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 w