption that apes it. In their common perusal ofbooks, singling out the errors and defects, the nauseous, thefulsome, the dull, and the impertinent, with the caution of a manthat walks through Edinburgh streets in a morning, who is indeed ascareful as he can to watch diligently and spy out the filth in hisway; not that he is curious to observe the colour and complexion ofthe ordure or take its dimensions, much less to be paddling in ortasting it, but only with a design to come out as cleanly as he may. These men seem, though very erroneously, to have understood theappellation of critic in a literal sense; that one principal part ofhis office was to praise and acquit, and that a critic who sets upto read only for an occasion of censure and reproof is a creature asbarbarous as a judge who should take up a resolution to hang all menthat came before him upon a trial. 

Again, by the word critic have been meant the restorers of ancientlearning from the worms, and graves, and dust of manuscripts. 

Now the races of these two have been for some ages utterly extinct, and besides to discourse any further of them would not be at all tomy purpose. 

The third and noblest sort is that of the true critic, whoseoriginal is the most ancient of all. Every true critic is a heroborn, descending in a direct line from a celestial stem, by Momusand Hybris, who begat Zoilus, who begat Tigellius, who begatEtcaetera the elder, who begat Bentley, and Rymer, and Wotton, andPerrault, and Dennis, who begat Etcaetera the younger. 

And these are the critics from whom the commonwealth of learning hasin all ages received such immense benefits, that the gratitude oftheir admirers placed their origin in heaven, among those ofHercules, Theseus, Perseus, and other great deservers of mankind. But heroic virtue itself hath not been exempt from the obloquy ofevil tongues. For it hath been objected that those ancient heroes, famous for their combating so many giants, and dragons, and robbers, were in their own persons a greater nuisance to mankind than any ofthose monsters they subdued; and therefore, to render theirobligations more complete, when all other vermin were destroyed, should in conscience have concluded with the same justice uponthemselves, as Hercules most generously did, and hath upon thatscore procured for himself more temples and votaries than the bestof his fellows. For these reasons I suppose it is why some haveconceived it would be very expedient for the public good of learningthat every true critic, as soon as he had finished his taskassigned, should immediately deliver himself up to ratsbane or hemp, or from some convenient altitude, and that no man's pretensions toso illustrious a character should by any means be received beforethat operation was performed. 

Now, from this heavenly descent of criticism, and the close analogyit bears to heroic virtue, it is easy to assign the properemployment of a true, ancient, genuine critic: which is, to travelthrough this vast world of writings; to peruse and hunt thosemonstrous faults bred within them; to drag out the lurking errors, like Cacus from his den; to multiply them like Hydra's heads; andrake them together like Augeas's dung; or else to drive away a sortof dangerous fowl who have a perverse inclination to plunder thebest branches of the tree of knowledge, like those Stymphalian birdsthat ate up the fruit. 

These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of atrue critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers'faults; which may be further put beyond dispute by the followingdemonstration:- That whoever will examine the writings in all kindswherewith this ancient sect hath honoured the world, shallimmediately find from the whole thread and tenor of them that theideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken upwith the faults, and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes ofother writers, and let the subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with thedefects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is baddoes of necessity distil into their own, by which means the wholeappears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticismsthemselves have made. 

Having thus briefly considered the original and office of a critic, as the word is understood in its most noble and universalacceptation, I proceed to refute the objections of those who arguefrom the silence and pretermission of authors, by which they pretendto prove that the very art of criticism, as now exercised, and by meexplained, is wholly modern, and consequently that the critics ofGreat Britain and France have no title to an original so ancient andillustrious as I have deduced. Now, if I can clearly make out, onthe contrary, that the most ancient writers have particularlydescribed both the person and the office of a true critic agreeableto the definition laid down by me, their grand objection--from thesilence of authors--will fall to the ground. 

I confess to have for a long time borne a part in this generalerror, from which I should never have acquitted myself but throughthe assistance of our noble moderns, whose most edifying volumes Iturn indefatigably over night and day, for the improvement of mymind and the good of my country. These have with unwearied painsmade many useful searches into the weak sides of the ancients, andgiven us a comprehensive list of them {84a}. Besides, they haveproved beyond contradiction that the very finest things delivered ofold have been long since invented and brought to light by much laterpens, and that the noblest discoveries those ancients ever made inart or nature have all been produced by the transcending genius ofthe present age, which clearly shows how little merit those ancientscan justly pretend to, and takes off that blind admiration paid themby men in a corner, who have the unhappiness of conversing toolittle with present things. Reflecting maturely upon all this, andtaking in the whole compass of human nature, I easily concluded thatthese ancients, highly sensible of their many imperfections, mustneeds have endeavoured, from some passages in their works, toobviate, soften, or divert the censorious reader, by satire orpanegyric upon the true critics, in imitation of their masters, themoderns. Now, in the commonplaces {84b} of both these I wasplentifully instructed by a long course of useful study in prefacesand prologues, and therefore immediately resolved to try what Icould discover of either, by a diligent perusal of the most ancientwriters, and especially those who treated of the earliest times. 

Here I found, to my great surprise, that although they all enteredupon occasion into particular descriptions of the true critic, according as they were governed by their fears or their hopes, yetwhatever they touched of that kind was with abundance of caution, adventuring no further than mythology and hieroglyphic. This, Isuppose, gave ground to superficial readers for urging the silenceof authors against the antiquity of the true critic, though thetypes are so apposite, and the applications so necessary andnatural, that it is not easy to conceive how any reader of moderneye and taste could overlook them. I shall venture from a greatnumber to produce a few which I am very confident will put thisquestion beyond doubt. 

It well deserves considering that these ancient writers, in treatingenigmatically upon this subject, have generally fixed upon the verysame hieroglyph, varying only the story according to theiraffections or their wit. For first, Pausanias is of opinion thatthe perfection of writing correct was entirely owing to theinstitution of critics, and that he can possibly mean no other thanthe true critic is, I think, manifest enough from the followingdescription. He says they were a race of men who delighted tonibble at the superfluities and excrescences of books, which thelearned at length observing, took warning of their own accord to lopthe luxuriant, the rotten, the dead, the sapless, and the overgrownbranches from their works. But now all this he cunningly shadesunder the following allegory: That the Nauplians in Argia learnedthe art of pruning their vines by observing that when an ass hadbrowsed upon one of them, it thrived the better and bore fairerfruit. But Herodotus holding the very same hieroglyph, speaks muchplainer and almost in terminis. He hath been so bold as to tax thetrue critics of ignorance and malice, telling us openly, for I thinknothing can be plainer, that in the western part of Libya there wereasses with horns, upon which relation Ctesias {85} yet refines, mentioning the very same animal about India; adding, that whereasall other asses wanted a gall, these horned ones were so redundantin that part that their flesh was not to be eaten because of itsextreme bitterness. 

Now, the reason why those ancient writers treated this subject onlyby types and figures was because they durst not make open attacksagainst a party so potent and so terrible as the critics of thoseages were, whose very voice was so dreadful that a legion of authorswould tremble and drop their pens at the sound. For so Herodotustells us expressly in another place how a vast army of Scythians wasput to flight in a panic terror by the braying of an ass. Fromhence it is conjectured by certain profound philologers, that thegreat awe and reverence paid to a true critic by the writers ofBritain have been derived to us from those our Scythian ancestors. In short, this dread was so universal, that in process of time thoseauthors who had a mind to publish their sentiments more freely indescribing the true critics of their several ages, were forced toleave off the use of the former hieroglyph as too nearly approachingthe prototype, and invented other terms instead thereof that weremore cautious and mystical. So Diodorus, speaking to the samepurpose, ventures no farther than to say that in the mountains ofHelicon there grows a certain weed which bears a flower of so damneda scent as to poison those who offer to smell it. Lucretius givesexactly the same relation. 

"Est etiam in magnis Heliconis montibus arbos, Floris odore hominem retro consueta necare. "--Lib. 6. {86}

But Ctesias, whom we lately quoted, has been a great deal bolder; hehad been used with much severity by the true critics of his own age, and therefore could not forbear to leave behind him at least onedeep mark of his vengeance against the whole tribe. His meaning isso near the surface that I wonder how it possibly came to beoverlooked by those who deny the antiquity of the true critics. Forpretending to make a description of many strange animals aboutIndia, he has set down these remarkable words. "Among the rest, "says he, "there is a serpent that wants teeth, and consequentlycannot bite, but if its vomit (to which it is much addicted) happensto fall upon anything, a certain rottenness or corruption ensues. These serpents are generally found among the mountains where jewelsgrow, and they frequently emit a poisonous juice, whereof whoeverdrinks, that person's brain flies out of his nostrils. "

There was also among the ancients a sort of critic, notdistinguished in specie from the former but in growth or degree, whoseem to have been only the tyros or junior scholars, yet because oftheir differing employments they are frequently mentioned as a sectby themselves. The usual exercise of these young students was toattend constantly at theatres, and learn to spy out the worst partsof the play, whereof they were obliged carefully to take note, andrender a rational account to their tutors. Fleshed at these smallersports, like young wolves, they grew up in time to be nimble andstrong enough for hunting down large game. For it has beenobserved, both among ancients and moderns, that a true critic hasone quality in common with a whore and an alderman, never to changehis title or his nature; that a grey critic has been certainly agreen one, the perfections and acquirements of his age being onlythe improved talents of his youth, like hemp, which some naturalistsinform us is bad for suffocations, though taken but in the seed. Iesteem the invention, or at least the refinement of prologues, tohave been owing to these younger proficients, of whom Terence makesfrequent and honourable mention, under the name of Malevoli. 

Now it is certain the institution of the true critics was ofabsolute necessity to the commonwealth of learning. For all humanactions seem to be divided like Themistocles and his company. Oneman can fiddle, and another can make a small town a great city; andhe that cannot do either one or the other deserves to be kicked outof the creation. The avoiding of which penalty has doubtless giventhe first birth to the nation of critics, and withal an occasion fortheir secret detractors to report that a true critic is a sort ofmechanic set up with a stock and tools for his trade, at as littleexpense as a tailor; and that there is much analogy between theutensils and abilities of both. That the "Tailor's Hell" is thetype of a critic's commonplace-book, and his wit and learning heldforth by the goose. That it requires at least as many of these tothe making up of one scholar as of the others to the composition ofa man. That the valour of both is equal, and their weapons near ofa size. Much may be said in answer to these invidious reflections;and I can positively affirm the first to be a falsehood: for, onthe contrary, nothing is more certain than that it requires greaterlayings out to be free of the critic's company than of any other youcan name. For as to be a true beggar, it will cost the richestcandidate every groat he is worth, so before one can commence a truecritic, it will cost a man all the good qualities of his mind, whichperhaps for a less purchase would be thought but an indifferentbargain. 

Having thus amply proved the antiquity of criticism and describedthe primitive state of it, I shall now examine the present conditionof this Empire, and show how well it agrees with its ancient self{88}. A certain author, whose works have many ages since beenentirely lost, does in his fifth book and eighth chapter say ofcritics that "their writings are the mirrors of learning. " This Iunderstand in a literal sense, and suppose our author must mean thatwhoever designs to be a perfect writer must inspect into the booksof critics, and correct his inventions there as in a mirror. Now, whoever considers that the mirrors of the ancients were made ofbrass and fine mercurio, may presently apply the two principalqualifications of a true modern critic, and consequently must needsconclude that these have always been and must be for ever the same. For brass is an emblem of duration, and when it is skilfullyburnished will cast reflections from its own superficies without anyassistance of mercury from behind. All the other talents of acritic will not require a particular mention, being included oreasily deducible to these. However, I shall conclude with threemaxims, which may serve both as characteristics to distinguish atrue modern critic from a pretender, and will be also of admirableuse to those worthy spirits who engage in so useful and honourablean art. 

The first is, that criticism, contrary to all other faculties of theintellect, is ever held the truest and best when it is the veryfirst result of the critic's mind; as fowlers reckon the first aimfor the surest, and seldom fail of missing the mark if they stay notfor a second. 

Secondly, the true critics are known by their talent of swarmingabout the noblest writers, to which they are carried merely byinstinct, as a rat to the best cheese, or a wasp to the fairestfruit. So when the king is a horseback he is sure to be thedirtiest person of the company, and they that make their court bestare such as bespatter him most. 

Lastly, a true critic in the perusal of a book is like a dog at afeast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what theguests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when thereare the fewest bones {89}. 

Thus much I think is sufficient to serve by way of address to mypatrons, the true modern critics, and may very well atone for mypast silence, as well as that which I am like to observe for thefuture. I hope I have deserved so well of their whole body as tomeet with generous and tender usage at their hands. Supported bywhich expectation I go on boldly to pursue those adventures alreadyso happily begun. 

SECTION IV. --A TALE OF A TUB. 

I have now with much pains and study conducted the reader to aperiod where he must expect to hear of great revolutions. For nosooner had our learned brother, so often mentioned, got a warm houseof his own over his head, than he began to look big and to takemightily upon him, insomuch that unless the gentle reader out of hisgreat candour will please a little to exalt his idea, I am afraid hewill henceforth hardly know the hero of the play when he happens tomeet him, his part, his dress, and his mien being so much altered. 

He told his brothers he would have them to know that he was theirelder, and consequently his father's sole heir; nay, a while after, he would not allow them to call him brother, but Mr. Peter; and thenhe must be styled Father Peter, and sometimes My Lord Peter. Tosupport this grandeur, which he soon began to consider could not bemaintained without a better fonde than what he was born to, aftermuch thought he cast about at last to turn projector and virtuoso, wherein he so well succeeded, that many famous discoveries, projects, and machines which bear great vogue and practice atpresent in the world, are owing entirely to Lord Peter's invention. I will deduce the best account I have been able to collect of thechief amongst them, without considering much the order they came outin, because I think authors are not well agreed as to that point. 

I hope when this treatise of mine shall be translated into foreignlanguages (as I may without vanity affirm that the labour ofcollecting, the faithfulness in recounting, and the great usefulnessof the matter to the public, will amply deserve that justice), thatof the several Academies abroad, especially those of France andItaly, will favourably accept these humble offers for theadvancement of universal knowledge. I do also advertise the mostreverend fathers the Eastern missionaries that I have purely fortheir sakes made use of such words and phrases as will best admit aneasy turn into any of the Oriental languages, especially theChinese. And so I proceed with great content of mind uponreflecting how much emolument this whole globe of earth is like toreap by my labours. 

The first undertaking of Lord Peter was to purchase a largecontinent, lately said to have been discovered in Terra Australisincognita. This tract of land he bought at a very great pennyworthfrom the discoverers themselves (though some pretended to doubtwhether they had ever been there), and then retailed it into severalcantons to certain dealers, who carried over colonies, but were allshipwrecked in the voyage; upon which Lord Peter sold the saidcontinent to other customers again and again, and again and again, with the same success. 

The second project I shall mention was his sovereign remedy for theworms, especially those in the spleen. The patient was to eatnothing after supper for three nights; as soon as he went to bed, hewas carefully to lie on one side, and when he grew weary, to turnupon the other. He must also duly confine his two eyes to the sameobject, and by no means break wind at both ends together withoutmanifest occasion. These prescriptions diligently observed, theworms would void insensibly by perspiration ascending through thebrain. 

A third invention was the erecting of a whispering-office for thepublic good and ease of all such as are hypochondriacal or troubledwith the cholic, as likewise of all eavesdroppers, physicians, midwives, small politicians, friends fallen out, repeating poets, lovers happy or in despair, bawds, privy-counsellors, pages, parasites and buffoons, in short, of all such as are in danger ofbursting with too much wind. An ass's head was placed soconveniently, that the party affected might easily with his mouthaccost either of the animal's ears, which he was to apply close fora certain space, and by a fugitive faculty peculiar to the ears ofthat animal, receive immediate benefit, either by eructation, orexpiration, or evomition. 

Another very beneficial project of Lord Peter's was an office ofinsurance for tobacco-pipes, martyrs of the modern zeal, volumes ofpoetry, shadows . . . . And rivers, that these, nor any of these, shall receive damage by fire. From whence our friendly societiesmay plainly find themselves to be only transcribers from thisoriginal, though the one and the other have been of great benefit tothe undertakers as well as of equal to the public. 

Lord Peter was also held the original author of puppets and raree-shows, the great usefulness whereof being so generally known, Ishall not enlarge farther upon this particular. 

But another discovery for which he was much renowned was his famousuniversal pickle. For having remarked how your common pickle in useamong housewives was of no farther benefit than to preserve deadflesh and certain kinds of vegetables, Peter with great cost as wellas art had contrived a pickle proper for houses, gardens, towns, men, women, children, and cattle, wherein he could preserve them assound as insects in amber. Now this pickle to the taste, the smell, and the sight, appeared exactly the same with what is in commonservice for beef, and butter, and herrings (and has been often thatway applied with great success), but for its may sovereign virtueswas quite a different thing. For Peter would put in a certainquantity of his powder pimperlim-pimp, after which it never failedof success. The operation was performed by spargefaction in aproper time of the moon. The patient who was to be pickled, if itwere a house, would infallibly be preserved from all spiders, rats, and weasels; if the party affected were a dog, he should be exemptfrom mange, and madness, and hunger. It also infallibly took awayall scabs and lice, and scalled heads from children, never hinderingthe patient from any duty, either at bed or board. 

But of all Peter's rarities, he most valued a certain set of bulls, whose race was by great fortune preserved in a lineal descent fromthose that guarded the golden-fleece. Though some who pretended toobserve them curiously doubted the breed had not been kept entirelychaste, because they had degenerated from their ancestors in somequalities, and had acquired others very extraordinary, but a foreignmixture. The bulls of Colchis are recorded to have brazen feet; butwhether it happened by ill pasture and running, by an alloy fromintervention of other parents from stolen intrigues; whether aweakness in their progenitors had impaired the seminal virtue, or bya decline necessary through a long course of time, the originals ofnature being depraved in these latter sinful ages of the world--whatever was the cause, it is certain that Lord Peter's bulls wereextremely vitiated by the rust of time in the metal of their feet, which was now sunk into common lead. However, the terrible roaringpeculiar to their lineage was preserved, as likewise that faculty ofbreathing out fire from their nostrils; which notwithstanding manyof their detractors took to be a feat of art, and to be nothing soterrible as it appeared, proceeding only from their usual course ofdiet, which was of squibs and crackers. However, they had twopeculiar marks which extremely distinguished them from the bulls ofJason, and which I have not met together in the description of anyother monster beside that in. Horace, "Varias inducere plumas, " and"Atrum definit in piscem. " For these had fishes tails, yet uponoccasion could outfly any bird in the air. Peter put these bullsupon several employs. Sometimes he would set them a roaring tofright naughty boys and make them quiet. Sometimes he would sendthem out upon errands of great importance, where it is wonderful torecount, and perhaps the cautious reader may think much to believeit; an appetitus sensibilis deriving itself through the whole familyfrom their noble ancestors, guardians of the Golden Fleece, theycontinued so extremely fond of gold, that if Peter sent them abroad, though it were only upon a compliment, they would roar, and spit, and belch, and snivel out fire, and keep a perpetual coil till youflung them a bit of gold; but then pulveris exigui jactu, they wouldgrow calm and quiet as lambs. In short, whether by secretconnivance or encouragement from their master, or out of their ownliquorish affection to gold, or both, it is certain they were nobetter than a sort of sturdy, swaggering beggars; and where theycould not prevail to get an alms, would make women miscarry andchildren fall into fits; who to this very day usually call spritesand hobgoblins by the name of bull-beggars. They grew at last sovery troublesome to the neighbourhood, that some gentlemen of theNorth-West got a parcel of right English bull-dogs, and baited themso terribly, that they felt it ever after. 

I must needs mention one more of Lord Peter's projects, which wasvery extraordinary, and discovered him to be master of a high reachand profound invention. Whenever it happened that any rogue ofNewgate was condemned to be hanged, Peter would offer him a pardonfor a certain sum of money, which when the poor caitiff had made allshifts to scrape up and send, his lordship would return a piece ofpaper in this form:-

"To all mayors, sheriffs, jailors, constables, bailiffs, hangmen, &c. Whereas we are informed that A. B. Remains in the hands of you, or any of you, under the sentence of death. We will and commandyou, upon sight hereof, to let the said prisoner depart to his ownhabitation, whether he stands condemned for murder, sodomy, rape, sacrilege, incest, treason, blasphemy, &c. , for which this shall beyour sufficient warrant. And it you fail hereof, G--d--mn you andyours to all eternity. And so we bid you heartily farewell. Yourmost humble man's man, "EMPEROR PETER. "

The wretches trusting to this lost their lives and money too. 

I desire of those whom the learned among posterity will appoint forcommentators upon this elaborate treatise, that they will proceedwith great caution upon certain dark points, wherein all who are notvere adepti may be in danger to form rash and hasty conclusions, especially in some mysterious paragraphs, where certain arcana arejoined for brevity sake, which in the operation must be divided. And I am certain that future sons of art will return large thanks tomy memory for so grateful, so useful an inmuendo. 

It will be no difficult part to persuade the reader that so manyworthy discoveries met with great success in the world; though I mayjustly assure him that I have related much the smallest number; mydesign having been only to single out such as will be of mostbenefit for public imitation, or which best served to give some ideaof the reach and wit of the inventor. And therefore it need not bewondered if by this time Lord Peter was become exceeding rich. Butalas! he had kept his brain so long and so violently upon the rack, that at last it shook itself, and began to turn round for a littleease. In short, what with pride, projects, and knavery, poor Peterwas grown distracted, and conceived the strangest imaginations inthe world. In the height of his fits (as it is usual with those whorun mad out of pride) he would call himself God Almighty, andsometimes monarch of the universe. I have seen him (says my author)take three old high-crowned hats, and clap them all on his head, three storey high, with a huge bunch of keys at his girdle, and anangling rod in his hand. In which guise, whoever went to take himby the hand in the way of salutation, Peter with much grace, like awell-educated spaniel, would present them with his foot, and if theyrefused his civility, then he would raise it as high as their chops, and give them a damned kick on the mouth, which hath ever since beencalled a salute. Whoever walked by without paying him theircompliments, having a wonderful strong breath, he would blow theirhats off into the dirt. Meantime his affairs at home went upsidedown, and his two brothers had a wretched time, where his firstboutade was to kick both their wives one morning out of doors, andhis own too, and in their stead gave orders to pick up the firstthree strollers could be met with in the streets. A while after henailed up the cellar door, and would not allow his brothers a dropof drink to their victuals {95}. Dining one day at an alderman's inthe city, Peter observed him expatiating, after the manner of hisbrethren in the praises of his sirloin of beef. "Beef, " said thesage magistrate, "is the king of meat; beef comprehends in it thequintessence of partridge, and quail, and venison, and pheasant, andplum-pudding, and custard. " When Peter came home, he would needstake the fancy of cooking up this doctrine into use, and apply theprecept in default of a sirloin to his brown loaf. "Bread, " sayshe, "dear brothers, is the staff of life, in which bread iscontained inclusive the quintessence of beef, mutton, veal, venison, partridge, plum-pudding, and custard, and to render all complete, there is intermingled a due quantity of water, whose crudities arealso corrected by yeast or barm, through which means it becomes awholesome fermented liquor, diffused through the mass of the bread. "Upon the strength of these conclusions, next day at dinner was thebrown loaf served up in all the formality of a City feast. "Come, brothers, " said Peter, "fall to, and spare not; here is excellentgood mutton {96}; or hold, now my hand is in, I'll help you. " Atwhich word, in much ceremony, with fork and knife, he carves out twogood slices of a loaf, and presents each on a plate to his brothers. The elder of the two, not suddenly entering into Lord Peter'sconceit, began with very civil language to examine the mystery. "Mylord, " said he, "I doubt, with great submission, there may be somemistake. " "What!" says Peter, "you are pleasant; come then, let ushear this jest your head is so big with. " "None in the world, myLord; but unless I am very much deceived, your Lordship was pleaseda while ago to let fall a word about mutton, and I would be glad tosee it with all my heart. " "How, " said Peter, appearing in greatsurprise, "I do not comprehend this at all;" upon which the younger, interposing to set the business right, "My Lord, " said he, "mybrother, I suppose, is hungry, and longs for the mutton yourLordship hath promised us to dinner. " "Pray, " said Peter, "take mealong with you, either you are both mad, or disposed to be merrierthan I approve of; if you there do not like your piece, I will carveyou another, though I should take that to be the choice bit of thewhole shoulder. " "What then, my Lord?" replied the first; "it seemsthis is a shoulder of mutton all this while. " "Pray, sir, " saysPeter, "eat your victuals and leave off your impertinence, if youplease, for I am not disposed to relish it at present;" but theother could not forbear, being over-provoked at the affectedseriousness of Peter's countenance. "My Lord, " said he, "I can onlysay, that to my eyes and fingers, and teeth and nose, it seems to benothing but a crust of bread. " Upon which the second put in hisword. "I never saw a piece of mutton in my life so nearlyresembling a slice from a twelve-penny loaf. " "Look ye, gentlemen, "cries Peter in a rage, "to convince you what a couple of blind, positive, ignorant, wilful puppies you are, I will use but thisplain argument; by G---, it is true, good, natural mutton as any inLeadenhall Market; and G--- confound you both eternally if you offerto believe otherwise. " Such a thundering proof as this left nofurther room for objection; the two unbelievers began to gather andpocket up their mistake as hastily as they could. "Why, truly, "said the first, "upon more mature consideration"--"Ay, " says theother, interrupting him, "now I have thought better on the thing, your Lordship seems to have a great deal of reason. " "Very well, "said Peter. "Here, boy, fill me a beer-glass of claret. Here's toyou both with all my heart. " The two brethren, much delighted tosee him so readily appeased, returned their most humble thanks, andsaid they would be glad to pledge his Lordship. "That you shall, "said Peter, "I am not a person to refuse you anything that isreasonable; wine moderately taken is a cordial. Here is a glassapiece for you; it is true natural juice from the grape; none ofyour damned vintner's brewings. " Having spoke thus, he presented toeach of them another large dry crust, bidding them drink it off, andnot be bashful, for it would do them no hurt. The two brothers, after having performed the usual office in such delicateconjunctures, of staring a sufficient period at Lord Peter and eachother, and finding how matters were like to go, resolved not toenter on a new dispute, but let him carry the point as he pleased;for he was now got into one of his mad fits, and to argue orexpostulate further would only serve to render him a hundred timesmore untractable. 

I have chosen to relate this worthy matter in all its circumstances, because it gave a principal occasion to that great and famousrupture {98a} which happened about the same time among thesebrethren, and was never afterwards made up. But of that I shalltreat at large in another section. 

However, it is certain that Lord Peter, even in his lucid intervals, was very lewdly given in his common conversation, extreme wilful andpositive, and would at any time rather argue to the death than allowhimself to be once in an error. Besides, he had an abominablefaculty of telling huge palpable lies upon all occasions, andswearing not only to the truth, but cursing the whole company tohell if they pretended to make the least scruple of believing him. One time he swore he had a cow at home which gave as much milk at ameal as would fill three thousand churches, and what was yet moreextraordinary, would never turn sour. Another time he was tellingof an old sign-post {98b} that belonged to his father, with nailsand timber enough on it to build sixteen large men-of-war. Talkingone day of Chinese waggons, which were made so light as to sail overmountains, "Z---nds, " said Peter, "where's the wonder of that? ByG---, I saw a large house of lime and stone travel over sea and land(granting that it stopped sometimes to bait) above two thousandGerman leagues. " {98c} And that which was the good of it, he wouldswear desperately all the while that he never told a lie in hislife, and at every word: "By G---- gentlemen, I tell you nothingbut the truth, and the d---l broil them eternally that will notbelieve me. "

In short, Peter grew so scandalous that all the neighbourhood beganin plain words to say he was no better than a knave; and his twobrothers, long weary of his ill-usage, resolved at last to leavehim; but first they humbly desired a copy of their father's will, which had now lain by neglected time out of mind. Instead ofgranting this request, he called them rogues, traitors, and the restof the vile names he could muster up. However, while he was abroadone day upon his projects, the two youngsters watched theiropportunity, made a shift to come at the will, and took a copia vera{99a}, by which they presently saw how grossly they had been abused, their father having left them equal heirs, and strictly commandedthat whatever they got should lie in common among them all. Pursuant to which, their next enterprise was to break open thecellar-door and get a little good drink to spirit and comfort theirhearts {99b}. In copying the will, they had met another preceptagainst whoring, divorce, and separate maintenance; upon which, their next work was to discard their concubines and send for theirwives {99c}. Whilst all this was in agitation, there enters asolicitor from Newgate, desiring Lord Peter would please to procurea pardon for a thief that was to be hanged to-morrow. But the twobrothers told him he was a coxcomb to seek pardons from a fellow whodeserved to be hanged much better than his client, and discoveredall the method of that imposture in the same form I delivered it awhile ago, advising the solicitor to put his friend upon obtaining apardon from the king. In the midst of all this platter andrevolution in comes Peter with a file of dragoons at his heels, andgathering from all hands what was in the wind, he and his gang, after several millions of scurrilities and curses not very importanthere to repeat, by main force very fairly kicks them both out ofdoors, and would never let them come under his roof from that day tothis. 

SECTION V. --A DIGRESSION IN THE MODERN KIND. 

We whom the world is pleased to honour with the title of modernauthors, should never have been able to compass our great design ofan everlasting remembrance and never-dying fame if our endeavourshad not been so highly serviceable to the general good of mankind. This, O universe! is the adventurous attempt of me, thy secretary -

 "Quemvis perferre laboremSuadet, et inducit noctes vigilare serenas. "

To this end I have some time since, with a world of pains and art, dissected the carcass of human nature, and read many useful lecturesupon the several parts, both containing and contained, till at lastit smelt so strong I could preserve it no longer. Upon which I havebeen at a great expense to fit up all the bones with exactcontexture and in due symmetry, so that I am ready to show a verycomplete anatomy thereof to all curious gentlemen and others. Butnot to digress further in the midst of a digression, as I have knownsome authors enclose digressions in one another like a nest ofboxes, I do affirm that, having carefully cut up human nature, Ihave found a very strange, new, and important discovery: that thepublic good of mankind is performed by two ways--instruction anddiversion. And I have further proved my said several readings(which, perhaps, the world may one day see, if I can prevail on anyfriend to steal a copy, or on certain gentlemen of my admirers to bevery importunate) that, as mankind is now disposed, he receives muchgreater advantage by being diverted than instructed, his epidemicaldiseases being fastidiosity, amorphy, and oscitation; whereas, inthe present universal empire of wit and learning, there seems butlittle matter left for instruction. However, in compliance with alesson of great age and authority, I have attempted carrying thepoint in all its heights, and accordingly throughout this divinetreatise have skilfully kneaded up both together with a layer ofutile and a layer of dulce. 

When I consider how exceedingly our illustrious moderns haveeclipsed the weak glimmering lights of the ancients, and turned themout of the road of all fashionable commerce to a degree that ourchoice town wits of most refined accomplishments are in gravedispute whether there have been ever any ancients or no; in whichpoint we are like to receive wonderful satisfaction from the mostuseful labours and lucubrations of that worthy modern, Dr. Bentley. I say, when I consider all this, I cannot but bewail that no famousmodern hath ever yet attempted an universal system in a smallportable volume of all things that are to be known, or believed, orimagined, or practised in life. I am, however, forced toacknowledge that such an enterprise was thought on some time ago bya great philosopher of O-Brazile. The method he proposed was by acertain curious receipt, a nostrum, which after his untimely death Ifound among his papers, and do here, out of my great affection tothe modern learned, present them with it, not doubting it may oneday encourage some worthy undertaker. 

You take fair correct copies, well bound in calf's skin and letteredat the back, of all modern bodies of arts and sciences whatsoever, and in what language you please. These you distil in balneo Mariae, infusing quintessence of poppy Q. S. , together with three pints oflethe, to be had from the apothecaries. You cleanse away carefullythe sordes and caput mortuum, letting all that is volatileevaporate. You preserve only the first running, which is again tobe distilled seventeen times, till what remains will amount to abouttwo drams. This you keep in a glass vial hermetically sealed forone-and-twenty days. Then you begin your catholic treatise, takingevery morning fasting (first shaking the vial) three drops of thiselixir, snuffing it strongly up your nose. It will dilate itselfabout the brain (where there is any) in fourteen minutes, and youimmediately perceive in your head an infinite number of abstracts, summaries, compendiums, extracts, collections, medullas, excerptaquaedams, florilegias and the like, all disposed into great orderand reducible upon paper. 

I must needs own it was by the assistance of this arcanum that I, though otherwise impar, have adventured upon so daring an attempt, never achieved or undertaken before but by a certain author calledHomer, in whom, though otherwise a person not without someabilities, and for an ancient of a tolerable genius; I havediscovered many gross errors which are not to be forgiven his veryashes, if by chance any of them are left. For whereas we areassured he designed his work for a complete body of all knowledge, human, divine, political, and mechanic {102a}, it is manifest hehath wholly neglected some, and been very imperfect perfect in therest. For, first of all, as eminent a cabalist as his discipleswould represent him, his account of the opus magnum is extremelypoor and deficient; he seems to have read but very superficiallyeither Sendivogus, Behmen, or Anthroposophia Theomagica {102b}. Heis also quite mistaken about the sphaera pyroplastica, a neglect notto be atoned for, and (if the reader will admit so severe a censure)vix crederem autorem hunc unquam audivisse ignis vocem. Hisfailings are not less prominent in several parts of the mechanics. For having read his writings with the utmost application usual amongmodern wits, I could never yet discover the least direction aboutthe structure of that useful instrument a save-all; for want ofwhich, if the moderns had not lent their assistance, we might yethave wandered in the dark. But I have still behind a fault far morenotorious to tax this author with; I mean his gross ignorance in thecommon laws of this realm, and in the doctrine as well as disciplineof the Church of England. A defect, indeed, for which both he andall the ancients stand most justly censured by my worthy andingenious friend Mr. Wotton, Bachelor of Divinity, in hisincomparable treatise of ancient and modern learning; a book neverto be sufficiently valued, whether we consider the happy turns andflowings of the author's wit, the great usefulness of his sublimediscoveries upon the subject of flies and spittle, or the laboriouseloquence of his style. And I cannot forbear doing that author thejustice of my public acknowledgments for the great helps andliftings I had out of his incomparable piece while I was penningthis treatise. 

But besides these omissions in Homer already mentioned, the curiousreader will also observe several defects in that author's writingsfor which he is not altogether so accountable. For whereas everybranch of knowledge has received such wonderful acquirements sincehis age, especially within these last three years or thereabouts, itis almost impossible he could be so very perfect in moderndiscoveries as his advocates pretend. We freely acknowledge him tobe the inventor of the compass, of gunpowder, and the circulation ofthe blood; but I challenge any of his admirers to show me in all hiswritings a complete account of the spleen. Does he not also leaveus wholly to seek in the art of political wagering? What can bemore defective and unsatisfactory than his long dissertation upontea? and as to his method of salivation without mercury, so muchcelebrated of late, it is to my own knowledge and experience a thingvery little to be relied on. 

It was to supply such momentous defects that I have been prevailedon, after long solicitation, to take pen in hand, and I dare ventureto promise the judicious reader shall find nothing neglected herethat can be of use upon any emergency of life. I am confident tohave included and exhausted all that human imagination can rise orfall to. Particularly I recommend to the perusal of the learnedcertain discoveries that are wholly untouched by others, whereof Ishall only mention, among a great many more, my "New Help ofSmatterers, or the Art of being Deep Learned and Shallow Read, " "ACurious Invention about Mouse-traps, " "A Universal Rule of Reason, or Every Man his own Carver, " together with a most useful engine forcatching of owls. All which the judicious reader will find largelytreated on in the several parts of this discourse. 

I hold myself obliged to give as much light as possible into thebeauties and excellences of what I am writing, because it is becomethe fashion and humour most applauded among the first authors ofthis polite and learned age, when they would correct the ill natureof critical or inform the ignorance of courteous readers. Besides, there have been several famous pieces lately published, both inverse and prose, wherein if the writers had not been pleased, out oftheir great humanity and affection to the public, to give us a nicedetail of the sublime and the admirable they contain, it is athousand to one whether we should ever have discovered one grain ofeither. For my own particular, I cannot deny that whatever I havesaid upon this occasion had been more proper in a preface, and moreagreeable to the mode which usually directs it there. But I herethink fit to lay hold on that great and honourable privilege ofbeing the last writer. I claim an absolute authority in right asthe freshest modern, which gives me a despotic power over allauthors before me. In the strength of which title I do utterlydisapprove and declare against that pernicious custom of making thepreface a bill of fare to the book. For I have always looked uponit as a high point of indiscretion in monstermongers and otherretailers of strange sights to hang out a fair large picture overthe door, drawn after the life, with a most eloquent descriptionunderneath. This has saved me many a threepence, for my curiositywas fully satisfied, and I never offered to go in, though ofteninvited by the urging and attending orator with his last moving andstanding piece of rhetoric, "Sir, upon my word, we are just going tobegin. " Such is exactly the fate at this time of Prefaces, Epistles, Advertisements, Introductions, Prolegomenas, Apparatuses, To the Readers's. This expedient was admirable at first; our greatDryden has long carried it as far as it would go, and withincredible success. He has often said to me in confidence that theworld would never have suspected him to be so great a poet if he hadnot assured them so frequently in his prefaces, that it wasimpossible they could either doubt or forget it. Perhaps it may beso. However, I much fear his instructions have edified out of theirplace, and taught men to grow wiser in certain points where he neverintended they should; for it is lamentable to behold with what alazy scorn many of the yawning readers in our age do now-a-daystwirl over forty or fifty pages of preface and dedication (which isthe usual modern stint), as if it were so much Latin. Though itmust be also allowed, on the other hand, that a very considerablenumber is known to proceed critics and wits by reading nothing else. Into which two factions I think all present readers may justly bedivided. Now, for myself, I profess to be of the former sort, andtherefore having the modern inclination to expatiate upon the beautyof my own productions, and display the bright parts of my discourse, I thought best to do it in the body of the work, where as it nowlies it makes a very considerable addition to the bulk of thevolume, a circumstance by no means to be neglected by a skilfulwriter. 

Having thus paid my due deference and acknowledgment to anestablished custom of our newest authors, by a long digressionunsought for and a universal censure unprovoked, by forcing into thelight, with much pains and dexterity, my own excellences and othermen's defaults, with great justice to myself and candour to them, Inow happily resume my subject, to the infinite satisfaction both ofthe reader and the author. 

SECTION VI. --A TALE OF A TUB. 

We left Lord Peter in open rupture with his two brethren, both forever discarded from his house, and resigned to the wide world withlittle or nothing to trust to. Which are circumstances that renderthem proper subjects for the charity of a writer's pen to work on, scenes of misery ever affording the fairest harvest for greatadventures. And in this the world may perceive the differencebetween the integrity of a generous Author and that of a commonfriend. The latter is observed to adhere close in prosperity, buton the decline of fortune to drop suddenly off; whereas the generousauthor, just on the contrary, finds his hero on the dunghill, fromthence, by gradual steps, raises him to a throne, and thenimmediately withdraws, expecting not so much as thanks for hispains; in imitation of which example I have placed Lord Peter in anoble house, given him a title to wear and money to spend. There Ishall leave him for some time, returning, where common charitydirects me, to the assistance of his two brothers at their lowestebb. However, I shall by no means forget my character of ahistorian, to follow the truth step by step whatever happens, orwherever it may lead me. 

The two exiles so nearly united in fortune and interest took alodging together, where at their first leisure they began to reflecton the numberless misfortunes and vexations of their life past, andcould not tell of the sudden to what failure in their conduct theyought to impute them, when, after some recollection, they called tomind the copy of their father's will which they had so happilyrecovered. This was immediately produced, and a firm resolutiontaken between them to alter whatever was already amiss, and reduceall their future measures to the strictest obedience prescribedtherein. The main body of the will (as the reader cannot easilyhave forgot) consisted in certain admirable rules, about the wearingof their coats, in the perusal whereof the two brothers at everyperiod duly comparing the doctrine with the practice, there wasnever seen a wider difference between two things, horrible downrighttransgressions of every point. Upon which they both resolvedwithout further delay to fall immediately upon reducing the wholeexactly after their father's model. 

But here it is good to stop the hasty reader, ever impatient to seethe end of an adventure before we writers can duly prepare him forit. I am to record that these two brothers began to bedistinguished at this time by certain names. One of them desired tobe called Martin, and the other took the appellation of Jack. Thesetwo had lived in much friendship and agreement under the tyranny oftheir brother Peter, as it is the talent of fellow-sufferers to do, men in misfortune being like men in the dark, to whom all coloursare the same. But when they came forward into the world, and beganto display themselves to each other and to the light, theircomplexions appeared extremely different, which the present postureof their affairs gave them sudden opportunity to discover. 

But here the severe reader may justly tax me as a writer of shortmemory, a deficiency to which a true modern cannot but of necessitybe a little subject. Because, memory being an employment of themind upon things past, is a faculty for which the learned in ourillustrious age have no manner of occasion, who deal entirely withinvention and strike all things out of themselves, or at least bycollision from each other; upon which account, we think it highlyreasonable to produce our great forgetfulness as an argumentunanswerable for our great wit. I ought in method to have informedthe reader about fifty pages ago of a fancy Lord Peter took, andinfused into his brothers, to wear on their coats whatever trimmingscame up in fashion, never pulling off any as they went out of themode, but keeping on all together, which amounted in time to amedley the most antic you can possibly conceive, and this to adegree that, upon the time of their falling out, there was hardly athread of the original coat to be seen, but an infinite quantity oflace, and ribbands, and fringe, and embroidery, and points (I meanonly those tagged with silver, for the rest fell off). Now thismaterial circumstance having been forgot in due place, as goodfortune hath ordered, comes in very properly here, when the twobrothers are just going to reform their vestures into the primitivestate prescribed by their father's will. 

They both unanimously entered upon this great work, lookingsometimes on their coats and sometimes on the will. Martin laid thefirst hand; at one twitch brought off a large handful of points, andwith a second pull stripped away ten dozen yards of fringe. Butwhen he had gone thus far he demurred a while. He knew very wellthere yet remained a great deal more to be done; however, the firstheat being over, his violence began to cool, and he resolved toproceed more moderately in the rest of the work, having already verynarrowly escaped a swinging rent in pulling off the points, whichbeing tagged with silver (as we have observed before), the judiciousworkman had with much sagacity double sewn to preserve them fromfalling. Resolving therefore to rid his coat of a huge quantity ofgold lace, he picked up the stitches with much caution anddiligently gleaned out all the loose threads as he went, whichproved to be a work of time. Then he fell about the embroideredIndian figures of men, women, and children, against which, as youhave heard in its due place, their father's testament was extremelyexact and severe. These, with much dexterity and application, wereafter a while quite eradicated or utterly defaced. For the rest, where he observed the embroidery to be worked so close as not to begot away without damaging the cloth, or where it served to hide orstrengthened any flaw in the body of the coat, contracted by theperpetual tampering of workmen upon it, he concluded the wisestcourse was to let it remain, resolving in no case whatsoever thatthe substance of the stuff should suffer injury, which he thoughtthe best method for serving the true intent and meaning of hisfather's will. And this is the nearest account I have been able tocollect of Martin's proceedings upon this great revolution. 

But his brother Jack, whose adventures will be so extraordinary asto furnish a great part in the remainder of this discourse, enteredupon the matter with other thoughts and a quite different spirit. For the memory of Lord Peter's injuries produced a degree of hatredand spite which had a much greater share of inciting him than anyregards after his father's commands, since these appeared at bestonly secondary and subservient to the other. However, for thismedley of humour he made a shift to find a very plausible name, honouring it with the title of zeal, which is, perhaps, the mostsignificant word that has been ever yet produced in any language, as, I think, I have fully proved in my excellent analyticaldiscourse upon that subject, wherein I have deduced a histori-theo-physiological account of zeal, showing how it first proceeded from anotion into a word, and from thence in a hot summer ripened into atangible substance. This work, containing three large volumes infolio, I design very shortly to publish by the modern way ofsubscription, not doubting but the nobility and gentry of the landwill give me all possible encouragement, having already had such ataste of what I am able to perform. 

I record, therefore, that brother Jack, brimful of this miraculouscompound, reflecting with indignation upon Peter's tyranny, andfurther provoked by the despondency of Martin, prefaced hisresolutions to this purpose. "What!" said he, "a rogue that lockedup his drink, turned away our wives, cheated us of our fortunes, palmed his crusts upon us for mutton, and at last kicked us out ofdoors; must we be in his fashions? A rascal, besides, that all thestreet cries out against. " Having thus kindled and inflamed himselfas high as possible, and by consequence in a delicate temper forbeginning a reformation, he set about the work immediately, and inthree minutes made more dispatch than Martin had done in as manyhours. For, courteous reader, you are given to understand that zealis never so highly obliged as when you set it a-tearing; and Jack, who doted on that quality in himself, allowed it at this time itsfull swing. Thus it happened that, stripping down a parcel of goldlace a little too hastily, he rent the main body of his coat fromtop to bottom {110}; and whereas his talent was not of the happiestin taking up a stitch, he knew no better way than to darn it againwith packthread thread and a skewer. But the matter was yetinfinitely worse (I record it with tears) when he proceeded to theembroidery; for being clumsy of nature, and of temper impatientwithal, beholding millions of stitches that required the nicest handand sedatest constitution to extricate, in a great rage he tore offthe whole piece, cloth and all, and flung it into the kennel, andfuriously thus continuing his career, "Ah! good brother Martin, "said he, "do as I do, for the love of God; strip, tear, pull, rend, flay off all that we may appear as unlike that rogue Peter as it ispossible. I would not for a hundred pounds carry the least markabout me that might give occasion to the neighbours of suspecting Iwas related to such a rascal. " But Martin, who at this timehappened to be extremely phlegmatic and sedate, begged his brother, of all love, not to damage his coat by any means, for he never wouldget such another; desired him to consider that it was not theirbusiness to form their actions by any reflection upon Peter's, butby observing the rules prescribed in their father's will. That heshould remember Peter was still their brother, whatever faults orinjuries he had committed, and therefore they should by all meansavoid such a thought as that of taking measures for good and evilfrom no other rule than of opposition to him. That it was true thetestament of their good father was very exact in what related to thewearing of their coats; yet was it no less penal and strict inprescribing agreement, and friendship, and affection between them. And therefore, if straining a point were at all defensible, it wouldcertainly be so rather to the advance of unity than increase ofcontradiction. 

Martin had still proceeded as gravely as he began, and doubtlesswould have delivered an admirable lecture of morality, which mighthave exceedingly contributed to my reader's repose both of body andmind (the true ultimate end of ethics), but Jack was already gone aflight-shot beyond his patience. And as in scholastic disputesnothing serves to rouse the spleen of him that opposes so much as akind of pedantic affected calmness in the respondent, disputantsbeing for the most part like unequal scales, where the gravity ofone side advances the lightness of the other, and causes it to flyup and kick the beam; so it happened here that the weight ofMartin's arguments exalted Jack's levity, and made him fly out andspurn against his brother's moderation. In short, Martin's patienceput Jack in a rage; but that which most afflicted him was to observehis brother's coat so well reduced into the state of innocence, while his own was either wholly rent to his shirt, or those placeswhich had escaped his cruel clutches were still in Peter's livery. So that he looked like a drunken beau half rifled by bullies, orlike a fresh tenant of Newgate when he has refused the payment ofgarnish, or like a discovered shoplifter left to the mercy ofExchange-women {111a}, or like a bawd in her old velvet petticoatresigned into the secular hands of the mobile {111b}. Like any orlike all of these, a medley of rags, and lace, and fringes, unfortunate Jack did now appear; he would have been extremely gladto see his coat in the condition of Martin's, but infinitely gladderto find that of Martin in the same predicament with his. However, since neither of these was likely to come to pass, he thought fit tolend the whole business another turn, and to dress up necessity intoa virtue. Therefore, after as many of the fox's arguments as hecould muster up for bringing Martin to reason, as he called it, oras he meant it, into his own ragged, bobtailed condition, andobserving he said all to little purpose, what alas! was left for theforlorn Jack to do, but, after a million of scurrilities against hisbrother, to run mad with spleen, and spite, and contradiction. Tobe short, here began a mortal breach between these two. Jack wentimmediately to new lodgings, and in a few days it was for certainreported that he had run out of his wits. In a short time after heappeared abroad, and confirmed the report by falling into the oddestwhimsies that ever a sick brain conceived. 

And now the little boys in the streets began to salute him withseveral names. Sometimes they would call him Jack the Bald, sometimes Jack with a Lanthorn, sometimes Dutch Jack, sometimesFrench Hugh, sometimes Tom the Beggar, and sometimes Knocking Jackof the North {112}. And it was under one or some or all of theseappellations (which I leave the learned reader to determine) that hehath given rise to the most illustrious and epidemic sect ofAEolists, who, with honourable commemoration, do still acknowledgethe renowned Jack for their author and founder. Of whose originalsas well as principles I am now advancing to gratify the world with avery particular account. 

"Mellaeo contingens cuncta lepore. "

SECTION VII. --A DIGRESSION IN PRAISE OF DIGRESSIONS. 

I have sometimes heard of an Iliad in a nut-shell, but it has beenmy fortune to have much oftener seen a nut-shell in an Iliad. Thereis no doubt that human life has received most wonderful advantagesfrom both; but to which of the two the world is chiefly indebted, Ishall leave among the curious as a problem worthy of their utmostinquiry. For the invention of the latter, I think the commonwealthof learning is chiefly obliged to the great modern improvement ofdigressions. The late refinements in knowledge, running parallel tothose of diet in our nation, which among men of a judicious tasteare dressed up in various compounds, consisting in soups and olios, fricassees and ragouts. 

It is true there is a sort of morose, detracting, ill-bred peoplewho pretend utterly to disrelish these polite innovations. And asto the similitude from diet, they allow the parallel, but are sobold as to pronounce the example itself a corruption and degeneracyof taste. They tell us that the fashion of jumbling fifty thingstogether in a dish was at first introduced in compliance to adepraved and debauched appetite, as well as to a crazy constitution, and to see a man hunting through an olio after the head and brainsof a goose, a widgeon, or a woodcock, is a sign he wants a stomachand digestion for more substantial victuals. Further, they affirmthat digressions in a book are like foreign troops in a state, whichargue the nation to want a heart and hands of its own, and ofteneither subdue the natives, or drive them into the most unfruitfulcorners. 

But after all that can be objected by these supercilious censors, itis manifest the society of writers would quickly be reduced to avery inconsiderable number if men were put upon making books withthe fatal confinement of delivering nothing beyond what is to thepurpose. It is acknowledged that were the case the same among us aswith the Greeks and Romans, when learning was in its cradle, to bereared and fed and clothed by invention, it would be an easy task tofill up volumes upon particular occasions without furtherexpatiating from the subject than by moderate excursions, helping toadvance or clear the main design. But with knowledge it has faredas with a numerous army encamped in a fruitful country, which for afew days maintains itself by the product of the soil it is on, tillprovisions being spent, they send to forage many a mile amongfriends or enemies, it matters not. Meanwhile the neighbouringfields, trampled and beaten down, become barren and dry, affordingno sustenance but clouds of dust. 

The whole course of things being thus entirely changed between usand the ancients, and the moderns wisely sensible of it, we of thisage have discovered a shorter and more prudent method to becomescholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking. The most accomplished way of using books at present is twofold:either first to serve them as some men do lords, learn their titlesexactly, and then brag of their acquaintance; or, secondly, which isindeed the choicer, the profounder, and politer method, to get athorough insight into the index by which the whole book is governedand turned, like fishes by the tail. For to enter the palace oflearning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to getin by the back-door. For the arts are all in a flying march, andtherefore more easily subdued by attacking them in the rear. Thusphysicians discover the state of the whole body by consulting onlywhat comes from behind. Thus men catch knowledge by throwing theirwit on the posteriors of a book, as boys do sparrows with flingingsalt upon their tails. Thus human life is best understood by thewise man's rule of regarding the end. Thus are the sciences found, like Hercules' oxen, by tracing them backwards. Thus are oldsciences unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot. 

Besides all this, the army of the sciences hath been of late with aworld of martial discipline drawn into its close order, so that aview or a muster may be taken of it with abundance of expedition. For this great blessing we are wholly indebted to systems andabstracts, in which the modern fathers of learning, like prudentusurers, spent their sweat for the ease of us their children. Forlabour is the seed of idleness, and it is the peculiar happiness ofour noble age to gather the fruit. 

Now the method of growing wise, learned, and sublime having becomeso regular an affair, and so established in all its forms, thenumber of writers must needs have increased accordingly, and to apitch that has made it of absolute necessity for them to interferecontinually with each other. Besides, it is reckoned that there isnot at this present a sufficient quantity of new matter left inNature to furnish and adorn any one particular subject to the extentof a volume. This I am told by a very skilful computer, who hathgiven a full demonstration of it from rules of arithmetic. 

This perhaps may be objected against by those who maintain theinfinity of matter, and therefore will not allow that any species ofit can be exhausted. For answer to which, let us examine thenoblest branch of modern wit or invention planted and cultivated bythe present age, and which of all others hath borne the most and thefairest fruit. For though some remains of it were left us by theancients, yet have not any of those, as I remember, been translatedor compiled into systems for modern use. Therefore we may affirm, to our own honour, that it has in some sort been both invented andbrought to a perfection by the same hands. What I mean is, thathighly celebrated talent among the modern wits of deducingsimilitudes, allusions, and applications, very surprising, agreeable, and apposite, from the signs of either sex, together withtheir proper uses. And truly, having observed how little inventionbears any vogue besides what is derived into these channels, I havesometimes had a thought that the happy genius of our age and countrywas prophetically held forth by that ancient typical description ofthe Indian pigmies whose stature did not exceed above two feet, sedquorum pudenda crassa, et ad talos usque pertingentia. Now I havebeen very curious to inspect the late productions, wherein thebeauties of this kind have most prominently appeared. And althoughthis vein hath bled so freely, and all endeavours have been used inthe power of human breath to dilate, extend, and keep it open, likethe Scythians {116}, who had a custom and an instrument to blow upthose parts of their mares, that they might yield the more milk; yetI am under an apprehension it is near growing dry and past allrecovery, and that either some new fonde of wit should, if possible, be provided, or else that we must e'en be content with repetitionhere as well as upon all other occasions. 

This will stand as an uncontestable argument that our modern witsare not to reckon upon the infinity of matter for a constant supply. What remains, therefore, but that our last recourse must be had tolarge indexes and little compendiums? Quotations must beplentifully gathered and booked in alphabet. To this end, thoughauthors need be little consulted, yet critics, and commentators, andlexicons carefully must. But above all, those judicious collectorsof bright parts, and flowers, and observandas are to be nicely dwelton by some called the sieves and boulters of learning, though it isleft undetermined whether they dealt in pearls or meal, andconsequently whether we are more to value that which passed throughor what stayed behind. 

By these methods, in a few weeks there starts up many a writercapable of managing the profoundest and most universal subjects. For what though his head be empty, provided his commonplace book befull? And if you will bate him but the circumstances of method, andstyle, and grammar, and invention; allow him but the commonprivileges of transcribing from others, and digressing from himselfas often as he shall see occasion, he will desire no moreingredients towards fitting up a treatise that shall make a verycomely figure on a bookseller's shelf, there to be preserved neatand clean for a long eternity, adorned with the heraldry of itstitle fairly inscribed on a label, never to be thumbed or greased bystudents, nor bound to everlasting chains of darkness in a library, but when the fulness of time is come shall happily undergo the trialof purgatory in order to ascend the sky. 

Without these allowances how is it possible we modern wits shouldever have an opportunity to introduce our collections listed underso many thousand heads of a different nature, for want of which thelearned world would be deprived of infinite delight as well asinstruction, and we ourselves buried beyond redress in an ingloriousand undistinguished oblivion?

From such elements as these I am alive to behold the day wherein thecorporation of authors can outvie all its brethren in the field--ahappiness derived to us, with a great many others, from our Scythianancestors, among whom the number of pens was so infinite that theGrecian eloquence had no other way of expressing it than by sayingthat in the regions far to the north it was hardly possible for aman to travel, the very air was so replete with feathers. 

The necessity of this digression will easily excuse the length, andI have chosen for it as proper a place as I could readily find. Ifthe judicious reader can assign a fitter, I do here empower him toremove it into any other corner he please. And so I return withgreat alacrity to pursue a more important concern. 

SECTION VIII. --A TALE OF A TUB. 

The learned AEolists maintain the original cause of all things to bewind, from which principle this whole universe was at firstproduced, and into which it must at last be resolved, that the samebreath which had kindled and blew up the flame of Nature should oneday blow it out. 

"Quod procul a nobis flectat Fortuna gubernans. "

This is what the Adepti understand by their anima mundi, that is tosay, the spirit, or breath, or wind of the world; or examine thewhole system by the particulars of Nature, and you will find it notto be disputed. For whether you please to call the forma informansof man by the name of spiritus, animus, afflatus, or anima, what areall these but several appellations for wind, which is the rulingelement in every compound, and into which they all resolve upontheir corruption. Further, what is life itself but, as it iscommonly called, the breath of our nostrils, whence it is veryjustly observed by naturalists that wind still continues of greatemolument in certain mysteries not to be named, giving occasion forthose happy epithets of turgidus and inflatus, applied either to theemittent or recipient organs. 

By what I have gathered out of ancient records, I find the compassof their doctrine took in two-and-thirty points, wherein it would betedious to be very particular. However, a few of their mostimportant precepts deducible from it are by no means to be omitted;among which, the following maxim was of much weight: That sincewind had the master share as well as operation in every compound, byconsequence those beings must be of chief excellence wherein thatprimordium appears most prominently to abound, and therefore man isin highest perfection of all created things, as having, by the greatbounty of philosophers, been endued with three distinct animas orwinds, to which the sage AEolists, with much liberality, have addeda fourth, of equal necessity as well as ornament with the otherthree, by this quartum principium taking in the four corners of theworld. Which gave occasion to that renowned cabalist Bombastus{119a} of placing the body of man in due position to the fourcardinal points. 

In consequence of this, their next principle was that man bringswith him into the world a peculiar portion or grain of wind, whichmay be called a quinta essentia extracted from the other four. Thisquintessence is of catholic use upon all emergencies of life, isimproveable into all arts and sciences, and may be wonderfullyrefined as well as enlarged by certain methods in education. This, when blown up to its perfection, ought not to be covetously boardedup, stifled, or hid under a bushel, but freely communicated tomankind. Upon these reasons, and others of equal weight, the wiseAEolists affirm the gift of belching to be the noblest act of arational creature. To cultivate which art, and render it moreserviceable to mankind, they made use of several methods. Atcertain seasons of the year you might behold the priests amongstthem in vast numbers with their mouths gaping wide against a storm. At other times were to be seen several hundreds linked together in acircular chain, with every man a pair of bellows applied to hisneighbour, by which they blew up each other to the shape and size ofa tun; and for that reason with great propriety of speech didusually call their bodies their vessels {119b}. When, by these andthe like performances, they were grown sufficiently replete, theywould immediately depart, and disembogue for the public good aplentiful share of their acquirements into their disciples' chaps. For we must here observe that all learning was esteemed among themto be compounded from the same principle. Because, first, it isgenerally affirmed or confessed that learning puffeth men up; and, secondly, they proved it by the following syllogism: "Words are butwind, and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothingbut wind. " For this reason the philosophers among them did in theirschools deliver to their pupils all their doctrines and opinions byeructation, wherein they had acquired a wonderful eloquence, and ofincredible variety. But the great characteristic by which theirchief sages were best distinguished was a certain position ofcountenance, which gave undoubted intelligence to what degree orproportion the spirit agitated the inward mass. For after certaingripings, the wind and vapours issuing forth, having first by theirturbulence and convulsions within caused an earthquake in man'slittle world, distorted the mouth, bloated the cheeks, and gave theeyes a terrible kind of relievo. At which junctures all theirbelches were received for sacred, the sourer the better, andswallowed with infinite consolation by their meagre devotees. Andto render these yet more complete, because the breath of man's lifeis in his nostrils, therefore the choicest, most edifying, and mostenlivening belches were very wisely conveyed through that vehicle togive them a tincture as they passed. 

Their gods were the four winds, whom they worshipped as the spiritsthat pervade and enliven the universe, and as those from whom aloneall inspiration can properly be said to proceed. However, the chiefof these, to whom they performed the adoration of Latria, was theAlmighty North, an ancient deity, whom the inhabitants ofMegalopolis in Greece had likewise in highest reverence. "Omniumdeorum Boream maxime celebrant. " {120} This god, though endued withubiquity, was yet supposed by the profounder AEolists to possess onepeculiar habitation, or (to speak in form) a caelum empyraeum, wherein he was more intimately present. This was situated in acertain region well known to the ancient Greeks, by them called[Greek text which cannot be reproduced], the Land of Darkness. Andalthough many controversies have arisen upon that matter, yet somuch is undisputed, that from a region of the like denomination themost refined AEolists have borrowed their original, from whence inevery age the zealous among their priesthood have brought over theirchoicest inspiration, fetching it with their own hands from thefountain-head in certain bladders, and disploding it among thesectaries in all nations, who did, and do, and ever will, daily gaspand pant after it. 

Now their mysteries and rites were performed in this manner. It iswell known among the learned that the virtuosos of former ages had acontrivance for carrying and preserving winds in casks or barrels, which was of great assistance upon long sea-voyages, and the loss ofso useful an art at present is very much to be lamented, though, Iknow not how, with great negligence omitted by Pancirollus. It wasan invention ascribed to AEolus himself, from whom this sect isdenominated, and who, in honour of their founder's memory, have tothis day preserved great numbers of those barrels, whereof they fixone in each of their temples, first beating out the top. Into thisbarrel upon solemn days the priest enters, where, having before dulyprepared himself by the methods already described, a secret funnelis also conveyed to the bottom of the barrel, which admits newsupplies of inspiration from a northern chink or cranny. Whereuponyou behold him swell immediately to the shape and size of hisvessel. In this posture he disembogues whole tempests upon hisauditory, as the spirit from beneath gives him utterance, whichissuing ex adytis and penetralibus, is not performed without muchpain and griping. And the wind in breaking forth deals with hisface as it does with that of the sea, first blackening, thenwrinkling, and at last bursting it into a foam. It is in this guisethe sacred AEolist delivers his oracular belches to his pantingdisciples, of whom some are greedily gaping after the sanctifiedbreath, others are all the while hymning out the praises of thewinds, and gently wafted to and fro by their own humming, do thusrepresent the soft breezes of their deities appeased. 

It is from this custom of the priests that some authors maintainthese AEolists to have been very ancient in the world, because thedelivery of their mysteries, which I have just now mentioned, appears exactly the same with that of other ancient oracles, whoseinspirations were owing to certain subterraneous effluviums of winddelivered with the same pain to the priest, and much about the sameinfluence on the people. It is true indeed that these werefrequently managed and directed by female officers, whose organswere understood to be better disposed for the admission of thoseoracular gusts, as entering and passing up through a receptacle ofgreater capacity, and causing also a pruriency by the way, such aswith due management has been refined from carnal into a spiritualecstasy. And to strengthen this profound conjecture, it is furtherinsisted that this custom of female priests is kept up still incertain refined colleges of our modern AEolists {122}, who areagreed to receive their inspiration, derived through the receptacleaforesaid, like their ancestors the Sybils. 

And whereas the mind of man, when he gives the spur and bridle tohis thoughts, does never stop, but naturally sallies out into bothextremes of high and low, of good and evil, his first flight offancy commonly transports him to ideas of what is most perfect, finished, and exalted, till, having soared out of his own reach andsight, not well perceiving how near the frontiers of height anddepth border upon each other, with the same course and wing he fallsdown plump into the lowest bottom of things, like one who travelsthe east into the west, or like a straight line drawn by its ownlength into a circle. Whether a tincture of malice in our naturesmakes us fond of furnishing every bright idea with its reverse, orwhether reason, reflecting upon the sum of things, can, like thesun, serve only to enlighten one half of the globe, leaving theother half by necessity under shade and darkness, or whether fancy, flying up to the imagination of what is highest and best, becomesover-short, and spent, and weary, and suddenly falls, like a deadbird of paradise, to the ground; or whether, after all thesemetaphysical conjectures, I have not entirely missed the truereason; the proposition, however, which has stood me in so muchcircumstance is altogether true, that as the most uncivilised partsof mankind have some way or other climbed up into the conception ofa God or Supreme Power, so they have seldom forgot to provide theirfears with certain ghastly notions, which, instead of better, haveserved them pretty tolerably for a devil. And this proceeding seemsto be natural enough, for it is with men whose imaginations arelifted up very high after the same rate as with those whose bodiesare so, that as they are delighted with the advantage of a nearercontemplation upwards, so they are equally terrified with the dismalprospect of the precipice below. Thus in the choice of a devil ithas been the usual method of mankind to single out some being, either in act or in vision, which was in most antipathy to the godthey had framed. Thus also the sect of the AEolists possessedthemselves with a dread and horror and hatred of two malignantnatures, betwixt whom and the deities they adored perpetual enmitywas established. The first of these was the chameleon, sworn foe toinspiration, who in scorn devoured large influences of their god, without refunding the smallest blast by eructation. The other was ahuge terrible monster called Moulinavent, who with four strong armswaged eternal battle with all their divinities, dexterously turningto avoid their blows and repay them with interest. {123}

Thus furnished, and set out with gods as well as devils, was therenowned sect of AEolists, which makes at this day so illustrious afigure in the world, and whereof that polite nation of Laplandersare beyond all doubt a most authentic branch, of whom I thereforecannot without injustice here omit to make honourable mention, sincethey appear to be so closely allied in point of interest as well asinclinations with their brother AEolists among us, as not only tobuy their winds by wholesale from the same merchants, but also toretail them after the same rate and method, and to customers muchalike. 

Now whether the system here delivered was wholly compiled by Jack, or, as some writers believe, rather copied from the original atDelphos, with certain additions and emendations suited to times andcircumstances, I shall not absolutely determine. This I may affirm, that Jack gave it at least a new turn, and formed it into the samedress and model as it lies deduced by me. 

I have long sought after this opportunity of doing justice to asociety of men for whom I have a peculiar honour, and whose opinionsas well as practices have been extremely misrepresented and traducedby the malice or ignorance of their adversaries. For I think it oneof the greatest and best of human actions to remove prejudices andplace things in their truest and fairest light, which I thereforeboldly undertake, without any regards of my own beside theconscience, the honour, and the thanks. 

SECTION IX. --A DIGRESSION CONCERNING THE ORIGINAL, THE USE, ANDIMPROVEMENT OF MADNESS IN A COMMONWEALTH. 

Nor shall it any ways detract from the just reputation of thisfamous sect that its rise and institution are owing to such anauthor as I have described Jack to be, a person whose intellectualswere overturned and his brain shaken out of its natural position, which we commonly suppose to be a distemper, and call by the name ofmadness or frenzy. For if we take a survey of the greatest actionsthat have been performed in the world under the influence of singlemen, which are the establishment of new empires by conquest, theadvance and progress of new schemes in philosophy, and thecontriving as well as the propagating of new religions, we shallfind the authors of them all to have been persons whose naturalreason hath admitted great revolutions from their diet, theireducation, the prevalency of some certain temper, together with theparticular influence of air and climate. Besides, there issomething individual in human minds that easily kindles at theaccidental approach and collision of certain circumstances, which, though of paltry and mean appearance, do often flame out into thegreatest emergencies of life. For great turns are not always givenby strong hands, but by lucky adaptation and at proper seasons, andit is of no import where the fire was kindled if the vapour has oncegot up into the brain. For the upper region of man is furnishedlike the middle region of the air, the materials are formed fromcauses of the widest difference, yet produce at last the samesubstance and effect. Mists arise from the earth, steams fromdunghills, exhalations from the sea, and smoke from fire; yet allclouds are the same in composition as well as consequences, and thefumes issuing from a jakes will furnish as comely and useful avapour as incense from an altar. Thus far, I suppose, will easilybe granted me; and then it will follow that as the face of Naturenever produces rain but when it is overcast and disturbed, so humanunderstanding seated in the brain must be troubled and overspread byvapours ascending from the lower faculties to water the inventionand render it fruitful. Now although these vapours (as it hath beenalready said) are of as various original as those of the skies, yetthe crop they produce differs both in kind and degree, merelyaccording to the soil. I will produce two instances to prove andexplain what I am now advancing. 

A certain great prince {126a} raised a mighty army, filled hiscoffers with infinite treasures, provided an invincible fleet, andall this without giving the least part of his design to his greatestministers or his nearest favourites. Immediately the whole worldwas alarmed, the neighbouring crowns in trembling expectationtowards what point the storm would burst, the small politicianseverywhere forming profound conjectures. Some believed he had laida scheme for universal monarchy; others, after much insight, determined the matter to be a project for pulling down the Pope andsetting up the Reformed religion, which had once been his own. Someagain, of a deeper sagacity, sent him into Asia to subdue the Turkand recover Palestine. In the midst of all these projects andpreparations, a certain state-surgeon {126b}, gathering the natureof the disease by these symptoms, attempted the cure, at one blowperformed the operation, broke the bag and out flew the vapour; nordid anything want to render it a complete remedy, only that theprince unfortunately happened to die in the performance. Now is thereader exceeding curious to learn from whence this vapour took itsrise, which had so long set the nations at a gaze? What secretwheel, what hidden spring, could put into motion so wonderful anengine? It was afterwards discovered that the movement of thiswhole machine had been directed by an absent female, who was removedinto an enemy's country. What should an unhappy prince do in suchticklish circumstances as these? He tried in vain the poet's never-failing receipt of corpora quaeque, for

"Idque petit corpus mens unde est saucia amore;Unde feritur, eo tendit, gestitque coire. "--Lucr. 

Having to no purpose used all peaceable endeavours, the collectedpart of the semen, raised and inflamed, became adust, converted tocholer, turned head upon the spinal duct, and ascended to the brain. The very same principle that influences a bully to break the windowsof a woman who has jilted him naturally stirs up a great prince toraise mighty armies and dream of nothing but sieges, battles, andvictories. 

The other instance is what I have read somewhere in a very ancientauthor of a mighty king {127a}, who, for the space of above thirtyyears, amused himself to take and lose towns, beat armies and bebeaten, drive princes out of their dominions, fright children fromtheir bread and butter, burn, lay waste, plunder, dragoon, massacresubject and stranger, friend and foe, male and female. It isrecorded that the philosophers of each country were in grave disputeupon causes natural, moral, and political, to find out where theyshould assign an original solution of this phenomenon. At last thevapour or spirit which animated the hero's brain, being in perpetualcirculation, seized upon that region of the human body so renownedfor furnishing the zibeta occidentalis {127b}, and gathering thereinto a tumour, left the rest of the world for that time in peace. Of such mighty consequence is it where those exhalations fix, and ofso little from whence they proceed. The same spirits which in theirsuperior progress would conquer a kingdom descending upon the anus, conclude in a fistula. 

Let us next examine the great introducers of new schemes inphilosophy, and search till we can find from what faculty of thesoul the disposition arises in mortal man of taking it into his headto advance new systems with such an eager zeal in things agreed onall hands impossible to be known; from what seeds this dispositionsprings, and to what quality of human nature these grand innovatorshave been indebted for their number of disciples, because it isplain that several of the chief among them, both ancient and modern, were usually mistaken by their adversaries, and, indeed, by all, except their own followers, to have been persons crazed or out oftheir wits, having generally proceeded in the common course of theirwords and actions by a method very different from the vulgardictates of unrefined reason, agreeing for the most part in theirseveral models with their present undoubted successors in theacademy of modern Bedlam, whose merits and principles I shallfurther examine in due place. Of this kind were Epicurus, Diogenes, Apollonius, Lucretius, Paracelsus, Des Cartes, and others, who, ifthey were now in the world, tied fast and separate from theirfollowers, would in this our undistinguishing age incur manifestdanger of phlebotomy, and whips, and chains, and dark chambers, andstraw. For what man in the natural state or course of thinking didever conceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all mankindexactly to the same length, and breadth, and height of his own? Yetthis is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in theempire of reason. Epicurus modestly hoped that one time or other acertain fortuitous concourse of all men's opinions, after perpetualjostlings, the sharp with the smooth, the light and the heavy, theround and the square, would, by certain clinamina, unite in thenotions of atoms and void, as these did in the originals of allthings. Cartesius reckoned to see before he died the sentiments ofall philosophers, like so many lesser stars in his romantic system, rapt and drawn within his own vortex. Now I would gladly beinformed how it is possible to account for such imaginations asthese in particular men, without recourse to my phenomenon ofvapours ascending from the lower faculties to overshadow the brain, and there distilling into conceptions, for which the narrowness ofour mother-tongue has not yet assigned any other name beside that ofmadness or frenzy. Let us therefore now conjecture how it comes topass that none of these great prescribers do ever fail providingthemselves and their notions with a number of implicit disciples, and I think the reason is easy to be assigned, for there is apeculiar string in the harmony of human understanding, which inseveral individuals is exactly of the same tuning. This, if you candexterously screw up to its right key, and then strike gently uponit whenever you have the good fortune to light among those of thesame pitch, they will by a secret necessary sympathy strike exactlyat the same time. And in this one circumstance lies all the skillor luck of the matter; for, if you chance to jar the string amongthose who are either above or below your own height, instead ofsubscribing to your doctrine, they will tie you fast, call you mad, and feed you with bread and water. It is therefore a point of thenicest conduct to distinguish and adapt this noble talent withrespect to the differences of persons and of times. Cicerounderstood this very well, when, writing to a friend in England, with a caution, among other matters, to beware of being cheated byour hackney-coachmen (who, it seems, in those days were as arrantrascals as they are now), has these remarkable words, Est quodgaudeas te in ista loca venisse, ubi aliquid sapere viderere {129}. For, to speak a bold truth, it is a fatal miscarriage so ill toorder affairs as to pass for a fool in one company, when in anotheryou might be treated as a philosopher; which I desire some certaingentlemen of my acquaintance to lay up in their hearts as a veryseasonable innuendo. 

This, indeed, was the fatal mistake of that worthy gentleman, mymost ingenious friend Mr. Wotton, a person in appearance ordainedfor great designs as well as performances, whether you will considerhis notions or his looks. Surely no man ever advanced into thepublic with fitter qualifications of body and mind for thepropagation of a new religion. Oh, had those happy talents, misapplied to vain philosophy, been turned into their properchannels of dreams and visions, where distortion of mind andcountenance are of such sovereign use, the base, detracting worldwould not then have dared to report that something is amiss, thathis brain hath undergone an unlucky shake, which even his brothermodernists themselves, like ungrates, do whisper so loud that itreaches up to the very garret I am now writing in. 

Lastly, whoever pleases to look into the fountains of enthusiasm, from whence in all ages have eternally proceeded such fatteningstreams, will find the spring-head to have been as troubled andmuddy as the current. Of such great emolument is a tincture of thisvapour, which the world calls madness, that without its help theworld would not only be deprived of those two great blessings, conquests and systems, but even all mankind would unhappily bereduced to the same belief in things invisible. Now the formerpostulatum being held, that it is of no import from what originalsthis vapour proceeds, but either in what angles it strikes andspreads over the understanding, or upon what species of brain itascends, it will be a very delicate point to cut the feather anddivide the several reasons to a nice and curious reader, how thisnumerical difference in the brain can produce effects of so vast adifference from the same vapour as to be the sole point ofindividuation between Alexander the Great, Jack of Leyden, andMonsieur Des Cartes. The present argument is the most abstractedthat ever I engaged in; it strains my faculties to their higheststretch, and I desire the reader to attend with utmost perpensity, for I now proceed to unravel this knotty point. 

There is in mankind a certain . . . Hic multa . . . Desiderantur. . . And this I take to be a clear solution of the matter. 

Having, therefore, so narrowly passed through this intricatedifficulty, the reader will, I am sure, agree with me in theconclusion that, if the moderns mean by madness only a disturbanceor transposition of the brain, by force of certain vapours issuingup from the lower faculties, then has this madness been the parentof all those mighty revolutions that have happened in empire, inphilosophy, and in religion. For the brain in its natural positionand state of serenity disposeth its owner to pass his life in thecommon forms, without any thought of subduing multitudes to his ownpower, his reasons, or his visions, and the more he shapes hisunderstanding by the pattern of human learning, the less he isinclined to form parties after his particular notions, because thatinstructs him in his private infirmities, as well as in the stubbornignorance of the people. But when a man's fancy gets astride on hisreason, when imagination is at cuffs with the senses, and commonunderstanding as well as common sense is kicked out of doors, thefirst proselyte he makes is himself; and when that is oncecompassed, the difficulty is not so great in bringing over others, astrong delusion always operating from without as vigorously as fromwithin. For cant and vision are to the ear and the eye the samethat tickling is to the touch. Those entertainments and pleasureswe most value in life are such as dupe and play the wag with thesenses. For if we take an examination of what is generallyunderstood by happiness, as it has respect either to theunderstanding or the senses we shall find all its properties andadjuncts will herd under this short definition, that it is aperpetual possession of being well deceived. And first, withrelation to the mind or understanding, it is manifest what mightyadvantages fiction has over truth, and the reason is just at ourelbow: because imagination can build nobler scenes and produce morewonderful revolutions than fortune or Nature will be at the expenseto furnish. Nor is mankind so much to blame in his choice thusdetermining him, if we consider that the debate merely lies betweenthings past and things conceived, and so the question is only this:whether things that have place in the imagination may not asproperly be said to exist as those that are seated in the memory?which may be justly held in the affirmative, and very much to theadvantage of the former, since this is acknowledged to be the wombof things, and the other allowed to be no more than the grave. Again, if we take this definition of happiness and examine it withreference to the senses, it will be acknowledged wonderfully adapt. How sad and insipid do all objects accost us that are not conveyedin the vehicle of delusion! How shrunk is everything as it appearsin the glass of Nature, so that if it were not for the assistance ofartificial mediums, false lights, refracted angles, varnish, andtinsel, there would be a mighty level in the felicity and enjoymentsof mortal men. If this were seriously considered by the world, as Ihave a certain reason to suspect it hardly will, men would no longerreckon among their high points of wisdom the art of exposing weaksides and publishing infirmities--an employment, in my opinion, neither better nor worse than that of unmasking, which, I think, hasnever been allowed fair usage, either in the world or the playhouse. 

In the proportion that credulity is a more peaceful possession ofthe mind than curiosity, so far preferable is that wisdom whichconverses about the surface to that pretended philosophy whichenters into the depths of things and then comes gravely back withinformations and discoveries, that in the inside they are good fornothing. The two senses to which all objects first addressthemselves are the sight and the touch; these never examine fartherthan the colour, the shape, the size, and whatever other qualitiesdwell or are drawn by art upon the outward of bodies; and then comesreason officiously, with tools for cutting, and opening, andmangling, and piercing, offering to demonstrate that they are not ofthe same consistence quite through. Now I take all this to be thelast degree of perverting Nature, one of whose eternal laws it is toput her best furniture forward. And therefore, in order to save thecharges of all such expensive anatomy for the time to come, I dohere think fit to inform the reader that in such conclusions asthese reason is certainly in the right; and that in most corporealbeings which have fallen under my cognisance, the outside hath beeninfinitely preferable to the in, whereof I have been furtherconvinced from some late experiments. Last week I saw a womanflayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her personfor the worse. Yesterday I ordered the carcass of a beau to bestripped in my presence, when we were all amazed to find so manyunsuspected faults under one suit of clothes. Then I laid open hisbrain, his heart, and his spleen, but I plainly perceived at everyoperation that the farther we proceeded, we found the defectsincrease upon us, in number and bulk; from all which I justly formedthis conclusion to myself, that whatever philosopher or projectorcan find out an art to sodder and patch up the flaws andimperfections of Nature, will deserve much better of mankind andteach us a more useful science than that so much in present esteem, of widening and exposing them (like him who held anatomy to be theultimate end of physic). And he whose fortunes and dispositionshave placed him in a convenient station to enjoy the fruits of thisnoble art, he that can with Epicurus content his ideas with thefilms and images that fly off upon his senses from the superfices ofthings, such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature, leaving the sourand the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up. This is thesublime and refined point of felicity called the possession of beingwell-deceived, the serene peaceful state of being a fool amongknaves. 

But to return to madness. It is certain that, according to thesystem I have above deduced, every species thereof proceeds from aredundancy of vapour; therefore, as some kinds of frenzy give doublestrength to the sinews, so there are of other species which addvigour, and life, and spirit to the brain. Now it usually happensthat these active spirits, getting possession of the brain, resemblethose that haunt other waste and empty dwellings, which for want ofbusiness either vanish and carry away a piece of the house, or elsestay at home and fling it all out of the windows. By which aremystically displayed the two principal branches of madness, andwhich some philosophers, not considering so well as I, have mistookto be different in their causes, over-hastily assigning the first todeficiency and the other to redundance. 

I think it therefore manifest, from what I have here advanced, thatthe main point of skill and address is to furnish employment forthis redundancy of vapour, and prudently to adjust the seasons ofit, by which means it may certainly become of cardinal and catholicemolument in a commonwealth. Thus one man, choosing a properjuncture, leaps into a gulf, from thence proceeds a hero, and iscalled the saviour of his country. Another achieves the sameenterprise, but unluckily timing it, has left the brand of madnessfixed as a reproach upon his memory. Upon so nice a distinction arewe taught to repeat the name of Curtius with reverence and love, that of Empedocles with hatred and contempt. Thus also it isusually conceived that the elder Brutus only personated the fool andmadman for the good of the public; but this was nothing else than aredundancy of the same vapour long misapplied, called by the Latinsingenium par negotiis, or (to translate it as nearly as I can), asort of frenzy never in its right element till you take it up inbusiness of the state. 

Upon all which, and many other reasons of equal weight, though notequally curious, I do here gladly embrace an opportunity I have longsought for, of recommending it as a very noble undertaking to SirEdward Seymour, Sir Christopher Musgrave, Sir John Bowles, JohnHowe, Esq. , and other patriots concerned, that they would move forleave to bring in a Bill for appointing commissioners to inspectinto Bedlam and the parts adjacent, who shall be empowered to sendfor persons, papers, and records, to examine into the merits andqualifications of every student and professor, to observe withutmost exactness their several dispositions and behaviour, by whichmeans, duly distinguishing and adapting their talents, they mightproduce admirable instruments for the several offices in a state, . . . Civil and military, proceeding in such methods as I shall herehumbly propose. And I hope the gentle reader will give someallowance to my great solicitudes in this important affair, uponaccount of that high esteem I have ever borne that honourablesociety, whereof I had some time the happiness to be an unworthymember. 

Is any student tearing his straw in piecemeal, swearing andblaspheming, biting his grate, foaming at the mouth, and emptyinghis vessel in the spectators' faces? Let the right worshipful theCommissioners of Inspection give him a regiment of dragoons, andsend him into Flanders among the rest. Is another eternallytalking, sputtering, gaping, bawling, in a sound without period orarticle? What wonderful talents are here mislaid! Let him befurnished immediately with a green bag and papers, and threepence inhis pocket {135}, and away with him to Westminster Hall. You willfind a third gravely taking the dimensions of his kennel, a personof foresight and insight, though kept quite in the dark; for why, like Moses, Ecce cornuta erat ejus facies. He walks duly in onepace, entreats your penny with due gravity and ceremony, talks muchof hard times, and taxes, and the whore of Babylon, bars up thewooden of his cell constantly at eight o'clock, dreams of fire, andshoplifters, and court-customers, and privileged places. Now what afigure would all these acquirements amount to if the owner were sentinto the City among his brethren! Behold a fourth in much and deepconversation with himself, biting his thumbs at proper junctures, his countenance chequered with business and design; sometimeswalking very fast, with his eyes nailed to a paper that he holds inhis hands; a great saver of time, somewhat thick of hearing, veryshort of sight, but more of memory; a man ever in haste, a greathatcher and breeder of business, and excellent at the famous art ofwhispering nothing; a huge idolator of monosyllables andprocrastination, so ready to give his word to everybody that henever keeps it; one that has forgot the common meaning of words, butan admirable retainer of the sound; extremely subject to thelooseness, for his occasions are perpetually calling him away. Ifyou approach his grate in his familiar intervals, "Sir, " says he, "give me a penny and I'll sing you a song; but give me the pennyfirst" (hence comes the common saying and commoner practice ofparting with money for a song). What a complete system of court-skill is here described in every branch of it, and all utterly lostwith wrong application! Accost the hole of another kennel, firststopping your nose, you will behold a surly, gloomy, nasty, slovenlymortal, raking in his own dung and dabbling in his urine. The bestpart of his diet is the reversion of his own ordure, which expiringinto steams, whirls perpetually about, and at last reinfunds. Hiscomplexion is of a dirty yellow, with a thin scattered beard, exactly agreeable to that of his diet upon its first declination, like other insects, who, having their birth and education in anexcrement, from thence borrow their colour and their smell. Thestudent of this apartment is very sparing of his words, but somewhatover-liberal of his breath. He holds his hand out ready to receiveyour penny, and immediately upon receipt withdraws to his formeroccupations. Now is it not amazing to think the society of WarwickLane {136} should have no more concern for the recovery of so usefula member, who, if one may judge from these appearances, would becomethe greatest ornament to that illustrious body? Another studentstruts up fiercely to your teeth, puffing with his lips, halfsqueezing out his eyes, and very graciously holds out his hand tokiss. The keeper desires you not to be afraid of this professor, for he will do you no hurt; to him alone is allowed the liberty ofthe ante-chamber, and the orator of the place gives you tounderstand that this solemn person is a tailor run mad with pride. This considerable student is adorned with many other qualities, uponwhich at present I shall not further enlarge. . . . Hark in yourear. . . . I am strangely mistaken if all his address, his motions, and his airs would not then be very natural and in their properelement. 

I shall not descend so minutely as to insist upon the vast number ofbeaux, fiddlers, poets, and politicians that the world might recoverby such a reformation, but what is more material, beside the cleargain redounding to the commonwealth by so large an acquisition ofpersons to employ, whose talents and acquirements, if I may be sobold to affirm it, are now buried or at least misapplied. It wouldbe a mighty advantage accruing to the public from this inquiry thatall these would very much excel and arrive at great perfection intheir several kinds, which I think is manifest from what I havealready shown, and shall enforce by this one plain instance, thateven I myself, the author of these momentous truths, am a personwhose imaginations are hard-mouthed and exceedingly disposed to runaway with his reason, which I have observed from long experience tobe a very light rider, and easily shook off; upon which account myfriends will never trust me alone without a solemn promise to ventmy speculations in this or the like manner, for the universalbenefit of human kind, which perhaps the gentle, courteous, andcandid reader, brimful of that modern charity and tenderness usuallyannexed to his office, will be very hardly persuaded to believe. 

SECTION X. --A FARTHER DIGRESSION. 

It is an unanswerable argument of a very refined age the wonderfulcivilities that have passed of late years between the nation ofauthors and that of readers. There can hardly pop out a play, apamphlet, or a poem without a preface full of acknowledgments to theworld for the general reception and applause they have given it, which the Lord knows where, or when, or how, or from whom itreceived. In due deference to so laudable a custom, I do herereturn my humble thanks to His Majesty and both Houses ofParliament, to the Lords of the King's most honourable PrivyCouncil, to the reverend the Judges, to the Clergy, and Gentry, andYeomanry of this land; but in a more especial manner to my worthybrethren and friends at Will's Coffee-house, and Gresham College, and Warwick Lane, and Moorfields, and Scotland Yard, and WestminsterHall, and Guildhall; in short, to all inhabitants and retainerswhatsoever, either in court, or church, or camp, or city, orcountry, for their generosity and universal acceptance of thisdivine treatise. I accept their approbation and good opinion withextreme gratitude, and to the utmost of my poor capacity shall takehold of all opportunities to return the obligation. 

I am also happy that fate has flung me into so blessed an age forthe mutual felicity of booksellers and authors, whom I may safelyaffirm to be at this day the two only satisfied parties in England. Ask an author how his last piece has succeeded, "Why, truly hethanks his stars the world has been very favourable, and he has notthe least reason to complain. " And yet he wrote it in a week atbits and starts, when he could steal an hour from his urgentaffairs, as it is a hundred to one you may see further in thepreface, to which he refers you, and for the rest to the bookseller. There you go as a customer, and make the same question, "He blesseshis God the thing takes wonderful; he is just printing a secondedition, and has but three left in his shop. " "You beat down theprice; sir, we shall not differ, " and in hopes of your customanother time, lets you have it as reasonable as you please; "Andpray send as many of your acquaintance as you will; I shall uponyour account furnish them all at the same rate. "

Now it is not well enough considered to what accidents and occasionsthe world is indebted for the greatest part of those noble writingswhich hourly start up to entertain it. If it were not for a rainyday, a drunken vigil, a fit of the spleen, a course of physic, asleepy Sunday, an ill run at dice, a long tailor's bill, a beggar'spurse, a factious head, a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, anda just contempt of learning, --but for these events, I say, and someothers too long to recite (especially a prudent neglect of takingbrimstone inwardly), I doubt the number of authors and of writingswould dwindle away to a degree most woeful to behold. To confirmthis opinion, hear the words of the famous troglodyte philosopher. "It is certain, " said he, "some grains of folly are of courseannexed as part in the composition of human nature; only the choiceis left us whether we please to wear them inlaid or embossed, and weneed not go very far to seek how that is usually determined, when weremember it is with human faculties as with liquors, the lightestwill be ever at the top. "

There is in this famous island of Britain a certain paltryscribbler, very voluminous, whose character the reader cannot whollybe a stranger to. He deals in a pernicious kind of writings called"Second Parts, " and usually passes under the name of "The Author ofthe First. " I easily foresee that as soon as I lay down my pen thisnimble operator will have stole it, and treat me as inhumanly as hehas already done Dr. Blackmore, Lestrange, and many others whoshall here be nameless. I therefore fly for justice and relief intothe hands of that great rectifier of saddles and lover of mankind, Dr. Bentley, begging he will take this enormous grievance into hismost modern consideration; and if it should so happen that thefurniture of an ass in the shape of a second part must for my sinsbe clapped, by mistake, upon my back, that he will immediatelyplease, in the presence of the world, to lighten me of the burthen, and take it home to his own house till the true beast thinks fit tocall for it. 

In the meantime, I do here give this public notice that myresolutions are to circumscribe within this discourse the wholestock of matter I have been so many years providing. Since my veinis once opened, I am content to exhaust it all at a running, for thepeculiar advantage of my dear country, and for the universal benefitof mankind. Therefore, hospitably considering the number of myguests, they shall have my whole entertainment at a meal, and Iscorn to set up the leavings in the cupboard. What the guestscannot eat may be given to the poor, and the dogs under the tablemay gnaw the bones {140}. This I understand for a more generousproceeding than to turn the company's stomachs by inviting themagain to-morrow to a scurvy meal of scraps. 

If the reader fairly considers the strength of what I have advancedin the foregoing section, I am convinced it will produce a wonderfulrevolution in his notions and opinions, and he will be abundantlybetter prepared to receive and to relish the concluding part of thismiraculous treatise. Readers may be divided into three classes--thesuperficial, the ignorant, and the learned, and I have with muchfelicity fitted my pen to the genius and advantage of each. Thesuperficial reader will be strangely provoked to laughter, whichclears the breast and the lungs, is sovereign against the spleen, and the most innocent of all diuretics. The ignorant reader(between whom and the former the distinction is extremely nice) willfind himself disposed to stare, which is an admirable remedy for illeyes, serves to raise and enliven the spirits, and wonderfully helpsperspiration. But the reader truly learned, chiefly for whosebenefit I wake when others sleep, and sleep when others wake, willhere find sufficient matter to employ his speculations for the restof his life. It were much to be wished, and I do here humblypropose for an experiment, that every prince in Christendom willtake seven of the deepest scholars in his dominions and shut them upclose for seven years in seven chambers, with a command to writeseven ample commentaries on this comprehensive discourse. I shallventure to affirm that, whatever difference may be found in theirseveral conjectures, they will be all, without the least distortion, manifestly deducible from the text. Meantime it is my earnestrequest that so useful an undertaking may be entered upon (if theirMajesties please) with all convenient speed, because I have a stronginclination before I leave the world to taste a blessing which wemysterious writers can seldom reach till we have got into ourgraves, whether it is that fame being a fruit grafted on the body, can hardly grow and much less ripen till the stock is in the earth, or whether she be a bird of prey, and is lured among the rest topursue after the scent of a carcass, or whether she conceives hertrumpet sounds best and farthest when she stands on a tomb, by theadvantage of a rising ground and the echo of a hollow vault. 

It is true, indeed, the republic of dark authors, after they oncefound out this excellent expedient of dying, have been peculiarlyhappy in the variety as well as extent of their reputation. Fornight being the universal mother of things, wise philosophers holdall writings to be fruitful in the proportion they are dark, andtherefore the true illuminated (that is to say, the darkest of all)have met with such numberless commentators, whose scholiasticmidwifery hath delivered them of meanings that the authorsthemselves perhaps never conceived, and yet may very justly beallowed the lawful parents of them, the words of such writers beinglike seed, which, however scattered at random, when they light upona fruitful ground, will multiply far beyond either the hopes orimagination of the sower. 

And therefore, in order to promote so useful a work, I will heretake leave to glance a few innuendos that may be of great assistanceto those sublime spirits who shall be appointed to labour in auniversal comment upon this wonderful discourse. And first, I havecouched a very profound mystery in the number of 0's multiplied byseven and divided by nine. Also, if a devout brother of the RosyCross will pray fervently for sixty-three mornings with a livelyfaith, and then transpose certain letters and syllables according toprescription, in the second and fifth section they will certainlyreveal into a full receipt of the opus magnum. Lastly, whoever willbe at the pains to calculate the whole number of each letter in thistreatise, and sum up the difference exactly between the severalnumbers, assigning the true natural cause for every such difference, the discoveries in the product will plentifully reward his labour. But then he must beware of Bythus and Sige, and be sure not toforget the qualities of Acamoth; a cujus lacrymis humecta proditsubstantia, a risu lucida, a tristitia solida, et a timore mobilis, wherein Eugenius Philalethes {142} hath committed an unpardonablemistake. 

SECTION XI. --A TALE OF A TUB. 

After so wide a compass as I have wandered, I do now gladly overtakeand close in with my subject, and shall henceforth hold on with itan even pace to the end of my journey, except some beautifulprospect appears within sight of my way, whereof, though at presentI have neither warning nor expectation, yet upon such an accident, come when it will, I shall beg my reader's favour and company, allowing me to conduct him through it along with myself. For inwriting it is as in travelling. If a man is in haste to be at home(which I acknowledge to be none of my case, having never so littlebusiness as when I am there), if his horse be tired with long ridingand ill ways, or be naturally a jade, I advise him clearly to makethe straightest and the commonest road, be it ever so dirty; butthen surely we must own such a man to be a scurvy companion at best. He spatters himself and his fellow-travellers at every step. Alltheir thoughts, and wishes, and conversation turn entirely upon thesubject of their journey's end, and at every splash, and plunge, andstumble they heartily wish one another at the devil. 

On the other side, when a traveller and his horse are in heart andplight, when his purse is full and the day before him, he takes theroad only where it is clean or convenient, entertains his companythere as agreeably as he can, but upon the first occasion carriesthem along with him to every delightful scene in view, whether ofart, of Nature, or of both; and if they chance to refuse out ofstupidity or weariness, let them jog on by themselves, and be d--n'd. He'll overtake them at the next town, at which arriving, herides furiously through, the men, women, and children run out togaze, a hundred noisy curs run barking after him, of which, if hehonours the boldest with a lash of his whip, it is rather out ofsport than revenge. But should some sourer mongrel dare too near anapproach, he receives a salute on the chaps by an accidental strokefrom the courser's heels, nor is any ground lost by the blow, whichsends him yelping and limping home. 

I now proceed to sum up the singular adventures of my renowned Jack, the state of whose dispositions and fortunes the careful readerdoes, no doubt, most exactly remember, as I last parted with them inthe conclusion of a former section. Therefore, his next care mustbe from two of the foregoing to extract a scheme of notions that maybest fit his understanding for a true relish of what is to ensue. 

Jack had not only calculated the first revolution of his brain soprudently as to give rise to that epidemic sect of AEolists, butsucceeding also into a new and strange variety of conceptions, thefruitfulness of his imagination led him into certain notions which, although in appearance very unaccountable, were not without theirmysteries and their meanings, nor wanted followers to countenanceand improve them. I shall therefore be extremely careful and exactin recounting such material passages of this nature as I have beenable to collect either from undoubted tradition or indefatigablereading, and shall describe them as graphically as it is possible, and as far as notions of that height and latitude can be broughtwithin the compass of a pen. Nor do I at all question but they willfurnish plenty of noble matter for such whose convertingimaginations dispose them to reduce all things into types, who canmake shadows--no thanks to the sun--and then mould them intosubstances--no thanks to philosophy--whose peculiar talent lies infixing tropes and allegories to the letter, and refining what isliteral into figure and mystery. 

Jack had provided a fair copy of his father's will, engrossed inform upon a large skin of parchment, and resolving to act the partof a most dutiful son, he became the fondest creature of itimaginable. For although, as I have often told the reader, itconsisted wholly in certain plain, easy directions about themanagement and wearing of their coats, with legacies and penaltiesin case of obedience or neglect, yet he began to entertain a fancythat the matter was deeper and darker, and therefore must needs havea great deal more of mystery at the bottom. "Gentlemen, " said he, "I will prove this very skin of parchment to be meat, drink, andcloth, to be the philosopher's stone and the universal medicine. "In consequence of which raptures he resolved to make use of it inthe most necessary as well as the most paltry occasions of life. Hehad a way of working it into any shape he pleased, so that it servedhim for a nightcap when he went to bed, and for an umbrella in rainyweather. He would lap a piece of it about a sore toe; or, when hehad fits, burn two inches under his nose; or, if anything lay heavyon his stomach, scrape off and swallow as much of the powder aswould lie on a silver penny--they were all infallible remedies. With analogy to these refinements, his common talk and conversationran wholly in the praise of his Will, and he circumscribed theutmost of his eloquence within that compass, not daring to let slipa syllable without authority from thence. Once at a strange househe was suddenly taken short upon an urgent juncture, whereon it maynot be allowed too particularly to dilate, and being not able tocall to mind, with that suddenness the occasion required, anauthentic phrase for demanding the way to the back, he chose rather, as the more prudent course, to incur the penalty in such casesusually annexed; neither was it possible for the united rhetoric ofmankind to prevail with him to make himself clean again, because, having consulted the will upon this emergency, he met with a passagenear the bottom (whether foisted in by the transcriber is not known)which seemed to forbid it {145a}. 

He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his meat, nor could all the world persuade him, as the common phrase is, toeat his victuals like a Christian {145b}. 

He bore a strange kind of appetite to snap-dragon and to the lividsnuffs of a burning candle {146a}, which he would catch and swallowwith an agility wonderful to conceive; and by this proceduremaintained a perpetual flame in his belly, which issuing in aglowing steam from both his eyes, as well as his nostrils and hismouth, made his head appear in a dark night like the skull of an asswherein a roguish boy hath conveyed a farthing-candle, to the terrorof his Majesty's liege subjects. Therefore he made use of no otherexpedient to light himself home, but was wont to say that a wise manwas his own lanthorn. 

He would shut his eyes as he walked along the streets, and if hehappened to bounce his head against a post or fall into the kennel(as he seldom missed either to do one or both), he would tell thegibing apprentices who looked on that he submitted with entireresignation, as to a trip or a blow of fate, with whom he found bylong experience how vain it was either to wrestle or to cuff, andwhoever durst undertake to do either would be sure to come off witha swingeing fall or a bloody nose. "It was ordained, " said he{146b}, "some few days before the creation, that my nose and thisvery post should have a rencounter, and therefore Providence thoughtfit to send us both into the world in the same age, and to make uscountrymen and fellow-citizens. Now, had my eyes been open, it isvery likely the business might have been a great deal worse, for howmany a confounded slip is daily got by man with all his foresightabout him. Besides, the eyes of the understanding see best whenthose of the senses are out of the way, and therefore blind men areobserved to tread their steps with much more caution, and conduct, and judgment than those who rely with too much confidence upon thevirtue of the visual nerve, which every little accident shakes outof order, and a drop or a film can wholly disconcert; like alanthorn among a pack of roaring bullies when they scour thestreets, exposing its owner and itself to outward kicks and buffets, which both might have escaped if the vanity of appearing would havesuffered them to walk in the dark. But further, if we examine theconduct of these boasted lights, it will prove yet a great dealworse than their fortune. It is true I have broke my nose againstthis post, because Providence either forgot, or did not think itconvenient, to twitch me by the elbow and give me notice to avoidit. But let not this encourage either the present age of posterityto trust their noses unto the keeping of their eyes, which may provethe fairest way of losing them for good and all. For, O ye eyes, yeblind guides, miserable guardians are ye of our frail noses; ye, Isay, who fasten upon the first precipice in view, and then tow ourwretched willing bodies after you to the very brink of destruction. But alas! that brink is rotten, our feet slip, and we tumble downprone into a gulf, without one hospitable shrub in the way to breakthe fall--a fall to which not any nose of mortal make is equal, except that of the giant Laurcalco {147a}, who was Lord of theSilver Bridge. Most properly, therefore, O eyes, and with greatjustice, may you be compared to those foolish lights which conductmen through dirt and darkness till they fall into a deep pit or anoisome bog. "

This I have produced as a scantling of Jack's great eloquence andthe force of his reasoning upon such abstruse matters. 

He was, besides, a person of great design and improvement in affairsof devotion, having introduced a new deity, who has since met with avast number of worshippers, by some called Babel, by others Chaos, who had an ancient temple of Gothic structure upon Salisbury plain, famous for its shrine and celebration by pilgrims. 

When he had some roguish trick to play, he would down with hisknees, up with his eyes, and fall to prayers though in the midst ofthe kennel. Then it was that those who understood his pranks wouldbe sure to get far enough out of his way; and whenever curiosityattracted strangers to laugh or to listen, he would of a suddenbespatter them with mud. 

In winter he went always loose and unbuttoned, and clad as thin aspossible to let in the ambient heat, and in summer lapped himselfclose and thick to keep it out {147b}. 

In all revolutions of government, he would make his court for theoffice of hangman-general, and in the exercise of that dignity, wherein he was very dexterous, would make use of no other vizardthan a long prayer. 

He had a tongue so musculous and subtile, that he could twist it upinto his nose and deliver a strange kind of speech from thence. Hewas also the first in these kingdoms who began to improve theSpanish accomplishment of braying; and having large ears perpetuallyexposed and erected, he carried his art to such a perfection, thatit was a point of great difficulty to distinguish either by the viewor the sound between the original and the copy. 

He was troubled with a disease the reverse to that called thestinging of the tarantula, and would run dog-mad at the noise ofmusic, especially a pair of bagpipes {148a}. But he would curehimself again by taking two or three turns in Westminster Hall, orBillingsgate, or in a boarding-school, or the Royal Exchange, or astate coffee-house. 

He was a person that feared no colours, but mortally hated all, andupon that account bore a cruel aversion to painters, insomuch thatin his paroxysms as he walked the streets, he would have his pocketsloaded with stones to pelt at the signs {148b}. 

Having from his manner of living frequent occasions to wash himself, he would often leap over head and ears into the water, though itwere in the midst of the winter, but was always observed to come outagain much dirtier, if possible, than he went in {148c}. 

He was the first that ever found out the secret of contriving asoporiferous medicine to be conveyed in at the ears {148d}. It wasa compound of sulphur and balm of Gilead, with a little pilgrim'ssalve. 

He wore a large plaister of artificial caustics on his stomach, withthe fervour of which he could set himself a groaning like the famousboard upon application of a red-hot iron. 

He would stand in the turning of a street, and calling to those whopassed by, would cry to one, "Worthy sir, do me the honour of a goodslap in the chaps;" to another, "Honest friend, pray favour me witha handsome kick in the rear;" "Madam, shall I entreat a small box inthe ear from your ladyship's fair hands?" "Noble captain, lend areasonable thwack, for the love of God, with that cane of yours overthese poor shoulders. " And when he had by such earnestsolicitations made a shift to procure a basting sufficient to swellup his fancy and his sides, he would return home extremelycomforted, and full of terrible accounts of what he had undergonefor the public good. "Observe this stroke, " said he, showing hisbare shoulders; "a plaguy janissary gave it me this very morning atseven o'clock, as, with much ado, I was driving off the Great Turk. Neighbours mine, this broken head deserves a plaister; had poor Jackbeen tender of his noddle, you would have seen the Pope and theFrench King long before this time of day among your wives and yourwarehouses. Dear Christians, the Great Moghul was come as far asWhitechapel, and you may thank these poor sides that he hath not--God bless us--already swallowed up man, woman, and child. "

It was highly worth observing the singular effects of that aversionor antipathy which Jack and his brother Peter seemed, even toaffectation, to bear towards each other. Peter had lately done somerogueries that forced him to abscond, and he seldom ventured to stirout before night for fear of bailiffs. Their lodgings were at thetwo most distant parts of the town from each other, and whenevertheir occasions or humours called them abroad, they would makechoice of the oddest, unlikely times, and most uncouth rounds thatthey could invent, that they might be sure to avoid one another. Yet, after all this, it was their perpetual fortune to meet, thereason of which is easy enough to apprehend, for the frenzy and thespleen of both having the same foundation, we may look upon them astwo pair of compasses equally extended, and the fixed foot of eachremaining in the same centre, which, though moving contrary ways atfirst, will be sure to encounter somewhere or other in thecircumference. Besides, it was among the great misfortunes of Jackto bear a huge personal resemblance with his brother Peter. Theirhumour and dispositions were not only the same, but there was aclose analogy in their shape, their size, and their mien; insomuchas nothing was more frequent than for a bailiff to seize Jack by theshoulders and cry, "Mr. Peter, you are the king's prisoner;" or, atother times, for one of Peter's nearest friends to accost Jack withopen arms: "Dear Peter, I am glad to see thee; pray send me one ofyour best medicines for the worms. " This, we may suppose, was amortifying return of those pains and proceedings Jack had labouredin so long, and finding how directly opposite all his endeavours hadanswered to the sole end and intention which he had proposed tohimself, how could it avoid having terrible effects upon a head andheart so furnished as his? However, the poor remainders of his coatbore all the punishment. The orient sun never entered upon hisdiurnal progress without missing a piece of it. He hired a tailorto stitch up the collar so close that it was ready to choke him, andsqueezed out his eyes at such a rate as one could see nothing butthe white. What little was left of the main substance of the coathe rubbed every day for two hours against a rough-cast wall, inorder to grind away the remnants of lace and embroidery, but at thesame time went on with so much violence that he proceeded a heathenphilosopher. Yet after all he could do of this kind, the successcontinued still to disappoint his expectation, for as it is thenature of rags to bear a kind of mock resemblance to finery, therebeing a sort of fluttering appearance in both, which is not to bedistinguished at a distance in the dark or by short-sighted eyes, soin those junctures it fared with Jack and his tatters, that theyoffered to the first view a ridiculous flaunting, which, assistingthe resemblance in person and air, thwarted all his projects ofseparation, and left so near a similitude between them as frequentlydeceived the very disciples and followers of both . . . Desuntnonnulla, . . . 

The old Sclavonian proverb said well that it is with men as withasses; whoever would keep them fast must find a very good hold attheir ears. Yet I think we may affirm, and it hath been verified byrepeated experience, that -

"Effugiet tamen haec sceleratus vincula Proteus. " {151a}

It is good, therefore, to read the maxims of our ancestors withgreat allowances to times and persons; for if we look into primitiverecords we shall find that no revolutions have been so great or sofrequent as those of human ears. In former days there was a curiousinvention to catch and keep them, which I think we may justly reckonamong the artes perditae; and how can it be otherwise, when in theselatter centuries the very species is not only diminished to a verylamentable degree, but the poor remainder is also degenerated so faras to mock our skilfullest tenure? For if only the slitting of oneear in a stag hath been found sufficient to propagate the defectthrough a whole forest, why should we wonder at the greatestconsequences, from so many loppings and mutilations to which theears of our fathers and our own have been of late so much exposed?It is true, indeed, that while this island of ours was under thedominion of grace, many endeavours were made to improve the growthof ears once more among us. The proportion of largeness was notonly looked upon as an ornament of the outward man, but as a type ofgrace in the inward. Besides, it is held by naturalists that ifthere be a protuberancy of parts in the superior region of the body, as in the ears and nose, there must be a parity also in theinferior; and therefore in that truly pious age the males in everyassembly, according as they were gifted, appeared very forward inexposing their ears to view, and the regions about them; becauseHippocrates {151b} tells us that when the vein behind the earhappens to be cut, a man becomes a eunuch, and the females werenothing backwarder in beholding and edifying by them; whereof thosewho had already used the means looked about them with great concern, in hopes of conceiving a suitable offspring by such a prospect;others, who stood candidates for benevolence, found there aplentiful choice, and were sure to fix upon such as discovered thelargest ears, that the breed might not dwindle between them. Lastly, the devouter sisters, who looked upon all extraordinarydilatations of that member as protrusions of zeal, or spiritualexcrescences, were sure to honour every head they sat upon as ifthey had been cloven tongues, but especially that of the preacher, whose ears were usually of the prime magnitude, which upon thataccount he was very frequent and exact in exposing with alladvantages to the people in his rhetorical paroxysms, turningsometimes to hold forth the one, and sometimes to hold forth theother; from which custom the whole operation of preaching is to thisvery day among their professors styled by the phrase of holdingforth. 

Such was the progress of the saints for advancing the size of thatmember, and it is thought the success would have been every wayanswerable, if in process of time a cruel king had not arose, whoraised a bloody persecution against all ears above a certainstandard {152a}; upon which some were glad to hide their flourishingsprouts in a black border, others crept wholly under a periwig; somewere slit, others cropped, and a great number sliced off to thestumps. But of this more hereafter in my general "History of Ears, "which I design very speedily to bestow upon the public. 

From this brief survey of the falling state of ears in the last age, and the small care had to advance their ancient growth in thepresent, it is manifest how little reason we can have to rely upon ahold so short, so weak, and so slippery; and that whoever desires tocatch mankind fast must have recourse to some other methods. Now hethat will examine human nature with circumspection enough maydiscover several handles, whereof the six {152b} senses afford oneapiece, beside a great number that are screwed to the passions, andsome few riveted to the intellect. Among these last, curiosity isone, and of all others affords the firmest grasp; curiosity, thatspur in the side, that bridle in the mouth, that ring in the nose ofa lazy, an impatient, and a grunting reader. By this handle it isthat an author should seize upon his readers; which as soon as hehath once compassed, all resistance and struggling are in vain, andthey become his prisoners as close as he pleases, till weariness ordulness force him to let go his grip. 

And therefore I, the author of this miraculous treatise, havinghitherto, beyond expectation, maintained by the aforesaid handle afirm hold upon my gentle readers, it is with great reluctance that Iam at length compelled to remit my grasp, leaving them in theperusal of what remains to that natural oscitancy inherent in thetribe. I can only assure thee, courteous reader, for both ourcomforts, that my concern is altogether equal to thine, for myunhappiness in losing or mislaying among my papers the remainingpart of these memoirs, which consisted of accidents, turns, andadventures, both new, agreeable, and surprising, and thereforecalculated in all due points to the delicate taste of this our nobleage. But alas! with my utmost endeavours I have been able only toretain a few of the heads. Under which there was a full account howPeter got a protection out of the King's Bench, and of areconcilement between Jack and him, upon a design they had in acertain rainy night to trepan brother Martin into a spunging-house, and there strip him to the skin. How Martin, with much ado, showedthem both a fair pair of heels. How a new warrant came out againstPeter, upon which Jack left him in the lurch, stole his protection, and made use of it himself. How Jack's tatters came into fashion incourt and city; how he got upon a great horse and ate custard {153}. But the particulars of all these, with several others which have nowslid out of my memory, are lost beyond all hopes of recovery. Forwhich misfortune, leaving my readers to condole with each other asfar as they shall find it to agree with their several constitutions, but conjuring them by all the friendship that has passed between us, from the title-page to this, not to proceed so far as to injuretheir healths for an accident past remedy, I now go on to theceremonial part of an accomplished writer, and therefore by acourtly modern least of all others to be omitted. 

THE CONCLUSION. 

Going too long is a cause of abortion as effectual, though not sofrequent, as going too short, and holds true especially in thelabours of the brain. Well fare the heart of that noble Jesuit{155} who first adventured to confess in print that books must besuited to their several seasons, like dress, and diet, anddiversions; and better fare our noble notion for refining upon thisamong other French modes. I am living fast to see the time when abook that misses its tide shall be neglected as the moon by day, orlike mackerel a week after the season. No man has more nicelyobserved our climate than the bookseller who bought the copy of thiswork. He knows to a tittle what subjects will best go off in a dryyear, and which it is proper to expose foremost when the weather-glass is fallen to much rain. When he had seen this treatise andconsulted his almanac upon it, he gave me to understand that he hadmanifestly considered the two principal things, which were the bulkand the subject, and found it would never take but after a longvacation, and then only in case it should happen to be a hard yearfor turnips. Upon which I desired to know, considering my urgentnecessities, what he thought might be acceptable this month. Helooked westward and said, "I doubt we shall have a bit of badweather. However, if you could prepare some pretty little banter(but not in verse), or a small treatise upon the it would run likewildfire. But if it hold up, I have already hired an author towrite something against Dr. Bentley, which I am sure will turn toaccount. "

At length we agreed upon this expedient, that when a customer comesfor one of these, and desires in confidence to know the author, hewill tell him very privately as a friend, naming whichever of thewits shall happen to be that week in the vogue, and if Durfey's lastplay should be in course, I had as lieve he may be the person asCongreve. This I mention, because I am wonderfully well acquaintedwith the present relish of courteous readers, and have oftenobserved, with singular pleasure, that a fly driven from a honey-potwill immediately, with very good appetite, alight and finish hismeal on an excrement. 

I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who aregrown very numerous of late, and I know very well the judiciousworld is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive, therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers aswith wells. A person with good eyes can see to the bottom of thedeepest, provided any water be there; and that often when there isnothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, thoughit be but a yard and half under ground, it shall pass, however, forwondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason than because it is wondrousdark. 

I am now trying an experiment very frequent among modern authors, which is to write upon nothing, when the subject is utterlyexhausted to let the pen still move on; by some called the ghost ofwit, delighting to walk after the death of its body. And to say thetruth, there seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands thanthat of discerning when to have done. By the time that an authorhas written out a book, he and his readers are become oldacquaintance, and grow very loathe to part; so that I have sometimesknown it to be in writing as in visiting, where the ceremony oftaking leave has employed more time than the whole conversationbefore. The conclusion of a treatise resembles the conclusion ofhuman life, which has sometimes been compared to the end of a feast, where few are satisfied to depart ut plenus vitae conviva. For menwill sit down after the fullest meal, though it be only to dose orto sleep out the rest of the day. But in this latter I differextremely from other writers, and shall be too proud if, by all mylabours, I can have any ways contributed to the repose of mankind intimes so turbulent and unquiet as these. Neither do I think such anemployment so very alien from the office of a wit as some wouldsuppose; for among a very polite nation in Greece {157} there werethe same temples built and consecrated to Sleep and the Muses, between which two deities they believed the strictest friendship wasestablished. 

I have one concluding favour to request of my reader, that he willnot expect to be equally diverted and informed by every line orevery page of this discourse, but give some allowance to theauthor's spleen and short fits or intervals of dulness, as well ashis own, and lay it seriously to his conscience whether, if he werewalking the streets in dirty weather or a rainy day, he would allowit fair dealing in folks at their ease from a window, to criticisehis gate and ridicule his dress at such a juncture. 

In my disposure of employments of the brain, I have thought fit tomake invention the master, and to give method and reason the officeof its lackeys. The cause of this distribution was from observingit my peculiar case to be often under a temptation of being wittyupon occasion where I could be neither wise nor sound, nor anythingto the matter in hand. And I am too much a servant of the modernway to neglect any such opportunities, whatever pains orimproprieties I may be at to introduce them. For I have observedthat from a laborious collection of seven hundred and thirty-eightflowers and shining hints of the best modern authors, digested withgreat reading into my book of common places, I have not been ableafter five years to draw, hook, or force into common conversationany more than a dozen. Of which dozen the one moiety failed ofsuccess by being dropped among unsuitable company, and the othercost me so many strains, and traps, and ambages to introduce, that Iat length resolved to give it over. Now this disappointment (todiscover a secret), I must own, gave me the first hint of setting upfor an author, and I have since found among some particular friendsthat it is become a very general complaint, and has produced thesame effects upon many others. For I have remarked many a towardlyword to be wholly neglected or despised in discourse, which hathpassed very smoothly with some consideration and esteem after itspreferment and sanction in print. But now, since, by the libertyand encouragement of the press, I am grown absolute master of theoccasions and opportunities to expose the talents I have acquired, Ialready discover that the issues of my observanda begin to grow toolarge for the receipts. Therefore I shall here pause awhile, till Ifind, by feeling the world's pulse and my own, that it will be ofabsolute necessity for us both to resume my pen. 

[In some early editions of "The Tale of a Tub, " Swift added, underthe title of "What Follows after Section IX. , " the following sketchfor a "History of Martin. "]

THE HISTORY OF MARTIN. 

Giving an account of his departure from Jack, and their setting upfor themselves, on which account they were obliged to travel, andmeet many disasters; finding no shelter near Peter's habitation, Martin succeeds in the North; Peter thunders against Martin for theloss of the large revenue he used to receive from thence; Harry Huffsent Marlin a challenge in fight, which he received; Peter rewardsHarry for the pretended victory, which encouraged Harry to huffPeter also; with many other extraordinary adventures of the saidMartin in several places with many considerable persons. 

With a digression concerning the nature, usefulness, and necessityof wars and quarrels. 

How Jack and Martin, being parted, set up each for himself. Howthey travelled over hills and dales, met many disasters, sufferedmuch from the good cause, and struggled with difficulties and wants, not having where to lay their head; by all which they afterwardsproved themselves to be right father's sons, and Peter to bespurious. Finding no shelter near Peter's habitation, Martintravelled northwards, and finding the Thuringians, a neighbouringpeople, disposed to change, he set up his stage first among them, where, making it his business to cry down Peter's powders, plasters, salves, and drugs, which he had sold a long time at a dear rate, allowing Martin none of the profit, though he had been oftenemployed in recommending and putting them off, the good people, willing to save their pence, began to hearken to Martin's speeches. How several great lords took the hint, and on the same accountdeclared for Martin; particularly one who, not having had enough ofone wife, wanted to marry a second, and knowing Peter used not togrant such licenses but at a swingeing price, he struck up a bargainwith Martin, whom he found more tractable, and who assured him hehad the same power to allow such things. How most of the otherNorthern lords, for their own private ends, withdrew themselves andtheir dependants from Peter's authority, and closed in with Martin. How Peter, enraged at the loss of such large territories, andconsequently of so much revenue, thundered against Martin, and sentout the strongest and most terrible of his bulls to devour him; butthis having no effect, and Martin defending himself boldly anddexterously, Peter at last put forth proclamations declaring Martinand all his adherents rebels and traitors, ordaining and requiringall his loving subjects to take up arms, and to kill, burn, anddestroy all and every one of them, promising large rewards, &c. , upon which ensued bloody wars and desolation. 

How Harry Huff {160a}, lord of Albion, one of the greatest bulliesof those days, sent a cartel to Martin to fight him on a stage atCudgels, quarter-staff, backsword, &c. Hence the origin of thatgenteel custom of prize-fighting so well known and practised to thisday among those polite islanders, though unknown everywhere else. How Martin, being a bold, blustering fellow, accepted the challenge;how they met and fought, to the great diversion of the spectators;and, after giving one another broken heads and many bloody woundsand bruises, how they both drew off victorious, in which theirexample has been frequently imitated by great clerks and otherssince that time. How Martin's friends applauded his victory, andhow Lord Harry's friends complimented him on the same score, andparticularly Lord Peter, who sent him a fine feather for his cap{160b}, to be worn by him and his successors as a perpetual mark forhis bold defence of Lord Peter's cause. How Harry, flushed with hispretended victory over Martin, began to huff Peter also, and at lastdownright quarrelled with him about a wench. How some of LordHarry's tenants, ever fond of changes, began to talk kindly ofMartin, for which he mauled them soundly, as he did also those thatadhered to Peter. How he turned some out of house and hold, othershe hanged or burnt, &c. 

How Harry Huff, after a deal of blustering, wenching, and bullying, died, and was succeeded by a good-natured boy {161a}, who, givingway to the general bent of his tenants, allowed Martin's notions tospread everywhere, and take deep root in Ambition. How, after hisdeath, the farm fell into the hands of a lady {161b}, who wasviolently in love with Lord Peter. How she purged the whole countrywith fire and sword, resolved not to leave the name or remembranceof Martin. How Peter triumphed, and set up shops again for sellinghis own powders, plasters, and salves, which were now declared theonly true ones, Martin's being all declared counterfeit. How greatnumbers of Martin's friends left the country, and, travelling up anddown in foreign parts, grew acquainted with many of Jack'sfollowers, and took a liking to many of their notions and ways, which they afterwards brought back into ambition, now under anotherlandlady {161c}, more moderate and more cunning than the former. How she endeavoured to keep friendship both with Peter and Martin, and trimmed for some time between the two, not without countenancingand assisting at the same time many of Jack's followers; butfinding, no possibility of reconciling all the three brothers, because each would be master, and allow no other salves, powders, orplasters to be used but his own, she discarded all three, and set upa shop for those of her own farm, well furnished with powders, plasters, salves, and all other drugs necessary, all right and true, composed according to receipts made by physicians and apothecariesof her own creating, which they extracted out of Peter's, andMartin's, and Jack's receipt-books, and of this medley or hodge-podge made up a dispensatory of their own, strictly forbidding anyother to be used, and particularly Peter's, from which the greatestpart of this new dispensatory was stolen. How the lady, farther toconfirm this change, wisely imitating her father, degraded Peterfrom the rank he pretended as eldest brother, and set up herself inhis place as head of the family, and ever after wore her father'sold cap with the fine feather he had got from Peter for standing hisfriend, which has likewise been worn with no small ostentation tothis day by all her successors, though declared enemies to Peter. How Lady Bess and her physicians, being told of many defects andimperfections in their new medley dispensatory, resolve on a furtheralteration, to purge it from a great deal of Peter's trash thatstill remained in it, but were prevented by her death. How she wassucceeded by a North-Country farmer {162a}, who pretended greatskill in the managing of farms, though he could never govern his ownpoor little farm, nor yet this large new one after he got it. Howthis new landlord, to show his valour and dexterity, fought againstenchanters, weeds, giants, and windmills, and claimed great honourfor his victories. How his successor, no wiser than he, occasionedgreat disorders by the new methods he took to manage his farms. Howhe attempted to establish in his Northern farm the same dispensatory{162b} used in the Southern, but miscarried, because Jack's powders, pills, salves, and plasters were there in great vogue. 

How the author finds himself embarrassed for having introduced intohis history a new sect different from the three he had undertaken totreat of; and how his inviolable respect to the sacred number threeobliges him to reduce these four, as he intends to do all otherthings, to that number; and for that end to drop the former Martinand to substitute in his place Lady Bess's institution, which is topass under the name of Martin in the sequel of this true history. This weighty point being cleared, the author goes on and describesmighty quarrels and squabbles between Jack and Martin; how sometimesthe one had the better and sometimes the other, to the greatdesolation of both farms, till at last both sides concur to hang upthe landlord {162c}, who pretended to die a martyr for Martin, though he had been true to neither side, and was suspected by manyto have a great affection for Peter. 

A DIGRESSION ON THE NATURE, USEFULNESS, AND NECESSITY OF WARS ANDQUARRELS. 

This being a matter of great consequence, the author intends totreat it methodically and at large in a treatise apart, and here togive only some hints of what his large treatise contains. The stateof war, natural to all creatures. War is an attempt to take byviolence from others a part of what they have and we want. Everyman, fully sensible of his own merit, and finding it not dulyregarded by others, has a natural right to take from them all thathe thinks due to himself; and every creature, finding its own wantsmore than those of others, has the same right to take everything itsnature requires. Brutes, much more modest in their pretensions thisway than men, and mean men more than great ones. The higher oneraises his pretensions this way, the more bustle he makes aboutthem, and the more success he has, the greater hero. Thus greatersouls, in proportion to their superior merit, claim a greater rightto take everything from meaner folks. This the true foundation ofgrandeur and heroism, and of the distinction of degrees among men. War, therefore, necessary to establish subordination, and to foundcities, kingdoms, &c. , as also to purge bodies politic of grosshumours. Wise princes find it necessary to have wars abroad to keeppeace at home. War, famine, and pestilence, the usual cures forcorruption in bodies politic. A comparison of these three--theauthor is to write a panegyric on each of them. The greatest partof mankind loves war more than peace. They are but few and mean-spirited that live in peace with all men. The modest and meek ofall kinds always a prey to those of more noble or strongerappetites. The inclination to war universal; those that cannot ordare not make war in person employ others to do it for them. Thismaintains bullies, bravoes, cut-throats, lawyers, soldiers, &c. Most professions would be useless if all were peaceable. Hencebrutes want neither smiths nor lawyers, magistrates nor joiners, soldiers or surgeons. Brutes having but narrow appetites, areincapable of carrying on or perpetuating war against their ownspecies, or of being led out in troops and multitudes to destroy oneanother. These prerogatives proper to man alone. The excellency ofhuman nature demonstrated by the vast train of appetites, passions, wants, &c. , that attend it. This matter to be more fully treated inthe author's panegyric on mankind. 

THE HISTORY OF MARTIN--Continued. 

How Jack, having got rid of the old landlord, set up another to hismind, quarrelled with Martin, and turned him out of doors. How hepillaged all his shops, and abolished his whole dispensatory. Howthe new landlord {164a} laid about him, mauled Peter, worriedMartin, and made the whole neighbourhood tremble. How Jack'sfriends fell out among themselves, split into a thousand parties, turned all things topsy-turvy, till everybody grew weary of them;and at last, the blustering landlord dying, Jack was kicked out ofdoors, a new landlord {164b} brought in, and Martin re-established. How this new landlord let Martin do what he pleased, and Martinagreed to everything his pious landlord desired, provided Jack mightbe kept low. Of several efforts Jack made to raise up his head, butall in vain; till at last the landlord died, and was succeeded byone {164c} who was a great friend to Peter, who, to humble Martin, gave Jack some liberty. How Martin grew enraged at this, called ina foreigner {164d} and turned out the landlord; in which Jackconcurred with Martin, because this landlord was entirely devoted toPeter, into whose arms he threw himself, and left his country. Howthe new landlord secured Martin in the full possession of his formerrights, but would not allow him to destroy Jack, who had always beenhis friend. How Jack got up his head in the North, and put himselfin possession of a whole canton, to the great discontent of Martin, who finding also that some of Jack's friends were allowed to liveand get their bread in the south parts of the country, grew highlydiscontented with the new landlord he had called in to hisassistance. How this landlord kept Martin in order, upon which hefell into a raging fever, and swore he would hang himself or join inwith Peter, unless Jack's children were all turned out to starve. Of several attempts to cure Martin, and make peace between him andJack, that they might unite against Peter; but all made ineffectualby the great address of a number of Peter's friends, that herdedamong Martin's, and appeared the most zealous for his interest. HowMartin, getting abroad in this mad fit, looked so like Peter in hisair and dress, and talked so like him, that many of the neighbourscould not distinguish the one from the other; especially when Martinwent up and down strutting in Peter's armour, which he had borrowedto fight Jack {165a}. What remedies were used to cure Martin'sdistemper . . . 

Here the author being seized with a fit of dulness, to which he isvery subject, after having read a poetical epistle addressed to . . . It entirely composed his senses, so that he has not writ a linesince. 

N. B. --Some things that follow after this are not in the MS. , butseem to have been written since, to fill up the place of what wasnot thought convenient then to print. 

A PROJECT FOR THE UNIVERSAL BENEFIT OF MANKIND. 

The author, having laboured so long and done so much to serve andinstruct the public, without any advantage to himself, has at lastthought of a project which will tend to the great benefit of allmankind, and produce a handsome revenue to the author. He intendsto print by subscription, in ninety-six large volumes in folio, anexact description of Terra Australis incognita, collected with greatcare, and prints from 999 learned and pious authors of undoubtedveracity. The whole work, illustrated with maps and cuts agreeableto the subject, and done by the best masters, will cost but oneguinea each volume to subscribers, one guinea to be paid in advance, and afterwards a guinea on receiving each volume, except the last. This work will be of great use for all men, and necessary for allfamilies, because it contains exact accounts of all the provinces, colonies, and mansions of that spacious country, where, by a generaldoom, all transgressors of the law are to be transported; and everyone having this work may choose out the fittest and best place forhimself, there being enough for all, so as every one shall be fullysatisfied. 

The author supposes that one copy of this work will be bought at thepublic charge, or out of the parish rates, for every parish churchin the three kingdoms, and in all the dominions thereunto belonging. And that every family that can command 10 pounds per annum, eventhough retrenched from less necessary expenses, will subscribe forone. He does not think of giving out above nine volumes nearly; andconsidering the number requisite, he intends to print at least100, 000 for the first edition. He is to print proposals againstnext term, with a specimen, and a curious map of the capital citywith its twelve gates, from a known author, who took an exact surveyof it in a dream. Considering the great care and pains of theauthor, and the usefulness of the work, he hopes every one will beready, for their own good as well as his, to contribute cheerfullyto it, and not grudge him the profit he may have by it, especiallyif he comes to a third or fourth edition, as he expects it will verysoon. 

He doubts not but it will be translated into foreign languages bymost nations of Europe, as well as Asia and Africa, being of asgreat use to all those nations as to his own; for this reason hedesigns to procure patents and privileges for securing the wholebenefit to himself from all those different princes and states, andhopes to see many millions of this great work printed in thosedifferent countries and languages before his death. 

After this business is pretty well established, he has promised toput a friend on another project almost as good as this, byestablishing insurance offices everywhere for securing people fromshipwreck and several other accidents in their voyage to thiscountry; and these officers shall furnish, at a certain rate, pilotswell versed in the route, and that know all the rocks, shelves, quicksands, &c. , that such pilgrims and travellers may be exposedto. Of these he knows a great number ready instructed in mostcountries; but the whole scheme of this matter he is to draw up atlarge and communicate to his friend. 

Footnotes:

{50} The number of livings in England. --Pate. 

{51a} "Distinguished, new, told by no other tongue. "--Horace. 

{51b} "Reading prefaces, &c. "--Swift's note in the margin. 

{56a} Plutarch. --Swift's note in the margin. 

{56b} Xenophon. --Swift's note in the margin, marked, in future, S. 

{56c} Spleen. --Horace. 

{59} "But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labour lies. "

- Dryden's "Virgil"

{60} "That the old may withdraw into safe ease. "

{61} In his subsequent apology for "The Tale of a Tub, " Swift wroteof these machines that, "In the original manuscript there was adescription of a fourth, which those who had the papers in theirpower blotted out, as having something in it of satire that Isuppose they thought was too particular; and therefore they wereforced to change it to the number three, whence some haveendeavoured to squeeze out a dangerous meaning that was neverthought on. And indeed the conceit was half spoiled by changing thenumbers; that of four being much more cabalistic, and thereforebetter exposing the pretended virtue of numbers, a superstition thenintended to be ridiculed. "

{62a} "Under the rainy sky, in the meetings of three and of fourways. "

{62b} Lucretius, lib. 2. --S. 

{62c} "'Tis certain, then, the voice that thus can wound;Is all material body, every sound. "

{63} To be burnt or worm-eaten. 

{64} The Royal Society first met at Gresham College, the resort ofmen of science. Will's Coffee-House was the resort of wits and menof letters. 

{65a} Viz. , about moving the earth. --S. 

{65b} "Virtuoso experiments and modern comedies. "--S. 

{67a} He lived a thousand. --S. 

{67b} Viz. , in the year 1697. --S. Dryden died in 1700, and thepublication of the "Tale of a Tub, " written in 1697, was not until1704. 

{69a} The title-page in the original was so torn that it was notpossible to recover several titles which the author here speaks of. --S. 

{69b} See Virgil translated, &c. --S. 

{70} Peter, the Church of Rome; Martin, the Reformed Church asestablished by authority in England; Jack, the dissenters from theEnglish Church Establishment. Martin, named probably from MartinLuther; Jack, from John Calvin. The coats are the coats ofrighteousness, in which all servants of God should be clothed; alikein love and duty, however they may differ in opinion. 

{71} Covetousness, ambition, and pride, which were the three greatvices that the ancient fathers inveighed against as the firstcorruptions of Christianity. --W. Wotton. 

{72a} The tailor. 

{72b} A sacred monkey. 

{75} The Roman Catholics were considered by the Reformers to haveadded to the simple doctrines of Christianity inventions of theirown, and to have laid especial stress on the adoption of them. UponSwift's saying of the three brothers, "Now the coats their fatherhad left them were, it is true, of very good cloth, and besides soneatly sewn that you would swear they were all of a piece, but, atthe same time, very plain, with little or no ornament, " W. Wottonobserves: "This is the distinguishing character of the Christianreligion. Christiana religio absoluta et simplex, was AmmianusMarcellinus's description of it, who was himself a heathen. " Butthe learned Peter argues that if a doctrine cannot be found, totidemverbis, in so many words, it may be found in so many syllables, or, if that way fail, we shall make them out in a third way, of so manyletters. 

{76} Quibusdam veteribus codicibus [some ancient MSS. ]. --S. 

{77a} There are two kinds--oral tradition and the written record, --reference to the value attached to tradition in the Roman Church. 

{77b} The flame-coloured lining figures the doctrine of Purgatory;and the codicil annexed, the Apocryphal books annexed to the Bible. The dog-keeper is said to be an allusion to the Apocryphal book ofTobit. 

{78a} Dread hell and subdue their lusts. 

{78b} Strained glosses and interpretations of the simple text. 

{79a} Images in churches. 

{79b} The locking up of the Gospel in the original Greek or in theLatin of the Vulgate, and forbidding its diffusion in the languageof the people. 

{80a} The Pope's bulls and decretals, issued by his paternalauthority, that must determine questions of interpretation andtradition, or else many absurd things would follow. 

{80b} Constantine the Great, from whom the Church of Rome was saidto have received the donation of St. Peter's patrimony, and firstderived the wealth described by our old Reformers as "the fatal giftof Constantine. "

{84a} See Wotton "Of Ancient and Modern Learning. "--S. 

{84b} Satire and panegyric upon critics. --S. 

{85} Vide excerpta ex eo apud Photium--S. 

{86} "Near Helicon and round the learned hillGrow trees whose blossoms with their odour kill. "--Hawkesworth. 

{88} A quotation after the manner of a great author. VideBentley's "Dissertation, " &c. --S. 

{89} "And how they're disappointed when they're pleased. "--Congreve, quoted by Pate. 

{95} Refusing the cup of sacrament to the laity. Thomas Wartonobserves on the following passage its close resemblance to thespeech of Panurge in Rabelais, and says that Swift formed himselfupon Rabelais. 

{96} Transubstantiation. 

{98a} The Reformation. 

{98b} The cross (in hoc signo vinces). Pieces of the wood said tobe part of it were many in the churches. 

{98c} One miracle to be believed was that the Chapel of Lorettotravelled from the Holy Land to Italy. 

{99a} Made a true copy of the Bible in the language of the people. 

{99b} Gave the cup to the laity. 

{99c} Allowed marriages of priests. 

{102a} Homerus omnes res humanas poematis complexus est. --Xenophonin Conviv. --S. 

{102b} A treatise written about fifty years ago by a Welshgentleman of Cambridge. His name, as I remember, Vaughan, asappears by the answer to it by the learned Dr. Henry More. It is apiece of the most unintelligible fustian that perhaps was everpublished in any language. --S. This piece was by the brother ofHenry Vaughan, the poet. 

{110} After the changes made by Martin that transformed the Churchof Rome into the Church of England, Jack's proceedings made a rentfrom top to bottom by the separation of the Presbyterians from theChurch Establishment. 

{111a} The galleries over the piazzas in the old Royal Exchangewere formerly filled with shops, kept chiefly by women. Illustrations of this feature in London life are to be found inDekker's "Shoemaker's Holiday, " and other plays. 

{111b} The contraction of the word mobile to mob first appeared inthe time of Charles the Second. 

{112} Jack the Bald, Calvin, from calvus, bald; Jack with aLanthorn, professing inward lights, Quakers; Dutch Jack, Jack ofLeyden, Anabaptists; French Hugh, the Huguenots; Tom the Beggar, theGueuses of Flanders; Knocking Jack of the North, John Knox ofScotland. AEolists pretenders to inspiration. 

{116} Herodotus, 1. 4. --S. 

{119a} Bombast von Hohenheim--Paracelsus. 

{119b} Fanatical preachers of rebellion. 

{120} Pausanias, 1. 8. --S. 

{122} The Quakers allowed women to preach. 

{123} The worshippers of wind or air found their evil spirits inthe chameleon, by which it was eaten, and the windmill, Moulin-a-vent, by whose four hands it was beaten. 

{126a} Henry IV. Of France. 

{126b} Ravaillac, who stabbed Henry IV. 

{127a} Swift's contemporary, Louis XIV. Of France. 

{127b} Western civet. Paracelsus was said to have endeavoured toextract a perfume from human excrement that might become asfashionable as civet from the cat. It was called zibetaoccidentalis, the back being, according to Paracelsus, the westernpart of the body. 

{129} Ep. Fam. Vii. 10, to Trebatius, who, as the next sentence inthe letter shows, had not gone into England. 

{135} A lawyer's coach-hire. --S. 

{136} The College of Physicians. 

{140} The bad critics. 

{142} A name under which Thomas Vaughan wrote. 

{145a} Revelations xxii. 11: "He which is filthy, let him befilthy still;" "phrase of the will, " being Scripture phrase, ofeither Testament, applied to every occasion, and often in the mostunbecoming manner. 

{145b} He did not kneel when he received the Sacrament. 

{146a} His inward lights. 

{146b} Predestination. 

{147a} Vide Don Quixote. --S. 

{147b} Swift borrowed this from the customs of Moronia--Fool'sLand--in Joseph Hall's Mundus Alter et Idem. 

{148a} The Presbyterians objected to church-music, and had noorgans in their meeting-houses. 

{148b} Opposed to the decoration of church walls. 

{148c} Baptism by immersion. 

{148d} Preaching. 

{151a} "This wicked Proteus shall escape the chain. "--Francis'sHorace. 

{151b} Lib. De Aere, Locis, et Aquis. --S. 

{152a} Charles II. , by the Act of Uniformity, which drove twothousand ministers of religion, including some of the most devout, in one day out of the Church of England. 

{152b} "Including Scaliger's, " is Swift's note in the margin. Thesixth sense was the "common sense" which united and conveyed to themind as one whole the information brought in by the other five. Common sense did not originally mean the kind of sense common amongthe people generally. A person wanting in common sense was onewhose brain did not properly combine impressions brought into it bythe eye, the ear, &c. 

{153} Reference here is to the exercise by James II. Of adispensing power which illegally protected Roman Catholics, andincidentally Dissenters also; to the consequent growth of feelingagainst the Roman Catholics. "Jack on a great horse and eatingcustard" represents what was termed the occasional conformity of menwho "blasphemed custard through the nose, " but complied with the lawthat required them to take Sacrament in the Church of England asqualification for becoming a Lord Mayor or holding any office ofpublic authority. 

{155} Pere d'Orleans. --S. 

{157} Trazenii, Pausan. L. 2. --S. 

{160a} Henry VIII. 

{160b} "Fidei Defensor. "

{161a} Edward VI. 

{161b} Queen Mary. 

{161c} Queen Elizabeth. 

{162a} James I. 

{162b} Episcopacy. 

{162c} Charles I. 

{164a} Cromwell. 

{164b} Charles II. 

{164c} James II. 

{164d} William III. 

{165a} High Church against Dissent.