My
LORD,
Though
the author has written a large Dedication, yet that being addressed to
a Prince
whom I am never likely to have the honour of being known to; a person,
besides,
as far as I can observe, not at all regarded or thought on by any of
our present
writers; and I being wholly free from that slavery which booksellers
usually lie
under to the caprices of authors, I think it a wise piece of
presumption to
inscribe these papers to your Lordship, and to implore your Lordship’s
protection of them. God and your Lordship know their faults and their
merits;
for as to my own particular, I am altogether a stranger to the matter;
and
though everybody else should be equally ignorant, I do not fear the
sale of the
book at all the worse upon that score. Your Lordship’s name on the
front in
capital letters will at any time get off one edition: neither would I
desire any
other help to grow an alderman than a patent for the sole privilege of
dedicating to your Lordship.
I
should now, in right of a dedicator, give your Lordship a list of your
own
virtues, and at the same time be very unwilling to offend your modesty;
but
chiefly I should celebrate your liberality towards men of great parts
and small
fortunes, and give you broad hints that I mean myself. And I was just
going on
in the usual method to peruse a hundred or two of dedications, and
transcribe an
abstract to be applied to your Lordship, but I was diverted by a certain
accident. For upon the covers of these papers I casually observed
written in
large letters the two following words, DETUR DIGNISSIMO, which, for
aught I
knew, might contain some important meaning. But it unluckily fell out
that none
of the Authors I employ understood Latin (though I have them often in
pay to
translate out of that language). I was therefore compelled to have
recourse to
the Curate of our Parish, who Englished it thus, Let it be given to the
worthiest; and his comment was that the Author meant his work should be
dedicated to the sublimest genius of the age for wit, learning,
judgment,
eloquence, and wisdom. I called at a poet’s chamber (who works for my
shop) in
an alley hard by, showed him the translation, and desired his opinion
who it was
that the Author could mean. He told me, after some consideration, that
vanity
was a thing he abhorred, but by the description he thought himself to
be the
person aimed at; and at the same time he very kindly offered his own
assistance
gratis towards penning a dedication to himself. I desired him, however,
to give
a second guess. Why then, said he, it must be I, or my Lord Somers.
From thence
I went to several other wits of my acquaintance, with no small hazard
and
weariness to my person, from a prodigious number of dark winding
stairs; but
found them all in the same story, both of your Lordship and themselves.
Now your
Lordship is to understand that this proceeding was not of my own
invention; for
I have somewhere heard it is a maxim that those to whom everybody
allows the
second place have an undoubted title to the first.
This
infallibly convinced me that your Lordship was the person intended by
the
Author. But being very unacquainted in the style and form of
dedications, I
employed those wits aforesaid to furnish me with hints and materials
towards a
panegyric upon your Lordship’s virtues.
In
two days they brought me ten sheets of paper filled up on every side.
They swore
to me that they had ransacked whatever could be found 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 a syllable there but what I and
everybody
else knew as well as themselves: therefore I grievously suspect a
cheat; and
that these Authors of mine stole and transcribed every word from the
universal
report of mankind. So that I took upon myself as fifty shillings out of
pocket
to no manner of purpose.
If
by altering the title I could make the same materials serve for another
dedication (as my betters have done), it would help to make up my loss;
but I
have made several persons dip here and there in those papers, and
before they
read three lines they have all assured me plainly that they cannot
possibly be
applied to any person besides your Lordship.
I
expected, indeed, to have heard of your Lordship’s bravery at the head
of an
army; of your undaunted courage in mounting a breach or scaling a wall;
or to
have had your pedigree traced in a lineal descent from the House of
Austria; or
of your wonderful talent at dress and dancing; or your profound
knowledge in
algebra, metaphysics, and the Oriental tongues: but to ply the world
with an old
beaten story of your wit, and eloquence, and learning, and wisdom, and
justice,
and politeness, and candour, and evenness of temper in all scenes of
life; of
that great discernment in discovering and readiness in favouring
deserving men;
with forty other common topics; I confess I have neither conscience nor
countenance to do it. Because there is no virtue either of a public or
private
life which some circumstances of your own have not often produced upon
the stage
of the world; and those few which for want of occasions to exert them
might
otherwise have passed unseen or unobserved by your friends, your
enemies have at
length brought to light.
It
is true I should be very loth the bright example of your Lordship’s
virtues
should be lost to after-ages, both for their sake and your own; but
chiefly
because they will be so very necessary to adorn the history of a late
reign; and
that is another reason why I would forbear to make a recital of them
here;
because I have been told by wise men that as dedications have run for
some years
past, a good historian will not be apt to have recourse thither in
search of
characters.
There
is one point wherein I think we dedicators would do well to change our
measures;
I mean, instead of running on so far upon the praise of our patron’s
liberality, to spend a word or two in admiring their patience. I can
put no
greater compliment on your Lordship’s than by giving you so ample an
occasion
to exercise it at present. Though perhaps I shall not be apt to reckon
much
merit to your Lordship upon that score, who having been formerly used
to tedious
harangues, and sometimes to as little purpose, will be the readier to
pardon
this, especially when it is offered by one who is, with all respect and
veneration,
My
LORD, Your Lordship’s most obedient and most faithful Servant,
THE
BOOKSELLER.
It
is now six years since these papers came first to my hand, which seems
to have
been about a twelvemonth after they were written, for the Author tells
us in his
preface to the first treatise that he had calculated it for the year
1697; and
in several passages of that discourse, as well as the second, it
appears they
were written about that time.
As
to the Author, I can give no manner of satisfaction. However, I am
credibly
informed that this publication is without his knowledge, for he
concludes the
copy is lost, having lent it to a person since dead, and being never in
possession of it after; so that, whether the work received his last
hand, or
whether he intended to fill up the defective places, is like to remain
a secret.
If
I should go about to tell the reader by what accident I became master
of these
papers, it would, in this unbelieving age, pass for little more than
the cant or
jargon of the trade. I therefore gladly spare both him and myself so
unnecessary
a trouble. There yet remains a difficult question—why I published them
no
sooner? I forbore upon two accounts. First, because I thought I had
better work
upon my hands; and secondly, because I was not without some hope of
hearing from
the Author and receiving his directions. But I have been lately alarmed
with
intelligence of a surreptitious copy which a certain great wit had new
polished
and refined, or, as our present writers express themselves, “fitted to
the
humour of the age,” as they have already done with great felicity to Don
Quixote, Boccalini, La Bruyere, and other authors. However, I thought
it fairer
dealing to offer the whole work in its naturals. If any gentleman will
please to
furnish me with a key, in order to explain the more difficult parts, I
shall
very gratefully acknowledge the favour, and print it by itself.
SIR,
I
here present your Highness with the fruits of a very few leisure hours,
stolen
from the short intervals of a world of business, and of an employment
quite
alien from such amusements as this; the poor production of that refuse
of time
which has lain heavy upon my hands during a long prorogation of
Parliament, a
great dearth of foreign news, and a tedious fit of rainy weather. For
which, and
other reasons, it cannot choose extremely to deserve such a patronage
as that 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 has the universal learned world already
resolved upon appealing to your future dictates with the lowest and most
resigned submission, fate having decreed you sole arbiter of the
productions of
human wit in this polite and most accomplished age. Methinks the number
of
appellants were enough to shock and startle any judge of a genius less
unlimited
than yours; but in order to prevent such glorious trials, the person,
it seems,
to whose care the education of your Highness is committed, has
resolved, as I am
told, to keep you in almost an universal ignorance of our studies,
which it is
your inherent birthright to inspect.
It
is amazing to me that this person should have assurance, in the face of
the sun,
to go about persuading your Highness that our age is almost wholly
illiterate
and has hardly produced one writer upon any subject. I know very well
that when
your Highness shall come to riper years, and have gone through the
learning of
antiquity, you will be too curious to neglect inquiring into the
authors of the
very age before you; and to think that this insolent, in the account he
is
preparing for your view, designs to reduce them to a number so
insignificant as
I am ashamed to mention; it moves my zeal and my spleen for the honour
and
interest of our vast flourishing body, as well as of myself, for whom I
know by
long experience he has professed, and still continues, a peculiar
malice.
It
is not unlikely that, when your Highness will one day peruse what I am
now
writing, you may be ready to expostulate with your governor upon the
credit of
what I here affirm, and command him to show you some of our
productions. To
which he will answer—for I am well informed of his designs—by asking
your
Highness where they are, and what is become of them? and pretend it a
demonstration that there never were any, because they are not then to
be found.
Not to be found! Who has mislaid them? Are they sunk in the abyss of
things? It
is certain that in their own nature they were light enough to swim upon
the
surface for all eternity; therefore, the fault is in him who tied
weights so
heavy to their heels as to depress them to the centre. Is their very
essence
destroyed? Who has annihilated them? Were they drowned by purges or
martyred by
pipes? Who administered them to the posteriors of ———-. But that it may
no
longer be a doubt with your Highness who is to be the author of this
universal
ruin, I beseech you to observe that large and terrible scythe which your
governor affects to bear continually about him. Be pleased to remark
the length
and strength, the sharpness and hardness, of his nails and teeth;
consider his
baneful, abominable breath, enemy to life and matter, infectious and
corrupting,
and then reflect whether it be possible for any mortal ink and paper of
this
generation to make a suitable resistance. Oh, that your Highness would
one day
resolve to disarm this usurping maitre de palais of his furious
engines, and
bring your empire hors du page.
It
were endless to recount the several methods of tyranny and destruction
which
your governor is pleased to practise upon this occasion. 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 heard of. Unhappy infants! many of them barbarously destroyed
before they
have so much as learnt their mother-tongue to beg for pity. Some he
stifles in
their cradles, others he frights into convulsions, whereof they
suddenly die,
some he flays alive, others he tears limb from 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 of Poets, from
whom I am
preparing a petition to your Highness, to be subscribed with the names
of one
hundred and thirty-six of the first race, but whose immortal
productions are
never likely to reach your eyes, though each of them is now an humble
and an
earnest appellant for the laurel, and has large comely volumes ready to
show for
a support to his pretensions. The never-dying works of these
illustrious persons
your governor, sir, has devoted to unavoidable death, and your Highness
is to be
made believe that our age has never arrived at the honour to produce
one single
poet.
We
confess immortality to be a great and powerful goddess, but in vain we
offer up
to her our devotions and our sacrifices if your Highness’s governor,
who has
usurped the priesthood, must, by an unparalleled ambition and avarice,
wholly
intercept and devour them.
To
affirm that our age is altogether unlearned and devoid of writers in
any kind,
seems to be an assertion so bold and so false, that I have been
sometimes
thinking the contrary may almost be proved by uncontrollable
demonstration. It
is true, indeed, that although their numbers be vast and their
productions
numerous in proportion, yet are they hurried so hastily off the scene
that they
escape our memory and delude our sight. When I first thought of this
address, I
had prepared a copious list of titles to present your Highness as an
undisputed
argument for what I affirm. The originals were posted fresh upon all
gates and
corners of streets; but returning in a very few hours to take a review,
they
were all torn down and fresh ones in their places. I inquired after
them among
readers and booksellers, but I inquired in vain; the memorial of them
was lost
among men, their place was no more to be found; and I was laughed to
scorn for a
clown and a pedant, devoid of all taste and refinement, little versed
in the
course of present affairs, and that knew nothing 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 do abound in learning and wit, but to fix upon particulars is a
task too
slippery for my slender abilities. If I should venture, in a windy day,
to
affirm to your Highness that there is a large cloud near the horizon in
the form
of a bear, another in the zenith with the head of an ass, a third to the
westward with claws like a dragon; and your Highness should in a few
minutes
think fit to examine the truth, it is certain they would be all chanced
in
figure and position, new ones would arise, and all we could agree upon
would be,
that clouds there were, but that I was grossly mistaken in the
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 needs have been
employed in
such numbers of books? Can these also be wholly annihilated, and to of
a sudden,
as I pretend? What shall I say in return of so invidious an objection?
It ill
befits the distance between your Highness and me to send you for ocular
conviction to a jakes or an oven, to the windows of a bawdyhouse, or to
a sordid
lanthorn. Books, like men their authors, have no more than one way of
coming
into the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of it and return
no more.
I
profess to your Highness, in the integrity of my heart, that what I am
going to
say is literally true this minute I am writing; what revolutions may
happen
before it shall be ready for your perusal I can by no means warrant;
however, I
beg you to accept it as a specimen of our learning, our politeness, and
our wit.
I do therefore affirm, upon the word of a sincere man, that there is now
actually in being a certain poet called John Dryden, whose translation
of Virgil
was lately printed in large folio, well bound, and if diligent search
were made,
for aught I know, is yet to be seen. There is another called Nahum
Tate, who is
ready to make oath that he has caused many reams of verse to be
published,
whereof both himself and his bookseller, if lawfully required, can
still produce
authentic copies, and therefore wonders why the world is pleased to
make such a
secret of it. There is a third, known by the name of Tom Durfey, a poet
of a
vast comprehension, an universal genius, and most 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 wonderful
importance
between himself and a bookseller; he is a writer of infinite wit and
humour, no
man rallies with a better grace and in more sprightly turns. Further, I
avow to
your Highness that with these eyes I have beheld the person of William
Wotton,
B.D., who has written a good-sized volume against a friend of your
governor,
from whom, alas! he must therefore look for little favour, in a most
gentlemanly
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, that he is a worthy yoke-mate to his fore-
mentioned
friend.
Why
should I go upon farther particulars, which might fill a volume with
the just
eulogies of my contemporary brethren? I shall bequeath this piece of
justice to
a larger work, wherein I intend to write a character of the present set
of wits
in our nation; their persons I shall describe particularly and at
length, their
genius and understandings in miniature.
In
the meantime, I do here make bold to present your Highness with a
faithful
abstract drawn from the universal body of all arts and sciences,
intended wholly
for your service and instruction. Nor do I doubt in the least but your
Highness
will peruse it as carefully and make as considerable improvements as
other young
princes have already done by the many volumes of late years written for
a help
to their studies.
That
your Highness may advance in wisdom and virtue, as well as years, and
at last
outshine all your royal ancestors, shall be the daily prayer of,
SIR,
Your Highness’s most devoted, &c. December. 1697.
The
wits of the present age being so very numerous and penetrating, it
seems the
grandees of Church and State begin to fall under horrible apprehensions
lest
these gentlemen, during the intervals of a long peace, should find
leisure to
pick holes in the weak sides of religion and government. To prevent
which, there
has been much thought employed of late upon certain projects for taking
off the
force and edge of those formidable inquirers from canvassing and
reasoning upon
such delicate points. They have at length fixed upon one, which will
require
some time as well as cost to perfect. Meanwhile, the danger hourly
increasing,
by new levies of wits, all appointed (as there is reason to fear) with
pen, ink,
and paper, which may at an hour’s warning be drawn out into pamphlets
and
other offensive weapons ready for immediate execution, it was judged of
absolute
necessity that some present expedient be thought on till the main
design can be
brought to maturity. To this end, at a grand committee, some days ago,
this
important discovery was made by a certain curious and refined observer,
that
seamen have a custom when they meet a Whale to fling him out an empty
Tub, by
way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the
Ship. This
parable was immediately mythologised; the Whale was interpreted to be
Hobbes’s
“Leviathan,” which tosses and plays with all other schemes 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 are said to borrow their weapons. The Ship in danger is
easily
understood to be its old antitype the commonwealth. But how to analyse
the Tub
was a matter of difficulty, when, after long inquiry and debate, the
literal
meaning was preserved, and it was decreed that, in order to prevent
these
Leviathans from tossing and sporting with the commonwealth, which of
itself is
too apt to fluctuate, they should be diverted from that game by “A Tale
of a
Tub.” And my genius being conceived to lie not unhappily that way, I
had the
honour done me to be engaged in the performance.
This
is the sole design in publishing the following treatise, which I hope
will serve
for an interim of some months to employ those unquiet spirits till the
perfecting of that great work, into the secret of which it is
reasonable the
courteous reader should have some little light.
It
is intended that a large Academy be erected, capable of containing nine
thousand
seven hundred forty and three persons, which, by modest computation, is
reckoned
to be pretty near the current number of wits in this island .These
are to be disposed into the several schools of this Academy, and there
pursue
those studies to which their genius most inclines them. The undertaker
himself
will publish his proposals with all convenient speed, to which I shall
refer the
curious reader for a more particular account, mentioning at present
only a few
of the principal schools. There is, first, a large pederastic school,
with
French and Italian masters; there is also the spelling school, a very
spacious
building; the school of looking-glasses; the school of swearing; the
school of
critics; the school of salivation; the school of hobby-horses; the
school of
poetry; the school of tops; the school of spleen; the school of gaming;
with
many others too tedious to recount. No person to be admitted member
into any of
these 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 duty of a
preface if my
genius, were capable of arriving at it. Thrice have I forced my
imagination to
take the tour of my invention, and thrice it has returned empty, the
latter
having been wholly drained by the following treatise. Not so my more
successful
brethren the moderns, who will by no means let slip a preface or
dedication
without some notable distinguishing stroke to surprise the reader at
the entry,
and kindle a wonderful expectation of what is to ensue. Such was that
of a most
ingenious poet, who, soliciting his brain for something new,
compared
himself to the hangman and his patron to the patient. This was insigne,
recens,
indictum ore alio . When I went through that necessary and noble course of
study, I
had the happiness to observe many such egregious touches, which I shall
not
injure the authors by transplanting, because I have remarked 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 are extremely witty to-day, or fasting, or in
this place,
or at eight o’clock, or over a bottle, or spoke by Mr. What dyecall’m,
or in
a summer’s morning, any of which, by the smallest transposal or
misapplication, is utterly annihilate. Thus wit has its walks and
purlieus, out
of which it may not stray the breadth of a hair, upon peril 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, and such a one that is nowhere intelligible but at Hyde Park
Corner.
Now, though it sometimes tenderly affects me to consider that all the
towardly
passages I shall deliver in the following treatise will grow quite out
of date
and relish with the first shifting of the present scene, yet I must need
subscribe to the justice of this proceeding, because I cannot imagine
why we
should be at expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the
former have
made no sort of provision for ours; wherein I speak the sentiment of
the very
newest, and consequently the most orthodox refiners, as well as my own.
However,
being extremely solicitous that every accomplished person who has got
into the
taste of wit calculated for this present month of August 1697 should
descend to
the very bottom of all the sublime throughout this treatise, I hold it
fit to
lay down this general maxim. Whatever reader desires to have a thorough
comprehension of an author’s thoughts, cannot take a better method than
by
putting himself into the circumstances and posture of life that the
writer was
in upon every important passage as it flowed from his pen, for this will
introduce a parity and strict correspondence of ideas between the
reader and the
author. Now, to assist the diligent reader in so delicate an affair—as
far as
brevity will permit—I have recollected that the shrewdest pieces of this
treatise were conceived in bed in a garret. At other times (for a
reason best
known to myself) I thought fit to sharpen my invention with hunger, and
in
general the whole work was begun, continued, and ended under a long
course of
physic and a great want of money. Now, I do affirm it will be absolutely
impossible for the candid peruser to go along with me in a great many
bright
passages, unless upon the several difficulties emergent he will please
to
capacitate and prepare himself by these directions. And this I lay down
as my
principal postulatum.
Because
I have professed to be a most devoted servant of all modern forms, I
apprehend
some curious wit may object against me for proceeding thus far in a
preface
without declaiming, according to custom, against the multitude of
writers
whereof the whole multitude of writers most reasonably complain. I am
just come
from perusing some hundreds of prefaces, wherein the authors do at the
very
beginning address the gentle reader concerning this enormous grievance.
Of these
I have preserved a few examples, and shall set them 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 press swarms
with,”
&c.
Another:
“The tax upon paper does not lessen the number of scribblers who daily
pester,” &c.
Another:
“When every little would-be wit takes pen in hand, ’tis in vain 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 I venture into the
public, for who upon a less consideration would be of 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 to our nation, having
strenuously
maintained the contrary in several parts of the following discourse;
secondly, I
do not well understand the justice of this proceeding, because I
observe many of
these polite prefaces to be not only from the same hand, but from those
who are
most voluminous in their several productions; upon which I shall tell
the reader
a short tale.
A
mountebank in Leicester Fields had drawn a huge assembly about him.
Among the
rest, a fat unwieldy fellow, half stifled in the press, would be every
fit
crying out, “Lord! what a filthy crowd is here. Pray, good people, give
way a
little. Bless need what a devil has raked this rabble together. Z——ds,
what
squeezing is this? Honest friend, remove your elbow.” At last a weaver
that
stood next him could hold no longer. “A plague confound you,” said he,
“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 you consider that you take up more room with that
carcass
than any five here? Is not the place as free for us as for you? Bring
your own
guts to a reasonable compass, and then I’ll engage we shall have room
enough
for us all.”
There
are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof I hope
there will
be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it
shall be
concluded that something very useful and profound is couched
underneath; and
again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different
character shall
be judged to contain 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 a multitude of
great
examples be allowed sufficient authority; for it is here to be noted
that praise
was originally a pension paid by the world, but the moderns, finding
the trouble
and charge too great in collecting it, have lately bought out the fee-
simple,
since which time the right of presentation is wholly in ourselves. For
this
reason it is that when an author makes his own eulogy, he uses a
certain form to
declare and insist upon his title, which is commonly in these or the
like words,
“I speak without vanity,” which I think plainly shows it to be a matter
of
right and justice. Now, I do here once for all declare, that in every
encounter
of this nature through the following treatise the form aforesaid is
implied,
which I 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 elaborate and
useful a
discourse without one grain of satire intermixed, which is the sole
point
wherein I have taken leave to dissent from the famous originals of our
age and
country. I have observed some satirists to use the public much at the
rate that
pedants do a naughty boy ready horsed for discipline. First expostulate
the
case, then plead the necessity of the rod from great provocations, and
conclude
every period with a lash. Now, if I know anything of mankind, these
gentlemen
might very well spare their reproof and correction, for there is not
through all
Nature another so callous and insensible a member as the world’s
posteriors,
whether you apply to it the toe or the birch. Besides, most of our late
satirists seem to lie under a sort of mistake, that because nettles
have the
prerogative to sting, therefore all other weeds must do so too. I make
not this
comparison out of the least design to detract from these worthy
writers, for it
is well known among mythologists that weeds have the pre-eminence over
all other
vegetables; and therefore the first monarch of this island whose taste
and
judgment were so acute and refined, did very wisely root out the roses
from the
collar of the order and plant the thistles in their stead, as the
nobler flower
of the two. For which reason it is conjectured by profounder
antiquaries that
the satirical itch, so prevalent in this part of our island, was first
brought
among us from beyond the Tweed. Here may it long flourish and abound;
may it
survive and neglect the scorn of the world with as much ease and
contempt as the
world is insensible to the lashes of it. May their own dulness, or that
of their
party, be no discouragement for the authors to proceed; but let them
remember it
is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they
are
employed on as when they have lost their edge. Besides, those whose
teeth are
too rotten to bite are best of all others qualified to revenge that
defect with
their breath.
I
am not, like other men, to envy or undervalue the talents I cannot
reach, for
which reason I must needs bear a true honour to this large eminent sect
of our
British writers. And I hope this little panegyric will not be offensive
to their
ears, since it has the advantage of being only designed for themselves.
Indeed,
Nature herself has taken order that fame and honour should be purchased
at a
better pennyworth by satire than by any other productions of the brain,
the
world being soonest provoked to praise by lashes, as men are to love.
There is a
problem in an ancient author why dedications and other bundles of
flattery run
all upon stale musty topics, without the smallest tincture of anything
new, not
only to the torment and nauseating of the Christian reader, but, if not
suddenly
prevented, to the universal spreading of that pestilent disease the
lethargy in
this island, whereas there is very little satire which has not
something in it
untouched before. The defects of the former are usually imputed to the
want of
invention among those who are dealers in that kind; but I think with a
great
deal of injustice, the solution being easy and natural, for the
materials of
panegyric, 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 counted upon a few fingers, but his follies
and vices
are innumerable, and time adds hourly to the heap. Now the utmost a
poor poet
can do is to get by heart a list of the cardinal virtues and deal them
with his
utmost liberality to his hero or his patron. He may ring the changes as
far as
it will go, and vary his phrase till he has talked round, but the
reader quickly
finds it is all pork, with
a little variety of sauce, for there is no inventing terms of art
beyond our
ideas, and when ideas are exhausted, terms of art must be so too.
But
though the matter for panegyric were as fruitful as the topics of
satire, yet
would it not be hard to find out a sufficient reason why the latter
will be
always better received than the first; for this being bestowed only
upon one or
a few persons at a time, is sure to raise envy, and consequently ill
words, from
the rest who have no share in the blessing. But satire, being levelled
at all,
is never resented for an offence by any, since every individual person
makes
bold to understand it of others, and very wisely removes his particular
part of
the burden upon the shoulders of the World, which are broad enough and
able to
bear it. To this purpose I have sometimes reflected upon the difference
between
Athens and England with respect to the point before us. In the
Attic commonwealth
it was the
privilege and birthright of every citizen and poet to rail aloud and in
public,
or to expose upon the stage by name any person they pleased, though of
the
greatest figure, whether a Creon, an Hyperbolus, an Alcibiades, or a
Demosthenes. But, on the other side, the least reflecting word let fall
against
the people in general was immediately caught up and revenged upon the
authors,
however considerable for their quality or their merits; whereas in
England it is
just the reverse of all this. Here you may securely display your utmost
rhetoric
against mankind in the face of the world; tell them that all are gone
astray;
that there is none that doeth good, no, not one; that we live in the
very dregs
of time; that knavery and atheism are epidemic as the pox; that honesty
is fled
with Astraea; with any other common-places equally new and eloquent,
which are
furnished by the splendida bills ;
and when you have done, the whole audience, far from being offended,
shall
return you thanks as a deliverer of precious and useful truths. Nay,
further, it
is but to venture your lungs, and you may preach in Covent Garden
against
foppery and fornication, and something else; against pride, and
dissimulation,
and bribery at Whitehall. You may expose rapine and injustice in the
Inns-of-Court chapel, and in a City pulpit be as fierce as you please
against
avarice, hypocrisy, and extortion. It is but a ball bandied to and fro,
and
every man carries a racket about him to strike it from himself among
the rest of
the company. But, on the other side, whoever should mistake the nature
of things
so far as to drop but a single hint in public how such a one starved
half the
fleet, and half poisoned the rest; how such a one, from a true
principle of love
and honour, pays no debts but for wenches and play; how such a one runs
out of
his estate; how Paris, bribed by Juno and Venus, loath to offend either
party,
slept out the whole cause on the bench; or how such an orator makes long
speeches in the Senate, with much thought, little sense, and to no
purpose;—whoever, I say, should venture to be thus particular, must
expect to
be imprisoned for scandalum
magnatum,
to have challenges sent him, to be sued for defamation, and to be
brought before
the bar of the House.
But
I forget that I am expatiating on a subject wherein I have no concern,
having
neither a talent nor an inclination for satire. On the other side, I am
so
entirely satisfied with the whole present procedure of human things,
that I have
been for some years preparing material towards “A Panegyric upon the
World;”
to which I intended to add a second part, entitled “A Modest Defence of
the
Proceedings of the Rabble in all Ages.” Both these I had thoughts to
publish
by way of appendix to the following treatise; but finding my common-
place book
fill much slower than I had reason to expect, I have chosen to defer
them to
another occasion. Besides, I have been unhappily prevented in that
design by a
certain domestic misfortune, in the particulars whereof, though it
would be very
seasonable, and much in the modern way, to inform the gentle reader,
and would
also be of great assistance towards extending this preface into the
size now in
vogue—which by rule ought to be large in proportion as the subsequent
volume
is small—yet I shall now dismiss our impatient reader from any further
attendance at the porch; and having duly prepared his mind by a
preliminary
discourse, shall gladly introduce him to the sublime mysteries that
ensue.
Whoever
has an ambition to be heard in a crowd must press, and squeeze, and
thrust, and
climb with indefatigable pains, till he has exalted himself to a
certain degree
of altitude above them. Now, in all assemblies, though you wedge them
ever so
close, we may observe this peculiar property, that over their heads
there is
room enough; but how to reach it is the difficult point, it being as
hard to get
quit of number as of hell.
“—Evadere
ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est.”
To
this end the philosopher’s way in all ages has been by erecting certain
edifices in the air; but whatever practice and reputation these kind of
structures have formerly possessed, or may still continue in, not
excepting even
that of Socrates when he was suspended in a basket to help
contemplation, I
think, with due submission, they seem to labour under two
inconveniences. First,
that the foundations being laid too high, they have been often out of
sight and
ever out of hearing. Secondly, that the materials being very
transitory, have
suffered much from inclemencies of air, especially in these north-west
regions.
Therefore,
towards the just performance of this great work there remain but three
methods
that I can think on; whereof the wisdom of our ancestors being highly
sensible,
has, to encourage all aspiring adventures, thought fit to erect three
wooden
machines for the use of those orators who desire to talk much without
interruption. These are the Pulpit, the Ladder, and the Stage-
itinerant. For as
to the Bar, though it be compounded of the same matter and designed for
the same
use, it cannot, however, be well allowed the honour of a fourth, by
reason of
its level or inferior situation exposing it to perpetual interruption
from
collaterals. Neither can the Bench itself, though raised to a proper
eminency,
put in a better claim, whatever its advocates insist on. For if they
please to
look into the original design of its erection, and the circumstances or
adjuncts
subservient to that design, they will soon acknowledge the present
practice
exactly correspondent to the primitive institution, and both to answer
the
etymology of the name, which in the Phoenician tongue is a word of great
signification, importing, if literally interpreted, “The place of
sleep,”
but in common acceptation, “A seat well bolstered and cushioned, for the
repose of old and gouty limbs;” senes ut in otia tuta recedant .
Fortune being indebted to them this part of retaliation,
that as formerly they have long talked whilst others slept, so now they
may
sleep as long whilst others talk.
But
if no other argument could occur to exclude the Bench and the Bar from
the list
of oratorical machines, it were sufficient that the admission of them
would
overthrow a number which I was resolved to establish, whatever argument
it might
cost me; in imitation of that prudent method observed by many other
philosophers
and great clerks, whose chief art in division has been to grow fond of
some
proper mystical number, which their imaginations have rendered sacred
to a
degree that they force common reason to find room for it in every part
of
Nature, reducing, including, and adjusting, every genus and species
within that
compass by coupling some against their wills and banishing others at
any rate.
Now, among all the rest, the profound number THREE is
that which has most employed my sublimest
speculations, nor ever without wonderful delight. There is now in the
press, and
will be published next term, a panegyrical essay of mine upon this
number,
wherein I have, by most convincing proofs, not only reduced the senses
and the
elements under its banner, but brought over several deserters from its
two great
rivals, SEVEN and NINE.
Now,
the first of these oratorical machines, in place as well as dignity, is
the
Pulpit. Of pulpits there are in this island several sorts, but I esteem
only
that made of timber from the Sylva Caledonia, which agrees very well
with our
climate. If it be upon its decay, it is the better, both for conveyance
of sound
and for other reasons to be mentioned by and by. The degree of
perfection in
shape and size I take to consist in being extremely narrow, with little
ornament, and, best of all, without a cover; for, by ancient rule, it
ought to
be the only uncovered vessel in every assembly where it is rightfully
used, by
which means, from its near resemblance to a pillory, it will ever have
a mighty influence on human ears.
Of Ladders I need say nothing. It is observed by
foreigners themselves, to the honour of our country, that we excel all
nations
in our practice and understanding of this machine. The ascending
orators 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 he shortly designs to publish in twelve volumes in folio,
illustrated with
copper-plates,—a work highly useful and curious, and altogether worthy
of such
a hand.
The last engine of orators is the Stage-
itinerant, erected
with much sagacity, sub Jove pluvio, in triviis et quadriviis. It
is the great seminary of the two former, and its orators are sometimes
preferred
to the one and sometimes to the other, in proportion to their
deservings, there
being a strict and perpetual intercourse between all three.
From this accurate deduction it is manifest that
for
obtaining attention in public there is of necessity required a superior
position
of place. But although this point be generally granted, yet the cause
is little
agreed in; and it seems to me that very few philosophers have fallen
into a true
natural solution of this phenomenon. The deepest account, and the most
fairly
digested of any I have yet met with is this, that air being a heavy
body, and
therefore, according to the system of Epicurus ,
continually descending, must needs be more so when laden and pressed
down by
words, which are also bodies of much weight and gravity, as is manifest
from
those deep impressions they make and leave upon us, and therefore must
be
delivered from a due altitude, or else they will 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.
And I am the readier to favour this conjecture
from a
common observation, that in the several assemblies of these orators
Nature
itself has instructed the hearers to stand with their mouths open and
erected
parallel to the horizon, so as they may be intersected by a
perpendicular line
from the zenith to the centre of the earth. In which position, if the
audience
be well compact, every one carries home a share, and little or nothing
is lost.
I confess there is something yet more refined in
the
contrivance and structure of our modern theatres. For, first, the pit
is sunk
below the stage with due regard to the institution above deduced, that
whatever
weighty matter shall be delivered thence, whether it be lead or gold,
may fall
plump into the jaws of certain critics, as I think they are called,
which stand
ready open to devour them. Then the boxes are built round and raised to
a level
with the scene, in deference to the ladies, because that large portion
of wit
laid out in raising pruriences and protuberances is observed to run
much upon a
line, and ever in a circle. The whining passions and little starved
conceits are
gently wafted up by their own extreme levity to the middle region, and
there fix
and are frozen by the frigid understandings of the inhabitants. Bombast
and
buffoonery, by nature lofty and light, soar highest of all, and would
be lost in
the 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 in their passage.
Now this physico-logical scheme of oratorical
receptacles
or machines contains a great mystery, being a type, a sign, an emblem,
a shadow,
a symbol, bearing analogy to the spacious commonwealth of writers and
to those
methods by which they must exalt themselves to a certain eminency above
the
inferior world. By the Pulpit are adumbrated the writings of our modern
saints
in Great Britain, as they have spiritualised and refined them from the
dross and
grossness of sense and human reason. The matter, as we have said, is of
rotten
wood, and that upon two considerations: because it is the quality of
rotten wood
to light in the dark; and secondly, because its cavities are full of
worms—which is a type with a pair of handles, having a respect to the
two
principal qualifications of the orator and the two different fates
attending
upon his works.
The Ladder is an adequate symbol of faction and
of poetry,
to both of which so noble a number of authors are indebted for their
fame. Of
faction, because .(Hiatus in MS.). Of poetry, because its orators do
perorare
with a song; and because, climbing up by slow degrees, fate is sure to
turn them
off before they can reach within many steps of the top; and because it
is a
preferment attained by transferring of propriety and a confounding of
meum and
tuum.
Under the Stage-itinerant are couched those
productions
designed for the pleasure and delight of mortal man, such as “Six
Pennyworth
of Wit,” “Westminster Drolleries,” “Delightful Tales,” “Complete
Jesters,” and the like, by which the writers of and for Grub Street
have in
these later ages so nobly triumphed over time, have clipped his 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 be adopted a member of that illustrious fraternity.
Now, I am not unaware how the productions of the
Grub
Street brotherhood have of late years fallen under many prejudices, nor
how it
has been the perpetual employment of two junior start-up societies to
ridicule
them and their authors as unworthy their established post in the
commonwealth of
wit and learning. Their own consciences will easily inform them whom I
mean; nor
has the world been so negligent a looker-on as not to observe the
continual
efforts made by the societies of Gresham and of Will’s
to edify a name and reputation upon the ruin of ours. And this is yet a
more
feeling grief to us, upon the regards of tenderness as well as of
justice, when
we reflect on their proceedings not only as unjust, but as ungrateful,
undutiful, and unnatural. For how can it be forgot by the world or
themselves,
to say nothing of our own records, which are full and clear in the
point, that
they both are seminaries, not only of our planting, but our watering
too. I am
informed our two rivals have lately made an offer to enter into the
lists with
united forces and challenge us to a comparison of books, both as to
weight and
number. In return to which, with license from our president, I humbly
offer two
answers. First, we say the proposal is like that which Archimedes made
upon a
smaller affair ,
including an
impossibility in the practice; for where can they find scales of
capacity enough
for the first, or an arithmetician of capacity enough for the second.
Secondly,
we are ready to accept the challenge, but with this condition, that a
third
indifferent person be assigned, to whose impartial judgment it shall be
left to
decide which society each book, treatise, or pamphlet do most properly
belong
to. This point, God knows, is very far from being fixed at present, for
we are
ready to produce a catalogue of some thousands which in all common
justice ought
to be entitled to our fraternity, but by the revolted and newfangled
writers
most perfidiously ascribed to the others. Upon all which we think it
very
unbecoming our prudence that the determination should be remitted to
the authors
themselves, when our adversaries by briguing and caballing have caused
so
universal a defection from us, that the greatest part of our society
has already
deserted to them, and our nearest friends begin to stand aloof, as if
they were
half ashamed to own us.
This is the utmost I am authorised to say upon so
ungrateful and melancholy a subject, because we are extremely unwilling
to
inflame a controversy whose continuance may be so fatal to the
interests of us
all, desiring much rather that things be amicably composed; and we
shall so far
advance on our side as to be ready to receive the two prodigals with
open arms
whenever they shall think fit to return from their husks and their
harlots,
which I think, from the present course of their studies, they most
properly may
be said to be engaged in, and, like an indulgent parent, continue to
them our
affection and our blessing.
But the greatest maim given to that general
reception
which the writings of our society have formerly received, next to the
transitory
state of all sublunary things, has been a superficial vein among many
readers of
the present age, who will by no means be persuaded to inspect beyond
the surface
and the rind of things; whereas wisdom is a fox, who, after long
hunting, will
at last cost you the pains to dig out. It is a cheese which, by how
much the
richer, has the thicker, the homelier, and the coarser coat, and
whereof to a
judicious palate the maggots are the best. It is a sack-posset, wherein
the
deeper you go you will find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a hen whose
cackling we
must value and consider, because it 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 you with nothing but a worm. In consequence of these momentous
truths, the
Grubaean sages have always chosen to convey their precepts and their
arts shut
up within the vehicles of types and fables; which having been perhaps
more
careful and curious in adorning than was altogether necessary, it has
fared with
these vehicles after the usual fate of coaches over-finely painted and
gilt,
that the transitory gazers have so dazzled their eyes and filled their
imaginations with the outward lustre, as neither to regard nor consider
the
person or the parts of the owner within. A misfortune we undergo with
somewhat
less reluctancy, because it has been common to us with Pythagoras,
AEsop,
Socrates, and other of our predecessors.
However, that neither the world nor ourselves may
any
longer suffer by such misunderstandings, I have been prevailed on,
after much
importunity from my friends, to travail in a complete and laborious
dissertation
upon the prime productions of our society, which, besides their
beautiful
externals for the gratification of superficial readers, have darkly and
deeply
couched under them the most finished and refined systems of all
sciences and
arts, as I do not doubt to lay open by untwisting or unwinding, and
either to
draw up by exantlation or display by incision.
This great work was entered upon some years ago
by one of
our most eminent members. He began with the “History of Reynard the
Fox,”
but neither lived to publish his essay nor to proceed farther in so
useful an
attempt, which is very much to be lamented, because the discovery he
made and
communicated to his friends is now universally received; nor do I think
any of
the learned will dispute that famous treatise to be a complete body of
civil
knowledge, and the revelation, or rather the apocalypse, of all state
arcana.
But the progress I have made is much greater, having already finished my
annotations upon several dozens from some of which I shall impart a few
hints to
the candid reader, as far as will be necessary to the conclusion at
which I aim.
The first piece I have handled is that of “Tom
Thumb,”
whose author was a Pythagorean philosopher. This dark treatise contains
the
whole scheme of the metempsychosis, deducing the progress of the soul
through
all her stages.
The next is “Dr. Faustus,” penned by Artephius, an
author bonae notae and an adeptus; he published it in the nine hundred
and
eighty-fourth year of
his age;
this writer proceeds wholly by reincrudation, or in the via humida; and
the
marriage between Faustus and Helen does most conspicuously dilucidate
the
fermenting of 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
Jerusalem Misna, and its just preference to that of Babylon, contrary
to the
vulgar opinion.
“The Hind and Panther.” This is the masterpiece
of a
famous writer now living, intended for a complete abstract of sixteen
thousand
schoolmen from Scotus to Bellarmine.
“Tommy Potts.” Another piece, supposed by the same
hand, by way of supplement to the former.
The “Wise Men of Gotham,” cum Appendice. This is a
treatise of immense erudition, being the great original and fountain of
those
arguments bandied about both in France and England, for a just defence
of modern
learning and wit, against the presumption, the pride, and the ignorance
of the
ancients. This unknown author hath so exhausted the subject, that a
penetrating
reader will easily discover whatever has been written since upon that
dispute to
be little more than repetition. An abstract of this treatise has been
lately
published by a worthy member of our society.
These notices may serve to give the learned
reader an idea
as well as a taste of what the whole work is likely to produce, wherein
I have
now altogether circumscribed my thoughts and my studies; and if I can
bring it
to a perfection before I die, shall reckon I have well employed the
poor remains
of an unfortunate life. This indeed is more than I can justly expect
from a
quill worn to the pith in the service of the State, in pros and cons
upon Popish
Plots, and Meal Tubs, and Exclusion Bills, and Passive Obedience, and
Addresses
of Lives and Fortunes; and Prerogative, and Property, and Liberty of
Conscience,
and Letters to a Friend: from an understanding and a conscience,
threadbare and
ragged with perpetual turning; from a head broken in a hundred places
by the
malignants of the opposite factions, and from a body spent with poxes
ill cured,
by trusting to bawds and surgeons, who (as it afterwards appeared) were
professed enemies to me and the Government, and revenged their party’s
quarrel
upon my nose and shins. Fourscore and eleven pamphlets have I written
under
three reigns, and for the service of six-and-thirty factions. But
finding the
State has no farther occasion for me and my ink, I retire willingly to
draw it
out into speculations more becoming a philosopher, having, to my
unspeakable
comfort, passed a long life with a conscience void of offence towards
God and
towards men.
But to return. I am assured from the reader’s
candour
that the brief specimen I have given will easily clear all the rest of
our
society’s productions from an aspersion grown, as it is manifest, out
of envy
and ignorance, that they are of little farther use or value to mankind
beyond
the common entertainments of their wit and their style; for these I am
sure have
never yet been disputed by our keenest adversaries; in both which, as
well as
the more profound and most mystical part, I have throughout this
treatise
closely followed the most applauded originals. And to render all
complete I have
with much thought and application of mind so ordered that the chief
title
prefixed to it (I mean that under which I design it shall pass in the
common
conversation of court and town) is modelled exactly after the manner
peculiar to
our society.
I confess to have been somewhat liberal in the
business of
titles, having observed the humour of multiplying them, to bear great
vogue
among certain writers, whom I exceedingly reverence. And indeed it
seems not
unreasonable that books, the children of the brain, should have the
honour to be
christened with variety of names, as well as other infants of quality.
Our
famous Dryden has ventured to proceed a point farther, endeavouring to
introduce
also a multiplicity of godfathers, which is an improvement of much more
advantage, upon a very obvious account. It is a pity this admirable
invention
has not been better cultivated, so as to grow by this time into general
imitation, when such an authority serves it for a precedent. Nor have my
endeavours been wanting to second so useful an example, but it seems
there is an
unhappy expense usually annexed to the calling of a godfather, which
was clearly
out of my head, as it is very reasonable to believe. Where the pinch
lay, I
cannot certainly affirm; but having employed a world of thoughts and
pains to
split my treatise into forty sections, and having entreated forty Lords
of my
acquaintance that they would do me the honour to stand, they all made
it matter
of conscience, and sent me their excuses.
Once upon a time there was a man who had three
sons by one
wife and all at a
birth, neither
could the midwife tell certainly which was the eldest. Their father
died while
they were young, and upon his death-bed, calling the lads to him, spoke
thus:—
“Sons, because I have purchased no estate, nor
was born
to any, I have long considered of some good legacies to bequeath you,
and at
last, with much care as well as expense, have provided each of you
(here they
are) a new coat. Now, you are to understand that these coats have two
virtues
contained in them; one is, that with good wearing they will last you
fresh and
sound as long as you live; the other is, that they will grow in the same
proportion with your bodies, lengthening and widening of themselves, so
as to be
always fit. Here, let me see them on you before I die. So, very well!
Pray,
children, wear them clean and brush them often. You will find in my
will (here
it is) full instructions in every particular concerning the wearing and
management of your coats, wherein you must be very exact to avoid the
penalties
I have appointed for every transgression or neglect, upon which your
future
fortunes will entirely depend. I have also commanded in my will that
you should
live together in one house like brethren and friends, for then you will
be sure
to thrive and not otherwise.”
Here the story says this good father died, and
the three
sons went all together to seek their fortunes.
I shall not trouble you with recounting what
adventures
they met for the first seven years, any farther than by taking notice
that they
carefully observed their father’s will and kept their coats in very good
order; that they travelled through several countries, encountered a
reasonable
quantity of giants, and slew certain dragons.
Being now arrived at the proper age for producing
themselves, they came up to town and fell in love with the ladies, but
especially three, who about that time were in chief reputation, the
Duchess
d’Argent, Madame de Grands-Titres, and the Countess d’Orgueil. On their
first appearance, our three adventurers met with a very bad reception,
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 said nothing; they drank, and fought, and slept, and
swore, and
took snuff; they went to new plays on the first night, haunted the
chocolate-houses, beat the watch; they bilked hackney-coachmen, ran in
debt with
shopkeepers, and lay with their wives; they killed bailiffs, kicked
fiddlers
down-stairs, ate at Locket’s, loitered at Will’s; they talked of the
drawing-room and never came there; dined with lords they never saw;
whispered a
duchess and spoke never a word; exposed the scrawls of their laundress
for
billet-doux of quality; came ever just from court and were never seen
in it;
attended the levee sub dio; got a list of peers by heart in one
company, and
with great familiarity retailed them in another. Above all, they
constantly
attended those committees of Senators who are silent in the House and
loud in
the coffeehouse, where they nightly adjourn to chew the cud of
politics, and are
encompassed with a ring of disciples who lie in wait to catch up their
droppings. The three brothers had acquired forty other qualifications
of the
like stamp too tedious to recount, and by consequence were justly
reckoned the
most accomplished persons in town. But all would not suffice, and the
ladies
aforesaid continued still inflexible. To clear up which difficulty, I
must, with
the reader’s good leave and patience, have recourse to some points of
weight
which the authors of that age have not sufficiently illustrated.
For about this time it happened a sect arose
whose tenets
obtained and spread very far, especially in the grand monde, and among
everybody
of good fashion. They worshipped a sort of idol ,
who, as their doctrine delivered, did daily create men by a kind of
manufactory
operation. This idol they placed in the highest parts of the house on
an altar
erected about three feet. He was shown in the posture of a Persian
emperor
sitting on a superficies with his legs interwoven under him. This god
had a
goose for his ensign, whence it is that some learned men pretend to
deduce his
original from Jupiter Capitolinus. At his left hand, beneath the altar,
Hell
seemed to open and catch at the animals the idol was creating, to
prevent which,
certain of his priests hourly flung in pieces of the uninformed mass or
substance, and sometimes whole limbs already enlivened, which that
horrid gulph
insatiably swallowed, terrible to behold. The goose was also held a
subaltern
divinity or Deus minorum gentium, before whose shrine was sacrificed
that
creature whose hourly food is human gore, and who is in so great renown
abroad
for being the delight and favourite of the Egyptian Cercopithecus .
Millions of these animals were cruelly slaughtered every day to appease
the
hunger of that consuming deity. The chief idol was also worshipped as
the
inventor of the yard and the needle, whether as the god of seamen, or
on account
of certain other mystical attributes, hath not been sufficiently
cleared.
The worshippers of this deity had also a system
of their
belief which seemed to turn upon the following fundamental. They held
the
universe to be a large suit of clothes which invests everything; that
the earth
is invested by the air; the air is invested by the stars; and the stars
are
invested by the Primum Mobile. Look on this globe of earth, you will
find it to
be a very complete and fashionable dress. What is that which some call
land but
a fine coat faced with green, or the sea but a waistcoat of water-
tabby? Proceed
to the particular works of the creation, you will find how curious
journeyman
Nature hath been to trim up the vegetable beaux; observe how sparkish a
periwig
adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet of white satin is
worn by
the birch. To conclude from all, what is man himself but a microcoat,
or rather
a complete suit of clothes with all its trimmings? As to his body there
can be
no dispute, but examine even the acquirements of his mind, you will
find them
all contribute in their order towards furnishing out an exact dress. To
instance
no more, is not religion a cloak, honesty a pair of shoes worn out in
the dirt,
self-love a surtout, vanity a shirt, and conscience a pair of breeches,
which,
though a cover for lewdness as well as nastiness, is easily slipped
down for the
service of both.
These postulata being admitted, it will follow in
due
course of reasoning that those beings which the world calls improperly
suits of
clothes are in reality the most refined species of animals, or to
proceed
higher, that they are rational creatures or men. For is it not manifest
that
they live, and move, and talk, and perform all other offices of human
life? Are
not beauty, and wit, and mien, and breeding their inseparable
proprieties? In
short, we see nothing but them, hear nothing but them. Is it not they
who walk
the streets, fill up Parliament-, coffee-, play-, bawdy-houses. It is
true,
indeed, that these animals, which are vulgarly called suits of clothes
or
dresses, do according to certain compositions receive different
appellations. If
one of them be trimmed up with a gold chain, and a red gown, and a
white rod,
and a great horse, it is called a Lord Mayor; if certain ermines and
furs be
placed in a certain position, we style them a judge, and so an apt
conjunction
of lawn and black satin we entitle a Bishop.
Others of these professors, though agreeing in
the main
system, were yet more refined upon certain branches of it; and held
that man was
an animal compounded of two dresses, the natural and the celestial
suit, which
were the body and the soul; that the soul was the outward, and the body
the
inward clothing; that the latter was ex traduce, but the former of daily
creation and circumfusion. This last they proved by Scripture, because
in them
we live, and move, and have our being: as likewise by philosophy,
because they
are all in all, and all in every part. Besides, said they, separate
these two,
and you will find the body to be only a senseless unsavoury carcass. By
all
which it is manifest that the outward dress must needs be the soul.
To this system of religion were tagged several
subaltern
doctrines, which were entertained with great vogue; as particularly the
faculties of the mind were deduced by the learned among them in this
manner:
embroidery was sheer wit, gold fringe was agreeable conversation, gold
lace was
repartee, a huge long periwig was humour, and a coat full of powder was
very
good raillery. All which required abundance of finesse and delicatesse
to manage
with advantage, as well as a strict observance after times and
fashions.
I have with much pains and reading collected out
of
ancient authors this short summary of a body of philosophy and divinity
which
seems to have been composed by a vein and race of thinking very
different from
any other systems, either ancient or modern. And it was not merely to
entertain
or satisfy the reader’s curiosity, but rather to give him light into
several
circumstances of the following story, that, knowing the state of
dispositions
and opinions in an age so remote, he may better comprehend those great
events
which were the issue of them. I advise, therefore, the courteous reader
to
peruse with a world of application, again and again, whatever I have
written
upon this matter. And so leaving these broken ends, I carefully gather
up the
chief thread of my story, and proceed.
These opinions, therefore, were so universal, as
well as
the practices of them, among the refined part of court and town, that
our three
brother adventurers, as their circumstances then stood, were strangely
at a
loss. For, on the one side, the three ladies they addressed themselves
to (whom
we have named already) were ever at the very top of the fashion, and
abhorred
all that were below it but the breadth of a hair. On the other side,
their
father’s will was very precise, and it was the main precept in it, with
the
greatest penalties annexed, not to add to or diminish from their coats
one
thread without a positive command in the will. Now the coats their
father had
left them were, it is true, of very good cloth, and besides, so neatly
sewn you
would swear they were all of a piece, but, at the same time, very
plain, with
little or no ornament; and it happened that before they were a month in
town
great shoulder-knots came up. Straight all the world was shoulder-
knots; no
approaching the ladies’ ruelles without the quota of shoulder-
knots. “That
fellow,” cries one, “has no soul: where is his shoulder-knot?” Our
three brethren soon discovered their want by sad experience, meeting in
their
walks with forty mortifications and indignities. If they went to the
playhouse,
the doorkeeper showed them into the twelve-penny gallery. If they
called a boat,
says a waterman, “I am first sculler.” If they stepped into the “Rose”
to take a bottle, the drawer would cry, “Friend, we sell no ale.” If
they
went to visit a lady, a footman met them at the door with “Pray, send
up your
message.” In this unhappy case they went immediately to consult their
father’s will, read it over and over, but not a word of the shoulder-
knot.
What should they do? What temper should they find? Obedience was
absolutely
necessary, and yet shoulder-knots appeared extremely requisite. After
much
thought, one of the brothers, who happened to be more book-learned than
the
other two, said he had found an expedient. “It is true,” said he, “there
is nothing here in this will, totidem verbis, making mention of
shoulder-knots,
but I dare conjecture we may find them inclusive, or totidem syllabis.”
This
distinction was immediately approved by all; and so they fell again to
examine
the will. But their evil star had so directed the matter that the first
syllable
was not to be found in the whole writing; upon which disappointment, he
who
found the former evasion took heart, and said, “Brothers, there is yet
hopes;
for though we cannot find them totidem verbis nor totidem syllabis, I
dare
engage we shall make them out tertio modo or totidem literis.” This
discovery
was also highly commended, upon which they fell once more to the
scrutiny, and
soon picked out S, H, O, U, L, D, E, R, when the same
planet, enemy to their repose, had wonderfully contrived that a K was
not to be
found. Here was a weighty difficulty! But the distinguishing brother
(for whom
we shall hereafter find a name), now his hand was in, proved by a very
good
argument that K was a modern illegitimate letter, unknown to the
learned ages,
nor anywhere to be found in ancient manuscripts. “It is true,” said he,
“the word Calendae, had in Q. V. C. been
sometimes writ with a K, but erroneously, for in the best copies it is
ever
spelt with a C; and by consequence it was a gross mistake in our
language to
spell ‘knot’ with a K,” but that from henceforward he would take care it
should be writ with a C. Upon this all further difficulty vanished;
shoulder-knots were made clearly out to be jure paterno, and our three
gentlemen
swaggered with as large and as flaunting ones as the best.
But
as human happiness is of a very short duration, so in those days were
human
fashions, upon which it entirely depends. Shoulder-knots had their
time, and we
must now imagine them in their decline, for a certain lord came just
from Paris
with fifty yards of gold lace upon his coat, exactly trimmed after the
court
fashion of that month. In two days all mankind appeared closed up in
bars of
gold lace. Whoever durst peep abroad without his complement of gold
lace was as
scandalous as a ——, and as ill received among the women. What should our
three knights do in this momentous affair? They had sufficiently
strained a
point already in the affair of shoulder-knots. Upon recourse to the
will,
nothing appeared there but altum
silentium.
That of the shoulder-knots
was a loose, flying, circumstantial point, but this of gold lace seemed
too
considerable an alteration without better warrant. It did aliquo modo
essentiae
adhaerere, and therefore required a positive precept. But about this
time it
fell out that the learned brother aforesaid had read “Aristotelis
Dialectica,” and especially that wonderful piece de Interpretatione,
which has
the faculty of teaching its readers to find out a meaning in everything
but
itself, like commentators on the Revelations, who proceed prophets
without
understanding a syllable of the text. “Brothers,” said he, “you are to
be
informed that of wills, duo sunt genera, nuncupatory and
scriptory, that
in the scriptory will here before us there is no precept or mention
about gold
lace, conceditur, but si idem affirmetur de nuncupatorio
negatur.
For, brothers, if you remember, we heard a fellow say when we were boys
that he
heard my father’s man say that he heard my father say that he would
advise his
sons to get gold lace on their coats as soon as ever they could procure
money to
buy it.” “That is very true,” cries the other. “I remember it perfectly
well,” said the third. And so, without more ado, they got the largest
gold
lace in the parish, and walked about as fine as lords.
A
while after, there came up all in fashion a pretty sort of flame-
coloured satin for
linings, and the mercer brought a pattern of it immediately to our three
gentlemen. “An please your worships,” said he, “my Lord C—— and Sir J.
W. had linings out of this very piece last night; it takes wonderfully,
and I
shall not have a remnant left enough to make my wife a pin-cushion by
to-morrow
morning at ten o’clock.” Upon this they fell again to rummage the will,
because the present case also required a positive precept, the lining
being held
by orthodox writers to be of the essence of the coat. After long search
they
could fix upon nothing to the matter in hand, except a short advice in
their
father’s will to take care of fire and put out their candles before
they went
to sleep . This, though
a good
deal for the purpose, and helping very far towards self-conviction, yet
not
seeming wholly of force to establish a command, and being resolved to
avoid
farther scruple, as well as future occasion for scandal, says he that
was the
scholar, “I remember to have read in wills of a codicil annexed, which
is
indeed a part of the will, and what it contains hath equal authority
with the
rest. Now I have been considering of this same will here before us, and
I cannot
reckon it to be complete for want of such a codicil. I will therefore
fasten one
in its proper place very dexterously. I have had it by me some time; it
was
written by a dog-keeper of my grandfather’s, and talks a great deal, as
good
luck would have it, of this very flame-coloured satin.” The project was
immediately approved by the other two; an old parchment scroll was
tagged on
according to art, in the form of a codicil annexed, and the satin
bought and
worn.
Next
winter a player, hired for the purpose by the Corporation of
Fringemakers, acted
his part in a new comedy, all covered with silver fringe, and according
to the
laudable custom gave rise to that fashion. Upon which the brothers,
consulting
their father’s will, to their great astonishment found these
words: “Item, I
charge and command my said three sons to wear no sort of silver fringe
upon or
about their said coats,” &c., with a penalty in case of
disobedience too
long here to insert. However, after some pause, the brother so often
mentioned
for his erudition, who was well skilled in criticisms, had found in a
certain
author, which he said should be nameless, that the same word which in
the will
is called fringe does also signify a broom-stick, and doubtless ought
to have
the same interpretation in this paragraph. This another of the brothers
disliked, because of that epithet silver, which could not, he humbly
conceived,
in propriety of speech be reasonably applied to a broom-stick; but it
was
replied upon him that this epithet was understood in a mythological and
allegorical sense. However, he objected again why their father should
forbid
them to wear a broom-stick on their coats, a caution that seemed
unnatural and
impertinent; upon which he was taken up short, as one that spoke
irreverently of
a mystery which doubtless was very useful and significant, but ought
not to be
over-curiously pried into or nicely reasoned upon. And in short, their
father’s authority being now considerably sunk, this expedient was
allowed to
serve as a lawful dispensation for wearing their full proportion of
silver
fringe.
A
while after was revived an old fashion, long antiquated, of embroidery
with
Indian figures of men, women, and children .
Here they had no occasion to examine the will. They remembered but too
well how
their father had always abhorred this fashion; that he made several
paragraphs
on purpose, importing his utter detestation of it, and bestowing his
everlasting
curse to his sons whenever they should wear it. For all this, in a few
days they
appeared higher in the fashion than anybody else in the town. But they
solved
the matter by saying that these figures were not at all the same with
those 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 the public. That these rigorous clauses in
the will
did therefore require some allowance and a favourable interpretation,
and ought
to be understood cum grano salis.
But
fashions perpetually altering in that age, the scholastic brother grew
weary of
searching further evasions and solving everlasting contradictions.
Resolved,
therefore, at all hazards to comply 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 (I have forgot which), and
trouble
themselves no farther to examine it, but only refer to its authority
whenever
they thought fit. In consequence whereof, a while after it grew a
general mode
to wear an infinite number of points, most of them tagged with silver;
upon
which the scholar pronounced ex cathedra that
points were absolutely jure patern as they might very well remember. It
is true,
indeed, the fashion prescribed somewhat more than were directly named
in the
will; however, that they, as heirs-general of their father, had power
to make
and add certain clauses for public emolument, though not deducible
todidem
verbis from the letter of the will, or else multa absurda sequerentur.
This was
understood for canonical, and therefore on the following Sunday they
came to
church all covered with points.
The
learned brother so often mentioned was reckoned the best scholar in all
that or
the next street to it; insomuch, as having run something behindhand
with the
world, he obtained the favour from a certain lord to
receive him into his house and to teach his children. A while after the
lord
died, and he, by long practice upon his father’s will, found the way of
contriving a deed of conveyance of that house to himself and his heirs;
upon
which he took possession, turned the young squires out, and received his
brothers in their stead.
Though
I have been hitherto as cautious as I could, upon all occasions, most
nicely to
follow the rules and methods of writing laid down by the example of our
illustrious moderns, yet has the unhappy shortness of my memory led me
into an
error, from which I must immediately extricate myself, before I can
decently
pursue my principal subject. I confess with shame it was an unpardonable
omission to proceed so far as I have already done before I had
performed the due
discourses, expostulatory, supplicate, or deprecatory, with my good
lords the
critics. Towards some atonement for this grievous neglect, I do here
make humbly
bold to present them with a short account of themselves and their art,
by
looking into the original and pedigree of the word, as it is generally
understood among us, and very briefly considering the ancient and
present state
thereof.
By
the word critic, at this day so frequent in all conversations, there
have
sometimes been distinguished three very different species of mortal men,
according as I have read in ancient books and pamphlets. For first, by
this term
were understood such persons as invented or drew up rules for
themselves and the
world, by observing which a careful reader might be able to pronounce
upon the
productions of the learned, form his taste to a true relish of the
sublime and
the admirable, and divide every beauty of matter or of style from the
corruption
that apes it. In their common perusal of books, singling out the errors
and
defects, the nauseous, the fulsome, the dull, and the impertinent, with
the
caution of a man that walks through Edinburgh streets in a morning, who
is
indeed as careful as he can to watch diligently and spy out the filth
in his
way; not that he is curious to observe the colour and complexion of the
ordure
or take its dimensions, much less to be paddling in or tasting it, but
only with
a design to come out as cleanly as he may. These men seem, though very
erroneously, to have understood the appellation of critic in a literal
sense;
that one principal part of his office was to praise and acquit, and
that a
critic who sets up to read only for an occasion of censure and reproof
is a
creature as barbarous as a judge who should take up a resolution to
hang all men
that came before him upon a trial.
Again,
by the word critic have been meant the restorers of ancient learning
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 to my purpose.
The
third and noblest sort is that of the true critic, whose original is
the most
ancient of all. Every true critic is a hero born, descending in a
direct line
from a celestial stem, by Momus and Hybris, who begat Zoilus, who begat
Tigellius, who begat Etcaetera the elder, who begat Bentley, and Rymer,
and
Wotton, and Perrault, and Dennis, who begat Etcaetera the younger.
And
these are the critics from whom the commonwealth of learning has in all
ages
received such immense benefits, that the gratitude of their admirers
placed
their origin in heaven, among those of Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, and
other
great deservers of mankind. But heroic virtue itself hath not been
exempt from
the obloquy of evil 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 of
those
monsters they subdued; and therefore, to render their obligations more
complete,
when all other vermin were destroyed, should in conscience have
concluded with
the same justice upon themselves, as Hercules most generously did, and
hath upon
that score procured for himself more temples and votaries than the best
of his
fellows. For these reasons I suppose it is why some have conceived it
would be
very expedient for the public good of learning that every true critic,
as soon
as he had finished his task assigned, should immediately deliver
himself up to
rats bane or hemp, or from some convenient altitude, and that no man’s
pretensions to so illustrious a character should by any means be
received before
that operation was performed.
Now,
from this heavenly descent of criticism, and the close analogy it bears
to
heroic virtue, it is easy to assign the proper employment of a true,
ancient,
genuine critic: which is, to travel through this vast world of
writings; to
peruse and hunt those monstrous faults bred within them; to drag out
the lurking
errors, like Cacus from his den; to multiply them like Hydra’s heads;
and rake
them together like Augeas’s dung; or else to drive away a sort of
dangerous
fowl who have a perverse inclination to plunder the best branches of
the tree of
knowledge, like those Stymphalian birds that ate up the fruit.
These
reasoning will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic:
that he
is a discoverer and collector of writers’ faults; which may be further
put
beyond dispute by the following demonstration:— That whoever will
examine the
writings in all kinds wherewith this ancient sect hath honoured the
world, shall
immediately find from the whole thread and tenor of them that the ideas
of the
authors have been altogether conversant and taken up with the faults,
and
blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers, and let the
subject
treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely
possessed and
replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of
what is
bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole
appears to
be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms themselves have
made.
Having
thus briefly considered the original and office of a critic, as the
word is
understood in its most noble and universal acceptation, I proceed to
refute the
objections of those who argue from the silence and pretermission of
authors, by
which they pretend to prove that the very art of criticism, as now
exercised,
and by me explained, is wholly modern, and consequently that the
critics of
Great Britain and France have no title to an original so ancient and
illustrious
as I have deduced. Now, if I can clearly make out, on the contrary,
that the
most ancient writers have particularly described both the person and
the office
of a true critic agreeable to the definition laid down by me, their
grand
objection—from the silence of authors—will fall to the ground.
I
confess to have for a long time borne a part in this general error,
from which I
should never have acquitted myself but through the assistance of our
noble
moderns, whose most edifying volumes I turn indefatigably over night
and day,
for the improvement of my mind and the good of my country. These have
with
unwearied pains made many useful searches into the weak sides of the
ancients,
and given us a comprehensive list of them.
Besides, they have proved beyond contradiction that the very finest
things
delivered of old have been long since invented and brought to light by
much
later pens, and that the noblest discoveries those ancients ever made
in art or
nature have all been produced by the transcending genius of the present
age,
which clearly shows how little merit those ancients can justly pretend
to, and
takes off that blind admiration paid them by men in a corner, who have
the
unhappiness of conversing too little with present things. Reflecting
maturely
upon all this, and taking in the whole compass of human nature, I easily
concluded that these ancients, highly sensible of their many
imperfections, must
needs have endeavoured, from some passages in their works, to obviate,
soften,
or divert the censorious reader, by satire or panegyric upon the true
critics,
in imitation of their masters, the moderns. Now, in the
commonplaces of
both these I was plentifully instructed by a long course of useful
study in
prefaces and prologues, and therefore immediately resolved to try what
I could
discover of either, by a diligent perusal of the most ancient writers,
and
especially those who treated of the earliest times.
Here
I found, to my great surprise, that although they all entered upon
occasion into
particular descriptions of the true critic, according as they were
governed by
their fears or their hopes, yet whatever they touched of that kind was
with
abundance of caution, adventuring no further than mythology and
hieroglyphic.
This, I suppose, gave ground to superficial readers for urging the
silence of
authors against the antiquity of the true critic, though the types are
so
apposite, and the applications so necessary and natural, that it is not
easy to
conceive how any reader of modern eye and taste could overlook them. I
shall
venture from a great number to produce a few which I am very confident
will put
this question beyond doubt.
It
well deserves considering that these ancient writers, in treating
enigmatically
upon this subject, have generally fixed upon the very same hieroglyph,
varying
only the story according to their affections or their wit. For first,
Pausanias
is of opinion that the perfection of writing correct was entirely owing
to the
institution of critics, and that he can possibly mean no other than the
true
critic is, I think, manifest enough from the following description. He
says they
were a race of men who delighted to nibble at the superfluities and
excrescences
of books, which the learned at length observing, took warning of their
own
accord to lop the luxuriant, the rotten, the dead, the sapless, and the
overgrown branches from their works. But now all this he cunningly
shades under
the following allegory: That the Nauplians in Argia learned the art of
pruning
their vines by observing that when an ass had browsed upon one of them,
it
thrived the better and bore fairer fruit. But Herodotus holding the
very same
hieroglyph, speaks much plainer and almost in terminis. He hath been so
bold as
to tax the true critics of ignorance and malice, telling us openly, for
I think
nothing can be plainer, that in the western part of Libya there were
asses with
horns, upon which relation Ctesias yet
refines, mentioning the very same animal about India; adding, that
whereas all
other asses wanted a gall, these horned ones were so redundant in that
part that
their flesh was not to be eaten because of its extreme bitterness.
Now,
the reason why those ancient writers treated this subject only by types
and
figures was because they durst not make open attacks against a party so
potent
and so terrible as the critics of those ages were, whose very voice was
so
dreadful that a legion of authors would tremble and drop their pens at
the
sound. For so Herodotus tells us expressly in another place how a vast
army of
Scythians was put to flight in a panic terror by the braying of an ass.
From
hence it is conjectured by certain profound philologers, that the great
awe and
reverence paid to a true critic by the writers of Britain have been
derived to
us from those our Scythian ancestors. In short, this dread was so
universal,
that in process of time those authors who had a mind to publish their
sentiments
more freely in describing the true critics of their several ages, were
forced to
leave off the use of the former hieroglyph as too nearly approaching the
prototype, and invented other terms instead thereof that were more
cautious and
mystical. So Diodorus, speaking to the same purpose, ventures no
farther than to
say that in the mountains of Helicon there grows a certain weed which
bears a
flower of so damned a scent as to poison those who offer to smell it.
Lucretius
gives exactly the same relation.
“Est etiam in magnis Heliconis montibus arbos,
Floris
odore hominem retro consueta necare.”—Lib. 6.
But
Ctesias, whom we lately quoted, has been a great deal bolder; he had
been used
with much severity by the true critics of his own age, and therefore
could not
forbear to leave behind him at least one deep mark of his vengeance
against the
whole tribe. His meaning is so near the surface that I wonder how it
possibly
came to be overlooked by those who deny the antiquity of the true
critics. For
pretending to make a description of many strange animals about India,
he has set
down these remarkable words. “Among the rest,” says he, “there is a
serpent that wants teeth, and consequently cannot bite, but if its
vomit (to
which it is much addicted) happens to fall upon anything, a certain
rottenness
or corruption ensues. These serpents are generally found among the
mountains
where jewels grow, and they frequently emit a poisonous juice, whereof
whoever
drinks, that person’s brain flies out of his nostrils.”
There
was also among the ancients a sort of critic, not distinguished in
specie from
the former but in growth or degree, who seem to have been only the
tyros or
junior scholars, yet because of their differing employments they are
frequently
mentioned as a sect by themselves. The usual exercise of these young
students
was to attend constantly at theatres, and learn to spy out the worst
parts of
the play, whereof they were obliged carefully to take note, and render a
rational account to their tutors. Fleshed at these smaller sports, like
young
wolves, they grew up in time to be nimble and strong enough for hunting
down
large game. For it has been observed, both among ancients and moderns,
that a
true critic has one quality in common with a whore and an alderman,
never to
change his title or his nature; that a grey critic has been certainly a
green
one, the perfections and acquirements of his age being only the
improved talents
of his youth, like hemp, which some naturalists inform us is bad for
suffocations, though taken but in the seed. I esteem the invention, or
at least
the refinement of prologues, to have been owing to these younger
proficients, of
whom Terence makes frequent and honourable mention, under the name of
Malevoli.
Now
it is certain the institution of the true critics was of absolute
necessity to
the commonwealth of learning. For all human actions seem to be divided
like
Themistocles and his company. One man can fiddle, and another can make
a small
town a great city; and he that cannot do either one or the other
deserves to be
kicked out of the creation. The avoiding of which penalty has doubtless
given
the first birth to the nation of critics, and withal an occasion for
their
secret detractors to report that a true critic is a sort of mechanic
set up with
a stock and tools for his trade, at as little expense as a tailor; and
that
there is much analogy between the utensils and abilities of both. That
the
“Tailor’s Hell” is the type of a critic’s common place-book, and his wit
and learning held forth by the goose. That it requires at least as many
of these
to the making up of one scholar as of the others to the composition of
a man.
That the valour of both is equal, and their weapons near of a size.
Much may be
said in answer to these invidious reflections; and I can positively
affirm the
first to be a falsehood: for, on the contrary, nothing is more certain
than that
it requires greater laying out to be free of the critic’s company than
of any
other you can name. For as to be a true beggar, it will cost the richest
candidate every groat he is worth, so before one can commence a true
critic, it
will cost a man all the good qualities of his mind, which perhaps for a
less
purchase would be thought but an indifferent bargain.
Having
thus amply proved the antiquity of criticism and described the
primitive state
of it, I shall now examine the present condition of this Empire, and
show how
well it agrees with its ancient self. A
certain author, whose works have many ages since been entirely lost,
does in his
fifth book and eighth chapter say of critics “their writings are the
mirrors
of learning.” This I understand in a literal sense, and suppose our
author
must mean that whoever designs to be a perfect writer must inspect into
the
books of critics, and correct his inventions there as in a mirror. Now,
whoever
considers that the mirrors of the ancients were made of brass and fine
mercurio,
may presently apply the two principal qualifications of a true modern
critic,
and consequently must needs conclude that these have always been and
must be
forever the same. For brass is an emblem of duration, and when it is
skilfully
burnished will cast reflections from its own superficies without any
assistance
of mercury from behind. All the other talents of a critic will not
require a
particular mention, being included or easily deducible to these.
However, I
shall conclude with three maxims, which may serve both as
characteristics to
distinguish a true modern critic from a pretender, and will be also of
admirable
use to those worthy spirits who engage in so useful and honourable an
art.
The
first is, that criticism, contrary to all other faculties of the
intellect, is
ever held the truest and best when it is the very first result of the
critic’s
mind; as fowlers reckon the first aim for the surest, and seldom fail
of missing
the mark if they stay not for a second.
Secondly,
their talent of swarming about the noblest writers, to which they are
carried
merely by instinct, as a rat to the best cheese, or a wasp knows the
true
critics to the fairest fruit. So when the king is a horseback he is
sure to be
the dirtiest person of the company, and they that make their court best
are such
as bespatter him most.
Lastly,
a true critic in the perusal of a book is like a dog at a feast, whose
thoughts
and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and
consequently is
apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
Thus
much I think is sufficient to serve by way of address to my patrons,
the true
modern critics, and may very well atone for my past silence, as well as
that
which I am like to observe for the future. I hope I have deserved so
well of
their whole body as to meet with generous and tender usage at their
hands.
Supported by which expectation I go on boldly to pursue those
adventures already
so happily begun.
I
have now with much pains and study conducted the reader to a period
where he
must expect to hear of great revolutions. For no sooner had our learned
brother,
so often mentioned, got a warm house of his own over his head, than he
began to
look big and to take mightily upon him, insomuch that unless the gentle
reader
out of his great candour will please a little to exalt his idea, I am
afraid he
will henceforth hardly know the hero of the play when he happens to
meet 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 their elder,
and
consequently his father’s sole heir; nay, a while after, he would not
allow
them to call him brother, but Mr. Peter; and then he must be styled
Father
Peter, and sometimes My Lord Peter. To support this grandeur, which he
soon
began to consider could not be maintained without a better fond than
what he was
born to, after much 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 at present in the
world, are
owing entirely to Lord Peter’s invention. I will deduce the best
account I
have been able to collect of the chief amongst them, without
considering much
the order they came out in, because I think authors are not well agreed
as to
that point.
I
hope when this treatise of mine shall be translated into foreign
languages (as I
may without vanity affirm that the labour of collecting, the
faithfulness in
recounting, and the great usefulness of the matter to the public, will
amply
deserve that justice), that of the several Academies abroad, especially
those of
France and Italy, will favourably accept these humble offers for the
advancement
of universal knowledge. I do also advertise the most reverend fathers
the
Eastern missionaries that I have purely for their sakes made use of
such words
and phrases as will best admit an easy turn into any of the Oriental
languages,
especially the Chinese. And so I proceed with great content of mind upon
reflecting how much emolument this whole globe of earth is like to reap
by my
labours.
The
first undertaking of Lord Peter was to purchase a large continent,
lately said
to have been discovered in Terra Australis incognita. This tract of
land he
bought at a very great pennyworth from the discoverers themselves
(though some
pretended to doubt whether they had ever been there), and then retailed
it into
several cantons to certain dealers, who carried over colonies, but were
all
shipwrecked in the voyage; upon which Lord Peter sold the said
continent 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 the worms,
especially those in the spleen. The patient was to eat nothing after
supper for
three nights; as soon as he went to bed, he was carefully to lie on one
side,
and when he grew weary, to turn upon the other. He must also duly
confine his
two eyes to the same object, and by no means break wind at both ends
together
without manifest occasion. These prescriptions diligently observed, the
worms
would void insensibly by perspiration ascending through the brain.
A
third invention was the erecting of a whispering-office for the public
good and
ease of all such as are hypochondriacal or troubled with 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 of
bursting with too much wind. An ass’s head was placed so conveniently,
that
the party affected might easily with his mouth accost either of the
animal’s
ears, which he was to apply close for a certain space, and by a
fugitive faculty
peculiar to the ears of that animal, receive immediate benefit, either
by
eructation, or expiration, or evomition.
Another
very beneficial project of Lord Peter’s was an office of insurance for
tobacco-pipes, martyrs of the modern zeal, volumes of poetry,
shadows . . .. And
rivers, that these, nor any of these, shall receive damage by fire.
From whence
our friendly societies may plainly find themselves to be only
transcribers from
this original, though the one and the other have been of great benefit
to the
undertakers as well as of equal to the public.
Lord
Peter was also held the original author of puppets and rare-shows, the
great
usefulness whereof being so generally known, I shall not enlarge
farther upon
this particular.
But
another discovery for which he was much renowned was his famous
universal
pickle. For having remarked how your common pickle in use among
housewives was
of no farther benefit than to preserve dead flesh and certain kinds of
vegetables, Peter with great cost as well as art had contrived a pickle
proper
for houses, gardens, towns, men, women, children, and cattle, wherein
he could
preserve them as sound as insects in amber. Now this pickle to the
taste, the
smell, and the sight, appeared exactly the same with what is in common
service
for beef, and butter, and herrings (and has been often that way applied
with
great success), but for its may sovereign virtues was quite a different
thing.
For Peter would put in a certain quantity of his powder pimperlim-pimp,
after
which it never failed of success. The operation was performed by
spargefaction
in a proper time of the moon. The patient who was to be pickled, if it
were a
house, would infallibly be preserved from all spiders, rats, and
weasels; if the
party affected were a dog, he should be exempt from mange, and madness,
and
hunger. It also infallibly took away all scabs and lice, and scalled
heads from
children, never hindering the 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 from those that guarded
the
golden-fleece. Though some who pretended to observe them curiously
doubted the
breed had not been kept entirely chaste, because they had degenerated
from their
ancestors in some qualities, and had acquired others very
extraordinary, but a
foreign mixture. The bulls of Colchis are recorded to have brazen feet;
but
whether it happened by ill pasture and running, by an alloy from
intervention of
other parents from stolen intrigues; whether a weakness in their
progenitors had
impaired the seminal virtue, or by a decline necessary through a long
course of
time, the originals of nature being depraved in these latter sinful
ages of the
world— whatever was the cause, it is certain that Lord Peter’s bulls
were
extremely vitiated by the rust of time in the metal of their feet,
which was now
sunk into common lead. However, the terrible roaring peculiar to their
lineage
was preserved, as likewise that faculty of breathing out fire from their
nostrils; which notwithstanding many of their detractors took to be a
feat of
art, and to be nothing so terrible as it appeared, proceeding only from
their
usual course of diet, which was of squibs and crackers. However, they
had two
peculiar marks which extremely distinguished them from the bulls of
Jason, and
which I have not met together in the description of any other monster
beside
that in. Horace, “Varias
inducere plumas,” and “Atrum definit in piscem.”
For these had fishes tails, yet upon occasion could outfly any bird in
the air.
Peter put these bulls upon several employs. Sometimes he would set them
a
roaring to fright naughty boys and make them quiet. Sometimes he would
send them
out upon errands of great importance, where it is wonderful to recount,
and
perhaps the cautious reader may think much to believe it; an
appetitus sensibilis
deriving itself through the whole family from their noble ancestors,
guardians
of the Golden Fleece, they continued 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
you flung
them a bit of gold; but then pulveris exigui
jactu,
they would grow calm and quiet as lambs. In short, whether by secret
connivance
or encouragement from their master, or out of their own liquorish
affection to
gold, or both, it is certain they were no better than a sort of sturdy,
swaggering beggars; and where they could not prevail to get an alms,
would make
women miscarry and children fall into fits; who to this very day
usually call
sprites and hobgoblins by the name of bull-beggars. They grew at last
so very
troublesome to the neighbourhood, that some gentlemen of the North-West
got a
parcel of right English bull-dogs, and baited them so terribly, that
they felt
it ever after.
I
must need to mention one more of Lord Peter’s projects, which was very
extraordinary, and discovered him to be master of a high reach and
profound
invention. Whenever it happened that any rogue of New gate was
condemned to be
hanged, Peter would offer him a pardon for a certain sum of money,
which when
the poor caitiff had made all shifts to scrape up and send, his
lordship would
return a piece of paper 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 command you, upon sight hereof, to let
the said
prisoner depart to his own habitation, whether he stands condemned for
murder,
sodomy, rape, sacrilege, incest, treason, blasphemy, &c., for which
this
shall be your sufficient warrant. And it you fail hereof, G—d—me you and
yours to all eternity. And so we bid you heartily farewell. Your most
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 for
commentators
upon this elaborate treatise, that they will proceed with great caution
upon
certain dark points, wherein all who are not vere
adepti may
be in danger to form rash and hasty conclusions, especially in some
mysterious
paragraphs, where certain arcana are joined for brevity sake, which in
the
operation must be divided. And I am certain that future sons of art
will return
large thanks to my memory for so grateful, so useful an inmuendo.
It
will be no difficult part to persuade the reader that so many worthy
discoveries
met with great success in the world; though I may justly assure him
that I have
related much the smallest number; my design having been only to single
out such
as will be of most benefit for public imitation, or which best served
to give
some idea of the reach and wit of the inventor. And therefore it need
not be
wondered if by this time Lord Peter was become exceeding rich. But
alas! 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 little ease. In short, what with
pride,
projects, and knavery, poor Peter was grown distracted, and conceived
the
strangest imaginations in the world. In the height of his fits (as it
is usual
with those who run mad out of pride) he would call himself God
Almighty, and
sometimes 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 storeys
high, with a
huge bunch of keys at his girdle, and an angling rod in his hand. In
which
guise, whoever went to take him by the hand in the way of salutation,
Peter with
much grace, like a well-educated spaniel, would present them with his
foot, and
if they refused 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 been called
a
salute. Whoever walked by without paying him their compliments, having a
wonderful strong breath, he would blow their hats off into the dirt.
Meantime
his affairs at home went upside down, and his two brothers had a
wretched time,
where his first boutade was to kick both their wives one morning out of
doors,
and his own too, and in their stead gave orders to pick up the first
three
strollers could be met with in the streets. A while after he nailed up
the
cellar door, and would not allow his brothers a drop of drink to their
victuals.
Dining one day at an alderman’s in the city, Peter observed him
expatiating,
after the manner of his brethren in the praises of his sirloin of beef.
“Beef,” said the sage magistrate, “is the king of meat; beef comprehends
in it the quintessence of partridge, and quail, and venison, and
pheasant, and
plum-pudding, and custard.” When Peter came home, he would needs take
the
fancy of cooking up this doctrine into use, and apply the precept in
default of
a sirloin to his brown loaf. “Bread,” says he, “dear brothers, is the
staff of life, in which bread is contained 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 are
also corrected by yeast or barm, through which means it becomes a
wholesome
fermented liquor, diffused through the mass of the bread.” Upon the
strength
of these conclusions, next day at dinner was the brown loaf served up
in all the
formality of a City feast. “Come, brothers,” said Peter, “fall to, and
spare not; here is excellent good mutton; or hold, now my hand is in,
I’ll
help you.” At which word, in much ceremony, with fork and knife, he
carves out
two good slices of a loaf, and presents each on a plate to his
brothers. The
elder of the two, not suddenly entering into Lord Peter’s conceit,
began with
very civil language to examine the mystery. “My lord,” said he, “I
doubt,
with great submission, there may be some mistake.” “What!” says Peter,
“you are pleasant; come then, let us hear this jest your head is so big
with.” “None in the world, my Lord; but unless I am very much deceived,
your
Lordship was pleased a while ago to let fall a word about mutton, and I
would be
glad to see it with all my heart.” “How,” said Peter, appearing in great
surprise, “I do not comprehend this at all;” upon which the younger,
interposing to set the business right, “My Lord,” said he, “my brother,
I
suppose, is hungry, and longs for the mutton your Lordship hath
promised us to
dinner.” “Pray,” said Peter, “take me along with you, either you are
both mad, or disposed to be merrier than I approve of; if you there do
not like
your piece, I will carve you another, though I should take that to be
the choice
bit of the whole shoulder.” “What then, my Lord?” replied the first; “it
seems this is a shoulder of mutton all this while.” “Pray, sir,” says
Peter, “eat your victuals and leave off your impertinence, if you
please, for
I am not disposed to relish it at present;” but the other could not
forbear,
being over-provoked at the affected seriousness of Peter’s
countenance. “My
Lord,” said he, “I can only say, that to my eyes and fingers, and teeth
and
nose, it seems to be nothing but a crust of bread.” Upon which the
second put
in his word. “I never saw a piece of mutton in my life so nearly
resembling 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 this plain argument; by G—-, it is
true, good,
natural mutton as any in Leadenhall Market; and G—— confound you both
eternally if you offer to believe otherwise.” Such a thundering proof
as this
left no further room for objection; the two unbelievers began to gather
and
pocket up their mistake as hastily as they could. “Why, truly,” said the
first, “upon more mature consideration”—“Ay,” says the other,
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 to you both with all my heart.”
The
two brethren, much delighted to see him so readily appeased, returned
their most
humble thanks, and said they would be glad to pledge his
Lordship. “That you
shall,” said Peter, “I am not a person to refuse you anything that is
reasonable; wine moderately taken is a cordial. Here is a glass apiece
for you;
it is true natural juice from the grape; none of your damned vintner’s
brewings.” Having spoke thus, he presented to each of them another
large dry
crust, bidding them drink it off, and not be bashful, for it would do
them no
hurt. The two brothers, after having performed the usual office in such
delicate
conjunctures, of staring a sufficient period at Lord Peter and each
other, and
finding how matters were like to go, resolved not to enter 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 or expostulate further would only serve to render
him a
hundred times more untractable.
I
have chosen to relate this worthy matter in all its circumstances,
because it
gave a principal occasion to that great and famous rupture which
happened about the same time among these brethren, and was never
afterwards made
up. But of that I shall treat 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 and positive, and
would at any
time rather argue to the death than allow himself to be once in an
error.
Besides, he had an abominable faculty of telling huge palpable lies
upon all
occasions, and swearing not only to the truth, but cursing the whole
company to
hell 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 a meal as would
fill
three thousand churches, and what was yet more extraordinary, would
never turn
sour. Another time he was telling of an old signpost that
belonged to his father, with nails and timber enough on it to build
sixteen
large men-of-war. Talking one day of Chinese waggons, which were made
so light
as to sail over mountains, “Z—-nds,” said Peter, “where’s the wonder
of that? By G—-, I saw a large house of lime and stone travel over sea
and
land (granting that it stopped sometimes to bait) above two thousand
German
leagues.” And that
which was
the good of it, he would swear desperately all the while that he never
told a
lie in his life, and at every word: “By G—— gentlemen, I tell you
nothing
but the truth, and the d—-l broil them eternally that will not believe
me.”
In
short, Peter grew so scandalous that all the neighbourhood began in
plain words
to say he was no better than a knave; and his two brothers, long weary
of his
ill-usage, resolved at last to leave him; but first they humbly desired
a copy
of their father’s will, which had now lain by neglected time out of
mind.
Instead of granting this request, he called them rogues, traitors, and
the rest
of the vile names he could muster up. However, while he was abroad one
day upon
his projects, the two youngsters watched their opportunity, made a
shift to come
at the will, and took a copia vera, by which they presently saw how
grossly they
had been abused, their father having left them equal heirs, and strictly
commanded that whatever they got should lie in common among them all.
Pursuant
to which, their next enterprise was to break open the cellar-door and
get a
little good drink to spirit and comfort their hearts. In copying the
will, they
had met another precept against whoring, divorce, and separate
maintenance; upon
which, their next work was to discard their concubines and send for
their wives .
Whilst all this was in agitation, there enters a solicitor from Newgate,
desiring Lord Peter would please to procure a pardon for a thief that
was to be
hanged to-morrow. But the two brothers told him he was a coxcomb to
seek pardons
from a fellow who deserved to be hanged much better than his client, and
discovered all the method of that imposture in the same form I
delivered it a
while ago, advising the solicitor to put his friend upon obtaining a
pardon from
the king. In the midst of all this platter and revolution in comes
Peter with a
file of dragoons at his heels, and gathering from all hands what was in
the
wind, he and his gang, after several millions of scurrilities and
curses not
very important here to repeat, by main force very fairly kicks them
both out of
doors, and would never let them come under his roof from that day to
this.
We
whom the world is pleased to honour with the title of modern authors,
should
never have been able to compass our great design of an everlasting
remembrance
and never-dying fame if our endeavours had not been so highly
serviceable to the
general good of mankind.
This, O universe! is the adventurous attempt of me, thy secretary —
“Quemvis
perferre laborem
Suadet, 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 lectures upon the several
parts,
both containing and contained, till at last it smelt so strong I could
preserve
it no longer. Upon which I have been at a great expense to fit up all
the bones
with exact contexture and in due symmetry, so that I am ready to show a
very
complete anatomy thereof to all curious gentlemen and others. But not
to digress
further in the midst of a digression, as I have known some authors
enclose
digressions in one another like a nest of boxes, I do affirm that,
having
carefully cut up human nature, I have found a very strange, new, and
important
discovery: that the public good of mankind is performed by two
ways—instruction and diversion. And I have further proved my said
several
readings (which, perhaps, the world may one day see, if I can prevail
on any
friend to steal a copy, or on certain gentlemen of my admirers to be
very
importunate) that, as mankind is now disposed, he receives much greater
advantage by being diverted than instructed, his epidemical diseases
being
fastidiosity, amorphy, and oscitation; whereas, in the present
universal empire
of wit and learning, there seems but little matter left for instruction.
However, in compliance with a lesson of great age and authority, I have
attempted carrying the point in all its heights, and accordingly
throughout this
divine treatise have skilfully kneaded up both together with a layer of
utile
and a layer of dulce.
When
I consider how exceedingly our illustrious moderns have eclipsed the
weak
glimmering lights of the ancients, and turned them out of the road of
all
fashionable commerce to a degree that our choice town wits of most
refined
accomplishments are in grave dispute whether there have been ever any
ancients
or no; in which point we are like to receive wonderful satisfaction
from the
most useful labours and lucubrations of that worthy modern, Dr.
Bentley. I say,
when I consider all this, I cannot but bewail that no famous modern
hath ever
yet attempted an universal system in a small portable volume of all
things that
are to be known, or believed, or imagined, or practised in life. I am,
however,
forced to acknowledge that such an enterprise was thought on some time
ago by a
great philosopher of O-Brazile. The method he proposed was by a certain
curious
receipt, a nostrum, which after his untimely death I found among his
papers, and
do here, out of my great affection to the modern learned, present them
with it,
not doubting it may one day encourage some worthy undertaker.
You
take fair correct copies, well bound in calf’s skin and lettered at 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 of lethe, to be had from the apothecaries.
You cleanse
away carefully the sordes and caput mortuum, letting all that is
volatile
evaporate. You preserve only the first running, which is again to be
distilled
seventeen times, till what remains will amount to about two drams. This
you keep
in a glass vial hermetically sealed for one-and-twenty days. Then you
begin your
catholic treatise, taking every morning fasting (first shaking the
vial) three
drops of this elixir, snuffing it strongly up your nose. It will dilate
itself
about the brain (where there is any) in fourteen minutes, and you
immediately
perceive in your head an infinite number of abstracts, summaries,
compendiums,
extracts, collections, medullas, excerpta quaedams, florilegias and the like, all disposed into great order
and
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 called Homer, in
whom,
though otherwise a person not without some abilities, and for an
ancient of a
tolerable genius; I have discovered many gross errors which are not to
be
forgiven his very ashes, if by chance any of them are left. For whereas
we are
assured he designed his work for a complete body of all knowledge,
human,
divine, political, and mechanic, it is manifest he hath wholly
neglected some,
and been very imperfect perfect in the rest. For, first of all, as
eminent a
cabalist as his disciples would represent him, his account of the opus
magnum is
extremely poor and deficient; he seems to have read but very
superficially
either Sendivogus,
Behmen, or Anthroposophia Theomagica. He is also quite mistaken about
the
sphaera pyroplastica, a neglect not to be atoned for, and (if the
reader will
admit so severe a censure) vix crederem autorem hunc unquam audivisse
ignis
vocem. His
failings are not less prominent in several parts of the mechanics. For
having
read his writings with the utmost application usual among modern wits,
I could
never yet discover the least direction about the structure of that
useful
instrument a save-all; for want of which, if the moderns had not lent
their
assistance, we might yet have wandered in the dark. But I have still
behind a
fault far more notorious to tax this author with; I mean his gross
ignorance in
the common laws of this realm, and in the doctrine as well as
discipline of the
Church of England. A defect, indeed, for which both he and all the
ancients
stand most justly censured by my worthy and ingenious friend Mr. Wotton,
Bachelor of Divinity, in his incomparable treatise of ancient and modern
learning; a book never to be sufficiently valued, whether we consider
the happy
turns and flowings of the author’s wit, the great usefulness of his
sublime
discoveries upon the subject of flies and spittle, or the laborious
eloquence of
his style. And I cannot forbear doing that author the justice of my
public
acknowledgments for the great helps and lifting I had out of his
incomparable
piece while I was penning this treatise.
But
besides these omissions in Homer already mentioned, the curious reader
will also
observe several defects in that author’s writings for which he is not
altogether so accountable. For whereas every branch of knowledge has
received
such wonderful acquirements since his age, especially within these last
three
years or thereabouts, it is almost impossible he could be so very
perfect in
modern discoveries as his advocates pretend. We freely acknowledge him
to be the
inventor of the compass, of gunpowder, and the circulation of the
blood; but I
challenge any of his admirers to show me in all his writings a complete
account
of the spleen. Does he not also leave us wholly to seek in the art of
political
wagering? What can be more defective and unsatisfactory than his long
dissertation upon tea? and as to his method of salivation without
mercury, so
much celebrated of late, it is to my own knowledge and experience a
thing very
little to be relied on.
It
was to supply such momentous defects that I have been prevailed on,
after long
solicitation, to take pen in hand, and I dare venture to promise the
judicious
reader shall find nothing neglected here that can be of use upon any
emergency
of life. I am confident to have included and exhausted all that human
imagination can rise or fall to. Particularly I recommend to the
perusal of the
learned certain discoveries that are wholly untouched by others,
whereof I shall
only mention, among a great many more, my “New Help of Smatterers, or
the Art
of being Deep Learned and Shallow Read,” “A Curious Invention about
Mouse-traps,” “A Universal Rule of Reason, or Every Man his own Carver,”
together with a most useful engine for catching of owls. All, which the
judicious reader will find largely, treated on in the several parts of
this
discourse.
I
hold myself obliged to give as much light as possible into the beauties
and
excellences of what I am writing, because it is become the fashion and
humour
most applauded among the first authors of this polite and learned age,
when they
would correct the ill nature of critical or inform the ignorance of
courteous
readers. Besides, there have been several famous pieces lately
published, both
in verse and prose, wherein if the writers had not been pleased, out of
their
great humanity and affection to the public, to give us a nice detail of
the
sublime and the admirable they contain, it is a thousand to one whether
we
should ever have discovered one grain of either. For my own particular,
I cannot
deny that whatever I have said upon this occasion had been more proper
in a
preface, and more agreeable to the mode which usually directs it there.
But I
here think fit to lay hold on that great and honourable privilege of
being the
last writer. I claim an absolute authority in right as the freshest
modern,
which gives me a despotic power over all authors before me. In the
strength of
which title I do utterly disapprove and declare against that pernicious
custom
of making the preface a bill of fare to the book. For I have always
looked upon
it as a high point of indiscretion in monster mongers and other
retailers of
strange sights to hang out a fair large picture over the door, drawn
after the
life, with a most eloquent description underneath. This has saved me
many a
three pence, for my curiosity was fully satisfied, and I never offered
to go in,
though often invited by the urging and attending orator with his last
moving and
standing piece of rhetoric, “Sir, upon my word, we are just going to
begin.”
Such is exactly the fate at this time of Prefaces, Epistles,
Advertisements,
Introductions, Prolegomenas,
Apparatuses, and To the Reader’s. This expedient was admirable at
first; our
great Dryden has long carried it as far as it would go, and with
incredible
success. He has often said to me in confidence that the world would
never have
suspected him to be so great a poet if he had not assured them so
frequently in
his prefaces, that it was impossible they could either doubt or forget
it.
Perhaps it may be so. However, I much fear his instructions have
edified out of
their place, and taught men to grow wiser in certain points where he
never
intended they should; for it is lamentable to behold with what a lazy
scorn many
of the yawning readers in our age do now-a-days twirl over forty or
fifty pages
of preface and dedication (which is the usual modern stint), as if it
were so
much Latin. Though it must be also allowed, on the other hand, that a
very
considerable number is known to proceed critics and wits by reading
nothing
else. Into which two factions I think all present readers may justly be
divided.
Now, for myself, I profess to be of the former sort, and therefore
having the
modern inclination to expatiate upon the beauty of 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 now lies it makes a very considerable addition to
the bulk
of the volume, a circumstance by no means to be neglected by a skilful
writer.
Having
thus paid my due deference and acknowledgment to an established custom
of our
newest authors, by a long digression unsought for and a universal
censure
unprovoked, by forcing into the light, with much pains and dexterity,
my own
excellences and other men’s defaults, with great justice to myself and
candour
to them, I now happily resume my subject, to the infinite satisfaction
both of
the reader and the author.
We
left Lord Peter in open rupture with his two brethren; both forever
discarded
from his house, and resigned to the wide world with little or nothing
to trust
to. Which are circumstances that render them proper subjects for the
charity of
a writer’s pen to work on, scenes of misery ever affording the fairest
harvest
for great adventures? And in this the world may perceive the difference
between
the integrity of a generous Author and that of a common friend. The
latter is
observed to adhere close in prosperity, but on the decline of fortune
to drop
suddenly off; whereas the generous author, just on the contrary, finds
his hero
on the dunghill, from thence, by gradual steps, raises him to a throne,
and then
immediately withdraws, expecting not so much as thanks for his pains; in
imitation of which example I have placed Lord Peter in a noble house,
given him
a title to wear and money to spend. There I shall leave him for some
time,
returning, where common charity directs me, to the assistance of his two
brothers at their lowest ebb. However, I shall by no means forget my
character
of a historian, to follow the truth step by step whatever happens, or
wherever
it may lead me.
The
two exiles so nearly united in fortune and interest took a lodging
together,
where at their first leisure they began to reflect on the numberless
misfortunes
and vexations of their life past, and could not tell of the sudden to
what
failure in their conduct they ought to impute them, when, after some
recollection, they called to mind the copy of their father’s will which
they
had so happily recovered. This was immediately produced, and a firm
resolution
taken between them to alter whatever was already amiss, and reduce all
their
future measures to the strictest obedience prescribed therein. The main
body of
the will (as the reader cannot easily have forgot) consisted in certain
admirable rules, about the wearing of their coats, in the perusal
whereof the
two brothers at every period duly comparing the doctrine with the
practice,
there was never seen a wider difference between two things, horrible
downright
transgressions of every point. Upon which they both resolved without
further
delay to fall immediately upon reducing the whole exactly after their
father’s
model.
But
here it is good to stop the hasty reader, ever impatient to see the end
of an
adventure before we writers can duly prepare him for it. I am to record
that
these two brothers began to be distinguished at this time by certain
names. One
of them desired to be called Martin, and the other took the appellation
of Jack.
These two had lived in much friendship and agreement under the tyranny
of their
brother Peter, as it is the talent of fellow-sufferers to do, men in
misfortune
being like men in the dark, to whom all colours are the same. But when
they came
forward into the world, and began to display themselves to each other
and to the
light, their complexions appeared extremely different, which the
present posture
of their affairs gave them sudden opportunity to discover.
But
here the severe reader may justly tax me as a writer of short memory, a
deficiency to which a true modern cannot but of necessity be a little
subject.
Because, memory being an employment of the mind upon things past, is a
faculty
for which the learned in our illustrious age have no manner of
occasion, who
deal entirely with invention and strike all things out of themselves,
or at
least by collision from each other; upon which account, we think it
highly
reasonable to produce our great forgetfulness as an argument
unanswerable for
our great wit. I ought in method to have informed the reader about
fifty pages
ago of a fancy Lord Peter took, and infused into his brothers, to wear
on their
coats whatever trimmings came up in fashion, never pulling off any as
they went
out of the mode, but keeping on all together, which amounted in time to
a medley
the most antic you can possibly conceive, and this to a degree that,
upon the
time of their falling out, there was hardly a thread of the original
coat to be
seen, but an infinite quantity of lace, and ribbons, and fringe, and
embroidery,
and points (I mean only those tagged with silver, for the rest fell
off). Now
this material circumstance having been forgot in due place, as good
fortune hath
ordered, comes in very properly here, when the two brothers are just
going to
reform their vestures into the primitive state prescribed by their
father’s
will.
They
both unanimously entered upon this great work, looking sometimes on
their coats
and sometimes on the will. Martin laid the first hand; at one twitch
brought off
a large handful of points, and with a second pull stripped away ten
dozen yards
of fringe. But when he had gone thus far he demurred a while. He knew
very well
there yet remained a great deal more to be done; however, the first
heat being
over, his violence began to cool, and he resolved to proceed more
moderately in
the rest of the work, having already very narrowly escaped a swinging
rent in
pulling off the points, which being tagged with silver (as we have
observed
before), the judicious workman had with much sagacity double sewn to
preserve
them from falling. Resolving therefore to rid his coat of a huge
quantity of
gold lace, he picked up the stitches with much caution and diligently
gleaned
out all the loose threads as he went, which proved to be a work of
time. Then he
fell about the embroidered Indian figures of men, women, and children,
against
which, as you have heard in its due place, their father’s testament was
extremely exact and severe. These, with much dexterity and application,
were
after a while quite eradicated or utterly defaced. For the rest, where
he
observed the embroidery to be worked so close as not to be got away
without
damaging the cloth, or where it served to hide or strengthened any flaw
in the
body of the coat, contracted by the perpetual tampering of workmen upon
it, he
concluded the wisest course was to let it remain, resolving in no case
whatsoever that the substance of the stuff should suffer injury, which
he
thought the best method for serving the true intent and meaning of his
father’s will. And this is the nearest account I have been able to
collect of
Martin’s proceedings upon this great revolution.
But
his brother Jack, whose adventures will be so extraordinary as to
furnish a
great part in the remainder of this discourse, entered upon the matter
with
other thoughts and a quite different spirit. For the memory of Lord
Peter’s
injuries produced a degree of hatred and spite which had a much greater
share of
inciting him than any regards after his father’s commands, since these
appeared at best only secondary and subservient to the other. However,
for this
medley of humour he made a shift to find a very plausible name,
honouring it
with the title of zeal, which is, perhaps, the most significant word
that has
been ever yet produced in any language, as, I think, I have fully
proved in my
excellent analytical discourse upon that subject, wherein I have
deduced a
histori-theo-physiological account of zeal, showing how it first
proceeded from
a notion into a word, and from thence in a hot summer ripened into a
tangible
substance. This work, containing three large volumes in folio, I design
very
shortly to publish by the modern way of subscription, not doubting but
the
nobility and gentry of the land will give me all possible
encouragement, having
already had such a taste of what I am able to perform.
I
record, therefore, that brother Jack, brimful of this miraculous
compound,
reflecting with indignation upon Peter’s tyranny, and further provoked
by the
despondency of Martin, prefaced his resolutions to this purpose. “What!”
said he, “a rogue that locked up his drink, turned away our wives,
cheated us
of our fortunes, palmed his crusts upon us for mutton, and at last
kicked us out
of doors; must we be in his fashions? A rascal, besides, that all the
street
cries out against.” Having thus kindled and inflamed himself as high as
possible, and by consequence in a delicate temper for beginning a
reformation,
he set about the work immediately, and in three minutes made more
dispatch than
Martin had done in as many hours. For, courteous reader, you are given
to
understand that zeal is 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
its full
swing. Thus it happened that, stripping down a parcel of gold lace a
little too
hastily, he rent the main body of his coat from top to bottom; and
whereas his
talent was not of the happiest in taking up a stitch, he knew no better
way than
to darn it again with packthread thread and a skewer. But the matter
was yet
infinitely worse (I record it with tears) when he proceeded to the
embroidery;
for being clumsy of nature, and of temper impatient withal, beholding
millions
of stitches that required the nicest hand and sedates constitution to
extricate,
in a great rage he tore off the whole piece, cloth and all, and flung
it into
the kennel, and furiously 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 is
possible. I
would not for a hundred pounds carry the least mark about me that might
give
occasion to the neighbours of suspecting I was related to such a
rascal.” But
Martin, who at this time happened to be extremely phlegmatic and
sedate, begged
his brother, of all love, not to damage his coat by any means, for he
never
would get such another; desired him to consider that it was not their
business
to form their actions by any reflection upon Peter’s, but by observing
the
rules prescribed in their father’s will. That he should remember Peter
was
still their brother, whatever faults or injuries he had committed, and
therefore
they should by all means avoid such a thought as that of taking
measures for
good and evil from no other rule than of opposition to him. That it was
true the
testament of their good father was very exact in what related to the
wearing of
their coats; yet was it no less penal and strict in prescribing
agreement, and
friendship, and affection between them. And therefore, if straining a
point were
at all defensible, it would certainly be so rather to the advance of
unity than
increase of contradiction.
Martin
had still proceeded as gravely as he began, and doubtless would have
delivered
an admirable lecture of morality, which might have exceedingly
contributed to my
reader’s repose both of body and mind (the true ultimate end of
ethics), but
Jack was already gone a flight-shot beyond his patience. And as in
scholastic
disputes nothing serves to rouse the spleen of him that opposes so much
as a
kind of pedantic affected calmness in the respondent, disputants being
for the
most part like unequal scales, where the gravity of one side advances
the
lightness of the other, and causes it to fly up and kick the beam; so it
happened here that the weight of Martin’s arguments exalted Jack’s
levity,
and made him fly out and spurn against his brother’s moderation. In
short,
Martin’s patience put Jack in a rage; but that which most afflicted him
was to
observe his brother’s coat so well reduced into the state of innocence,
while
his own was either wholly rent to his shirt, or those places which had
escaped
his cruel clutches were still in Peter’s livery. So that he looked like
a
drunken beau half rifled by bullies, or like a fresh tenant of Newgate
when he
has refused the payment of garnish, or like a discovered shoplifter
left to the
mercy of Exchange-women, or like a bawd in her old velvet petticoat
resigned
into the secular hands of the mobile. Like any or like all of these, a
medley of
rags, and lace, and fringes, unfortunate Jack did now appear; he would
have been
extremely glad to see his coat in the condition of Martin’s, but
infinitely
gladder to find that of Martin in the same predicament with his.
However, since
neither of these was likely to come to pass, he thought fit to lend the
whole
business another turn, and to dress up necessity into a virtue.
Therefore, after
as many of the fox’s arguments as he could muster up for bringing
Martin to
reason, as he called it, or as he meant it, into his own ragged,
bobtailed
condition, and observing he said all to little purpose, what alas! Was
left for
the forlorn Jack to do, but after a million of scurrilities against his
brother,
to run mad with spleen, and spite, and contradiction. To be short, here
began a
mortal breach between these two. Jack went immediately to new lodgings,
and in a
few days it was for certain reported that he had run out of his wits.
In a short
time after he appeared abroad, and confirmed the report by falling into
the
oddest whimsies that ever a sick brain conceived.
And
now the little boys in the streets began to salute him with several
names.
Sometimes they would call him Jack the Bald, sometimes Jack with a
Lanthorn,
sometimes Dutch Jack, sometimes French Hugh, sometimes Tom the Beggar,
and
sometimes Knocking Jack of the North. And it was under one or some or
all of
these appellations (which I leave the learned reader to determine) that
he hath
given rise to the most illustrious and epidemic sect of AEolists, who,
with
honourable commemoration, do still acknowledge the renowned Jack for
their
author and founder. Of whose originals as well as principles I am now
advancing
to gratify the world with a very particular account.
“Mellaeo
contingens cuncta lepore.”
I
have sometimes heard of an Iliad in a nutshell, but it has been my
fortune to
have much oftener seen a nutshell in an Iliad. There is no doubt that
human life
has received most wonderful advantages from both; but to which of the
two the
world is chiefly indebted, I shall leave among the curious as a problem
worthy
of their utmost inquiry. For the invention of the latter, I think the
commonwealth of learning is chiefly obliged to the great modern
improvement of
digressions. The late refinements in knowledge, running parallel to
those of
diet in our nation, which among men of a judicious taste is dressed up
in
various compounds, are consisting in soups and olios, fricassees and
ragouts.
It
is true there is a sort of morose, detracting, ill-bred people who
pretend
utterly to disrelish these polite innovations. And as to the similitude
from
diet, they allow the parallel, but are so bold as to pronounce the
example
itself a corruption and degeneracy of taste. They tell us that the
fashion of
jumbling fifty things together in a dish was at first introduced in
compliance
to a depraved and debauched appetite, as well as to a crazy
constitution, and to
see a man hunting through an olio after the head and brains of a goose,
a
widgeon, or a woodcock, is a sign he wants a stomach and digestion for
more
substantial victuals. Further, they affirm that digressions in a book
are like
foreign troops in a state, which argue the nation to want a heart and
hands of
its own, and often either subdue the natives, or drive them into the
most
unfruitful corners.
But
after all that can be objected by these supercilious censors, it is
manifest the
society of writers would quickly be reduced to a very inconsiderable
number if
men were put upon making books with the fatal confinement of delivering
nothing
beyond what is to the purpose. It is acknowledged that were the case
the same
among us as with the Greeks and Romans, when learning was in its
cradle, to be
reared and fed and clothed by invention, it would be an easy task to
fill up
volumes upon particular occasions without further expatiating from the
subject
than by moderate excursions, helping to advance or clear the main
design. But
with knowledge it has fared as with a numerous army encamped in a
fruitful
country, which for a few days maintains itself by the product of the
soil it is
on, till provisions being spent, they send to forage many a mile among
friends
or enemies, it matters not. Meanwhile the neighbouring fields, trampled
and
beaten down, become barren and dry, affording no sustenance but clouds
of dust.
The
whole course of things being thus entirely changed between us and the
ancients,
and the moderns wisely sensible of it, we of this age have discovered a
shorter
and more prudent method to become scholars 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
titles
exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance; or, secondly, which is
indeed the
choicer, the profounder, and politer method, to get a thorough insight
into the
index by which the whole book is governed and turned, like fishes by
the tail.
For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an
expense of
time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are
content to
get in by the back-door. For the arts are all in a flying march, and
therefore
more easily subdued by attacking them in the rear. Thus physicians
discover the
state of the whole body by consulting only what comes from behind. Thus
men
catch knowledge by throwing their wit on the posteriors of a book, as
boys do
sparrows with flinging salt upon their tails. Thus human life is best
understood
by the wise man’s rule of regarding the end. Thus are the sciences
found, like
Hercules’ oxen, by tracing them backwards. Thus are old sciences
unravelled
like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.
Besides
all this, the army of the sciences hath been of late with a world of
martial
discipline drawn into its close order, so that a view or a muster may
be taken
of it with abundance of expedition. For this great blessing we are
wholly
indebted to systems and abstracts, in which the modern fathers of
learning, like
prudent usurers, spent their sweat for the ease of us their children.
For labour
is the seed of idleness, and it is the peculiar happiness of our noble
age to
gather the fruit.
Now
the method of growing wise, learned, and sublime having become so
regular an
affair, and so established in all its forms, the number of writers must
needs
have increased accordingly, and to a pitch that has made it of absolute
necessity for them to interfere continually with each other. Besides,
it is
reckoned that there is not at this present a sufficient quantity of new
matter
left in Nature to furnish and adorn any one particular subject to the
extent of
a volume. A very skilful computer, who hath given a full demonstration
of it
from rules of arithmetic, tells me.
Those
who maintain the infinity of matter, and therefore will not allow that
any
species of it can be exhausted perhaps may object this to. For answer
to which,
let us examine the noblest branch of modern wit or invention planted and
cultivated by the present age, and which of all others hath borne the
most and
the fairest fruit. For though the ancients left some remains of it us,
yet have
not any of those, as I remember, been translated or compiled into
systems for
modern use. Therefore we may affirm, to our own honour, that it has in
some sort
been both invented and brought to perfection by the same hands. What I
mean is,
that highly celebrated talent among the modern wits of deducing
similitude,
allusions, and applications, very surprising, agreeable, and apposite,
from the
signs of either sex, together with their proper uses. And truly, having
observed
how little invention bears any vogue besides what is derived into these
channels, I have sometimes had a thought that the happy genius of our
age and
country was prophetically held forth by that ancient typical
description of the
Indian pigmies whose stature did not exceed above two feet,
sed
quorum pudenda crassa, et ad talos usque pertingentia. Now I have been very curious to inspect the late productions,
wherein
the beauties of this kind have most prominently appeared. And although
this vein
hath bled so freely, and all endeavours have been used in the power of
human
breath to dilate, extend, and keep it open, like the Scythians, who had
a custom
and an instrument to blow up those parts of their mares, that they
might yield
the more milk; yet I am under an apprehension it is near growing dry
and past
all recovery, and that either some new fonde of wit should, if
possible, be
provided, or else that we must e’en be content with repetition here as
well as
upon all other occasions.
This
will stand as an uncontestable argument that our modern wits are not to
reckon
upon the infinity of matter for a constant supply. What remains,
therefore, but
that our last recourse must be had to large indexes and little
compendiums?
Quotations must be plentifully gathered and booked in alphabet. To this
end,
though authors need be little consulted, yet critics, and commentators,
and
lexicons carefully must. But above all, those judicious collectors of
bright
parts, and flowers, and observant are to be nicely dwelt on by some
called the
sieves and boulders of learning, though it is left undetermined whether
they
dealt in pearls or meal, and consequently whether we are more to value
that
which passed through or what stayed behind.
By
these methods, in a few weeks there starts up many a writer capable of
managing
the profoundest and most universal subjects. For what though his head
is empty,
provided his commonplace book be full? And if you will bate him but the
circumstances of method, and style, and grammar, and invention; allow
him but
the common privileges of transcribing from others, and digressing from
himself
as often as he shall see occasion, he will desire no more ingredients
towards
fitting up a treatise that shall make a very comely figure on a
bookseller’s
shelf, there to be preserved neat and clean for a long eternity,
adorned with
the heraldry of its title fairly inscribed on a label, never to be
thumbed or
greased by students, nor bound to everlasting chains of darkness in a
library,
but when the fullness of time is come shall happily undergo the trial of
purgatory in order to ascend the sky.
Without
these allowances how is it possible we modern wits should ever have an
opportunity to introduce our collections listed under so many thousand
heads of
a different nature, for want of which the learned world would be
deprived of
infinite delight as well as instruction, and we ourselves buried beyond
redress
in an inglorious and undistinguished oblivion?
From
such elements as these I am alive to behold the day wherein the
corporation of
authors can out vie all its brethren in the field—a happiness derived
to us,
with a great many others, from our Scythian ancestors, among whom the
number of
pens was so infinite that the Grecian eloquence had no other way of
expressing
it than by saying that in the regions far to the north it was hardly
possible
for a man to travel, the very air was so replete with feathers.
The
necessity of this digression will easily excuse the length, and I have
chosen
for it as proper a place as I could readily find. If the judicious
reader can
assign a fitter, I do here empower him to remove it into any other
corner he
pleases. And so I return with great alacrity to pursue a more important
concern.
The
learned AEolists maintain the original cause of all things to be wind,
from
which principle this whole universe was at first produced, and into
which it
must at last be resolved, that the same breath which had kindled and
blew up the
flame of Nature should one day blow it out.
“Quod
procul a nobis flectat Fortuna gubernans.”
This
is what the Adepti understand by their anima mundi, that is to say, the
spirit,
or breath, or wind of the world; or examines the whole system by the
particulars
of Nature, and you will find it not to be disputed. For whether you
please to
call the forma informants of man by the name of spirits, animus,
afflatus, or
anima, what are all these but several appellations for wind, which is
the ruling
element in every compound, and into which they all resolve upon their
corruption. Further, what is life itself but, as it is commonly called,
the
breath of our nostrils, whence it is very justly observed by
naturalists that
wind still continues of great emolument in certain mysteries not to be
named,
giving occasion for those happy epithets of turgidus and
inflatus,
applied either to the emittent
or recipient organs.
By
what I have gathered out of ancient records, I find the compass of their
doctrine took in two-and-thirty points, wherein it would be tedious to
be very
particular. However, a few of their most important precepts deducible
from it
are by no means to be omitted; among which, the following maxim was of
much
weight: That since wind had the master share as well as operation in
every
compound, by consequence those beings must be of chief excellence
wherein that primordium
appears most prominently to abound, and therefore man is in highest
perfection
of all created things, as having, by the great bounty of philosophers,
been
endued with three distinct animas or winds, to which the sage AEolists,
with
much liberality, have added a fourth, of equal necessity as well as
ornament
with the other three, by this quartum
principium taking in the four corners of the world. Which gave occasion
to that
renowned cabalist Bombastus of placing the body of man in due position to the four cardinal
points.
In
consequence of this, their next principle was that man brings with him
into the
world a peculiar portion or grain of wind, which may be called a
quinta essentia, extracted
from the other four. This quintessence is of catholic use upon all
emergencies
of life, is improvable into all arts and sciences, and may be
wonderfully
refined as well as enlarged by certain methods in education. This, when
blown up
to its perfection, ought not to be covetously boarded up, stifled, or
hid under
a bushel, but freely communicated to mankind. Upon these reasons, and
others of
equal weight, the wise AEolists affirm the gift of belching to be the
noblest
act of a rational creature. To cultivate which art, and render it more
serviceable to mankind, they made use of several methods. At certain
seasons of
the year you might behold the priests amongst them in vast numbers with
their
mouths gaping wide against a storm. At other times were to be seen
several
hundreds linked together in a circular chain, with every man a pair of
bellows
applied to his neighbour, by which they blew up each other to the shape
and size
of a tun; and for that reason with great propriety of speech did
usually call
their bodies their vessels. When, by these and the like performances,
they were
grown sufficiently replete, they would immediately depart, and
disembogue for
the public good a plentiful share of their acquirements into their
disciples’
chaps. For we must here observe that all learning was esteemed among
them to be
compounded from the same principle. Because, first, it is generally
affirmed or
confessed that learning puffed men up; and, secondly, they proved it by
the
following syllogism: “Words are but wind, and learning is nothing but
words;
ergo, learning is nothing but wind.” For this reason the philosophers
among
them did in their schools deliver to their pupils all their doctrines
and
opinions by eructation, wherein they had acquired a wonderful
eloquence, and of
incredible variety. But the great characteristic by which their chief
sages were
best distinguished was a certain position of countenance, which gave
undoubted
intelligence to what degree or proportion the spirit agitated the
inward mass.
For after certain gripings, the wind and vapours issuing forth, having
first by
their turbulence and convulsions within caused an earthquake in man’s
little
world, distorted the mouth, bloated the cheeks, and gave the eyes a
terrible
kind of relievo.
At which junctures all their belches were received for sacred, the
sourer the
better, and swallowed with infinite consolation by their meagre
devotees. And to
render these yet more complete, because the breath of man’s life is in
his
nostrils, therefore the choicest, most edifying, and most enlivening
belches
were very wisely conveyed through that vehicle to give them a tincture
as they
passed.
Their
gods were the four winds, which they worshipped as the spirits that
pervade and
enliven the universe, and as those from whom alone all inspiration can
properly
be said to proceed. However, the chief of these, to whom they performed
the
adoration of Latria, was the Almighty North, an ancient deity, whom the
inhabitants of Megalopolis in Greece had likewise in highest
reverence. “Omnium deorum Boream maxime celebrant.” This
god, though endued with ubiquity, was yet supposed by the profounder
AEolists to
possess one peculiar habitation, or (to speak in form) a caelum
empyraeum,
wherein he was more intimately present. This was situated in a certain
region
well known to the ancient Greeks, by them called [Greek text which
cannot be
reproduced], the Land of Darkness. And although many controversies have
arisen
upon that matter, yet so much is undisputed, that from a region of the
like
denomination the most refined AEolists have borrowed their original,
from whence
in every age the zealous among their priesthood have brought over their
choicest
inspiration, fetching it with their own hands from the fountain-head in
certain
bladders, and disploding it among the sectaries in all nations, who
did, and do,
and ever will, daily gasp and pant after it.
Now
their mysteries and rites were performed in this manner. It is well
known among
the learned that the virtuosos of former ages had a contrivance for
carrying and
preserving winds in casks or barrels, which was of great assistance
upon long
sea-voyages, and the loss of so useful an art at present is very much
to be
lamented, though, I know not how, with great negligence omitted by
Pancirollus.
It was an invention ascribed to AEolus himself, from whom this sect is
denominated, and who, in honour of their founder’s memory, have to this
day
preserved great numbers of those barrels, whereof they fix one in each
of their
temples, first beating out the top. Into this barrel upon solemn days
the priest
enters, where, having before duly prepared himself by the methods
already
described, a secret funnel is also conveyed to the bottom of the
barrel, which
admits new supplies of inspiration from a northern chink or cranny.
Whereupon
you behold him swell immediately to the shape and size of his vessel.
In this
posture he disembogues whole tempests upon his auditory, as the spirit
from
beneath gives him utterance, which issuing ex adytis
and penetralibus, is not performed without much pain and griping. And the wind in
breaking forth deals with his face as it does with that of the sea,
first
blackening, then wrinkling, and at last bursting it into foam. It is in
this
guise the sacred AEolist delivers his oracular belches to his panting
disciples,
of whom some are greedily gaping after the sanctified breath, others
are all the
while hymning out the praises of the winds, and gently wafted to and
fro by
their own humming, do thus represent the soft breezes of their deities
appeased.
It
is from this custom of the priests that some authors maintain these
AEolists to
have been very ancient in the world, because the delivery of their
mysteries,
which I have just now mentioned, appears exactly the same with that of
other
ancient oracles, whose inspirations were owing to certain subterraneous
effluviums
of wind delivered with the same pain to the priest, and much about the
same
influence on the people. It is true indeed that these were frequently
managed
and directed by female officers, whose organs were understood to be
better
disposed for the admission of those oracular gusts, as entering and
passing up
through a receptacle of greater capacity, and causing also a pruriency
by the
way, such as with due management has been refined from carnal into a
spiritual
ecstasy. And to strengthen this profound conjecture, it is further
insisted that
this custom of female priests is kept up still in certain refined
colleges of
our modern AEolists, who are
agreed
to receive their inspiration, derived through the receptacle aforesaid,
like
their ancestors the Sybils.
And
whereas the mind of man, when he gives the spur and bridle to his
thoughts, does
never stop, but naturally sallies out into both extremes of high and
low, of
good and evil, his first flight of fancy commonly transports him to
ideas of
what is most perfect, finished, and exalted, till, having soared out of
his own
reach and sight, not well perceiving how near the frontiers of height
and depth
border upon each other, with the same course and wing he falls down
plump into
the lowest bottom of things, like one who travels the east into the
west, or
like a straight line drawn by its own length into a circle. Whether a
tincture
of malice in our natures makes us fond of furnishing every bright idea
with its
reverse, or whether reason, reflecting upon the sum of things, can,
like the
sun, serve only to enlighten one half of the globe, leaving the other
half by
necessity under shade and darkness, or whether fancy, flying up to the
imagination of what is highest and best, becomes over-short, and spent,
and
weary, and suddenly falls, like a dead bird of paradise, to the ground;
or
whether, after all these metaphysical conjectures, I have not entirely
missed
the true reason; the proposition, however, which has stood me in so much
circumstance is altogether true, that as the most uncivilised parts of
mankind
have some way or other climbed up into the conception of a God or
Supreme Power,
so they have seldom forgot to provide their fears with certain ghastly
notions,
which, instead of better, have served them pretty tolerably for a
devil. And
this proceeding seems to be natural enough, for it is with men whose
imaginations are lifted up very high after the same rate as with those
whose
bodies are so, that as they are delighted with the advantage of a nearer
contemplation upwards, so they are equally terrified with the dismal
prospect of
the precipice below. Thus in the choice of a devil it has been the
usual method
of mankind to single out some being, either in act or in vision, which
was in
most antipathy to the god they had framed. Thus also the sect of the
AEolists
possessed themselves with a dread and horror and hatred of two malignant
natures, betwixt whom and the deities they adored perpetual enmity was
established. The first of these was the chameleon, sworn foe to
inspiration,
which in scorn devoured large influences of their god, without
refunding the
smallest blast by eructation. The other was a huge terrible monster
called
Moulinavent, who with four strong arms waged eternal battle with all
their
divinities, dexterously turning to avoid their blows and repay them with
interest.
Thus
furnished, and set out with gods as well as devils, was the renowned
sect of
AEolists, which makes at this day so illustrious a figure in the world,
and
whereof that polite nation of Laplanders are beyond all doubt a most
authentic
branch, of whom I therefore cannot without injustice here omit to make
honourable mention, since they appear to be so closely allied in point
of
interest as well as inclinations with their brother AEolists among us,
as not
only to buy their winds by wholesale from the same merchants, but also
to retail
them after the same rate and method, and to customers much alike.
Now
whether the system here delivered was wholly compiled by Jack, or, as
some
writers believe, rather copied from the original at Delphos, with
certain
additions and emendations suited to times and circumstances, I shall not
absolutely determine. This I may affirm, that Jack gave it at least a
new turn,
and formed it into the same dress and model, as it lies deduced by
me.
I
have long sought after this opportunity of doing justice to a society
of men for
whom I have a peculiar honour, and whose opinions as well as practices
have been
extremely misrepresented and traduced by the malice or ignorance of
their
adversaries. For I think it one of the greatest and best of human
actions to
remove prejudices and place things in their truest and fairest light,
which I
therefore boldly undertake, without any regards of my own beside the
conscience,
the honour, and the thanks.
Nor
shall it any ways detract from the just reputation of this famous sect
that its
rise and institution are owing to such an author as I have described
Jack to be,
a person whose intellectuals were overturned and his brain shaken out
of its
natural position, which we commonly suppose to be a distemper, and call
by the
name of madness or frenzy. For if we take a survey of the greatest
actions that
have been performed in the world under the influence of single men,
which are
the establishment of new empires by conquest, the advance and progress
of new
schemes in philosophy, and the contriving as well as the propagating of
new
religions, we shall find the authors of them all to have been persons
whose
natural reason hath admitted great revolutions from their diet, their
education,
the prevalence of some certain temper, together with the particular
influence of
air and climate. Besides, there is something individual in human minds
that
easily kindle at the accidental approach and collision of certain
circumstances,
which, though of paltry and mean appearance, do often flame out into the
greatest emergencies of life. For great turns are not always given by
strong
hands, but by lucky adaptation and at proper seasons, and it is of no
import
where the fire was kindled if the vapour has once got up into the
brain. For the
upper region of man is furnished like the middle region of the air, the
materials are formed from causes of the widest difference, yet produce
at last
the same substance and effect. Mists arise from the earth, steams from
dunghills, exhalations from the sea, and smoke from fire; yet all
clouds are the
same in composition as well as consequences, and the fumes issuing from
a jakes
will furnish as comely and useful a vapour as incense from an altar.
Thus far, I
suppose, will easily be granted me; and then it will follow that as the
face of
Nature never produces rain but when it is overcast and disturbed, so
human
understanding seated in the brain must be troubled and overspread by
vapours
ascending from the lower faculties to water the invention and render it
fruitful. Now although these vapours (as it hath been already said) are
of as
various original as those of the skies, yet the crop they produce
differs both
in kind and degree, merely according to the soil. I will produce two
instances
to prove and explain what I am now advancing.
A
certain great prince raised a
mighty army, filled his coffers with infinite treasures, provided an
invincible
fleet, and all this without giving the least part of his design to his
greatest
ministers or his nearest favourites. Immediately the whole world was
alarmed,
the neighbouring crowns in trembling expectation towards what point the
storm
would burst, the small politicians everywhere forming profound
conjectures. Some
believed he had laid a scheme for universal monarchy; others, after much
insight, determined the matter to be a project for pulling down the
Pope and
setting up the Reformed religion, which had once been his own. Some
again, of a
deeper sagacity, sent him into Asia to subdue the Turk and recover
Palestine. In
the midst of all these projects and preparations, a certain state-
surgeon,
gathering the nature of the disease by these symptoms, attempted the
cure, at
one blow performed the operation, broke the bag and out flew the
vapour; nor did
anything want to render it a complete remedy, only that the prince
unfortunately
happened to die in the performance. Now is the reader exceeding curious
to learn
from whence this vapour took its rise, which had so long set the
nations at a
gaze? What secret wheel, what hidden spring, could put into motion so
wonderful
an engine? It was afterwards discovered that an absent female, who was
removed
into an enemy’s country, had directed the movement of this whole
machine. What
should an unhappy prince do in such ticklish 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 collected part of the
semen,
raised and inflamed, became adust, converted to choler, turned head
upon the
spinal duct, and ascended to the brain. The very same principle that
influences
a bully to break the windows of a woman who has jilted him naturally
stirs up a
great prince to raise mighty armies and dream of nothing but sieges,
battles,
and victories.
The
other instance is what I have read somewhere in a very ancient author
of a
mighty king, who, for the space of above thirty years, amused himself
to take
and lose towns, beat armies and be beaten, drive princes out of their
dominions,
fright children from their bread and butter, burn, lay waste, plunder,
dragoon,
massacre subject and stranger, friend and foe, male and female. It is
recorded
that the philosophers of each country were in grave dispute upon causes
natural,
moral, and political, to find out where they should assign an original
solution
of this phenomenon. At last the vapour or spirit which animated the
hero’s
brain, being in perpetual circulation, seized upon that region of the
human body
so renowned for furnishing the
zibeta occidentalis, and gathering there into a tumour, left the rest of the world
for that
time in peace. Of such mighty consequence is it where those exhalations
fix, and
of so little from whence they proceed. The same spirits, which in their
superior
progress would conquer a kingdom descending upon the anus, conclude in a
fistula.
Let
us next examine the great introducers of new schemes in philosophy, and
search
till we can find from what faculty of the soul the disposition arises
in mortal
man of taking it into his head to advance new systems with such an
eager zeal in
things agreed on all hands impossible to be known; from what seeds this
disposition springs, and to what quality of human nature these grand
innovators
have been indebted for their number of disciples, because it is plain
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 of their wits, having generally proceeded in
the
common course of their words and actions by a method very different
from the
vulgar dictates of unrefined reason, agreeing for the most part in
their several
models with their present undoubted successors in the academy of modern
Bedlam,
whose merits and principles I shall further examine in due place. Of
this kind
were Epicurus,
Diogenes,
Apollonius,
Lucretius, Paracelsus,
Des Cartes,
and others, who, if they were now in the world, tied fast and separate
from
their followers, would in this our undistinguishing age incur manifest
danger of
phlebotomy, and whips, and chains, and dark chambers, and straw. For
what man in
the natural state or course of thinking did ever conceive it in his
power to
reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and
breadth, and
height of his own? Yet this is the first humble and civil design of all
innovators in the empire of reason. Epicurus
modestly hoped that one time or other a certain fortuitous concourse of
all
men’s opinions, after perpetual jostlings, the sharp with the smooth,
the
light and the heavy, the round and the square, would, by certain
clinamina,
unite in the notions of atoms and void, as these did in the originals
of all
things. Cartesius reckoned to see before he died the sentiments of all
philosophers, like so many lesser stars in his romantic system, rapt
and drawn
within his own vortex. Now I would gladly be informed how it is
possible to
account for such imaginations as these in particular men, without
recourse to my
phenomenon of vapours ascending from the lower faculties to overshadow
the
brain, and there distilling into conceptions, for which the narrowness
of our
mother-tongue has not yet assigned any other name beside that of
madness or
frenzy. Let us therefore now conjecture how it comes to pass that none
of these
great prescribers do ever fail providing themselves and their notions
with a
number of implicit disciples, and I think the reason is easy to be
assigned, for
there is a peculiar string in the harmony of human understanding, which
in
several individuals is exactly of the same tuning. This, if you can
dexterously
screw up to its right key, and then strike gently upon it whenever you
have the
good fortune to light among those of the same pitch, they will by a
secret
necessary sympathy strike exactly at the same time. And in this one
circumstance
lies all the skill or luck of the matter; for, if you chance to jar the
string
among those who are either above or below your own height, instead of
subscribing to your doctrine, they will tie you fast, call you mad, and
feed you
with bread and water. It is therefore a point of the nicest conduct to
distinguish and adapt this noble talent with respect to the differences
of
persons and of times. Cicero understood this very well, when, writing
to a
friend in England, with a caution, among other matters, to beware of
being
cheated by our hackney-coachmen (who, it seems, in those days were as
arrant
rascals as they are now), has these remarkable words, Est quod gaudeas
te in ista loca venisse, ubi aliquid sapere viderere. For, to speak a bold truth, it is a fatal
miscarriage
so ill to order affairs as to pass for a fool in one company, when in
another
you might be treated as a philosopher; which I desire some certain
gentlemen of
my acquaintance to lay up in their hearts as a very seasonable
innuendo.
This,
indeed, was the fatal mistake of that worthy gentleman, my most
ingenious friend
Mr. Wotton, a person in appearance ordained for great designs as well as
performances, whether you will consider his notions or his looks.
Surely no man
ever advanced into the public with fitter qualifications of body and
mind for
the propagation of a new religion. Oh, had those happy talents,
misapplied to
vain philosophy, been turned into their proper channels of dreams and
visions,
where distortion of mind and countenance are of such sovereign use, the
base,
detracting world would not then have dared to report that something is
amiss,
that his brain hath undergone an unlucky shake, which even his brother
modernists themselves, like ingrates, do whisper so loud that it
reaches 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 fattening streams, will find the
spring-head
to have been as troubled and muddy as the current. Of such great
emolument is a
tincture of this vapour, which the world calls madness, that without
its help
the world would not only be deprived of those two great blessings,
conquests and
systems, but even all mankind would unhappily be reduced to the same
belief in
things invisible. Now the former postulatum being held, that it is of
no import
from what originals this vapour proceeds, but either in what angles it
strikes
and spreads over the understanding, or upon what species of brain it
ascends, it
will be a very delicate point to cut the feather and divide the several
reasons
to a nice and curious reader, how this numerical difference in the
brain can
produce effects of so vast a difference from the same vapour as to be
the sole
point of individuation between Alexander the Great, Jack of Leyden, and
Monsieur
Des Cartes. The present argument is the most abstracted that ever I
engaged in;
it strains my faculties to their highest stretch, 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 intricate difficulty, the
reader
will, I am sure, agree with me in the conclusion that, if the moderns
mean by
madness only a disturbance or transposition of the brain, by force of
certain
vapours issuing up from the lower faculties, then has this madness been
the
parent of all those mighty revolutions that have happened in empire, in
philosophy, and in religion. For the brain in its natural position and
state of
serenity disposeth its owner to pass his life in the common forms,
without any
thought of subduing multitudes to his own power, his reasons, or his
visions,
and the more he shapes his understanding by the pattern of human
learning, the
less he is inclined to form parties after his particular notions,
because that
instructs him in his private infirmities, as well as in the stubborn
ignorance
of the people. But when a man’s fancy gets astride on his reason, when
imagination is at cuffs with the senses, and common understanding as
well as
common sense is kicked out of doors, the first proselyte he makes is
himself;
and when that is once compassed, the difficulty is not so great in
bringing over
others, a strong delusion always operating from without as vigorously
as from
within. For cant and vision are to the ear and the eye the same that
tickling is
to the touch. Those entertainments and pleasures we most value in life
are such
as dupe and play the wag with the senses. For if we take an examination
of what
is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the
understanding or the senses we shall find all its properties and
adjuncts will
herd under this short definition, that it is a perpetual possession of
being
well deceived. And first, with relation to the mind or understanding,
it is
manifest what mighty advantages fiction has over truth, and the reason
is just
at our elbow: because imagination can build nobler scenes and produce
more
wonderful revolutions than fortune or Nature will be at the expense to
furnish.
Nor is mankind so much to blame in his choice thus determining him, if
we
consider that the debate merely lies between things past and things
conceived,
and so the question is only this: whether things that have place in the
imagination may not as properly be said to exist as those that are
seated in the
memory? Which may be justly held in the affirmative, and very much to
the
advantage of the former, since this is acknowledged to be the womb of
things,
and the other allowed being no more than the grave. Again, if we take
this
definition of happiness and examine it with reference to the senses, it
will be
acknowledged wonderfully adapt. How sad and insipid do all objects
accost us
that are not conveyed in the vehicle of delusion! How shrunk is
everything as it
appears in the glass of Nature, so that if it were not for the
assistance of
artificial mediums, false lights, refracted angles, varnish, and
tinsel, there
would be a mighty level in the felicity and enjoyments of mortal men.
If this
were seriously considered by the world, as I have a certain reason to
suspect it
hardly will, men would no longer reckon among their high points of
wisdom the
art of exposing weak sides and publishing infirmities—an employment, in
my
opinion, neither better nor worse than that of unmasking, which, I
think, has
never been allowed fair usage, either in the world or the
playhouse.
In
the proportion that credulity is a more peaceful possession of the mind
than
curiosity, so far preferable is that wisdom which converses about the
surface to
that pretended philosophy which enters into the depths of things and
then comes
gravely back with information and discoveries, that in the inside they
are good
for nothing. The two senses to which all objects first address
themselves are
the sight and the touch; these never examine farther than the colour,
the shape,
the size, and whatever other qualities dwell or are drawn by art upon
the
outward of bodies; and then comes reason officiously, with tools for
cutting,
and opening, and mangling, and piercing, offering to demonstrate that
they are
not of the same consistence quite through. Now I take all this to be
the last
degree of perverting Nature, one of whose eternal laws it is to put her
best
furniture forward. And therefore, in order to save the charges of all
such
expensive anatomy for the time to come, I do here think fit to inform
the reader
that in such conclusions as these reason is certainly in the right; and
that in
most corporeal beings which have fallen under my cognisance, the
outside hath
been infinitely preferable to the in, whereof I have been further
convinced from
some late experiments. Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will
hardly
believe how much it altered her person for the worse. Yesterday I
ordered the
carcass of a beau to be stripped in my presence, when we were all
amazed to find
so many unsuspected faults under one suit of clothes. Then I laid open
his
brain, his heart, and his spleen, but I plainly perceived at every
operation
that the farther we proceeded, we found the defects increase upon us,
in number
and bulk; from all which I justly formed this conclusion to myself, that
whatever philosopher or projector can find out an art to sodder and
patch up the
flaws and imperfections of Nature, will deserve much better of mankind
and teach
us a more useful science than that so much in present esteem, of
widening and
exposing them (like him who held anatomy to be the ultimate end of
physic). And
he whose fortunes and dispositions have placed him in a convenient
station to
enjoy the fruits of this noble art, he that can with Epicurus content
his ideas
with the films and images that fly off upon his senses from the
superficies of
things, such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature, leaving the sour and
the
dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up. This is the sublime and
refined point
of felicity called the possession of being well-deceived, the serene
peaceful
state of being a fool among knaves.
But
to return to madness. It is certain that, according to the system I
have above
deduced, every species thereof proceeds from a redundancy of vapour;
therefore,
as some kinds of frenzy give double strength to the sinews, so there
are of
other species which add vigour, and life, and spirit to the brain. Now
it
usually happens that these active spirits, getting possession of the
brain,
resemble those that haunt other waste and empty dwellings, which for
want of
business either vanish and carry away a piece of the house, or else
stay at home
and fling it all out of the windows. By which are mystically displayed
the two
principal branches of madness, and which some philosophers, not
considering so
well as I, have mistook to be different in their causes, over-hastily
assigning
the first to deficiency and the other to redundancy.
I
think it therefore manifest, from what I have here advanced, that the
main point
of skill and address is to furnish employment for this redundancy of
vapour, and
prudently to adjust the seasons of it, by which means it may certainly
become of
cardinal and catholic emolument in a commonwealth. Thus one man,
choosing a
proper juncture, leaps into a gulf, from thence proceeds a hero, and is
called
the saviour of his country. Another achieves the same enterprise, but
unluckily
timing it, has left the brand of madness fixed as a reproach upon his
memory.
Upon so nice a distinction are we taught to repeat the name of Curtius
with
reverence and love, that of Empedocles with hatred and contempt. Thus
also it is
usually conceived that the elder Brutus only personated the fool and
madman for
the good of the public; but this was nothing else than a redundancy of
the same
vapour long misapplied, called by the Latins ingenium
par negotiis,
or (to translate it as nearly as I can), a sort of frenzy never in its
right
element till you take it up in business of the state.
Upon
all which, and many other reasons of equal weight, though not equally
curious, I
do here gladly embrace an opportunity I have long sought for, of
recommending it
as a very noble undertaking to Sir Edward Seymour, Sir Christopher
Musgrave,
Sir John Bowles, John Howe, Esq., and other patriots concerned, that
they would
move for leave to bring in a Bill for appointing commissioners to
inspect into
Bedlam and the parts adjacent, who shall be empowered to send for
persons,
papers, and records, to examine into the merits and qualifications of
every
student and professor, to observe with utmost exactness their several
dispositions and behaviour, by which means, duly distinguishing and
adapting
their talents, they might produce admirable instruments for the several
offices
in a state, . . . civil and military, proceeding in such methods as I
shall here
humbly propose. And I hope the gentle reader will give some allowance
to my
great solicitudes in this important affair, upon account of that high
esteem I
have ever borne that honourable society, whereof I had some time the
happiness
to be an unworthy member.
Is
any student tearing his straw in piecemeal, swearing and blaspheming,
biting his
grate, foaming at the mouth, and emptying his vessel in the spectators’
faces?
Let the right worshipful the Commissioners of Inspection give him a
regiment of
dragoons, and send him into Flanders among the rest. Is another
eternally
talking, sputtering, gaping, bawling, in a sound without period or
article? What
wonderful talents are here mislaid! Let him be furnished immediately
with a
green bag and papers, and threepence in his pocket, and away with him to
Westminster Hall. You will find a third gravely taking the dimensions
of his
kennel, a person of foresight and insight, though kept quite in the
dark; for
why, like Moses, Ecce cornuta
erat ejus facies.
He walks duly in one pace, entreats your penny with due gravity and
ceremony,
talks much of hard times, and taxes, and the whore of Babylon, bars up
the
wooden of his cell constantly at eight o’clock, dreams of fire, and
shoplifters, and court-customers, and privileged places. Now what a
figure would
all these acquirements amount to if the owner were sent into the City
among his
brethren! Behold a fourth in much and deep conversation with himself,
biting his
thumbs at proper junctures, his countenance chequered with business and
design;
sometimes walking very fast, with his eyes nailed to a paper that he
holds in
his hands; a great saver of time, somewhat thick of hearing, very short
of
sight, but more of memory; a man ever in haste, a great hatcher and
breeder of
business, and excellent at the famous art of whispering nothing; a huge
idolator
of monosyllables and procrastination, so ready to give his word to
everybody
that he never keeps it; one that has forgot the common meaning of
words, but an
admirable retainer of the sound; extremely subject to the looseness,
for his
occasions are perpetually calling him away. If you 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 penny first” (hence comes the common saying and
commoner
practice of parting with money for a song). What a complete system of
court-skill is here described in every branch of it, and all utterly
lost with
wrong application! Accost the hole of another kennel, first stopping
your nose,
you will behold a surly, gloomy, nasty, slovenly mortal, raking in his
own dung
and dabbling in his urine. The best part of his diet is the reversion
of his own
ordure, which expiring into steams, whirls perpetually about, and at
last
reinfunds. His complexion 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 an excrement, from
thence
borrow their colour and their smell. The student of this apartment is
very
sparing of his words, but somewhat over-liberal of his breath. He holds
his hand
out ready to receive your penny, and immediately upon receipt withdraws
to his
former occupations. Now is it not amazing to think the society of
Warwick Lane should
have no more concern for the recovery of so useful a member, who, if
one may
judge from these appearances, would become the greatest ornament to that
illustrious body? Another student struts up fiercely to your teeth,
puffing with
his lips, half squeezing out his eyes, and very graciously holds out
his hand to
kiss. 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 of the ante-chamber,
and the
orator of the place gives you to understand that this solemn person is
a tailor
run mad with pride. This considerable student is adorned with many other
qualities, upon which at present I shall not further enlarge . . ..
Hark in your
ear . . . . I am strangely mistaken if all his address, his motions,
and his
airs would not then be very natural and in their proper element.
I
shall not descend so minutely as to insist upon the vast number of
beaux,
fiddlers, poets, and politicians that the world might recover by such a
reformation, but what is more material, beside the clear gain
redounding to the
commonwealth by so large an acquisition of persons to employ, whose
talents and
acquirements, if I may be so bold to affirm it, are now buried or at
least
misapplied. It would be a mighty advantage accruing to the public from
this
inquiry that all these would very much excel and arrive at great
perfection in
their several kinds, which I think is manifest from what I have already
shown,
and shall enforce by this one plain instance, that even I myself, the
author of
these momentous truths, am a person whose imaginations are hard-mouthed
and
exceedingly disposed to run away with his reason, which I have observed
from
long experience to be a very light rider, and easily shook off; upon
which
account my friends will never trust me alone without a solemn promise
to vent my
speculations in this or the like manner, for the universal benefit of
human
kind, which perhaps the gentle, courteous, and candid reader, brimful
of that
modern charity and tenderness usually annexed to his office, will be
very hardly
persuaded to believe.
It
is an unanswerable argument of a very refined age the wonderful
civilities that
have passed of late years between the nation of authors and that of
readers.
There can hardly pop out a play, a pamphlet, or a poem without a
preface full of
acknowledgments to the world for the general reception and applause
they have
given it, which the Lord knows where, or when, or how, or from whom it
received.
In due deference to so laudable a custom, I do here return my humble
thanks to
His Majesty and both Houses of Parliament, to the Lords of the King’s
most
honourable Privy Council, to the reverend the Judges, to the Clergy,
and Gentry,
and Yeomanry of this land; but in a more especial manner to my worthy
brethren
and friends at Will’s Coffee-house, and Gresham College, and Warwick
Lane, and
Moorfields, and Scotland Yard, and Westminster Hall, and Guildhall; in
short, to
all inhabitants and retainers whatsoever, either in court, or church,
or camp,
or city, or country, for their generosity and universal acceptance of
this
divine treatise. I accept their approbation and good opinion with
extreme
gratitude, and to the utmost of my poor capacity shall take hold of all
opportunities to return the obligation.
I
am also happy that fate has flung me into so blessed an age for the
mutual
felicity of booksellers and authors, whom I may safely affirm to be at
this day
the two only satisfied parties in England. Ask an author how his last
piece has
succeeded, “Why, truly he thanks his stars the world has been very
favourable,
and he has not the least reason to complain.” And yet he wrote it in a
week at
bits and starts, when he could steal an hour from his urgent affairs,
as it is a
hundred to one you may see further in the preface, to which he refers
you, and
for the rest to the bookseller. There you go as a customer, and make
the same
question, “He blesses his God the thing takes wonderful; he is just
printing a
second edition, and has but three left in his shop.” “You beat down the
price; sir, we shall not differ,” and in hopes of your custom another
time,
lets you have it as reasonable as you please; “And pray send as many of
your
acquaintance as you will; I shall upon your account furnish them all at
the same
rate.”
Now
it is not well enough considered to what accidents and occasions the
world is
indebted for the greatest part of those noble writings which hourly
start up to
entertain it. If it were not for a rainy day, a drunken vigil, a fit of
the
spleen, a course of physic, a sleepy Sunday, an ill run at dice, a long
tailor’s bill, a beggar’s purse, a factious head, a hot sun, costive
diet,
want of books, and a just contempt of learning, —but for these events,
I say,
and some others too long to recite (especially a prudent neglect of
taking
brimstone inwardly), I doubt the number of authors and of writings
would dwindle
away to a degree most woeful to behold. To confirm this opinion, hear
the words
of the famous troglodyte philosopher. “It is certain,” said he, “some
grains of folly are of course annexed as part in the composition of
human
nature; only the choice is left us whether we please to wear them
inlaid or
embossed, and we need not go very far to seek how that is usually
determined,
when we remember it is with human faculties as with liquors, the
lightest will
be ever at the top.”
There
is in this famous island of Britain a certain paltry scribbler, very
voluminous,
whose character the reader cannot wholly be a stranger to. He deals in a
pernicious kind of writings called “Second Parts,” and usually passes
under
the name of “The Author of the First.” I easily foresee that as soon as
I
lay down my pen this nimble operator will have stole it, and treat me as
inhumanly as he has already done Dr. Blackmore, Lestrange, and many
others who
shall here be nameless. I therefore fly for justice and relief into the
hands of
that great rectifier of saddles and lover of mankind, Dr. Bentley,
begging he
will take this enormous grievance into his most modern consideration;
and if it
should so happen that the furniture of an ass in the shape of a second
part must
for my sins be clapped, by mistake, upon my back, that he will
immediately
please, 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 to call for
it.
In
the meantime, I do here give this public notice that my resolutions are
to
circumscribe within this discourse the whole stock of matter I have
been so many
years providing. Since my vein is once opened, I am content to exhaust
it all at
a running, for the peculiar advantage of my dear country, and for the
universal
benefit of mankind. Therefore, hospitably considering the number of my
guests,
they shall have my whole entertainment at a meal, and I scorn to set up
the
leavings in the cupboard. What the guests cannot eat may be given to
the poor,
and the dogs under the table may gnaw the bones. This I understand for
a more
generous proceeding than to turn the company’s stomachs by inviting
them again
to-morrow to a scurvy meal of scraps.
If
the reader fairly considers the strength of what I have advanced in the
foregoing section, I am convinced it will produce a wonderful
revolution in his
notions and opinions, and he will be abundantly better prepared to
receive and
to relish the concluding part of this miraculous treatise. Readers may
be
divided into three classes—the superficial, the ignorant, and the
learned, and
I have with much felicity fitted my pen to the genius and advantage of
each. The
superficial reader will be strangely provoked to laughter, which clears
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) will find himself disposed to stare, which is an
admirable
remedy for ill eyes, serves to raise and enliven the spirits, and
wonderfully
helps perspiration. But the reader truly learned, chiefly for whose
benefit I
wake when others sleep, and sleep when others wake, will here find
sufficient
matter to employ his speculations for the rest of his life. It were
much to be
wished, and I do here humbly propose for an experiment, that every
prince in
Christendom will take seven of the deepest scholars in his dominions
and shut
them up close for seven years in seven chambers, with a command to
write seven
ample commentaries on this comprehensive discourse. I shall venture to
affirm
that, whatever difference may be found in their several conjectures,
they will
be all, without the least distortion, manifestly deducible from the
text.
Meantime it is my earnest request that so useful an undertaking may be
entered
upon (if their Majesties please) with all convenient speed, because I
have a
strong inclination before I leave the world to taste a blessing which we
mysterious writers can seldom reach till we have got into our graves,
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 to pursue after the scent of a carcass, or whether
she
conceives her trumpet sounds best and farthest when she stands on a
tomb, by the
advantage of a rising ground and the echo of a hollow vault.
It
is true, indeed, the republic of dark authors, after they once found
out this
excellent expedient of dying, have been peculiarly happy in the variety
as well
as extent of their reputation. For night being the universal mother of
things,
wise philosophers hold all writings to be fruitful in the proportion
they are
dark, and therefore the true illuminated (that is to say, the darkest
of all)
have met with such numberless commentators, whose scholiastic midwifery
hath
delivered them of meanings that the authors themselves perhaps never
conceived,
and yet may very justly be allowed the lawful parents of them, the
words of such
writers being like seed, which, however scattered at random, when they
light
upon a fruitful ground, will multiply far beyond either the hopes or
imagination
of the sower.
And
therefore, in order to promote so useful a work, I will here take leave
to
glance a few innuendos that may be of great assistance to those sublime
spirits
who shall be appointed to labour in a universal comment upon this
wonderful
discourse. And first, I have couched a very profound mystery in the
number of
0’s multiplied by seven and divided by nine. Also, if a devout brother
of the
Rosy Cross will pray fervently for sixty-three mornings with a lively
faith, and
then transpose certain letters and syllables according to prescription,
in the
second and fifth section they will certainly reveal into a full receipt
of the
opus magnum. Lastly, whoever will be at the pains to calculate the
whole number
of each letter in this treatise, and sum up the difference exactly
between the
several numbers, 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 to forget the qualities of Acamoth; a cujus
lacrymis
humecta prodit substantia, a risu lucida, a tristitia solida, et a
timore
mobilis, wherein Eugenius Philalethes hath
committed an unpardonable mistake.
After
so wide a compass as I have wandered, I do now gladly overtake and
close in with
my subject, and shall henceforth hold on with it an even pace to the
end of my
journey, except some beautiful prospect appears within sight of my way,
whereof,
though at present I 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 in writing
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 little business as when I am there),
if his
horse be tired with long riding and ill ways, or be naturally a jade, I
advise
him clearly to make the straightest and the commonest road, be it ever
so dirty;
but then surely we must own such a man to be a scurvy companion at
best. He
spatters himself and his fellow travellers at every step. All their
thoughts,
and wishes, and conversation turn entirely upon the subject of their
journey’s
end, and at every splash, and plunge, and stumble they heartily wish
one another
at the devil.
On
the other side, when a traveller and his horse are in heart and plight,
when his
purse is full and the day before him, he takes the road only where it
is clean
or convenient, entertains his company there as agreeably as he can, but
upon the
first occasion carries them along with him to every delightful scene in
view,
whether of art, of Nature, or of both; and if they chance to refuse out
of
stupidity or weariness, let them jog on by themselves, and be d—
n’d. He’ll overtake them at the next town, at which
arriving, he rides furiously through, the men, women, and children run
out to
gaze, a hundred noisy curs run barking after him, of which, if he
honours the
boldest with a lash of his whip, it is rather out of sport than
revenge. But
should some sourer mongrel dare too near an approach, he receives a
salute on
the chaps by an accidental stroke from the courser’s heels, nor is any
ground
lost by the blow, which sends 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 reader does, no doubt, most
exactly
remember, as I last parted with them in the conclusion of a former
section.
Therefore, his next care must be from two of the foregoing to extract a
scheme
of notions that may best fit his understanding for a true relish of
what is to
ensue.
Jack
had not only calculated the first revolution of his brain so prudently
as to
give rise to that epidemic sect of AEolists, but succeeding also into a
new and
strange variety of conceptions, the fruitfulness of his imagination led
him into
certain notions which, although in appearance very unaccountable, were
not
without their mysteries and their meanings, nor wanted followers to
countenance
and improve them. I shall therefore be extremely careful and exact in
recounting
such material passages of this nature as I have been able to collect
either from
undoubted tradition or indefatigable reading, and shall describe them as
graphically as it is possible, and as far as notions of that height and
latitude
can be brought within the compass of a pen. Nor do I at all question
but they
will furnish plenty of noble matter for such whose converting
imaginations
dispose them to reduce all things into types, who can make shadows—no
thanks
to the sun—and then mould them into substances—no thanks to
philosophy—whose peculiar talent lies in fixing tropes and allegories
to the
letter, and refining what is literal into figure and mystery.
Jack
had provided a fair copy of his father’s will, engrossed in form upon a
large
skin of parchment, and resolving to act the part of a most dutiful son,
he
became the fondest creature of it imaginable. For although, as I have
often told
the reader, it consisted wholly in certain plain, easy directions about
the
management and wearing of their coats, with legacies and penalties in
case of
obedience or neglect, yet he began to entertain a fancy that the matter
was
deeper and darker, and therefore must needs have a great deal more of
mystery at
the bottom. “Gentlemen,” said he, “I will prove this very skin of
parchment to be meat, drink, and cloth, to be the philosopher’s stone
and the
universal medicine.” In consequence of which raptures he resolved to
make use
of it in the most necessary as well as the most paltry occasions of
life. He had
a way of working it into any shape he pleased, so that it served him
for a
nightcap when he went to bed, and for an umbrella in rainy weather. He
would lap
a piece of it about a sore toe; or, when he had fits, burn two inches
under his
nose; or, if anything lay heavy on his stomach, scrape off and swallow
as much
of the powder as would lie on a silver penny—they were all infallible
remedies. With analogy to these refinements, his common talk and
conversation
ran wholly in the praise of his Will, and he circumscribed the utmost
of his
eloquence within that compass, not daring to let slip a syllable without
authority from thence. Once at a strange house he was suddenly taken
short upon
an urgent juncture, whereon it may not be allowed too particularly to
dilate,
and being not able to call to mind, with that suddenness the occasion
required,
an authentic phrase for demanding the way to the back, he chose rather,
as the
more prudent course, to incur the penalty in such cases usually
annexed; neither
was it possible for the united rhetoric of mankind to prevail with him
to make
himself clean again, because, having consulted the will upon this
emergency, he
met with a passage near the bottom (whether foisted in by the
transcriber is not
known) which seemed to forbid it.
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, to eat his victuals like a
Christian.
He
bore a strange kind of appetite to snap-dragon and to the livid snuffs
of a
burning candle, which he would catch and swallow with an agility
wonderful to
conceive; and by this procedure maintained a perpetual flame in his
belly, which
issuing in a glowing steam from both his eyes, as well as his nostrils
and his
mouth, made his head appear in a dark night like the skull of an ass
wherein a
roguish boy hath conveyed a farthing-candle, to the terror of his
Majesty’s
liege subjects. Therefore he made use of no other expedient to light
himself
home, but was wont to say that a wise man was his own lanthorn.
He
would shut his eyes as he walked along the streets, and if he happened
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 the gibing apprentices who looked on
that he
submitted with entire resignation, as to a trip or a blow of fate, with
whom he
found by long experience how vain it was either to wrestle or to cuff,
and
whoever durst undertake to do either would be sure to come off with a
swingeing
fall or a bloody nose. “It was ordained,” said he, “some few days before
the creation, that my nose and this very post should have a rencounter,
and
therefore Providence thought fit to send us both into the world in the
same age,
and to make us countrymen and fellow-citizens. Now, had my eyes been
open, it is
very likely the business might have been a great deal worse, for how
many a
confounded slip is daily got by man with all his foresight about him.
Besides,
the eyes of the understanding see best when those of the senses are out
of the
way, and therefore blind men are observed to tread their steps with
much more
caution, and conduct, and judgment than those who rely with too much
confidence
upon the virtue of the visual nerve, which every little accident shakes
out of
order, and a drop or a film can wholly disconcert; like a lanthorn
among a pack
of roaring bullies when they scour the streets, exposing its owner and
itself to
outward kicks and buffets, which both might have escaped if the vanity
of
appearing would have suffered them to walk in the dark. But further, if
we
examine the conduct of these boasted lights, it will prove yet a great
deal
worse than their fortune. It is true I have broke my nose against this
post,
because Providence either forgot, or did not think it convenient, to
twitch me
by the elbow and give me notice to avoid it. But let not this encourage
either
the present age of posterity to trust their noses unto the keeping of
their
eyes, which may prove the fairest way of losing them for good and all.
For, O ye
eyes, ye blind guides, miserable guardians are ye of our frail noses;
ye, I say,
who fasten upon the first precipice in view, and then tow our wretched
willing
bodies after you to the very brink of destruction. But alas! That brink
is
rotten, our feet slip, and we tumble down prone into a gulf, without one
hospitable shrub in the way to break the fall—a fall to which not any
nose of
mortal make is equal, except that of the giant Laurcalco, who was Lord
of the
Silver Bridge. Most properly, therefore, O eyes, and with great
justice, may you
be compared to those foolish lights which conduct men through dirt and
darkness
till they fall into a deep pit or a noisome bog.”
This
I have produced as a scantling of Jack’s great eloquence and the force
of his
reasoning upon such abstruse matters.
He
was, besides, a person of great design and improvement in affairs of
devotion,
having introduced a new deity, who has since met with a vast 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 his knees, up
with his
eyes, and fall to prayers though in the midst of the kennel. Then it
was that
those who understood his pranks would be sure to get far enough out of
his way;
and whenever curiosity attracted strangers to laugh or to listen, he
would of a
sudden bespatter them with mud.
In
winter he went always loose and unbuttoned, and clad as thin as
possible to let
in the ambient heat, and in summer lapped himself close and thick to
keep it out.
In
all revolutions of government, he would make his court for the office of
hangman-general, and in the exercise of that dignity, wherein he was
very
dexterous, would make use of no other vizard than a long prayer.
He
had a tongue so musculous and subtile, that he could twist it up into
his nose
and deliver a strange kind of speech from thence. He was also the first
in these
kingdoms who began to improve the Spanish accomplishment of braying;
and having
large ears perpetually exposed and erected, he carried his art to such a
perfection, that it was a point of great difficulty to distinguish
either by the
view or the sound between the original and the copy.
He
was troubled with a disease the reverse to that called the stinging of
the
tarantula, and would run dog-mad at the noise of music, especially a
pair of
bagpipes. But he would cure himself again by taking two or three turns
in
Westminster Hall, or Billingsgate, or in a boarding-school, or the Royal
Exchange, or a state coffee-house.
He
was a person that feared no colours, but mortally hated all, and upon
that
account bore a cruel aversion to painters, insomuch that in his
paroxysms as he
walked the streets, he would have his pockets loaded with stones to
pelt at the
signs.
Having
from his manner of living frequent occasions to wash himself, he would
often
leap over head and ears into the water, though it were in the midst of
the
winter, but was always observed to come out again much dirtier, if
possible,
than he went in.
He
was the first that ever found out the secret of contriving a
soporiferous
medicine to be conveyed in at the ears. It was a compound of sulphur
and balm of
Gilead, with a little pilgrim’s salve.
He
wore a large plaister of artificial caustics on his stomach, with the
fervour of
which he could set himself a groaning like the famous board upon
application of
a red-hot iron.
He
would stand in the turning of a street, and calling to those who passed
by,
would cry to one, “Worthy sir, do me the honour of a good slap in the
chaps;” to another, “Honest friend, pray favour me with a handsome kick
in
the rear;” “Madam, shall I entreat a small box in the ear from your
ladyship’s fair hands?” “Noble captain, lend a reasonable thwack, for
the
love of God, with that cane of yours over these poor shoulders.” And
when he
had by such earnest solicitations made a shift to procure a basting
sufficient
to swell up his fancy and his sides, he would return home extremely
comforted,
and full of terrible accounts of what he had undergone for the public
good.
“Observe this stroke,” said he, showing his bare shoulders; “a plaguy
janissary gave it me this very morning at seven o’clock, as, with much
ado, I
was driving off the Great Turk. Neighbours mine, this broken head
deserves a
plaister; had poor Jack been tender of his noddle, you would have seen
the Pope
and the French King long before this time of day among your wives and
your
warehouses. Dear Christians, the Great Moghul was come as far as
Whitechapel,
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 aversion or
antipathy
which Jack and his brother Peter seemed, even to affectation, to bear
towards
each other. Peter had lately done some rogueries that forced him to
abscond, and
he seldom ventured to stir out before night for fear of bailiffs. Their
lodgings
were at the two most distant parts of the town from each other, and
whenever
their occasions or humours called them abroad, they would make choice
of the
oddest, unlikely times, and most uncouth rounds that they could invent,
that
they might be sure to avoid one another. Yet, after all this, it was
their
perpetual fortune to meet, the reason of which is easy enough to
apprehend, for
the frenzy and the spleen of both having the same foundation, we may
look upon
them as two pair of compasses equally extended, and the fixed foot of
each
remaining in the same centre, which, though moving contrary ways at
first, will
be sure to encounter somewhere or other in the circumference. Besides,
it was
among the great misfortunes of Jack to bear a huge personal resemblance
with his
brother Peter. Their humour and dispositions were not only the same,
but there
was a close analogy in their shape, their size, and their mien;
insomuch as
nothing was more frequent than for a bailiff to seize Jack by the
shoulders and
cry, “Mr. Peter, you are the king’s prisoner;” or, at other times, for
one
of Peter’s nearest friends to accost Jack with open arms: “Dear Peter,
I am
glad to see thee; pray send me one of your best medicines for the
worms.”
This, we may suppose, was a mortifying return of those pains and
proceedings
Jack had laboured in so long, and finding how directly opposite all his
endeavours had answered to the sole end and intention which he had
proposed to
himself, how could it avoid having terrible effects upon a head and
heart so
furnished as his? However, the poor remainders of his coat bore all the
punishment. The orient sun never entered upon his diurnal progress
without
missing a piece of it. He hired a tailor to stitch up the collar so
close that
it was ready to choke him, and squeezed out his eyes at such a rate as
one could
see nothing but the white. What little was left of the main substance
of the
coat he rubbed every day for two hours against a rough-cast wall, in
order to
grind away the remnants of lace and embroidery, but at the same time
went on
with so much violence that he proceeded a heathen philosopher. Yet
after all he
could do of this kind, the success continued still to disappoint his
expectation, for as it is the nature of rags to bear a kind of mock
resemblance
to finery, there being a sort of fluttering appearance in both, which
is not to
be distinguished at a distance in the dark or by short-sighted eyes, so
in those
junctures it fared with Jack and his tatters, that they offered to the
first
view a ridiculous flaunting, which, assisting the resemblance in person
and air,
thwarted all his projects of separation, and left so near a similitude
between
them as frequently deceived the very disciples and followers of
both . . . Desunt
nonnulla,
. . .
The
old Sclavonian proverb said well that it is with men as with asses;
whoever
would keep them fast must find a very good hold at their ears. Yet I
think we
may affirm, and it hath been verified by repeated experience, that —
“Effugiet
tamen haec sceleratus vincula
Proteus.”
It
is good, therefore, to read the maxims of our ancestors with great
allowances to
times and persons; for if we look into primitive records we shall find
that no
revolutions have been so great or so frequent as those of human ears.
In former
days there was a curious invention to catch and keep them, which I
think we may
justly reckon among the artes
perditae;
and how can it be otherwise, when in these latter centuries the very
species is
not only diminished to a very lamentable degree, but the poor remainder
is also
degenerated so far as to mock our skilfullest tenure? For if only the
slitting
of one ear in a stag hath been found sufficient to propagate the defect
through
a whole forest, why should we wonder at the greatest consequences, from
so many
lopping and mutilations to which the ears 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 the dominion of grace, many endeavours were made to improve the
growth of
ears once more among us. The proportion of largeness was not only
looked upon as
an ornament of the outward man, but as a type of grace in the inward.
Besides,
it is held by naturalists that if there 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 the inferior; and therefore in that truly pious age the males
in every
assembly, according as they were gifted, appeared very forward in
exposing their
ears to view, and the regions about them; because Hippocrates tells
us that when the vein behind the ear happens to be cut, a man becomes a
eunuch,
and the females were nothing backwarder in beholding and edifying by
them;
whereof those who 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 a plentiful choice,
and were
sure to fix upon such as discovered the largest ears, that the breed
might not
dwindle between them. Lastly, the devouter sisters, who looked upon all
extraordinary dilatations of that member as protrusions of zeal, or
spiritual
excrescences, were sure to honour every head they sat upon as if they
had been
cloven tongues, but especially that of the preacher, whose ears were
usually of
the prime magnitude, which upon that account he was very frequent and
exact in
exposing with all advantages to the people in his rhetorical paroxysms,
turning
sometimes to hold forth the one, and sometimes to hold forth the other;
from
which custom the whole operation of preaching is to this very day among
their
professors styled by the phrase of holding forth.
Such
was the progress of the saints for advancing the size of that member,
and it is
thought the success would have been every way answerable, if in process
of time
a cruel king had not arose, who raised a bloody persecution against all
ears
above a certain standard; upon which some were glad to hide their
flourishing
sprouts in a black border, others crept wholly under a periwig; some
were slit,
others cropped, and a great number sliced off to the stumps. 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 the present, it is manifest
how
little reason we can have to rely upon a hold so short, so weak, and so
slippery; and that whoever desires to catch mankind fast must have
recourse to
some other methods. Now he that will examine human nature with
circumspection
enough may discover several handles, whereof the six senses afford one
apiece,
beside a great number that are screwed to the passions, and some few
riveted to
the intellect. Among these last, curiosity is one, and of all others
affords the
firmest grasp; curiosity, that spur in the side, that bridle in the
mouth, that
ring in the nose of a lazy, an impatient, and a grunting reader. By
this handle
it is that an author should seize upon his readers; which as soon as he
hath
once compassed, all resistance and struggling are in vain, and they
become his
prisoners as close as he pleases, till weariness or dulness force him
to let go
his grip.
And
therefore I, the author of this miraculous treatise, having hitherto,
beyond
expectation, maintained by the aforesaid handle a firm hold upon my
gentle
readers, it is with great reluctance that I am at length compelled to
remit my
grasp, leaving them in the perusal of what remains to that natural
oscitancy
inherent in the tribe. I can only assure thee, courteous reader, for
both our
comforts, that my concern is altogether equal to thine, for my
unhappiness in
losing or mislaying among my papers the remaining part of these
memoirs, which
consisted of accidents, turns, and adventures, both new, agreeable, and
surprising, and therefore calculated in all due points to the delicate
taste of
this our noble age. But alas! with my utmost endeavours I have been
able only to
retain a few of the heads. Under which there was a full account how
Peter got a
protection out of the King’s Bench, and of a reconcilement between Jack
and
him, upon a design they had in a certain rainy night to trepan brother
Martin
into a spunging-house, and there strip him to the skin. How Martin,
with much
ado, showed them both a fair pair of heels. How a new warrant came out
against
Peter, upon which Jack left him in the lurch, stole his protection, and
made use
of it himself. How Jack’s tatters came into fashion in court and city;
how he
got upon a great horse and ate custard. But the particulars of all
these, with
several others which have now slid out of my memory, are lost beyond
all hopes
of recovery. For which misfortune, leaving my readers to condole with
each other
as far 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 injure their healths
for an
accident past remedy, I now go on to the ceremonial part of an
accomplished
writer, and therefore by a courtly modern least of all others to be
omitted.
Going
too long is a cause of abortion as effectual, though not so frequent,
as going
too short, and holds true especially in the labours of the brain. Well
fare the
heart of that noble Jesuit
who first
adventured to confess in print that books must be suited to their
several
seasons, like dress, and diet, and diversions; and better fare our
noble notion
for refining upon this among other French modes. I am living fast to
see the
time when a book that misses its tide shall be neglected as the moon by
day, or
like mackerel a week after the season. No man has more nicely observed
our
climate than the bookseller who bought the copy of this work. He knows
to a
title what subjects will best go off in a dry year, and which it is
proper to
expose foremost when the weather-glass is fallen to much rain. When he
had seen
this treatise and consulted his almanac upon it, he gave me to
understand that
he had manifestly considered the two principal things, which were the
bulk and
the subject, and found it would never take but after a long vacation,
and then
only in case it should happen to be a hard year for turnips. Upon which
I
desired to know, considering my urgent necessities, what he thought
might be
acceptable this month. He looked westward and said, “I doubt we shall
have a
bit of bad weather. However, if you could prepare some pretty little
banter (but
not in verse), or a small treatise upon the it would run like wildfire.
But if
it hold up, I have already hired an author to write something against
Dr.
Bentley, which I am sure will turn to account.”
At
length we agreed upon this expedient, that when a customer comes for
one of
these, and desires in confidence to know the author, he will tell him
very
privately as a friend, naming whichever of the wits shall happen to be
that week
in the vogue, and if Durfey’s last play should be in course, I had as
lieve he
may be the person as Congreve. This I mention, because I am wonderfully
well
acquainted with the present relish of courteous readers, and have often
observed, with singular pleasure, that a fly driven from a honey-pot
will
immediately, with very good appetite, alight and finish his meal on an
excrement.
I
have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are
grown very
numerous of late, and I know very well the judicious world is resolved
to list
me in that number. I conceive, therefore, as to the business of being
profound,
that it is with writers as with wells. A person with good eyes can see
to the
bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there; and that often when
there is
nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it
be but a
yard and half under ground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep,
upon no
wiser a reason than because it is wondrous dark.
I
am now trying an experiment very frequent among modern authors, which
is to
write upon nothing, when the subject is utterly exhausted to let the
pen still
move on; by some called the ghost of wit, delighting to walk after the
death of
its body. And to say the truth, there seems to be no part of knowledge
in fewer
hands than that of discerning when to have done. By the time that an
author has
written out a book, he and his readers are become old acquaintance, and
grow
very loathe to part; so that I have sometimes known it to be in writing
as in
visiting, where the ceremony of taking leave has employed more time
than the
whole conversation before. The conclusion of a treatise resembles the
conclusion
of human life, which has sometimes been compared to the end of a feast,
where
few are satisfied to depart ut
plenus vitae conviva.
For men will sit down after the fullest meal, though it is only to dose
or to
sleep out the rest of the day. But in this latter I differ extremely
from other
writers, and shall be too proud if, by all my labours, I can have any
ways
contributed to the repose of mankind in times so turbulent and unquiet
as these.
Neither do I think such an employment so very alien from the office of
a wit as
some would suppose; for among a very polite nation in Greece there
were the same temples built and consecrated to Sleep and the Muses,
between
which two deities they believed the strictest friendship was
established.
I
have one concluding favour to request of my reader, that he will not
expect to
be equally diverted and informed by every line or every page of this
discourse,
but give some allowance to the author’s spleen and short fits or
intervals of
dulness, as well as his own, and lay it seriously to his conscience
whether, if
he were walking the streets in dirty weather or a rainy day, he would
allow it
fair dealing in folks at their ease from a window, to criticise his
gate and
ridicule his dress at such a juncture.
In
my disposure of employments of the brain, I have thought fit to make
invention
the master, and to give method and reason the office of its lackeys.
The cause
of this distribution was from observing it my peculiar case to be often
under a
temptation of being witty upon neither occasion where I could be
neither wise
nor sound, nor anything to the matter in hand. And I am too much a
servant of
the modern way to neglect any such opportunities, whatever pains or
improprieties I may be at to introduce them. For I have observed that
from a
laborious collection of seven hundred and thirty-eight flowers and
shining hints
of the best modern authors, digested with great reading into my book of
common
places, I have not been able after five years to draw, hook, or force
into
common conversation any more than a dozen. Of which dozen the one
moiety failed
of success by being dropped among unsuitable company, and the other
cost me so
many strains, and traps, and ambages to introduce, that I at length
resolved to
give it over. Now this disappointment (to discover a secret), I must
own, gave
me the first hint of setting up for an author, and I have since found
among some
particular friends that it is become a very general complaint, and has
produced
the same effects upon many others. For I have remarked many a towardly
word to
be wholly neglected or despised in discourse, which hath passed very
smoothly
with some consideration and esteem after its preferment and sanction in
print.
But now, since, by the liberty and encouragement of the press, I am
grown
absolute master of the occasions and opportunities to expose the
talents I have
acquired, I already discover that the issues of my observanda begin to
grow too
large for the receipts. Therefore I shall here pause awhile, till I
find, by
feeling the world’s pulse and my own, that it will be of absolute
necessity
for us both to resume my pen.
[In some early editions of “The Tale of a Tub,” Swift added,
under
the title of “What Follows after Section IX.,” the following sketch
for a
“History of Martin.”]
Giving
an account of his departure from Jack, and their setting up for
themselves, on
which account they were obliged to travel, and meet many disasters;
finding no
shelter near Peter’s habitation, Martin succeeds in the North; Peter
thunders
against Martin for the loss of the large revenue he used to receive
from thence;
Harry Huff sent Marlin a challenge in fight, which he received; Peter
rewards
Harry for the pretended victory, which encouraged Harry to huff Peter
also; with
many other extraordinary adventures of the said Martin in several
places with
many considerable persons.
With
a digression concerning the nature, usefulness, and necessity of wars
and
quarrels.
How
Jack and Martin, being parted, set up each for himself. How they
travelled over
hills and dales, met many disasters, suffered much from the good cause,
and
struggled with difficulties and wants, not having where to lay their
head; by
all which they afterwards proved themselves to be right father’s sons,
and
Peter to be spurious. Finding no shelter near Peter’s habitation, Martin
travelled northwards, and finding the Thuringians, a neighbouring
people,
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 often employed 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 account declared
for
Martin; particularly one who, not having had enough of one wife, wanted
to marry
a second, and knowing Peter used not to grant such licenses but at a
swingeing
price, he struck up a bargain with Martin, whom he found more
tractable, and who
assured him he had the same power to allow such things. How most of the
other
Northern lords, for their own private ends, withdrew themselves and
their
dependants from Peter’s authority, and closed in with Martin. How Peter,
enraged at the loss of such large territories, and consequently of so
much
revenue, thundered against Martin, and sent out the strongest and most
terrible
of his bulls to devour him; but this having no effect, and Martin
defending
himself boldly and dexterously, Peter at last put forth proclamations
declaring
Martin and all his adherents rebels and traitors, ordaining and
requiring all
his loving subjects to take up arms, and to kill, burn, and destroy all
and
every one of them, promising large rewards, &c., upon which ensued
bloody
wars and desolation.
How
Harry Huff, lord of Albion, one of the greatest bullies of those days,
sent a
cartel to Martin to fight him on a stage at Cudgels, quarter-staff,
backsword,
&c. Hence the origin of that genteel custom of prize-fighting so
well known
and practised to this day 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 wounds and
bruises,
how they both drew off victorious, in which their example has been
frequently
imitated by great clerks and others since that time. How Martin’s
friends
applauded his victory, and how Lord Harry’s friends complimented him on
the
same score, and particularly Lord Peter, who sent him a fine feather
for his
cap, to be worn by him and his successors as a perpetual mark for his
bold
defence of Lord Peter’s cause. How Harry, flushed with his pretended
victory
over Martin, began to huff Peter also, and at last downright quarrelled
with him
about a wench. How some of Lord Harry’s tenants, ever fond of changes,
began
to talk kindly of Martin, for which he mauled them soundly, as he did
also those
that adhered to Peter. How he turned some out of house and hold, others
he
hanged or burnt, &c.
How
Harry Huff, after a deal of blustering, wenching, and bullying, died,
and was
succeeded by a good-natured boy, who, giving way to the general bent of
his
tenants, allowed Martin’s notions to spread everywhere, and take deep
root in
Ambition. How, after his death, the farm fell into the hands of a lady,
who was
violently in love with Lord Peter. How she purged the whole country
with fire
and sword, resolved not to leave the name or remembrance of Martin. How
Peter
triumphed, and set up shops again for selling his own powders,
plasters, and
salves, which were now declared the only true ones, Martin’s being all
declared counterfeit. How great numbers of Martin’s friends left the
country,
and, travelling up and down in foreign parts, grew acquainted with many
of
Jack’s followers, and took a liking to many of their notions and ways,
which
they afterwards brought back into ambition, now under another landlady,
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 countenancing and assisting at the same time many of
Jack’s
followers; but finding, no possibility of reconciling all the three
brothers,
because each would be master, and allow no other salves, powders, or
plasters to
be used but his own, she discarded all three, and set up a 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 apothecaries of her own creating, which they extracted out of
Peter’s, and
Martin’s, and Jack’s receipt-books, and of this medley or hodge-podge
made
up a dispensatory of their own, strictly forbidding any other to be
used, and
particularly Peter’s, from which the greatest part of this new
dispensatory
was stolen. How the lady, farther to confirm this change, wisely
imitating her
father, degraded Peter from the rank he pretended as eldest brother,
and set up
herself in his place as head of the family, and ever after wore her
father’s
old cap with the fine feather he had got from Peter for standing his
friend,
which has likewise been worn with no small ostentation to this day by
all her
successors, though declared enemies to Peter. How Lady Bess and her
physicians,
being told of many defects and imperfections in their new medley
dispensatory,
resolve on a further alteration, to purge it from a great deal of
Peter’s
trash that still remained in it, but were prevented by her death. How
she was
succeeded by a North-Country farmer, who pretended great skill in the
managing
of farms, though he could never govern his own poor little farm, nor
yet this
large new one after he got it. How this new landlord, to show his
valour and
dexterity, fought against enchanters, weeds, giants, and windmills, and
claimed
great honour for his victories. How his successor, no wiser than he,
occasioned
great disorders by the new methods he took to manage his farms. How he
attempted
to establish in his Northern farm the same dispensatory 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 into his
history a
new sect different from the three he had undertaken to treat of; and
how his
inviolable respect to the sacred number three obliges him to reduce
these four,
as he intends to do all other things, to that number; and for that end
to drop
the former Martin and to substitute in his place Lady Bess’s
institution,
which is to pass under the name of Martin in the sequel of this true
history.
This weighty point being cleared, the author goes on and describes
mighty
quarrels and squabbles between Jack and Martin; how sometimes the one
had the
better and sometimes the other, to the great desolation of both farms,
till at
last both sides concur to hang up the landlord, who pretended to die a
martyr
for Martin, though he had been true to neither side, and was suspected
by many
to have a great affection for Peter.
This
being a matter of great consequence, the author intends to treat it
methodically
and at large in a treatise apart, and here to give only some hints of
what his
large treatise contains. The state of war, natural to all creatures.
War is an
attempt to take by violence from others a part of what they have and we
want.
Every man, fully sensible of his own merit, and finding it not duly
regarded by
others, has a natural right to take from them all that he thinks due to
himself;
and every creature, finding its own wants more than those of others,
has the
same right to take everything its nature requires. Brutes, much more
modest in
their pretensions this way than men, and mean men more than great ones.
The
higher one raises his pretensions this way, the more bustle he makes
about them,
and the more success he has, the greater hero. Thus greater souls, in
proportion
to their superior merit, claim a greater right to take everything from
meaner
folks. This true foundation of grandeur and heroism, and of the
distinction of
degrees among men. War, therefore, necessary to establish
subordination, and to
found cities, kingdoms, &c., as also to purge bodies politic of
gross
humours. Wise princes find it necessary to have wars abroad to keep
peace at
home. War, famine, and pestilence, the usual cures for corruption in
bodies
politic. A comparison of these three—the author is to write a panegyric
on
each of them. The greatest part of mankind loves war more than peace.
They are
but few and mean-spirited that live in peace with all men. The modest
and meek
of all kinds always a prey to those of more noble or stronger
appetites. The
inclination to war universal; those that cannot or dare not make war in
person
employ others to do it for them. This maintains bullies, bravoes, cut-
throats,
lawyers, soldiers, &c. Most professions would be useless if all were
peaceable. Hence brutes want neither smiths nor lawyers, magistrates nor
joiners, soldiers or surgeons. Brutes having but narrow appetites, are
incapable
of carrying on or perpetuating war against their own species, or of
being led
out in troops and multitudes to destroy one another. These prerogatives
proper
to man alone. The excellency of human nature demonstrated by the vast
train of
appetites, passions, wants, &c., that attend it. This matter to be
more
fully treated in the author’s panegyric on mankind.
How
Jack, having got rid of the old landlord, set up another to his mind,
quarrelled
with Martin, and turned him out of doors. How he pillaged all his
shops, and
abolished his whole dispensatory. How the new landlord laid
about him, mauled Peter, worried Martin, and made the whole
neighbourhood
tremble. How Jack’s friends 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 of doors, a
new
landlord brought in,
and Martin
re-established. How this new landlord let Martin do what he pleased,
and Martin
agreed to everything his pious landlord desired, provided Jack might be
kept
low. Of several efforts Jack made to raise up his head, but all in
vain; till at
last the landlord died, and was succeeded by one who
was a great friend to Peter, who, to humble Martin, gave Jack some
liberty. How
Martin grew enraged at this, called in a foreigner and
turned out the landlord; in which Jack concurred with Martin, because
this
landlord was entirely devoted to Peter, into whose arms he threw
himself, and
left his country. How the new landlord secured Martin in the full
possession of
his former rights, but would not allow him to destroy Jack, who had
always been
his friend. How Jack got up his head in the North, and put himself in
possession
of a whole canton, to the great discontent of Martin, who finding also
that some
of Jack’s friends were allowed to live and get their bread in the south
parts
of the country, grew highly discontented with the new landlord he had
called in
to his assistance. How this landlord kept Martin in order, upon which
he fell
into a raging fever, and swore he would hang himself or join in with
Peter,
unless Jack’s children were all turned out to starve. Of several
attempts to
cure Martin, and make peace between him and Jack, that they might unite
against
Peter; but all made ineffectual by the great address of a number of
Peter’s
friends, that herded among Martin’s, and appeared the most zealous for
his
interest. How Martin, getting abroad in this mad fit, looked so like
Peter in
his air and dress, and talked so like him, that many of the neighbours
could not
distinguish the one from the other; especially when Martin went up and
down
strutting in Peter’s armour, which he had borrowed to fight Jack. What
remedies were used to cure Martin’s distemper . . .
Here
the author being seized with a fit of dulness, to which he is very
subject,
after having read a poetical epistle addressed to . . . it entirely
composed his
senses, so that he has not writ a line since.
N.B.—Some
things that follow after this are not in the MS., but seem to have been
written
since, to fill up the place of what was not thought convenient then to
print.
The
author, having laboured so long and done so much to serve and instruct
the
public, without any advantage to himself, has at last thought of a
project which
will tend to the great benefit of all mankind, and produce handsome
revenue to
the author. He intends to print by subscription, in ninety-six large
volumes in
folio, an exact description of Terra Australis incognita, collected
with great
care, and prints from 999 learned and pious authors of undoubted
veracity. The
whole work, illustrated with maps and cuts agreeable to the subject,
and done by
the best masters, will cost but one guinea 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
all families, because it contains exact accounts of all the provinces,
colonies,
and mansions of that spacious country, where, by a general doom, all
transgressors of the law are to be transported; and every one having
this work
may choose out the fittest and best place for himself, there being
enough for
all, so as every one shall be fully satisfied.
The
author supposes that one copy of this work will be bought at the public
charge,
or out of the parish rates, for every parish church in the three
kingdoms, and
in all the dominions thereunto belonging. And that every family that
can command
10 pounds per annum, even though retrenched from less necessary
expenses, will
subscribe for one. He does not think of giving out above nine volumes
nearly;
and considering the number requisite, he intends to print at least
100,000 for
the first edition. He is to print proposals against next term, with a
specimen,
and a curious map of the capital city with its twelve gates, from a
known
author, who took an exact survey of it in a dream. Considering the
great care
and pains of the author, and the usefulness of the work, he hopes every
one will
be ready, for their own good as well as his, to contribute cheerfully
to it, and
not grudge him the profit he may have by it, especially if he comes to
a third
or fourth edition, as he expects it will very soon.
He
doubts not but it will be translated into foreign languages by most
nations of
Europe, as well as Asia and Africa, being of as great use to all those
nations
as to his own; for this reason he designs to procure patents and
privileges for
securing the whole benefit to himself from all those different princes
and
states, and hopes to see many millions of this great work printed in
those
different countries and languages before his death.
After
this business is pretty well established, he has promised to put a
friend on
another project almost as good as this, by establishing insurance
offices
everywhere for securing people from shipwreck and several other
accidents in
their voyage to this country; and these officers shall furnish, at a
certain
rate, pilots well versed in the route, and that know all the rocks,
shelves,
quicksands, &c., that such pilgrims and travellers may be exposed
to. Of
these he knows a great number ready instructed in most countries; but
the whole
scheme of this matter he is to draw up at large and communicate to his
friend.