The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Tale of a Tub, by Jonathan Swift (#6 in our series by Jonathan Swift) Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: A Tale of a Tub Author: Jonathan Swift Release Date: December, 2003 [EBook #4737] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 10, 2002] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII
Transcribed by Stephen Rice. Additional proofing by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk. From the 1889 "Tale of a Tub and Other Works"
George Routledge and Sons edition.
A TALE OF A TUB
Contents
The Tale of a Tub:
Advert
To the Right Honourable John Lord
Somers
The Bookseller to The Reader
The Epistle Dedicatory
The Preface
Section I. - The Introduction
Section II.
Section III. - A Digression Concerning
Critics
Section IV. - A Tale Of A Tub
Section V. - A Digression In The
Modern Kind
Section VI. - A Tale Of A Tub
Section VII - A Digression In Praise
Of Digressions
Section VIII. - A Tale Of A Tub
Section IX. - A Digression Concerning
The Original . . .
Section X. - A Farther Digression
Section XI. - A Tale Of A Tub
The Conclusion
The History Of Martin
The History of Martin
A Digression On The Nature . . .
The History Of Martin - Continued
A Project For The Universal Benefit
Of Mankind
ADVERT
Treatifes writ by the fame Author, moft of them mentioned in the following
Discourfes; which will be fpeedily publifhed.
A Character of the prefent Set of Wits in this Ifland.
A Panegyrical Effay upon the Number THREE.
A Differtation upon the principal productions of Grub-ftree.
Lectures upon the Diffection of Human Nature.
A Panegyrick upon the World.
An Analytical Difcourfe upon Zeal, Hiftori-theo-phyfi-logically
confidered.
A general Hiftory of Ears.
A modeft Defence of the Proceedings of the Rabble in all Ages.
A Defcription of the Kingdom of Abfurdities.
A Voyage into England, by a Perfon of Quality in Terra Auftralis
incognita, tranflated from the Original.
A Critical Effay upon the Art of Canting, Philofophically, Phyfically,
and Mufically confidered.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN LORD SOMERS.
My LORD,
Though the author has written a large Dedication, yet that 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.
THE BOOKSELLER TO THE READER
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 Bruyère, 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.
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY
TO
HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE POSTERITY
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 maître 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. Decemb. 1697.
THE PREFACE.
The wits of the present age being so very numerous and penetrating,
it seems the grandees of Church and State begin to fall 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 {50}.
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 {51a}.
When I went through that necessary and noble course of study, {51b}
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. Whatdyecall’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, {56a}
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 {56b}
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 Astræa; with any other common-places
equally new and eloquent, which are furnished by the splendida
bills {56c};
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.
SECTION I. - THE INTRODUCTION.
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.” {59}
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 {60}.
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 {61}
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. {62a}
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
{62b}, 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. {62c}
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. {63}
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 {64},
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 {65a},
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 {65b},
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 Grubæan 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,
Æsop, 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
bonæ notæ and an adeptus; he published it in the
nine hundred and eighty-fourth year {67a}
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 {67b},
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 {69a},
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
{69b}, 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.
SECTION II.
Once upon a time there was a man who had three sons by one wife {70}
and all at a birth, neither could the midwife tell certainly 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 {71}.
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 {72a},
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 {72b}.
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?” {75}
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. {76}
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, {77a}
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 {77b} 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 {78a}.
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 {78b},
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 {79a}.
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 {79b}
(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 cathedrâ {80a}
that points were absolutely jure paterno 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
{80b} 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.
SECTION III. - A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS.
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,
supplicatory, 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 Etcætera the
elder, who begat Bentley, and Rymer, and Wotton, and Perrault, and Dennis,
who begat Etcætera 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 ratsbane 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 reasonings 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 {84a}.
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 {84b}
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 {85}
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.
{86}
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
commonplace-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 layings 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 {88}.
A certain author, whose works have many ages since been entirely lost,
does in his fifth book and eighth chapter say of critics that “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 for ever 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, the true critics are known by 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 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 {89}.
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.
SECTION IV. - A TALE OF A TUB.
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 fonde 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 raree-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 needs 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
Newgate 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--mn 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 verè
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 storey 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 {95}.
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
{96}; 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
{98a} 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 sign-post
{98b} 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.” {98c}
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 {99a},
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 {99b}.
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 {99c}.
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.
SECTION V. - A DIGRESSION IN THE MODERN KIND.
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 quædams, 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
{102a}, 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 {102b}.
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 liftings 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 monstermongers 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 threepence, 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, To the Readers’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.
SECTION VI. - A TALE OF A TUB.
We left Lord Peter in open rupture with his two brethren, both for ever
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 ribbands, 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 {110};
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 sedatest 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 {111a},
or like a bawd in her old velvet petticoat resigned into the secular
hands of the mobile {111b}.
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 {112}.
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 Æolists, 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.”
SECTION VII. - A DIGRESSION IN PRAISE OF DIGRESSIONS.
I have sometimes heard of an Iliad in a nut-shell, but it has been my
fortune to have much oftener seen a nut-shell 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 are dressed up in
various compounds, consisting in soups and olios, fricassees and ragouts.
It is true there is a sort of morose, detracting, ill-bred 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.
This I am told by a very skilful computer, who hath given a full demonstration
of it from rules of arithmetic.
This perhaps may be objected against by those who maintain the infinity
of matter, and therefore will not allow that any species of it can be
exhausted. 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 some remains of it were left us by the ancients, 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 a perfection by
the same hands. What I mean is, that highly celebrated talent
among the modern wits of deducing similitudes, 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 {116},
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 observandas are to be nicely dwelt on by some called
the sieves and boulters 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 be 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 fulness 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 outvie 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 please. And so I return with
great alacrity to pursue a more important concern.
SECTION VIII. - A TALE OF A TUB.
The learned Æolists 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 à 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 examine 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 informans
of man by the name of spiritus, 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 Æolists,
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 {119a}
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
improveable 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 Æolists 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 {119b}.
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 puffeth 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, whom 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.” {120}
This god, though endued with ubiquity, was yet supposed by the profounder
Æolists to possess one peculiar habitation, or (to speak in form)
a caelum empyræum, wherein he was more intimately present.
This was situated in a certain region well known to the ancient Greeks,
by them called Σχοτια, 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 Æolists 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 Æolus 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 a foam. It is in this guise the sacred Æolist 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
Æolists 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 Æolists {122},
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 Æolists 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, who
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. {123}
Thus furnished, and set out with gods as well as devils, was the renowned
sect of Æolists, 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 Æolists 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.
SECTION IX. - A DIGRESSION CONCERNING THE ORIGINAL, THE USE, AND IMPROVEMENT
OF MADNESS IN A COMMONWEALTH.
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 prevalency of some certain temper, together with
the particular influence of air and climate. Besides, there is
something individual in human minds that easily kindles 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 {126a}
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
{126b}, 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 the movement of this whole machine
had been directed by an absent female, who was removed into an enemy’s
country. 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 {127a},
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 {127b},
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 {129}.
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 ungrates, 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 to be 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 informations 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 superfices 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 redundance.
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 {135},
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 {136}
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.
SECTION X. - A FARTHER DIGRESSION.
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 {140}.
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 Sigè, and be sure not to forget the qualities
of Acamoth; a cujus lacrymis humecta prodit substantia, à
risu lucida, à tristitiâ solida, et à timore mobilis,
wherein Eugenius Philalethes {142}
hath committed an unpardonable mistake.
SECTION XI. - A TALE OF A TUB.
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 Æolists, 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 {145a}.
He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his meat, nor
could all the world persuade him, as the common phrase is, to eat his
victuals like a Christian {145b}.
He bore a strange kind of appetite to snap-dragon and to the livid snuffs
of a burning candle {146a},
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 {146b},
“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 {147a},
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 {147b}.
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 {148a}.
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 {148b}.
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 {148c}.
He was the first that ever found out the secret of contriving a soporiferous
medicine to be conveyed in at the ears {148d}.
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.” {151a}
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 perditæ; 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 loppings 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 {151b}
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 {152a};
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 {152b}
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 {153}.
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.
THE CONCLUSION.
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 {155}
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 tittle 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 be 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
{157} 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
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.”]
THE 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 {160a},
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 {160b},
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 {161a},
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 {161b},
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
{161c}, more
moderate and more cunning than the former. How she endeavoured
to keep friendship both with Peter and Martin, and trimmed for some
time between the two, not without 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 {162a},
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 {162b}
used in the Southern, but miscarried, because Jack’s powders,
pills, salves, and plasters were there in great vogue.
How the author finds himself embarrassed for having introduced 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 {162c},
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.
A DIGRESSION ON THE NATURE, USEFULNESS, AND NECESSITY OF WARS AND QUARRELS.
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 the 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.
THE HISTORY OF MARTIN - Continued.
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 {164a}
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 {164b}
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 {164c}
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
{164d} 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 {165a}.
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.
A PROJECT FOR THE UNIVERSAL BENEFIT OF MANKIND.
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
a 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 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.
Footnotes:
{50} The number
of livings in England. - Pate.
{51a} “Distinguished,
new, told by no other tongue.” - Horace.
{51b} “Reading
prefaces, &c.” - Swift’s note in the margin.
{56a} Plutarch.
- Swift’s note in the margin.
{56b} Xenophon.
- Swift’s note in the margin, marked, in future, S.
{56c} Spleen.
- Horace.
{59} “But
to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labour lies.”
- Dryden’s “Virgil”
{60} “That
the old may withdraw into safe ease.”
{61} In his
subsequent apology for “The Tale of a Tub,” Swift wrote
of these machines that, “In the original manuscript there was
a description of a fourth, which those who had the papers in their power
blotted out, as having something in it of satire that I suppose they
thought was too particular; and therefore they were forced to change
it to the number three, whence some have endeavoured to squeeze out
a dangerous meaning that was never thought on. And indeed the
conceit was half spoiled by changing the numbers; that of four being
much more cabalistic, and therefore better exposing the pretended virtue
of numbers, a superstition then intended to be ridiculed.”
{62a} “Under
the rainy sky, in the meetings of three and of four ways.”
{62b} Lucretius,
lib. 2. - S.
{62c} “’Tis
certain, then, the voice that thus can wound;
Is all material body, every sound.”
{63} To be
burnt or worm-eaten.
{64} The Royal
Society first met at Gresham College, the resort of men of science.
Will’s Coffee-House was the resort of wits and men of letters.
{65a} Viz.,
about moving the earth. - S.
{65b} “Virtuoso
experiments and modern comedies.” - S.
{67a} He
lived a thousand. - S.
{67b} Viz.,
in the year 1697. - S. Dryden died in 1700, and the publication
of the “Tale of a Tub,” written in 1697, was not until 1704.
{69a} The
title-page in the original was so torn that it was not possible to recover
several titles which the author here speaks of. - S.
{69b} See
Virgil translated, &c. - S.
{70} Peter,
the Church of Rome; Martin, the Reformed Church as established by authority
in England; Jack, the dissenters from the English Church Establishment.
Martin, named probably from Martin Luther; Jack, from John Calvin.
The coats are the coats of righteousness, in which all servants of God
should be clothed; alike in love and duty, however they may differ in
opinion.
{71} Covetousness,
ambition, and pride, which were the three great vices that the ancient
fathers inveighed against as the first corruptions of Christianity.
- W. Wotton.
{72a} The
tailor.
{72b} A sacred
monkey.
{75} The Roman
Catholics were considered by the Reformers to have added to the simple
doctrines of Christianity inventions of their own, and to have laid
especial stress on the adoption of them. Upon Swift’s saying
of the three brothers, “Now the coats their father had left them
were, it is true, of very good cloth, and besides so neatly sewn that
you would swear they were all of a piece, but, at the same time, very
plain, with little or no ornament,” W. Wotton observes: “This
is the distinguishing character of the Christian religion. Christiana
religio absoluta et simplex, was Ammianus Marcellinus’s description
of it, who was himself a heathen.” But the learned Peter
argues that if a doctrine cannot be found, totidem verbis, in
so many words, it may be found in so many syllables, or, if that way
fail, we shall make them out in a third way, of so many letters.
{76} Quibusdam
veteribus codicibus [some ancient MSS.]. - S.
{77a} There
are two kinds - oral tradition and the written record, - reference to
the value attached to tradition in the Roman Church.
{77b} The
flame-coloured lining figures the doctrine of Purgatory; and the codicil
annexed, the Apocryphal books annexed to the Bible. The dog-keeper
is said to be an allusion to the Apocryphal book of Tobit.
{78a} Dread
hell and subdue their lusts.
{78b} Strained
glosses and interpretations of the simple text.
{79a} Images
in churches.
{79b} The
locking up of the Gospel in the original Greek or in the Latin of the
Vulgate, and forbidding its diffusion in the language of the people.
{80a} The
Pope’s bulls and decretals, issued by his paternal authority,
that must determine questions of interpretation and tradition, or else
many absurd things would follow.
{80b} Constantine
the Great, from whom the Church of Rome was said to have received the
donation of St. Peter’s patrimony, and first derived the wealth
described by our old Reformers as “the fatal gift of Constantine.”
{84a} See
Wotton “Of Ancient and Modern Learning.” - S.
{84b} Satire
and panegyric upon critics. - S.
{85} Vide
excerpta ex eo apud Photium - S.
{86} “Near
Helicon and round the learned hill
Grow trees whose blossoms with their odour kill.” - Hawkesworth.
{88} A quotation
after the manner of a great author. Vide Bentley’s
“Dissertation,” &c. - S.
{89} “And
how they’re disappointed when they’re pleased.” -
Congreve, quoted by Pate.
{95} Refusing
the cup of sacrament to the laity. Thomas Warton observes on the
following passage its close resemblance to the speech of Panurge in
Rabelais, and says that Swift formed himself upon Rabelais.
{96} Transubstantiation.
{98a} The
Reformation.
{98b} The
cross (in hoc signo vinces). Pieces of the wood said to
be part of it were many in the churches.
{98c} One
miracle to be believed was that the Chapel of Loretto travelled from
the Holy Land to Italy.
{99a} Made
a true copy of the Bible in the language of the people.
{99b} Gave
the cup to the laity.
{99c} Allowed
marriages of priests.
{102a}
Homerus omnes res humanas poematis complexus est. - Xenophon in Conviv.
- S.
{102b}
A treatise written about fifty years ago by a Welsh gentleman of Cambridge.
His name, as I remember, Vaughan, as appears by the answer to it by
the learned Dr. Henry More. It is a piece of the most unintelligible
fustian that perhaps was ever published in any language. - S.
This piece was by the brother of Henry Vaughan, the poet.
{110} After
the changes made by Martin that transformed the Church of Rome into
the Church of England, Jack’s proceedings made a rent from top
to bottom by the separation of the Presbyterians from the Church Establishment.
{111a}
The galleries over the piazzas in the old Royal Exchange were formerly
filled with shops, kept chiefly by women. Illustrations of this
feature in London life are to be found in Dekker’s “Shoemaker’s
Holiday,” and other plays.
{111b}
The contraction of the word mobile to mob first appeared in the time
of Charles the Second.
{112} Jack
the Bald, Calvin, from calvus, bald; Jack with a Lanthorn, professing
inward lights, Quakers; Dutch Jack, Jack of Leyden, Anabaptists; French
Hugh, the Huguenots; Tom the Beggar, the Gueuses of Flanders; Knocking
Jack of the North, John Knox of Scotland. Æolists pretenders
to inspiration.
{116} Herodotus,
1. 4. - S.
{119a}
Bombast von Hohenheim - Paracelsus.
{119b}
Fanatical preachers of rebellion.
{120} Pausanias,
1. 8. - S.
{122} The
Quakers allowed women to preach.
{123} The
worshippers of wind or air found their evil spirits in the chameleon,
by which it was eaten, and the windmill, Moulin-à-vent, by whose
four hands it was beaten.
{126a}
Henry IV. of France.
{126b}
Ravaillac, who stabbed Henry IV.
{127a}
Swift’s contemporary, Louis XIV. of France.
{127b}
Western civet. Paracelsus was said to have endeavoured to extract
a perfume from human excrement that might become as fashionable as civet
from the cat. It was called zibeta occidentalis, the back
being, according to Paracelsus, the western part of the body.
{129} Ep.
Fam. vii. 10, to Trebatius, who, as the next sentence in the letter
shows, had not gone into England.
{135} A lawyer’s
coach-hire. - S.
{136} The
College of Physicians.
{140} The
bad critics.
{142} A name
under which Thomas Vaughan wrote.
{145a}
Revelations xxii. 11: “He which is filthy, let him be filthy still;”
“phrase of the will,” being Scripture phrase, of either
Testament, applied to every occasion, and often in the most unbecoming
manner.
{145b}
He did not kneel when he received the Sacrament.
{146a}
His inward lights.
{146b}
Predestination.
{147a}
Vide Don Quixote. - S.
{147b}
Swift borrowed this from the customs of Moronia - Fool’s Land
- in Joseph Hall’s Mundus Alter et Idem.
{148a}
The Presbyterians objected to church-music, and had no organs in their
meeting-houses.
{148b}
Opposed to the decoration of church walls.
{148c}
Baptism by immersion.
{148d}
Preaching.
{151a}
“This wicked Proteus shall escape the chain.” - Francis’s
Horace.
{151b}
Lib. de Aëre, Locis, et Aquis. - S.
{152a}
Charles II., by the Act of Uniformity, which drove two thousand ministers
of religion, including some of the most devout, in one day out of the
Church of England.
{152b}
“Including Scaliger’s,” is Swift’s note in the
margin. The sixth sense was the “common sense” which
united and conveyed to the mind as one whole the information brought
in by the other five. Common sense did not originally mean the
kind of sense common among the people generally. A person wanting
in common sense was one whose brain did not properly combine impressions
brought into it by the eye, the ear, &c.
{153} Reference
here is to the exercise by James II. of a dispensing power which illegally
protected Roman Catholics, and incidentally Dissenters also; to the
consequent growth of feeling against the Roman Catholics. “Jack
on a great horse and eating custard” represents what was termed
the occasional conformity of men who “blasphemed custard through
the nose,” but complied with the law that required them to take
Sacrament in the Church of England as qualification for becoming a Lord
Mayor or holding any office of public authority.
{155} Père
d’Orleans. - S.
{157} Trazenii,
Pausan. L. 2. - S.
{160a}
Henry VIII.
{160b}
“Fidei Defensor.”
{161a}
Edward VI.
{161b}
Queen Mary.
{161c}
Queen Elizabeth.
{162a}
James I.
{162b}
Episcopacy.
{162c}
Charles I.
{164a}
Cromwell.
{164b}
Charles II.
{164c}
James II.
{164d}
William III.
{165a}
High Church against Dissent.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Tale of a Tub
by Jonathan Swift
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