THE CARISBROOKE LIBRARY. i. THE SECOND VOLUME OF THIS LIBRARY, TALES OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS, BEING THE CONFESSIO AMANTIS OF JOHN GOWER, Will be Published on the 2$th March 1880. / A V) , THE CARISBROOKE LIBRARY. '"T'HE UNIVERSAL LIBRARY, now completed in sixty-three cheap shilling volumes, has included English versions of the " Iliad," of all extant plays of the Greek tragedians, and of some plays of Aristophanes, of Sanskrit fables, and of Virgil's "^Eneid." It has followed the course of time with English versions of the most famous works of Dante, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Rabelais, Cervantes, Moliere as recast by English dramatists, of Goethe's " Faust " and of Schiller's Poems. It has given currency also to a series of the works of English writers, representative, as far as limits would allow, of our own literature, from Richard of Bury's " Philobiblon " to Sheridan's Plays and Emerson's Essays. In the sequence of publication variety was aimed at, but in the choice of books to be republished there was always the unity of purpose that now allows the volumes to be arranged in historical order, illustrating some of the chief epochs of European literature, and especially of English literature, in the long course of time. THE CARISBROOKE LIBRARY, now begun, will continue the work of its predecessor, with some changes of form and method. It will include books for which the volumes of the former series did not allow sufficient room. Some- times in the " Universal Library " a large book Hobbes's M194430 iv THE CAR1SBROOKE LIBRARY. 11 Leviathan/' for example was packed into small type. In the " Carisbrooke Library " there will be no small type. The volumes will be larger ; each of about four hundred and fifty pages. They will be handsome library volumes, printed with clear type upon good paper, at the price of half-a-crown, and they will be published in alternate months. In the " Universal Library " the editor's intro- duction to each volume was restricted to four pages, and there was no annotation. In the " Carisbrooke Library," with larger leisure and a two months' interval between the volumes, it will be possible for the editor to give more help towards the enjoyment of each book. There will be fuller introductions, and there will be notes. Since changes of methdd and form in the old Library mean the beginning of a new Library with change of name, a simple change is made from the universal to the particular ; from the purpose to the one who purposes ; from the wide world that yields fruitage for the mind, to the small spot of earth where, if God please, in shades of evening one fruit- gatherer will find new leisure to unburthen himself of his little store. In the " Carisbrooke Library," as in the predecessor of which it is an extension, there will be order in disorder. Variety will be still aimed at in sequence of the volumes, while the choice of books to be issued will be still guided by the desire to bring home to Englishmen, without unfair exclusion of any form of earnest thought, as far as may be, some living knowledge of their literature along its whole extent, and of its relations with the wisdom and the wit of the surrounding world. HENRY MORLEY. December 1888. THE TALE OF A TUB AND OTHER WORKS. THE TALE OF A TUB AND OTHER WORKS BY JONATHAN SWIFT EDITED BY HENRY MORLEY, LL.D. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL GLASGOW MANCHESTER AND NEW YORK 1889 BALLAN'TYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON CONTENTS. PART I. PAGE INTRODUCTION (1667-1713) ... . . II A TALE OF A TUB . . . . . . . 33 - THE HISTORY OF MARTIN . . . ' . .159 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS 169 - RESOLUTIONS 198 MRS. FRANCES HARRIS'S PETITION . . . . .199 A TRITICAL ESSAY 203 A MEDITATION UPON A BROOMSTICK .... 209 ^_ THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS 211 BAUCIS AND PHILEMON 221 ARGUMENT AGAINST ABOLISHING CHRISTIANITY IN ENGLAND ... 227 ~ PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708 241 AN ANSWER TO BICKERSTAFF 253 MR. BICKERSTAFF'S PREDICTIONS 258 A GRUB STREET ELEGY 262 A DESCRIPTION OF THE MORNING 266 A DESCRIPTION OF A CITY SHOWER ..... 267 A PROJECT FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF RELIGION . .271 PART II. INTRODUCTION (1713-1745) ...... 295 THE LITTLE LEGACIES IN SWIFTS WILL .... 304 HORACE, BOOK I. EP. VII. ...... 307 x CONTENTS. FAGE THE AUTHOR UPON HIMSELF 312 HORACE, BOOK II. SAT. VI 315 CADENUS AND VANESSA 320 A REBUS .......... 345 THE DEAN'S ANSWER . . . . . . 346 IN SICKNESS 347 POEMS TO STELLA 348 THREE PRAYERS . . . . . . . 373 THREE SERMONS . 377 THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS (Continued) . . . 404 SUPPLEMENT. SWIFT'S JOURNAL TO STELLA (THE FIRST SEVEN LE1TERS) 411 JONATHAN SWIFT. PART I. FROM BIRTH TO THE AGE OF FORTY-SIX. (1667-1713.) JONATHAN SWIFT was born in Dublin on the 3 oth of J November 1667. He died on the ipth of October 1745, at the age of seventy-eight. He was of a Yorkshire family which had a branch in Ireland. A Rev. Thomas Swift in the reign of Queen Elizabeth was Rector of St Andrews, Canterbury, during three-and-thirty years before his death in 1592. He had nine children or more, of whom one, William, succeeded to his father's rectory. The Rev. William Swift married about four months after his father's death. His wife was an heiress, Mary Philpott, who had a large estate, which she kept under her own control. This lady was our Jonathan Swift's great-grandmother. In a short sketch of his family, made by himself, Swift seems to have dwelt, from sense of heredity, on eccentricity of character in those from whom he was descended. In course of time he had become convinced of the fact that he had inherited a taint of insanity. In his underlying knowledge of this we find the key to actions in his life which it would otherwise be difficult to understand. Mary Philpott, who married Swift's great-grandfather, the Rev. William Swift, is described by her great-grandson, from family 12 JONATHAN SWIFT. tradition, as " a capricious, ill-natured, and passionate woman, of which there have been told several instances ; and it hath been a continual tradition in the family that she absolutely disinherited her only son, Thomas, for no greater crime than that of robbing an orchard when he was a boy." Her husband, the Rev. William Swift, became Rector of Harbledown at the end of Elizabeth's reign, and he was Prebendary of Canterbury. He died in 1624, near the end of the reign of James the First, a year and a half before the wife to whom he had been thirty-two years married. His great-grandson rather goes out of his way to note even of him that " he seems to have been a person somewhat fantastic," be- cause he altered the family coat of arms. The Rev. William Swift had two daughters and but one son, Thomas, our Jonathan Swift's grandfather. He also became a clergyman, and having been disinherited by his mother, as Swift says, " never enjoyed more than one hundred pounds a year, which was all at Goderich in Herefordshire. He became Vicar of Goderich, and afterwards of Bridstow in the same county." The Rev. Thomas Swift married Elizabeth Dryden. Thence came the cousinship between Jonathan Swift and John Dryden the poet. Swift's grandmother was niece to Dryden's grandfather. It was that grandmother who brought the name of Jonathan out of the Dryden into the Swift family. Swift finds also his grand- father Thomas to have been "somewhat whimsical and singular." " He built a house on his own land in the village of Goderich, which by the architecture denotes the builder to have been some- what whimsical and singular, and very much towards a projector." It was a house of three storeys, containing twelve or fourteen rooms, besides vaults and garrets, and was built in three blocks, like separate houses joined together at a single point. Thomas Swift died in 1658, towards the end of the Commonwealth time. He suffered so much in the Civil War time for his loyalty to the King, that one must suspect error in the tradition that he had only the small income from his livings of Goderich and Bridstow ; for he had thirteen children, and Swift tells us that "he was JONATHAN SWIFT. I3 plundered by the Roundheads six-and-thirty, some say above fifty times." Swift writes of this grandfather : " The author of ' Mercurius Rusticus ' dates the beginning of his sufferings so early as October 1642. The Earl of Stamford, who had the command of the Parliament army in those parts, loaded him at first with very heavy exactions ; and afterwards, at different times, robbed him of all his books and household furni- ture, and took away from the family even their wearing apparel ; with some other circumstances of cruelty too tedious to relate at large in this place. The Earl being asked why he committed these barbarities, my author says 'he gave two reasons for it; first, because Mr. Swift had bought arms and conveyed them into Monmouthshire, which, under his lordship's good favour was not so ; and secondly, because, not long before, he preached a sermon in Ross upon the text 'Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's,' in which his lordship said he had spoken treason in endeavouring to give Caesar more than his due. These two crimes cost Mr. Swift no less than ^300. "About that time he engaged his small estate, and having quilted all the money he could get in his waistcoat, got off to a town held for the King ; where being asked by the governor, who knew him well, what he could do for His Majesty, Mr. Swift said he would give the King his coat, and stripping it off, presented it to the governor, who observing it to be worth little, Mr. Swift said, ' Then take my waistcoat,' and bid the governor weigh it in his hand, who ordering it to be unripped, found it lined with three hundred broad pieces of gold, which, as it proved a season- able relief, must be avowed an extraordinary supply from a private clergyman of a small estate, so often plundered, and soon after turned out of his livings in the Church." That was in 1646. The thirteen children of this Rev. Thomas Swift, and some wives and children of theirs, shall now be set forth in form of pedigree. JONATHAN SWIFT. REV. THOMAS SWI FT = ELIZABETH DRYDEN. j GODWIN = Four TnoMAS=The eldest ! JONATHAN = Abigail DRVDEN. William; 1 wives. died younz. daughter of Sir 1 Herrick, of Willoughby Adam ; ; William - 1 Leicester. 4 other sons L. I j Davenant. 1 I and 3 or 4 Willoughby, merchant Deane, also 13 Thomas, Rector of Puttenham, Jane, J>. 1666. JONATHAN SWIFT, daughters. at Lisbon. other sons lived to the age born and 3 of 87. Nov. 30, ^ daughters. 1667. 18 children. Jonathan Swift, therefore, was in no want of uncles and cousins. He was provided by his Uncle Godwin alone with eighteen cousins. It will be observed also, that his father came in direct descent from three generations of clergymen, and that the family traditions of the Civil War were strongly with the King against the Parliament. The Jonathan Swift who wrote "The Tale of a Tub " was essentially a Churchman, and his bias was on the side of authority. Swift's father, from whom he inherited his name of Jonathan, was the seventh or eighth son of the Vicar of Goderich. He and his brothers Dryden, William, and Adam all came to seek fortune in Ireland, where their eldest brother, Godwin, had settled and prospered. Godwin was of Gray's Inn, and had been called to the Bar about the time of his father's death, in 1658. His nephew says of him that "he married a relation of the old Marchioness of Ormond, and upon that account, as well as his father's loyalty, the old Duke of Ormond made him his Attorney- General in the palatinate of Tipperary. He had four wives. One of them, to the great offence of his family, was co-heiress to Admiral Deane, who was one of the Regicides. Her name was Hannah, daughter of Major Richard Deane. She was Godwin's third wife, by whom he had issue Deane Swift and several other children. His second wife, Catherine Webster, was the only one who did not bring him a dower. Jonathan had come to Ireland very soon after his eldest brother, Godwin. He had been about the law-courts of the King's Inns in Dublin for six or seven years, on the 25th of JON A THA N S WIFT. i 5 January 1666 ; and had been admitted an attorney and a member of the Society in Hilary Term, 1665. On that 25th of January 1666 he was elected by the Benchers to be successor to Thomas Wale, their steward, who had lately died. With a newly-married wife from Leicester, Abigail Erick or Herrick of the family of Herrick the poet the young steward of the King's Inns began life as caterer for the Dublin lawyers. His own property he was but twenty-four years old bought an annuity of twenty pounds a year, which he settled upon his wife. When he died at the age of twenty-five, in the early spring of the next year, 1667, that little annuity was all he left her, with these exceptions an infant daughter Jane ; an unborn son ; and a hundred and twenty pounds of money owing to the steward by those lawyers who were slow in paying for their commons. Seven or eight months after his father's death our Jonathan Swift was born, in No. 7 Hoey's Court, adjoining the Castle enclosure, a court now pulled down and included in the Castle grounds. Born in Hoey's Court on St. Andrew's Day, the 3Oth November 1667, eight months after his father's death, Jonathan Swift was smuggled to Newhaven, as a baby, by a too affectionate nurse, who crossed the Channel on occasion of the death of a relation, and brought him back after two years, so well taught, for an infant, that Swift tells us he could read any chapter in the Bible when he was three years old. When he was six years old his mother re- turned to her relatives at Leicester, and left Jonathan to the care of his Uncle Godwin, who received him into his large family, and sent him to Kilkenny School, where, in his latter years, he had for a schoolfellow William Congreve, two years younger than himself. Swift passed from the care of Mr. Ryder at Kilkenny to be entered on the 24th of April 1682, aged fourteen years and about five months, as a pensioner at Trinity College, Dublin. There he remained for the next seven years. In February 1685 at the examination for degrees, his Physics were registered as done " badly," his Greek and Latin " well," his Theme " negligently," and he barely passed "by special grace," although the "bene" 1 6 JONATHAN SWIFT. given for his classics was an approbation very sparingly conceded to the work in any subject of any of the hundred and nineteen men who we're on the list at that examination. After this Jonathan Swift seems to have worked hard for his M.A. degree, but the state of Ireland in the days of the English Revolution of 1688-89 stopped nearly all work at Trinity College. Classes were broken up, and at the same time Swift had lost the support of his Uncle Godwin, who had crippled his means seriously before he fell into a state of idiocy. He died an idiot in 1688; so Jonathan Swift died in 1745 ; and so Swift had, for many years before the end, believed that he should die. In the last months of his life at Trinity College, he was only saved from absolute want by an uncle, William, who had a home in Dublin. When the English, for fear of Tyrconnel, fled from Dublin, Swift could do no better than go home then in his twenty-second year to his mother at Leicester, and take counsel with her for the shaping of his future. Sir William Temple was then living, withdrawn from political life, at Moor Park, near Farnham in Surrey. His age was sixty- one, his political opinions were those which prevailed after the expulsion of the Stuarts, and in 1668 he had with straightfor- wardness as a statesman gone to De Witt and settled in five days the triple alliance of England, Holland, and Sweden against the aggressive ambition of France. He stood high in the regard of William III. and the Whig statesmen of the English Revolution. They would have made him a Secretary of State, but he declined the offer. He had in the days of Charles the Second given up the statesman's occupation in despair. Build what he would, if it was good for anything, the King, who was good for nothing, would destroy it. Sir William was plagued also with the gout. He needed rest, and had a taste for literature, and wrote essays, and had in writing as in statesmanship a clear and direct style. Gout grew more troublesome; peaceful life at Moor Park, with gardens to improve, a study in which his mind could rest or work at will, with pleasant home companionship, with now and then also a friendly call made by the King, or by some politician who JONATHAN SWIFT. 17 would chat with the veteran on state affairs, made pleasant close to his life's more strenuous labours, and there were to be ten years yet before Sir William died. When Mrs. Swift, early in 1689, advised her son Jonathan to seek his friendship, Sir William Temple lived at Moor Park with his wife and his widowed sister, Martha, Lady Giffard, whose early love had ended in marriage with Sir William Giffard when he was at the point of death, that she might as his widow succeed to his estate. Sir William Temple's wife, who died some five years later, in 1694, had been Dorothy, daughter of Sir Peter Osborne. William Temple, as a young man of twenty, when on his way to France, had found Dorothy and her brother at an inn in the Isle of Wight. One of the young men wrote Royalist lines on a window, for which the whole party was arrested till Dorothy Osborne obtained their release by taking the offence upon herself; and then began young Temple's course of love, that was crossed by many troubles. There was some relationship between Swift's mother and Lady Temple. Sir William Temple's father, as Master of the Irish Rolls, had been in friendly relation with Swift's uncle, God- win, and Sir William Temple had succeeded his father in that sinecure Irish office. Here was ground enough for the letter of introduction with which Swift went to Moor Park in the summer of 1689, hoping to establish with Sir William such relations of patron and client as would secure the great man's future influence on his behalf. The visit was not made in vain. Swift was received into Sir William Temple's house. He had not then completed his twenty-second year, and he found in the house a little girl between seven and eight years old (he remembered her age afterwards as six) named Esther Johnson, who in her womanhood became the " Stella " of his after years. Esther Johnson's mother was confidential servant or com- panion to Lady Giffard, with whom she remained till Lady Giffard died, in 1722, at the age of eighty-four. Mrs. Johnson, who lived sometimes in the house at Moor Park and sometimes in a cottage near by, was a widow with two daughters, Esther or Hetty, the elder, and Anne. Jonathan Swift, aged twenty-two, i8 JONATHAN SWIFT. took to the child of seven, who was then not strong in health and not good-looking. He made himself her tutor ; he so taught her to write that her handwriting in after life was very like his own ; and he talked playfully with her in baby words that survived to later years as their " Little Language." " Do you know what," he wrote to her long afterwards, " when I am writing in our language I make up my mouth just as if I were speaking it. I caught my- self at it just now " as when he prayed God ' bless poodeerichar M.D.,' bidding her be merry and 'get oo health.'" The meeting with this child was the beginning of the slow growth of a love that pierced afterwards to the quick of Jonathan Swift's life. About this time also of his first coming to Moor Park, and first meeting with little Hetty as pupil and playfellow, Swift was first touched by an ailment which was the beginning of the slow growth of a brain disease that afterwards quenched his reason and destroyed his life. The beginning was with fits of giddiness, at a time variously stated as a little before or a little after his first settlement with Sir William Temple. At first he did not know what it meant, and ascribed it to an indigestion caused by a surfeit of apples. He never lost this symptom of .the slowly- growing brain disease that, about four years after the first attack, became asociated with attacks of deafness. In May 1690, when Swift had not been a year at Moor Park, failure of health, and perhaps also some restlessness of temp, r, led to suggestion that he might get better in his native air. S.r Robert Southwell going then to Ireland as Secretary of State, Temple sent Swift to him with a letter of recommendation. The letter offered him for Sir Robert's service in Ireland, and said : " He was born and bred there (though of a good family in Here- fordshire), was near seven years in the College of Dublin, and ready to take his degree of Master of Arts, when he was forced away by the desertion of that College upon the calamities of the country. Since that time he has lived in my house, read to me, writ for me, and kept all accounts as far as my small occasions required. He has Latin and Greek, some French, writes a very good and current hand, is very honest and diligent, and has good JONATHAN SWIFT. 19 friends, though they have for the present lost their fortunes in Ireland ; and his whole family having been long known to me, obliged me thus far to take care of him. If you please to accept him into your service, either as a gentleman to wait on you or as a clerk to write under you, and either to use him so if you like his service, or upon any establishment of the College to recommend him to a fellowship there, which he has a just pre- tence to, I shall acknowledge it as a great obligation to me as well as to him." Swift went to Ireland, but as he obtained no settlement there, and his health became worse for the change, he soon returned to his patron at Moor Park, and to his teaching of little Hetty. Swift's uncle William in Dublin then obtained for him a certifi- cate of his Dublin degree, and Sir William Temple's interest obtained for him an ad eundem at Oxford, which was extended to the grade of M. A. of Hart Hall, that is, Hartford College. This step was taken with a view to ordination, when, through Sir William Temple's influence, Swift should obtain a prebend from the King. The way of life he sought for himself was in the service of the Church. Complexities of Swift's political action in after years, become less intricate when we consider that his natural allegiance was to the Church, his bias was towards any statesman who appeared to him more likely than another to assist the Church. We have to remember also that, though bred as a Whig in Sir William Temple's household, his inclination in most matters of opinion was to the side of authority. As to marriage, Swift wrote to a friend at Leicester in January 1692, when Hetty Johnson was but a child of nine years old, and his own age was a few weeks over twenty-four : " I shall speak plainly to you. The very ordinary observations I made with going half a mile beyond the University have taught me experience enough not to think of marriage till I settle my fortune in the world, which I am sure will not be in some years ; and even then I am so hard to please myself, that I suppose I shall put it off to the other world." Early in 1693 Sir William Temple gave his young client an 20 JONATHAN SWIFT. opportunity of showing his powers to the King. His Majesty, when visiting Moor Park, had met young Swift, had been friendly enough towards him to show him in the gardens the Dutch way of cutting asparagus, and when asked by Sir William to help him on in the world, had offered to make him captain of a troop of horse. King William, afraid of a proposed Bill for Triennial Parliaments, had sent the Earl of Portland to Moor Park to advise upon the matter with Sir William Temple. Sir William not having succeeded in his endeavour to show that there would be no danger from such a Bill, sent afterwards young Swift further to demonstrate his opinion to the Earl of Portland and to the King. Of this attempt Swift himself recorded that, being well versed in English history, he " gave the King a short account of the matter, and a more large one to the Earl of Port- land, but all in vain : for the King, by ill advisers, was prevailed upon to refuse passing the Bill. This was the first time that Mr. Swift had ever any converse with courts, and he told his friends it was the first incident that helped to cure him of vanity." At the beginning of May 1694 Swift's impatience for a settle- ment in life led to some quarrel with his patron. Sir William to whom he had become a little necessary wished that Swift would stay with him until the King gave the expected prebend. Swift, in his twenty-seventh year, was tired of waiting. Sir William Temple, not soothed by his gout, grew angry. Swift must wait for his Church preferment, but if he was resolved to go, he might have at once a clerkship in the Irish Rolls of ^120 a year. Swift said then he would have it as maintenance that would enable him to go to Ireland, take orders, and serve the Church without being driven to do so by the need of bread. He went home to Leicester resolved to be ordained, and he applied for ordination in September. It was required that he should produce a certifi- cate of good conduct from Sir William Temple. He wrote there- fore on the 6th of October a letter that had to include apologies for rudeness, It was replied to with prompt kindness. He obtained Deacon's orders on the 28th October 1694, and Priest's orders on the i3th of January 1695. JONATHAN SWIFT. 21 Family friends begged for Jonathan Swift from Lord Capel, then Lord Deputy of Ireland, a small prebend that would pro- duce income of but a little more than a hundred a year. It was at Kilroot, not far from Belfast. An old college friend named Waring, who had in fact shared Swift's chamber as a student in Dublin, lived at Belfast. Swift renewed acquaintance with him, and found the dulness of Kilroot partly relieved by attentions to his sister. According to a fashion of the day he turned her name of Waring to Varina, and when, after a year at Kilroot, Sir William Temple invited Swift back to Moor Park, he wrote her a letter to which she could have replied by engaging herself to be married to him. But she did not. She had about a hundred a year of her own, and Swift had next to nothing but his doubtful prospects. Swift's regard for his friend's sister had been magnified in the haze of his uncertain fortune, as he chafed through restless solitary days. He had not yet put away all thought of marriage, and in that year, 1695, Stella was not yet a woman; she was a child of twelve. It was then impossible for Swift to know what she was afterwards to be to him. Swift had been absent a year and a half from Moor Park when he yielded to Sir William Temple's wish for a renewal of their old relations. Sir William said he would find him in England some- thing better than Kilroot, and Swift returned to him, leaving a Mr. Winder, who had wife and children, to do duty in the prebend, which afterwards, in 1698, he resigned wholly in Mr. Winder's favour. Lord Sunderland, through whose influence Sir William Temple hoped to obtain better preferment for Swift, went out of office when the formalities connected with the resignation of Kilroot were within ten days of completion. Swift returned to Moor Park in 1696, to stay there during the few remaining years of Temple's life. He was then in his twenty- ninth year. Hetty Johnson was about fourteen. Swift himself, when she had grown to be his lodestar, wrote afterwards of his early relations with her, " I knew her from six years old, and had some share in her education, by directing what books she should read, and perpetually instructing her in the principles of honour 22 JONATHAN SWIFT. and virtue, from which she never swerved in any one action or moment of her life. She was sickly from her childhood until about the age of fifteen, but then grew into perfect health, and was looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and agree- able young women in London, only a little too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of her face in perfec- tion. She lived generally in the country," at Moor Park, " with a family where she contracted an intimate friendship with another lady of more advanced years. Never was any of her sex born with better gifts of the mind, or who more improved them by reading and conversation." The "friend of more advanced years " was Rebecca Dingley, a poor relation of the Temples, who was also, in Swift's time, one of the Moor Park household. Though, no doubt, Swift often chafed at the long continuance of a relation of client and patron very slow in giving him the desired entry upon active life, his mind was well employed in full use of his genius ; for we have now reached the time of his writing " The Tale of a Tub" and "The Battle of the Books." He was happy also in the unconscious and slow growth of a new interest in Hetty Johnson, whose recorded growth in beauty, after the age of fifteen, may be in part due to the eyes that came at last to see in her all beauty, grace, and wit Seven years after Temple's death Swift wrote to one of his nephews thanks for a kind invitation to Moor Park, "which no time will make me forget and love less." It was in 1697, in his thirtieth year, that Swift wrote "The Tale of a Tub" and "The Battle of the Books," which were not published until 1704. "The Tale of a Tub" was meant to be a plea for charity in argument of differences between Peter, the Church of Rome, Martin, the Church of England, and Jack, the Dissenter ; but the strength of Swift's own feeling for Martin inter- fered a little with his charity towards Peter and Jack. " The Tale of a Tub " was an old phrase for a rambling story, and Ben Jon- son had given that name to his last play, which had a Squire Tub of Tottenham Court for its hero, and its characters from Maryle- bone, Islington, Kentish Town, Kilburn, Hampstead, Chalcot, and Belsize. Swift's "Tale of a Tub " owes its great strength to the JONATHAN SWIFT. 23 fact that its wit and whim were spent on what were to its author questions that he cared about with all his heart, and that went to the heart also of the greatest question with which man can be concerned. " The Battle of the Books " dealt with a more trivial argument which then occupied the minds of polite critics in France and England. It began in France with oppositions of opinion upon the relative merits of ancient and modern authors, but it had been swollen by a large affluent from argument begun in England with an attack on Richard Bentley by the Honourable Charles Boyle, grandson of Roger Boyle, first Earl of Orrery. Sir William Temple was led chiefly by Fontenelle's part in the French argu- ment his " Discours sur 1'Eglogue " and his " Digression sur les Anciens et les Modernes/' which were both on the side of the moderns to write " An Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning," which ended pleasantly with a saying of Alfonso, King of Aragon, that " among so many things as are by men possessed or pursued in the course of their lives, all the rest are baubles, besides old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to converse with, and old books to read." Sir William elaborated his plea for the ancients with much faith in fiction. He thought there was probably little use to the world, though much honour to their authors, in the Copernican system, or in Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood; and then immediately asked, "What are become of the charms of music, by which men and beasts, fishes, fowls, and serpents were so frequently enchanted, and their very natures changed?" In one passage of this essay Sir William said that the two most ancient books he knew of in prose were " ^Esop's Fables "and " Phalaris's Epistles," "both living near the same time, which was that of Cyrus and Pythagoras." " The letters of Phalaris have," he said, " more force of wit and genius than any others I have ever seen, either ancient or modern." Then, after putting aside doubts of their genuineness and the opinions that ascribed them to Lucian, he proceeded with a sentence or two of high eulogium. The gentlemanly essay of Sir William Temple, published in 24 JONATHAN SWIFT. 1692, was subjected in 1694 to strict but courteous criticism by William Wotton in his " Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning." William Wotton was then twenty-eight years old, and had lately been presented by Lord Nottingham to the rectory of Middleton Keynes in Buckinghamshire. He was the son of a rector of Wrentham in Suffolk, and is said to have read Hebrew, Greek, and Latin when his age was between four and five. He went to Catherine Hall, Cambridge, when under ten " infra decem annos " was B.A. at fourteen, and distinguished himself at college by acquiring scholarship in Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, and Syriac. Richard Bentley, four years older than Wotton, entered at St. John's College, Cambridge, when his age was fourteen. Thus the ten-year-old Wotton and the fourteen-year-old Bentley joined the University at the same time. After serving for some months as master of Spalding School, Bentley lived for six years, from 1683 to 1689, with Dr. Stillingfleet, then Dean of St. Paul's, as tutor to his second son. In 1689, on the accession of Wil- liam and Mary, Stillingfleet became Bishop of Worcester, and Bentley took orders in 1690 that he might act as his chaplain. An edition of a Greek chronicle (John Malelas) was published in 1691 by the Curators of the Sheldonian Press, with a Latin letter of criticism addressed to Dr. John Mill, principal of St. Edmund's Hall, who was answerable for the edition, and who had shown the text to Bentley, on condition that he would write such a letter to be published with it. This letter to Mill was an appendix of ninety-eight pages, that established at once, abroad as well as at home, Richard Bentley's reputation for wide reading and vigour in the use of it. In 1692 Bentley gave the first course of the lectures instituted by the Honourable Robert Boyle, who left funds in trust for eight lectures a year that were to set forth the evidences of Christianity against unbe- lievers, but were not to argue questions in dispute among Chris- tians themselves. Robert Boyle died in 1691, and the first Boyle lecturer was Richard Bentley, who gave in 1692 eight sermons on " The Folly and Unreasonableness of Atheism demonstrated from JONATHAN SWIFT. 25 the Advantage and Pleasure of a Religious Life, the Faculties of Human Souls, the Structure of Animate Bodies, and the Origin and Frame of the World." The last three of these sermons, which rested their argument upon Newton's discoveries, he submitted to Newton before preaching them. Bentley was still living with Stillingfleet in 1694, when he was made Keeper of the Royal Libraries. The Honourable Charles Boyle, then a youth of eighteen, was a student at Christchurch, Oxford, and had been advised by Dr. Aldrich, Dean of Christchurch, to produce an edition of the Letters of Phalaris, which Sir William Temple had so greatly praised. For this purpose he wished to collate a MS. in the Royal Library, just at the time when Bentley had been newly made Librarian. Bentley gave every facility, and lent the MS. for a sufficient time ; but the collator failed in his duty, Bentley was misrepresented, and a sneer at him was inserted by young Boyle in his edition of Phalaris. Bentley saw the sneer in an early copy of the book, and at once sent a full explanation in good time for a withdrawal of the offensive sentence. But it was not withdrawn. Bentley took no more notice of the young gentleman's rudeness until 1697, when there was a second edition of his friend Wotton's " Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning." To this Bentley had promised, before Boyle's edition appeared, to contribute an essay on the over-praised letters of Phalaris, showing that they were written by a Greek rhetorician who lived after the birth of Christ. Incidentally in this essay, the Keeper of the Royal Libraries, who had taken possession early in 1696 of the lodgings in St. James's assigned to the King's Librarian, defended himself against Boyle's accusation, and when referring to Boyle's edition of Phalaris, implied that other hands had been at work upon it. W T itty scholars of Christchurch, with Francis Atterbury at their head, then gathered about young Boyle, and helped to the produc- tion of a book entitled " Dr Bentley's Dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris, and the Fables of ^Esop, examined by the Honourable Charles Boyle, Esq." Bentley's reply, in March 1699, was a masterly " Dissertation on the Letters of Phalaris," that left the 26 JONATHAN SWIFT. victory with him, although Charles Boyle's succession to his brother as Earl of Orrery in 1703 helped to sustain his credit among persons of fashion. Swift's " Battle of the Books," written at Moor Park in 1697, to amuse and praise and please Sir William Temple, from whose praise of Philaris the battle sprang, was published in 1704, in the same volume with the "Tale of a Tub." Except a pamphlet on " Dissensions of Athens and Rome," which should stand first in a collection of his Political Works, with that volume Swift strongly began his career as an English writer. Sir William Temple died on the 27th of January 1699, leaving Swift to complete the arrangement of his works for a collected edition, at which Sir William had been working for some years. There went with the trust a legacy of a hundred pounds, and the profit that might arise from the sale of the volumes. There were five volumes issued successively, the first in 1700, with a dedica- tion to the king. They brought to Swift forty pounds a piece. Lady Giffard remained at Moor Park, attended still by Mrs. Bridget Johnson, Esther's mother. To Esther Johnson, Sir William left "a lease of some lands I have in Monistown, in the County of Wicklow in Ireland." Rebecca Dingley had some property of her own ; her age was about thirty-five she was two or three years older than Swift, and after Sir William Temple's death she joined lives with Esther Johnson, who was then a girl of eighteen. So Rebecca Dingley and Esther Johnson took lodgings at Farnham and there lived together. Swift, left to make his way in life, petitioned the king in vain for the long promised prebend ; sought it in vain through the good offices of Lord Romney ; and accepted an invitation from Lord Berkeley, who was proceeding to Ireland as one of the Lords Justices, to go with him as chaplain and secretary. When he reached Ireland he was supplanted in the secretaryship by Mr. Bushe, the Earl's principal secretary, who urged that the office was not proper for a clergyman. Swift then looked for the next Church preferment, which happened to be the Deanery of Derry. Mr. Bushe had been promised a thousand pounds if he could get JONATHAN SWIFT. 27 that office for a learned friend of his own, Dr. Bolton, and again he succeeded. Swift had remained at Dublin Castle with Lord Berkeley's family. He left in anger when the Deanery of Derry was given away from him, but was soon won back. The Vicarage of Laracor, two miles from Trim in East Meath, which Dr. Bolton was required to resign on his promotion, was given to Swift in February 1700; there was joined to it the adjacent rectory of Agher, and the living of Rathbeggan, all in the diocese of Meath. There never was a village of Laracor. The church stood at the meeting of four roads, with four or five cottages near it. Swift retained his office of chaplain at Dublin Castle, and lived on the kindliest terms with Lord Berkeley's family. The Countess and her two daughters, Lady Mary and Lady Betty, were all ready for a joke. Lady Berkeley liked an occasional reading from Robert Boyle's " Meditations," of which the object was to turn common incidents and common objects into parables enforcing spiritual truth. But she could enjoy the "Meditation upon a Broomstick" that the chaplain slipped one day into the place of such a read- ing. Verses like those of the deaf housekeeper, Mrs. Frances Harris's " Petition on the Loss of her Purse of Money," show the kindly playfulness that made Swift a brightener of other people's lives despite the sorrow in his own. His income from his livings was below 2 30. On Miss Waring's behalf inquiries were made. She thought it too little, and Swift courteously assented to her view. His interest in her had lessened, but he was not yet con- scious of the growing strength of his regard for Esther Johnson, who had grown up beside him out of childhood, and had been known from the age of seven. Nor had he yet found out what his attacks of giddiness and deafness meant, and drawn from such knowledge the resolve that he must not marry as other men do, because he would not transmit to children the curse of mad- ness for their heritage. Swift, while at Laracor, repaired the vicarage, laid out the gar- den, planted willows by its little stream, increased the glebe from one acre to twenty, and bought tithes for permanent endowment of the vicarage so long as the Established Church in Ireland 28 JONATHAN SWIFT. should retain its established form of Christianity. He resolved at once that there should be prayers in his church every Wednes- day and Friday as well as on Sundays. And he would not have the church closed when nobody was present at the beginning of a week-day service. One or two late-comers might find the doors shut and not corne again. Uncertainty would then make others hesitate when they proposed to come. That is the earnest side of what is commonly told as an unseemly jest that, finding nobody in the church but himself and the clerk when a service was due, he began with " Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry places ." If the way of this was whim- sical, the thing done was wise. And it was not unseemly, for why should not the Scripture move the parson and his clerk ? Dr. Marsh, Archbishop of Dublin, gave Swift a prebend in St. Patrick's Cathedral, and on the i6th of February 1700 he took the degree of D.D. in the University of Dublin. Lord Berkeley, recalled at the time when the four Whig lords were impeached by the Tories, left for London in April 1701, and at his wish Swift came to London with him. He had suggested to Lord Berkeley that he could find a parallel for the impeachment in the dissensions between Nobles and Commons in Athens and Rome, and he proceeded, when in London, to show this in the pamphlet already referred to, which was printed privately in the same year, 1701. He was in London from May to September. He visited his mother, to whom he had gone on foot from Moor Park in every year of his life with Sir William Temple. He has been called low-minded because upon those walks to Leicester he slept at poor lodgings, paying an extra twopence for clean sheets. He had then little money in his purse for the year's uses, and there seems to have been no time of his life when others had not part in his possessions. During this visit to London Swift also saw Esther Johnson in her lodgings at Farnham, and as he wrote afterwards : " Indeed very much for my own satisfaction, who had few friends or acquaintance in Ireland, I prevailed with her and her dear friend and companion, the other lady, to draw what money they had JONATHAN SWIFT. 29 into Ireland, a great part of their fortunes being in annuities upon funds. Money was then 10 per cent, in Ireland, besides the advantage of returning it, and all necessaries of life at half the price. They complied with my advice and soon after came over." This was early in 1701 when Esther Johnson's age was about twenty, and Rebecca Dingley's age was about thirty-six. Swift was in London again from April to October 1 702, and from November 1703 to May 1704, when the "Tale of a Tub" went to the printers. He was in London again in 1705, and from the latter months of 1707 until June 1709, when Esther Johnson was for a short time also in London. In April 1 704 Swift replied to a letter from the Rev. William Tisdall, who wished to offer marriage to Esther Johnson, and wished first to know whether she was engaged to Dr. Swift. Swift's reply left him entirely free to speak, while he prefaced his answer with " First, I think I have said to you before, that if my fortunes and humour served me to think of that state I should certainly, among all persons on earth, make your choice ; because I never saw that person whose conversation I entirely valued but hers : this was the utmost I ever gave way to." Esther Johnson did not accept Mr. Tisdall's offer. Swift by this time understood what was foreshadowed by the attacks of giddiness and deafness, with, doubtless, other occasions of an inward consciousness of that inherited taint which threatened to his life an end like his uncle Godwin's. So, no doubt, he interpreted to his own mind the " fortunes and humour " that would not serve him to think of the state of marriage, and already, perhaps, the sense of this terrible cloud upon his life had caused him to read on his birthday, as after- wards we know that he did, the third chapter of Job, in which Job opened his mouth " and cursed his day, and Job spake and said, Let the day perish wherein I was born. . . . For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me." Lord Orrery tells us that Swift often dwelt with marked feeling on the eminent men whose deaths were preceded by the loss of intellect, and in a will made ten years before his death, he left his savings to the Corporation of Dublin, in trust 3 o JONATHAN SWIFT. for the founding of an hospital for idiots and lunatics. Ambitious of large influence for good, and capable beyond his fellows, Swift could not, in an age of narrow party strife and petty scandal, put into the hands of adversaries such a weapon against himself as his own admission of the thing he feared. Any fool could then have replied to his weightiest words : " Never mind Swift Has he not himself told you that he doubts his own sanity?" When- ever the dread came on him with too full assurance that it was well grounded, the resolve that he would not transmit to children the curse that weighed upon himself, made it impossible for him to marry as other men do. He loved Esther Johnson; and when he had made her the star of his life, its light went out when she died, and the breaking down of the forts of reason then at once began. She knew, we may be sure, his inmost thoughts, and gave to him, by deliberate choice, all her mind and heart in a half marriage that was more to her than any whole marriage with William Tisdall or another. She made, no doubt, a sacri- fice to which no healthy man should tempt a womaji. But she made it willingly, and Swift's health of mind had no flaws in it before the great flaw came. But we, not knowing what they knew, are ill judges of what they said and did in the pure friend- ship that bound them to each other. Swift took such great care of Stella's reputation that no tongue of scandal ever wagged against her. Having provided against that danger, he made her the one dear companion of his life. Swift's " Tritical Essay," in which trite phrases are gravely piled on one another with the air of a man who has something of great importance to say, belongs to the days of the " Meditation upon a Broomstick." The poem of " Baucis and Philemon " was written in 1706. John Forster found Swift's original draught at Sir Andrew Fountaine's house in Norfolk. It is more vigorous than it was left after its 230 lines had been reduced to 178 by changes made at the suggestion of Addison, who, said Swift, " made me blot out fourscore, add fourscore, and alter fourscore." In 1708 Swift, while in London, was active in many ways. He wrote his " Argument to Prove the Inconvenience of Abolishing JONATHAN SWIFT. 31 Christianity," and his " Project for the Advancement of Religion and the Reformation of Manners," in which we may note the tendency to rest upon authority. In the close of the same year he made his playful attack, in the character of Isaac Bickerstaff, on the frauds of the astrological almanac makers. In 1709 he stayed two months with his mother in Leicester from April to the end of June, for her health was failing. She died on the 24th of April 1710. In 1710 Swift was agent for the Church in Ireland that desired extension to itself of Queen Anne's Bounty. He found in this work better help and acceptance from Harley and the Tories than from Somers, Halifax, and the Whigs. It was at this time that Swift began the " Journal to Stella," of which the first seven letters are given in the Appendix to this volume. His service as a political writer were soon secured by the Tories, who professed especial friendship to the Church. The Queen would not give a Bishopric to the author of "The Tale of a Tub," and Swift's reward from the Tories was that they made him, on the 23rd of April 1713, Dean of St. Patrick's. The rest of his story will be told in the Introduction to the Second Part of this collection of the writings which best illustrate his personal character. H. M. A TALE OF A TUB. Treatifes writ by the fame Author, moft of them mentioned in the following Dis- courfes ; which will be fpeedily pub- lifhed. Char after of the prefent Set of Wits in this I/land. A Panegyrical EJ/ay upon the Number THREE. A Differtation upon the principal prodii- ftions of Grub-ftreet. upon a Direction of Human Na- A Panegyrick upon the World. An Analytical D if coiirfe upon Zeal, Hiftori- theo-phyfi -logically conjidered. A general Hi/lory of Ears. A modeft Defence of the Proceedings of the Rabble in all Ages. A Defcription of the Kingdom of Abfur- dities. A Voyage into England, by a P erf on of Quality in Terra Auftralis incognita, tran- flatedfrom the Original. A Critical EJ/ay ^cpon the Art of Canting, Philofophicalfy) Phyfecally, and Mujically con- jidered. TALE F A TUB. Written for the Univerfal Improve- ment of Mankind. Diu multumque de/ideratum. To which is added, An ACCOUNT of a B A T T E L BETWEEN THE Antient and Modern BOOKS in St. James s Library. Bafima eacabafa eanaa irraurifta, diarba da caeo- taba fobor camelanthi. Iren. Lil. i. C. 18. n _, __ j A jj Infignemqiie meo capitl petwe hide coronam, Unde pritis null I velarunt tempora Mufa. Lucret. The Second Edition Corrected. LONDON: Printed for John Nutt, near Stationers- Hall. MDCCIV. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN LORD SOMERS. MY LORD, '"P HOUGH 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 dedi- cating 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 ^ r :st 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 38 DEDICATION. 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 pro- ceeding 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 pane- gyric upon your Lordship's virtues. In two days they brought me ten sheets of paper filled up on e\i/y side. They swore to me that they had ransacked what- ever 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 DEDICATION. 39 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 look 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 know- ledge 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 dis- cernment 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. 40 DEDICATION. 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. T T is now six years since these papers came first to my hands, * 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. How- ever, 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 pub- lished 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 42 THE BOOKSELLER TO THE READER. have already done with great felicity to Don Quixote, Boccalini, La Bruyere, and other authors. However, I thought it fairer dealing to offer the whole work in its naturals. If any gentle- man 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, T 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 amuse- ments 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 unlimijejLlhari yours ; but in order to prevent such glorious trialsCthepersorj) 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 44 DEDICATION TO 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 High- ness 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 in- solent, 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 com- mand 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 theyLwe*e 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 annihi- lated 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 br^S 9 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 ; con- sider 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 PRINCE POSTERITY. 45 disarm this usurping maitre de palais of his furious engines, and bring your empire hors du page. It were endless to recount the several methods of tyranny and destruction which your governor is pleased to practise upon this occasion. His inveterate malice is such to the writings of our age, that, of several thousands produced yearly from this renowned city, before the next revolution of the sun there is not one to be heard of. Unhappy infants ! many of them barbarously destroyed before they have so much as learnt their mother-tongue to beg for pity. Some he stifles in their cradles, others he frights into convulsions, whereof they suddenly die, some he flays alive, others he tears limb from limb, great numbers are offered to Moloch, and the rest, tainted by his breath, die of a languishing consumption. But the concern I have most at heart is for our Corporation of Poets, from whom I am preparing a petition to your Highness, to be subscribed with the names of one hundred and thirty-six of the first race, but whose immortal productions are never likely to reach your eyes, though each of them is now an humble and an earnest appellant for the laurel, and has large comely volumes ready to show for a support to his pretensions. The never- dying works of these illustrious persons your governor, sir, has devoted to unavoidable death, and your Highness is to be made believe that our age has never arrived at the honour to produce one single poet. We confess immortality to be a great and powerful goddess, but in vain we offer up to her our devotions and our sacrifices if ^our_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 46 DEDICATION TO 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 refine- ment, 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 changed 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 ques- tion, 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 so 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 ; PRINCE POSTERITY. 47 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 pub- lished, whereof both himself and his bookseller, if lawfully re- quired, 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 pro- found 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 polite- ness 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 High-. 48 DEDICATION TO PRINCE POSTERITY. ness with a faithful abstract drawn from the universal body of all arts and sciences, intended wholly for your service and instruc- tion. 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 cer- tain 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 D 50 THE PREFACE. 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. 1 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 under- taker 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 build- ing ; 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 1 The number of livings in England. Pate. THE PREFACE. 51 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 expec- tation of what is to ensue. Such was that of a most ingenious poet, who, soliciting his brain for something new, compared him- self to the hangman and his patron to the patient. This was tnsigne, recens, indicium ore alio. 1 When I went through that necessary and noble course of study, 2 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 misapplica- tion, 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 ex- pense 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 cal^ culated for this present month of August 1697 should descend 1 " Distinguished, new, told by no other tongue." Horace. 8 " Reading prefaces, &c." Swift's note in tlic margin. 52 THE PREFACE. 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 cir- cumstances and posture of life that the writer was in upon every important passage as it flowed from his pen, for this will intro- duce 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 recol- lected 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 tinder 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 con- cerning 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. THE PREFACE. 53 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 objec- tion. First, I am far from granting the number of writers a nuisance to our nation, having strenuously maintained the con- trary 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 me ! 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 some- thing 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 54 THE PREFACE. 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 elabo- rate 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 tnere 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 THE PREFACE. 55 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 any- thing new, not only to the torment and nauseating of the Chris- tian 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 im- puted 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 56 THE PREFACE. 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, 1 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 indi- vidual 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 2 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 Astrasa ; with any other common-places equally new and eloquent, which are furnished by the splendida bilis ; 8 and when you have done, the whole audience, far from 1 Plutarch. Swift's note in the margin. 2 Xenophon. Swift's note in the margin t marked, in future, S. 3 Spleen. Horace. THE PREFACE. 57 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 for- nication, 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 isjjut 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 N \ 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 V .. 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 pre- sent 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 follow- ing 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 58 % THE PREFACE. 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. A TALE OF A TUB, & c . SECTION I. THE INTRODUCTION. T X 7HOEVER has an ambition to be heard in a crowd must * * press, and squeeze, and thrust, and climb with inde- fatigable pains, till he has exalted himself to a certain degree 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, hie labor est." 1 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 1 " But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labour lies." Dryden's " Virgil" 60 INTRODUCTION. materials being very transitory, have suffered much from incle- mencies 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 encou- rage 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, how- ever, 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 tufa recedant.' 1 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, 1 "That the old may withdraw into safe ease." INTRODUCTION. 61 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 num- ber THREE * is that which has most employed my sublimest specu- lations, 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 ascend- ing 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 1 In his subsequent apology for " The Tale of a Tub," Swift wrote of these machines that, "In the original manuscript there was a description of a fourth, which those who had the papers in their power blotted cut, as having something in it of satire that I suppose they thought was too particular ; and therefore they were forced to change it to the number three, whence some have endeavoured to squeeze out a dangerous meaning that was never thought on. And indeed the conceit was half spoiled by changing the numbers ; that of four being much more cabalistic, and therefore better exposing the pretended virtue of numbers, a super- stition then intended to be ridiculed." 62 INTRODUCTION. 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 guadriviis. 1 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 posi- tion of place. But although this point be generally granted, yetTthe 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, 2 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." Liter, lib. 4. 3 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* 1 " Under the rainy sky, in the meetings of three and of four \vaysj" 3 Lucretius, lib. 2. S. 3 " 'Tis certain, then, the voice that thus can wound Is all material ; body, every sound. " INTRODUCTION. 63 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 pas- sions 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 com- monwealth of writers and _tojtho..se 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^oTAsense)an)d 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. 1 The Ladder is an adequate symbol of faction and of poetry, 1 To be burnt or worm-eaten. 64 INTRODUCTION. 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 propr(ety ^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 pre- judices, 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, 1 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 proceed- ings 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 i The Royal Society first met at Gresham College, the resort of men of science. Will's Coffee- House was the resort of wits and men of letters. INTRODUCTION. 65 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 Archi- medes made upon a smaller affair, 1 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 new-fangled 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, 2 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 1 Viz., about moving the earth. S. 2 " Virtuoso experiments and modern comedies." S. E 66 INTRODUCTION. 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 Grubsean sages have always chosen to convey their precepts and their arts shut up within the vehicles of types and fables, which having been per- haps 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, ^Esop, 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 INTRODUCTION. 67 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 apo- calypse, of all state arcana. But the progress I have made is much greater, having already finished my annotations upon seve- ral 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 con- tains 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 bonce, notes and an adeptus ; he published it in the nine hundred and eighty-fourth year 1 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 fer- menting 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 Jeru- salem 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, 2 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 1 He lived a thousand. S. 2 Viz., in the year 1697. S. Dryden died in 1700, and the publication of the "Tale of a Tub," written in 1697, was not until 1704. 68 INTRODUCTION. 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 unfor- tunate 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 hun- dred 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 pro- found and most mystical part, I have throughout this treatise closely INTRODUCTION. 69 followed the most applauded originals. And to render all com- plete, 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, 1 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, en- deavouring to introduce also a multiplicity of godfathers, 2 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 cer- tainly 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. 1 The title-page in the original was so torn that it was not possible to recover several titles which the author here speaks of. S. 2 See Virgil translated, c. S. 70 A TALE OF A TUB. SECTION II. upon a time there was a man who had three sons by one wife 1 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 under- stand 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 ancThot otherwise." Here the story says this good father died, and the three sons went all together to seek their fortunes. 1 Peter, the Church of Rome ; Martin, the Reformed Church as established by authority in England ; Jack, the dissenters from the English Church Establishment. Martin, named probably from Martin Luther ; Jack, from John Calvin. The coats are the coats of righteousness, in which all servants of God should be clothed ; alike in love and duty, however they may differ in opinion. A TALE OF A TUB. 7 i 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. 1 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 coffee- house, 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 tjedious to recount, and by consequence were justly reckoned the most accomplished persons in town. But all would not suffice, and the ladies afore- 1 Covetousness, ambition, and pride, which were the three great vices that the ancient fathers inveighed against as the fir^t corruptions of Christianity. W. Wotton. J 72 A TALE OF A TUB. said continued still inflexible. To clear up which difficulty, I must, with the reader's good leave and patience, have recourse to some points or 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* 1 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 J and who is in so great renown abroad for being the delight arid favourite of the Egyptian Cercopithecus. 2 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 L 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 every- thing ; 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 1 The tailor. - A sacred monkey. A TALE OF A TUB. 73 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 micro- coat, 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 -. >J^ 74 A TALE OF A TUB. latter was ex traduce, but the former of daily creation and circum- fusion. 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 jrpu 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 doc- trines, 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 fol- lowing 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 A TALE OF A TUB. 75 side, their father's will was very precise, and it was the main pre- cept m it, with the greatest penalties annexed, not to add to or diminish from tneir coats one lliread 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 grejl^]io.ulder-]knots cameji^ Straight all the world was shoulder-knots ; no approaching the ladies' ruelles with- out the quota of shoulder-knots. " That fellow," cries one, " has no soul : where is his shoulder-knot ? " 1 Our three brethren soon dis- covered their want by sad experience, meeting in their walks with forty mortifications and indignities. If they went to the play- house, 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 foot- man 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 boqk-Jearned 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 men- tion of shoulder-knots, but I dare conjecture we may find them 1 The Roman Catholics were considered by the Reformers to have added to the simple doctrines of Christianity inventions of their own, and to have laid especial stress on the adoption of them. Upon Swift's saying of the three brothers, " Now the coats their father had left them were, it is true, of very good cloth, and besides so neatly sewn that you would swear they were all of a piece, but, at the same time, very plain, with little or no ornament," W. Wotton observes: "This is the distinguishing character of the Christian religion. Christiana religio absoluta et simplex, was Ammianus Marcellinus's description of it, who was himself a heathen." But the learned Peter argues that if a doctrine cannot be found, totifam verbis, in so many words, it may be found in so many syllables, or, if that way fail, we shall make them out in a third way, of so many letters. 76 A TALE OF A TUB. 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 disappoint- ment, 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 Urtio 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 con- trived 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 manu- scripts. "It is true," said he, "the word Calender had in Q. V. C. 1 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 i Quibiisdam veteribus codicibus [some ancient MSS.]. S. A TALE OF A TUB. 77 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 essenticz adharere, 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 Interpretation, which has the faculty of teaching its readers to find out a meaning in every- thing but itself, like commentators on the Revelations, who pro- ceed 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, 1 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 itT^j " 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 2 for linings, and the mercer brought a pattern of it immediately to our three gentlemen. " An please your wor- ships," 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-mor- row morning at ten o'clock." Upon this they fell again to rummage the will, because the present case also required a positive precept, the lirnng being held by orthodox writers to be of the essence of thejioat, After long search they could fix upon nothing to the 1 There are two kinds oral tradition and the written record, reference to the value attached to tradition in the Roman Church. 2 The flame-coloured lining figures the doctrine of Purgatory ; and the codicil annexed, the Apocryphal books annexed to the Bible. The dog-keeper is said to be an allusion to the Apocryphal book of Tobit. 78 A TALE OF A TUB. 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. 1 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 further 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 pro- ject was immediately approved by the other two ; an old parch- ment 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, 2 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 dis- obedience 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. 1 Dread hell and subdue their lusts. 2 Strained glosses and interpretations of the simple text. A TALE OF A TUB. 79 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 uponj And in short, their father's autho- rity 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. 1 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 salts. But fashions perpetually altering in that age, the scholastic brother grew weary of searching further evasions and solving everlasting contradictions. 'Resolved, therefore, at all hazards to comply with the modes of the world, they concerted matters together, and agreed unanimously to lock up their father's will in a strong-box, brought out of Greece or Italy^}(I have forgot which), and trouble themselves no farther to examine it, but only refer to its authority whenever they thought fit. In consequence 1 Images in churches. 2 The locking up of the Gospel in the original Greek or in the Latin of the Vulgate, and forbidding its diffusion in the language of the people. 8o A TALE OF A TUB. whereof, a while after it grew a general mode to wear an infinite number of points, most of them tagged with silver ; upon which the scholar pronounced ex cathedra l 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 2 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 con- veyance 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. 1 The' Pope's bulls and decretals, issued by his paternal authority, that must determine questions of interpretation and tradition, or else many absurd things would follow. 2 Constantine the Great, from whom the Church of Rome was said to have received the donation of St. Peter's patrimony, and first derived the wealth de- scribed by our old Reformers as " the fatal gift of Constantine." A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS. 81 SECTION III. A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS. HOUGH 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, expos- tulatory, 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 ^irstj by this term were understood such persons as invented or drew up rules for themselves and the world, by observing whicrT a"carelul reader might be able to pro- nounce upon the productions of the learned, form his taste to a true relish of the^sublirjia. 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 F 82 A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS. 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 manu- scripts. 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 raid noblest sort is that of the true critic, whose original is the most ancient oflTIL Every true critic is a hero born, descending in a direct line from a celestial stem, by Momus and Hybris, who begat Zoilus, who begat Tigellius, who begat Etcaetera the elder, who begat Bentley, and Rymer, and Wotton, and Perrault, and Dennis, who begat Etcaetera the younger. And these are the critics from whom the commonwealth of learning has in all ages received such immense benefits, that the gratitude of their admirers placed their origin in heaven, among those of Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, and other great deservers of mankind. But heroic virtue itself hath not been exempt from the obloquy of evil tongues. For it hath been objected that those ancient heroes, famous for their combating so many giants, and dragons, and robbers, were in their own persons a greater nuisance to mankind than any of those monsters they subdued ; and therefore, to render their obligations more complete, when all other vermin were destroyed, should in conscience have con- cluded with the same justice upon themselves, as Hercules most generously did, and hath upon that score procured for himself A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS. 83 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 imme- diately deliver himself up to ratsbane or hemp, or from some convenient altitude, and that no man's pretensions to so illus- trious 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' faultsj 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 quint- essence 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 accepta- tion, I proceed to refute the objections of those who argue from the silence and pretermission of authors, by which they pretend to 84 A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS. 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 agree- able 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 edi- fying 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 thejm 1 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.jto obviate, soften, or divert the censorious reader, by satire or pane- gyric upon the true critics, in imitation of their masters, the moderns. Now, in the commonplaces 2 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. 3 See Wotton "Of Ancient and Modern Learning. " S. 2 Satire and panegyric upon critics. S. A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS. 85 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 treat- .ing 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, Pajisanias is of opinion that the perfection of writing correct was entirely owing to the institution of critics, and that he can possibly mean no otrltrr 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 : ThaLthe Nauplians jn Argia learned \ the art of pruning their vines by observing that when an ass had br^owsed 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 1 yet refines, mentioning the very same animal about India; adding, that whereas all other asses wanted a gall, these horned 1 Vide excerpta ex eo apud Photium S. 86 A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS. 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 fipnreaovas hprai^p^thpy 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 philo- logers, 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. 1 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 1 " Near Helicon and round the learned hill Grow trees Whose blossoms with their odour kill." Hawkesworth. A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS. 87 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 rotten- ness 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 distin- guished 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 Malevpli. Now it is certain the institution of the true critics was of abso- lute 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 88 A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS. 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. J[pr as to be a true beggar, it will cost the richest candidate every groatrhe 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 de- scribed 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. 1 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 conse- quently 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 charac- 1 A quotation after the manner of a great author. Vide Bentley's ' ' Dissertation , " &c.-S. A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS. 89 teristics 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. 1 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. 1 l "And how they're disappointed when they're pleased." Congreve, quo fed by Pate. 90 A TALE OF A TUB. SECTION IV. A TALE OF A TUB. T 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 consider- ing 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 A TALE OF A TUB. 91 of the matter to the public, will amply deserve that justice), that the worthy members 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 penny- worth 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 perspira- tion 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 con- veniently, that the party affected might easily with his mouth 9 2 A TALE OF A TUB. Accost either of the animal's ears, which he was to apply close for a certain space, and by a -fugitive faculty peculiar ta~tbe- 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 tran- scribers 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 vege- tables, 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 performedbv 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. A TALE OF A TUB. 93 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 com- mon 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 pin mas," 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 com- pliment, 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 94 A TALE OF A TUB. then pidveris exigui jaciu, they would grow calm and quiet as lambs. In short, whether by secret connivance or encourage- ment 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 trouble- some 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 if 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 pro- ceed with great caution upon certain dark points, wherein all who are not vere adeptl may be in danger to form rash and hasty con- clusions, especially in some mysterious paragraphs, where certain arcana are joined for brevity sake, which in the operation must A TALE OF A TUB. 95 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 there- fore 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. 1 Dining 1 Refusing the cup of sacrament to the laity. Thomas Warton observes on the following passage its close resemblance to the speech of Panurge in Rabelais, and says that Swift formed himself upon Rabelais. 96 A TALE OF A TUB. one day at an alderman's in the city, Peter observed him expa- tiating 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 cook- ing 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 quint- essence 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 ; x 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, 1 Transubstantiation. A TALE OF A TUB. 97 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, gentle- men," 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 Lord- ship. "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 vintners 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 G 98 A TALE OF A TUB. 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 circum- stances, because it gave a principal occasion to that great and famous rupture 1 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 2 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, -nds," said Peter, "where's the wonder of that? By 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." 3 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 1 broil them eternally that will not believe me." In short, Peter grew so scandalous that all the neighbourhood began in plain words to say he was no better than a knave ; and his two brothers, long weary of his ill-usage, resolved at last to 1 The Reformation. 2 The cross (in hoc signo mnces]. Pieces of the wood said to be part of it were many in the churches. 3 One miracle to be believed was that the Chapel of Loretto travelled from the Holy Land to Italy. A TALE OF A TUB. 99 leave him ; but first they humbly desired a copy of their father's will, which had now lain by neglected time out of mind. Instead of granting this request, he called them rogues, traitors, and the rest of the vile names he could muster up. However, while he was abroad one day upon his projects, the two youngsters watched their opportunity, made a shift to come at the will, and took a copia vera? by which they presently saw how grossly they had been abused, their father having left them equal heirs, and strictly commanded that whatever they got should lie in common among them all Pursuant to which, their next enterprise was to break open the cellar-door and get a little good drink to spirit and com- fort their hearts. 2 In copying the will, they had met another pre- cept against whoring, divorce, and separate maintenance ; upon which, their next work was to discard their concubines and send for their wives. 3 Whilst all this was in agitation, there enters a solicitor from Newgate, desiring Lord Peter would please to pro- cure a pardon for a thief that was to be hanged to-morrow. But the two brothers told him he was a coxcomb to seek pardons from a fellow who deserved to be hanged much better than his client, and discovered all the method of that imposture in the same form I delivered it a while ago, advising the solicitor to put his friend upon obtaining a pardon from the king. In the midst of all this clatter and revolution in comes Peter with a file of dragoons at his heels, and gathering from all hands what was in the wind, he and his gang, after several millions of scurrilities and curses not very important here to repeat, by main force very fairly kicks them both out of doors, and would never let them come under his roof from that day to this. 1 Made a true copy of the Bible in the language of the people. 2 Gave the cup to the laity. 3 Allowed marriages of priests, ioo A DIGRESSION IN THE MODERN KIND. SECTION V. A DIGRESSION IN THE MODERN KIND. 'V\TE whom the world is pleased to honour with the title of * modern authors, should never have been able to compass our great design of an everlasting remembrance and never-dying fame if our endeavours had not been so highly serviceable to the general good of mankind. This, O universe ! is the adventurous attempt of me, thy secretary " Quemvis perferre laborem Suadet, et inducit noctes vigilare serenas." To this end I have some time since, with a world of pains and art, dissected the carcass of human nature, and read many useful lectures upon the several parts, both containing and contained, till at last it smelt so strong I could preserve it no longer. Upon which I have been at a great expense to fit up all the bones with exact contexture and in due symmetry, so that I am ready to show a very complete anatomy thereof to all curious gentlemen and others. But not to digress further in the midst of a digression, as I have known some authors enclose digressions in one another like a nest of boxes, I do affirm that, having carefully cut up human nature, I have found a very strange, new, and important discovery : that the public good of mankind is performed by two ways instruction and diversion. And I have further proved my said several readings (which, perhaps, the world may one day see, if I can prevail on any friend to steal a copy, or on certain gentlemen of my admirers to be very importunate) that, as mankind is now disposed, he receives much greater advantage by being diverted A DIGRESSION IN THE MODERN KIND. 101 than instructed, his epidemical diseases being fastidiosity, amorphy, and oscitation ; whereas, in the present universal empire of wit and learning, there seems but little matter left for instruction. However, in compliance with a lesson of great age and authority, I have attempted carrying the point in all its heights, and accord- ingly throughout this divine treatise have skilfully kneaded up both together with a layer of utile and a layer of dulce. When I consider how exceedingly our illustrious moderns have eclipsed the weak glimmering lights of the ancients, and turned them out of the road of all fashionable commerce to a degree that our choice town wits of most refined accomplishments are in grave dispute whether there have been ever any ancients or no; in which point we are like to receive wonderful satisfaction from the most useful labours and lucubrations of that worthy modern, Dr. Bentley. I say, when I consider all this, I cannot but bewail that no famous modern hath ever yet attempted an universal system in a small portable volume of all things that are to be known, or believed, or imagined, or practised in life. I am, however, forced to acknowledge that such an enterprise was thought on some time ago by a great philosopher of O-Brazile. The method he proposed was by a certain curious receipt, a nostrum, which after his untimely death I found among his papers, and do here, out of my great affection to the modern learned, present them with it, not doubting it may one day encourage some worthy undertaker. You take fair correct copies, well bound in calf's skin and lettered at the back, of all modern bodies of arts and sciences whatsoever, and in what language you please. These you distil in balnea Maria, infusing quintessence of poppy Q.S., together with three pints of lethe, to be had from the apothecaries. You cleanse away carefully the sordes and caput mortuum, letting all that is volatile evaporate. You preserve only the first running, which is again to be distilled seventeen times, till what remains will amount to about two drams. This you keep in a glass vial hermetically sealed for one-and-twenty days. Then you begin your catholic treatise, taking every morning fasting (first shaking 102 A DIGRESSION IN THE MODERN KIND. the vial) three drops of this elixir, snuffing it strongly up your nose. It will dilate itself about the brain (where there is any) in fourteen minutes, and you immediately perceive in your head an infinite number of abstracts, summaries, compendiums, extracts, collections, medullas, excerpta qusedams, florilegias and the like, all disposed into great order and reducible upon paper. I must needs own it was by the assistance of this arcanum that I, though otherwise impar, have adventured upon so daring an attempt, never achieved or undertaken before but by a certain author called Homer, in whom, though otherwise a person not without some abilities, and for an ancient of a tolerable genius, I have discovered many gross errors which are not to be forgiven his very ashes, if by chance any of them are left. For whereas we are assured he designed his work for a complete body of all knowledge, human, divine, political, and mechanic, 1 it is manifest he hath wholly neglected some, and been very im- perfect in the rest. For, first of all, as eminent a cabalist as his disciples would represent him, his account of the opus magnum is extremely poor and deficient; he seems to have read but very superficially either Sendivogus, Behmen, or Anthroposophia Theomagica. 2 He is also quite mistaken about the sphcera pyroplastica, a neglect not to be atoned for, and (if the reader will admit so severe a censure) vix crederem autorem hunc unquam audivisse ignis vocem. His failings are not less promi- nent in several parts of the mechanics. For having read his writings with the utmost application usual among modern wits, I could never yet discover the least direction about the structure of that useful instrument a save-all ; for want of which, if the moderns had not lent their assistance, we might yet have wandered in the dark. But I have still behind a fault far more notorious to tax this author with j I mean his gross ignorance in the common f%nji/vA*> 1*-* itjLtt. > /y<*+-tei | r . ^.Ji M 1 Homerusomnes reshumanas poematiscomplexusest. Xenophon in Conviv. S. 2 A treatise written about fifty years ago by a Welsh gentleman of Cambridge. His name, as I remember, Vaughan, as appears by the answer to it by the learned Dr. Henry More. It is a piece of the most unintelligible fustian that perhaps was ever published in any language. S. This piece was by the brother of Henry Vaughan, the poet. A DIGRESSION IN THE MODERN KIND. 103 laws of this realm, and in the doctrine as well as discipline of the Church of England, A defect, indeed, for which both he and all the ancients stand most justly censured by my worthy and ingenious friend Mr. Wotton, Bachelor of Divinity, in his incom- parable treatise of ancient and modern learning ; a book never to be sufficiently valued, whether we consider the happy turns and flowings of the author's wit, the great usefulness of his sublime discoveries upon the subject of flies and spittle, or the laborious eloquence of his style. And I cannot forbear doing that author the justice of my public acknowledgments for the great helps and liftings I had out of his incomparable piece while I was penning this treatise. But besides these omissions in Homer already mentioned, the curious reader will also observe several defects in that author's writings for which he is not altogether so accountable. For whereas every branch of knowledge has received such wonderful acquirements since his age, especially within these last three years or thereabouts, it is almost impossible he could be so very per- fect in modern discoveries as his advocates pretend. We freely acknowledge him to be the inventor of the compass, of gun- powder, and the circulation of the blood ; but I challenge any of his admirers to show me in all his writings a complete account of the spleen. Does he not also leave us wholly to seek in the art of political wagering ? What can be more defective and unsatisfac- tory than his long dissertation upon tea ? and as to his method of salivation without mercury, so much celebrated of late, it is to my own knowledge and experience a thing very little to be relied on. It was to supply such momentous defects that I have been pre- vailed on, after long solicitation, to take pen in hand, and I dare venture to promise the judicious reader shall find nothing neglected here that can be of use upon any emergency of life. I am con- fident to have included and exhausted all that human imagina- tion can rise or fall to. Particularly I recommend to the perusal of the learned certain discoveries that are wholly untouched by others, whereof I shall only mention, among a great many more, my " New Help of Smatterers, or the Art of being Deep Learned 104 A DIGRESSION IN THE MODERN KIND. and Shallow Read," " A Curious Invention about Mouse-traps," " A Universal Rule of Reason, or Every Man his own Carver," together with a most useful engine for catching of owls. All which the judicious reader will find largely treated on in the several parts of this discourse. I hold myself obliged to give as much light as possible into the beauties and excellences of what I am writing, because it is become the fashion and humour most applauded among the first authors of this polite and learned age, when they would correct the ill nature of critical or inform the ignorance of courteous readers. Besides, there have been several famous pieces lately pub- lished, both in verse and prose, wherein if the writers had not been pleased, out of their great humanity and affection to the public, to give us a nice detail of the sublime and the admirable they contain, it is a thousand to one whether we should ever have discovered one grain of either. For my own particular, I cannot deny that whatever I have said upon this occasion had been more proper in a preface, and more agreeable to the mode which usually directs it there. But I here think fit to lay hold on that great and honourable privilege of being the last writer. I claim an absolute authority in right as the freshest modern, which gives me a despotic power over all authors before me. In the strength of which title I do utterly disapprove and declare against that per- nicious custom of making the preface a bill of fare to the book. For I have always looked upon it as a high point of indiscretion in monstermongers and other retailers of strange sights to hang out a fair large picture over the door, drawn after the life, with a most eloquent description underneath. This has saved me many a threepence, for my curiosity was fully satisfied, and I never offered to go in, though often invited by the urging and attending orator with his last moving and standing piece of rhetoric, " Sir, upon my word, we are just going to begin." Such is exactly the fate at this time of Prefaces, Epistles, Advertisements, Introductions, Prolegomenas, Apparatuses, To the Readers's. This expedient was admirable at first ; our great Dryden has long carried it as far as it would go, and with incredible success. He has often said A DIGRESSION IN THE MODERN KIND. 105 to me in confidence that the world would never have suspected him to be so great a poet if he had not assured them so frequently in his prefaces, that it was impossible they could either doubt or forget it. Perhaps it may be so. However, I much fear his in- structions have edified out of their place, and taught men to grow wiser in certain points where he never intended they should ; for it is lamentable to behold with what a lazy scorn many of the yawning readers in our age do now-a-days twirl over forty or fifty pages of preface and dedication (which is the usual modern stint), as if it were so much Latin. Though it must be also allowed, on the other hand, that a very considerable number is known to pro- ceed critics and wits by reading nothing else. Into which two factions I think all present readers may justly be divided. Now, for myself, I profess to be of the former sort, and therefore having the modern inclination to expatiate upon the beauty of my own productions, and display the bright parts of my discourse, I thought best to do it in the body of the work, where as it now lies it makes a very considerable addition to the bulk of the volume, a circumstance by no means to be neglected by a skilful writer. Having thus paid my due deference and acknowledgment to an established custom of our newest authors, by a long digression unsought for and a universal censure unprovoked, by forcing into the light, with much pains and dexterity, my own excellences and other men's defaults, with great justice to myself and candour to them, I now happily resume my subject, to the infinite satisfaction both of the reader and the author. 106 A TALE OF A TUB. SECTION VI. A TALE OF A TUB. \~\7E left Lord Peter in open rupture with his two brethren, both * * for ever discarded from his house, and resigned to the wide world with little or nothing to trust to. Which are circum- stances that render them proper subjects for the charity of a writer's pen to work on, scenes of misery ever affording the fairest harvest *for great adventures. And in this the world may perceive the difference between the integrity of a generous author and that of a common friend. The latter is observed to adhere close in prosperity, but on the decline of fortune to drop suddenly off; whereas the generous author, just on the contrary, finds his hero on the dunghill, from thence, by gradual steps, raises him to a throne, and then immediately withdraws, expecting not so much as thanks for his pains; in imitation of which example I have placed Lord Peter in a noble house, given him a title to wear and money to spend. There I shall leave him for some time, return- ing, where common charity directs me, to the assistance of his two brothers at their lowest ebb. However, I shall by no means forget my character of a historian, to follow the truth step by step whatever happens, or wherever it may lead me. The two exiles so nearly united in fortune and interest took a lodging together, where at their first leisure they began to reflect on the numberless misfortunes and vexations of their life past, and could not tell of the sudden to what failure in their conduct they ought to impute them, when, after some recollection, they called to mind the copy of their father's will which they had so happily recovered. This was immediately produced, and a firm A TALE OF A TUB. 107 resolution taken between them to alter whatever was already amiss, and reduce all their future measures to the strictest obedience prescribed therein. The main body of the will (as the reader cannot easily have forgot) consisted in certain admirable rules about the wearing of their coats, in the perusal whereof the two brothers at every period duly comparing the doctrine with the practice, there was never seen a wider difference between two things, horrible downright transgressions of every point. Upon which they both resolved without further delay to fall immediately upon reducing the whole exactly after their father's model. But here it is good to stop the hasty reader, ever impatient to see the end of an adventure before we writers can duly prepare him for it. I am to record that these two brothers began to be distinguished at this time by certain names. One of them desired to be called Martin, and the other took the appellation of Jack. These two had lived in much friendship and agreement under the tyranny of their brother Peter, as it is the talent of fellow- sufferers to do, men in misfortune being like men in the dark, to whom all colours are the same. But when they came forward into the world, and began to display themselves to each other and to the light, their complexions appeared extremely different, which the present posture of their affairs gave them sudden opportunity to discover. But here the severe reader may justly tax me as a writer of short memory, a deficiency to which a true modern cannot but of necessity be a little subject. Because, memory being an em* ployment of the mind upon things past, is a faculty for which the learned in our illustrious age have no manner of occasion, who deal entirely with invention and strike all things out of them- selves, or at least by collision from each other; upon which account, we think it highly reasonable to produce our great forgetfulness as an argument unanswerable for our great wit. I ought in method to have informed the reader about fifty pages ago of a fancy Lord Peter took, and infused into his brothers, to wear on their coats whatever trimmings came up in fashion, never pulling off any as they went out of the mode, but keeping io8 A TALE OF A TUB. on all together, which amounted in time to a medley the most antic you can possibly conceive, and this to a degree that, upon the time of their falling out, there was hardly a thread of the original coat to be seen, but an infinite quantity of lace, and ribbands, and fringe, and embroidery, and points (I mean only those tagged with silver, for the rest fell off). Now this material circumstance having been forgot in due place, as good fortune hath ordered, comes in very properly here, when the two brothers are just going to reform their vestures into the primitive state prescribed by their father's will. They both unanimously entered upon this great work, looking sometimes on their coats and sometimes on the will. Martin laid the first hand ; at one twitch brought off a large handful of points, and with a second pull stripped away ten dozen yards of fringe. But when he had gone thus far he demurred a while. He knew very well there yet remained a great deal more to be done; however, the first heat being over, his violence began to cool, and he resolved to proceed more moderately in the rest of the work, having already very narrowly escaped a swinging rent in pulling off the points, which being tagged with silver (as we have observed before), the judicious workman had with much sagacity double sewn to preserve them from falling. Resolving therefore to rid his coat of a huge quantity of gold lace, he picked up the stitches with much caution and diligently gleaned out all the loose threads as he went, which proved to be a work of time. Then he fell about the embroidered Indian figures of men, women, and children, against which, as you have heard in its due place, their father's testament was extremely exact and severe. These, with much dexterity and application, were after a while quite eradicated or utterly defaced. For the rest, where he observed the embroidery to be worked so close as not to be got away with- out damaging the cloth, or where it served to hide or strengthened any flaw in the body of the coat, contracted by the perpetual tampering of workmen upon it, he concluded the wisest course was to let^if remain, resolving in no case whatsoever that the substance of the stuff should suffer injury, which he thought the A TALE OF A TUB. 109 best method for serving the true intent and meaning of his father's will. And this is the nearest account I have been able to collect of Martin's proceedings upon this great revolution. But his brother Jack, whose adventures will be so extraordinary as to furnish a great part in the remainder of this discourse, entered upon the matter with other thoughts and a quite different spirit. For the memory of Lord Peter's injuries produced a degree of Jlatre^ and(Spi?Vhich had a much greater share of inciting him \|y than any regarcfs after his father's commands, since these appeared at best only secondary and subservient to the other. However, for this medley of humour he made a shift to find a very plausible name, honouring it with the title of jzeajj which is, perhaps, the most significant word that has been ever yet produced in any language, as, I think, I have fully proved in my excellent analy- tical discourse upon that subject, wherein I have deduced a histori-theo-physiological account of zeal, showing how it first proceeded from a notion into a word, and from thence in a hot summer ripened into a tangible substance. This work, con- taining three large volumes in folio, I design very shortly to publish by the modem way of subscription, not doubting but the nobility and gentry of the land will give me all possible encour- agement, having already had such a taste of what I am able to perform. I record, therefore, that brother Jack, brimful of this miraculous compound, reflecting with indignation upon Peter's tyranny, and further provoked by the despondency of Martin, prefaced his resolutions to this purpose. "What! "said he, "a rogue that locked up his drink, turned away our wives, cheated us of our fortunes, palmed his crusts upon us for mutton, and at last kicked us out of doors ; must we be in his fashions? A rascal, besides, ' that all the street cries out against" Having thus kindled and inflamed himself as high as possible, and by consequence in a delicate temper for beginning a reformation, he set about the work immediately, and in three minutes made more dispatch than Martin had done in as many hours. For, courteous reader, you are given to understand that zeal is never so highly obliged no A TALE OF A TUB. i> as when you set it a-tearing; and Jack, who doted ^on that quality in himself, allowed it at this time its full swing. Thus it happened that, stripping down a parcel of gold lace a little too hastily, he rent the main body of his coat from top to bottom; 1 and whereas his talent was not of the happiest in taking up a stitch, he knew no better way than to darn it again with pack- thread and a skewer. But the matter was yet infinitely worse (I record it with tears) when he proceeded to the embroidery ; for being clumsy of nature, and of temper impatient withal, beholding millions of stitches that required the nicest hand and sedatest constitution to extricate, in a great rage he tore off the whole piece, cloth and all, and flung it into the kennel, and furiously thus continuing his career, "Ah! good bother Martin," said he, " do as I do, for the love of God ; strip, tear, pull, rend, flay off all, that we may appear as unlike that rogue Peter as it is possible, I would not for a hundred pounds carry the least mark about me that might give occasion to the neighbours of suspecting I was related to such a rascal." But Martin, who at this time happened to be extremely phlegmatic and sedate, begged his brother, of all love, not to damage his coat by any means, for he never would get such another ; desired him to consider that it was not their business to form their actions by any reflection upon Peter's, but by observing the rules prescribed in their father's will. That he should remember Peter was still their brother, whatever faults or injuries he had committed, and therefore they should by all means avoid such a thought as that of taking measures for good and evil from no other rule than of opposition to him. That it was true the testament of their good father was very exact in what related to the wearing of their coats ; yet was it no less penal and strict in prescribing agreement, and friendship, and affection between them. And therefore, if straining a point were at all defensible, it would certainly be so rather to the advance of unity than increase of contradiction. 1 After the changes made by Martin that transformed the Church of Rome into the Church of England, Jack's proceedings made a rent from top to bottom by the separation of the Presbyterians from the Church Establishment. A TALE OF A TUB. in Martin had still proceeded as gravely as he began, and doubt- less would have delivered an admirable lecture of morality, which might have exceedingly contributed to my reader's repose both of body and mina (the true ultimate end of ethics), but Jack was already gone a flight-shot beyond his patience. And as in scho- lastic disputes nothing serves to rouse the spleen of him that opposes so much as a kind of pedantic affected calmness in the respondent, disputants being for the most part like unequal scales, where the gravity of one side advances the lightness of the other, and causes i f _jo. fly n p 'mri Irirfc tfrfi beam ; so it happened here H^*V-^ that the weight of Martin's arguments exalted Jack's levity, an made him fly out and spurn against his brother's moderation. In short, Martin's patienc^ put Jack in a rage ; but that which most afflicted him was to observe his brother's coat so well reduced into the state of innocence, while his own was either wholly rent to his shirt, or those places which had escaped his cruel clutches were still in Peter's livery. So that he lopkedjike a drunl^n beau half rifled by bullies, or like a fresh tenant of Newgate when he has refused the payment of garnish, or like a discovered shop- lifter left to the mercy of Exchange-women, 1 or like a bawd in her old velvet petticoat resigned into the secular hands of the mobile. 2 Like any or like all of these, a medley of rags, and lace, and fringes, unfortunate Jack did now appear; he would hav. .been extremely glad to see his coat in the condition of Martin's, but infinitely gladder to find that of Martin in the same predicament with his. However, since neither of these was likely to come to pas~s, he thought fit to lend the whole business another turn, and to dress up necessity into a virtue. Therefore, after as many of the fox's arguments as he could muster up for bringing Martin to reason, as he called it, or as he meant it, into his own ragged, bobtailed condition, and observing he said all to little purpose, what alas ! was left for the forlorn Jack to do, but, after a million 1 The galleries over the piazzas in the old Royal Exchange were formerly filled with shops, kept chiefly by women. Illustrations of this feature in London life are to be found in Dekker's "Shoemaker's Holiday," and other plays. 2 The contraction of the word mobile to mob first appeared in the time of Charles the Second. 112 A TALE OF A TUB. of scurrilities against his brother, to run mad with spleen, and spite, and contradiction. To be short, here began a mortal breach between these two. Jack went immediately to new lodgings, and in a few days it was for certain reported that he had run out of his wits. In a short time after he appeared abroad, and confirmed the report by falling into the oddest whimsies that ever a sick brain conceived. And now the little boys in the streets began to salute him with several names. Sometimes they would call him Jack the Bald, sometimes Jack with a Lanthorn, sometimes Dutch Jack, some- times French Hugh, sometimes Tom the Beggar, and sometimes Knocking Jack of the North. 1 And it was under one or some or all of these appellations (which I leave the learned reader to determine) that he hath given rise to the most illustrious and epidemic sect of ^olists, who, with honourable commemoration, do still acknowledge the renowned Jack for their author and founder. Of whose originals as well as principles I am now advancing to gratify the world with a very particular account. " Mellaeo contingens cuncta lepore." 1 Jack the Bald, Calvin, from calvus, bald ; Jack with a Lanthorn, professing inward lights, Quakers ; Dutch Jack, Jack of Leyden, Anabaptists ; French Hugh, the Huguenots ; Tom the Beggar, the Gueuses of Flanders ; Knocking Jack of the North, John Knox of Scotland. ^Eolists, pretenders to inspiration. A DIGRESSION IN PRAISE OF DIGRESSIONS. 113 SECTION VII. A DIGRESSION IN PRAISE OF DIGRESSIONS. T HAVE sometimes heard of an Iliad in a nut-shell, but it * has been my fortune to have much oftener seen a nut-shell in an Iliad. There is no doubt that human life has received most wonderful advantages from both; but to which of the two the world is chiefly indebted, I shall leave among the curious as a problem worthy of their utmost inquiry. For the invention of the latter, I think the commonwealth of learning is chiefly obliged to the great modern improvement of digressions. The late refine- ments in knowledge, running parallel to those of diet in our nation, which among men of a judicious taste are dressed up in various compounds, consisting in soups and olios, fricassees and ragouts. It is true there is a sort of morose, detracting, ill-bred people who pretend utterly to disrelish these polite innovations. And as to the similitude from diet, they allow the parallel, but are so bold as to pronounce the example itself a corruption and degeneracy of taste. They tell us that the fashion of jumbling fifty things together in a dish was at first introduced in compliance to a depraved and debauched appetite, as well as to a crazy constitu- tion, and to see a man hunting through an olio after the head and brains of a goose, a widgeon, or a woodcock, is a sign he wants a stomach and digestion for more substantial victuals. Further, they affirm that digressions in a book are like foreign troops in a state, which argue the nation to want a heart and hands of its own, and often either subdue the natives, or drive them into the most unfruitful corners. H ii4 A DIGRESSION IN PRAISE OF DIGRESSIONS. But after all that can be objected by these supercilious censors, it is manifest the society of writers would quickly be reduced to a very inconsiderable number if men were put upon making books with the fatal confinement of delivering nothing beyond what is to the purpose. It is acknowledged that were the case the same among us as with the Greeks and Romans, when learning was in its cradle, to be reared and fed and clothed by invention, it would be an easy task to fill up volumes upon particular occa- sions without further expatiating from the subject than by mode- rate excursions, helping to advance or clear the main design. But with knowledge it has fared as with a numerous army encamped in a fruitful country, which for a few days maintains itself by the product of the soil it is on, till provisions being spent, they send to forage many a mile among friends or enemies, it matters not. Meanwhile the neighbouring fields, trampled and beaten down, become barren and dry, affording no sustenance but clouds of dust. The whole course of things being thus entirely changed between us and the ancients, and the moderns wisely sensible of it, we of this age have discovered a shorter and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking. The most accomplished way of using books at present is twofold : either first to serve them as some men do lords, learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance ; or, secondly, which is indeed the choicer, the profounder, and politer method, to get a thorough insight into the index by which the whole book is governed and turned, like fishes by the tail. For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door. For the arts are all in a flying march, and therefore more easily subdued by attacking them in the rear. Thus physicians discover the state of the whole body by consulting only what comes from behind. Thus men catch knowledge by throwing their wit on the posteriors of a book, as boys do sparrows with flinging salt upon their tails. Thus human life is best understood by the wise A DIGRESSION IN PRAISE OF DIGRESSIONS. 115 man's rule of regarding the end. Thus are the sciences found, like Hercules' oxen, by tracing them backwards. Thus are old sciences unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot Besides all this, the army of the sciences hath been of late with a world of martial discipline drawn into its close order, so that a view or a muster may be taken of it with abundance of expedition. For this great blessing we are wholly indebted to systems and abstracts, in which the modem fathers of learning, like prudent usurers, spent their sweat for the ease of us their children. For labour is the seed of idleness, and it is the peculiar happiness of _ our noble age to gather the fruit. Now the method of growing wise, learned, and sublime having become so regular an affair, and so established in all its forms, the number of writers must needs have increased accordingly, and to a pitch that has made it of absolute necessity for them to interfere continually with each other. Besides, it is reckoned that there is not at this present a sufficient quantity of new matter left in Nature to furnish and adorn any one particular subject to the extent of a volume. This I am told by a very skilful computer, who hath given a full demonstration of it from rules of arithmetic. This perhaps may be objected against by those who maintain the infinity of matter, and therefore will not allow that any species of it can be exhausted. For answer to which, let us examine the noblest branch of modern wit or invention planted and cultivated by the present age, and which of all others hath borne the most and the fairest fruit. For though some remains of it were left us by the ancients, yet have not any of those, as I remember, been translated or compiled into systems for modern use. Therefore we may affirm, to our own honour, that it has in some sort been both invented and brought to a perfection by the same hands. What I mean is, that highly celebrated talent among the modern wits of deducing similitudes, allusions, and applications, very surprising, agreeable, and apposite, from the signs of either sex, together with their proper uses. And truly, having observed how little invention bears any vogue besides what is derived into these channels, I have sometimes had a thought that the happy n6 A DIGRESSION IN PRAISE OF DIGRESSIONS. genius of our age and country was prophetically held forth by that ancient typical description of the Indian pigmies whose stature did not exceed above two feet, sed quorum pudenda crassa, et ad /a/os usque pertingentia. Now I have been very curious to inspect the late productions, wherein the beauties of this kind have most prominently appeared. And although this vein hath bled so freely, and all endeavours have been used in the power of human breath to dilate, extend, and keep it open, like the Scy- thians, 1 who had a custom and an instrument to blow up those parts of their mares, that they might yield the more milk ; yet I am under an apprehension it is near growing dry and past all recovery, and that either some new fonde of wit should, if possible, be provided, or else that we must e'en be content with repetition here as well as upon all other occasions. This will stand as an uncontestable argument that our modern wits are not to reckon upon the infinity of matter for a constant supply. What remains, therefore, but that our last recourse must be had to large indexes and little compendiums ? Quotations must be plentifully gathered and booked in alphabet. To this end, though authors need be little consulted, yet critics, and com- mentators, and lexicons carefully must. But above all, those judi- cious collectors of bright parts, and flowers, and observandas are to be nicely dwelt on by some called the sieves and boulters of learning, though it is left undetermined whether they dealt in pearls or meal, and consequently whether we are more to value that which passed through or what stayed behind. By these methods, in a few weeks there starts up many a writer capable of managing the profoundest and most universal subjects. For what though his head be empty, provided his common-place book be full? And if you will bate him but the circumstances of method, and style, and grammar, and invention ; allow him but the common privileges of transcribing from others, and digressing from himself as often as he shall see occasion, he will desire no more ingredients towards fitting up a treatise that shall make a very comely figure on a bookseller's shelf, there to 1 Herodotus, 1. 4. 5. A DIGRESSION IN PRAISE OF DIGRESSIONS. 117 be preserved neat and clean for a long eternity, adorned with the heraldry of its title fairly inscribed on a label, never to be thumbed or greased by students, nor bound to everlasting chains of dark- ness in a library, but when the fulness of time is come shall happily undergo the trial of purgatory in order to ascend the sky. Without these allowances how is it possible we modern wits should ever have an opportunity to introduce our collections listed under so many thousand heads of a different nature, for want of which the learned world would be deprived of infinite delight as well as instruction, and we ourselves buried beyond redress in an inglorious and undistinguished oblivion ? From such elements as these I am alive to behold the day wherein the corporation of authors can outvie all its brethren in the field a happiness derived to us, with a great many others, from our Scythian ancestors, among whom the number of pens was so infinite that the Grecian eloquence had no other way of expressing it than by saying that in the regions far to the north it was hardly possible for a man to travel, the very air was so replete with feathers. The necessity of this digression will easily excuse the length, and I have chosen for it as proper a place as I could readily find. If the judicious reader can assign a fitter, I do here empower him to remove it into any other corner he please. And so I return with great alacrity to pursue a more important concern. JiS A TALE OF A TUB. SECTION VIII. A TALE OF A TUB. f I "HE learned ^Eolists maintain the original cause of all things "^ to be' wind, from which principle this whole universe was at first produced, and into which it must at last be resolved, that the same breath which had kindled and blew up the flame of Nature should one day blow it out. " Quod procul a nobis flectat Fortuna gubernans." This is what the Adept! understand by their anima mimdi, that is to say, the spirit, or breath, or wind of the world ; or examine the whole system by the particulars of Nature, and you will find it not to be disputed. For whether you please to call the forma informans of man by the name of spiritus, animus, afflatus, or anima, what are all these but several appellations for wind, which is the ruling element in every compound, and into which they all resolve upon their corruption. Further, what is life itself but, as it is commonly called, the breath of our nostrils, whence it is very justly observed by naturalists that wind still continues of great emolument in certain mysteries not to be named, giving occasion for those happy epithets of turgidus and inflates, applied either to the emittent or recipient organs. By what I have gathered out of ancient records, I find the compass of their doctrine took in two-and-thirty points, wherein it would be tedious to be very particular. However, a few of their most important precepts deducible from it are by no means to be omitted ; among which, the following maxim was of much weight : That since wind had the master share as well as A TALE OF A TUB. 119 operation in every compound, by consequence those beings must be of chief excellence wherein that primordium appears most prominently to abound, and therefore man is in highest perfec- tion of all created things, as having, by the great bounty of philosophers, been endued with three distinct animas or winds, to which the sage ^Eolists, with much liberality, have added a fourth, of equal necessity as well as ornament with the other three, by this quartum principium taking in the four corners of the world. Which gave occasion to that renowned cabalist Bombastus * of placing the body of man in due position to the four cardinal points. In consequence of this, their next principle was that man brings with him into the world a peculiar portion or grain of wind, which may be called a quinta essentia extracted from the other four. This quintessence is of catholic use upon all emergencies of life, is improveable into all arts and sciences, and may be won- derfully refined as well as enlarged by certain methods in educa- tion. This, when blown up to its perfection, ought not to be covetously hoarded up, stifled, or hid under a bushel, but freely communicated to mankind. Upon these reasons, and others of equal weight, the wise ^Eolists affirm the gift of belching to be the noblest act of a rational creature. To cultivate which art, and render it more serviceable to mankind, they made use of several methods. At certain seasons of the year you might behold the priests amongst them in vast numbers with their mouths gaping wide against a storm. At other times were to be seen several hundreds linked together in a circular chain, with every man a pair of bellows applied to his neighbour, by which they blew up each other to the shape and size of a tun ; and for that reason with great propriety of speech did usually call their bodies their vessels. 2 When, by these and the like performances, they were grown sufficiently replete, they would immediately depart, and disembogue for the public good a plentiful share of their acquire- ments into their disciples' chaps. For we must here observe that 1 Bombast von Hohenheim Paracelsus. 2 Fanatical preachers of rebellion. 120 A TALE OF A TUB. all learning was esteemed among them to be compounded from the same principle. Because, first, it is generally affirmed or con- fessed that learning puffeth men up ; and, secondly, they proved it by the following syllogism : " Words are but wind, and learning is nothing but words ; ergo, learning is nothing but wind." For this reason the philosophers among them did in their schools deliver to their pupils all their doctrines and opinions by eructa- tion, wherein they had acquired a wonderful eloquence, and of incredible variety. But the great characteristic by which their chief sages were best distinguished was a certain position of countenance, which gave undoubted intelligence to what degree or proportion the spirit agitated the inward mass. For after certain gripings, the wind and vapours issuing forth, having first by their turbulence and convulsions within caused an earthquake in man's little world, distorted the mouth, bloated the cheeks, and gave the eyes a terrible kind of relievo. At which junctures all their belches were received for sacred, the sourer the better, and swallowed with infinite consolation by their meagre devotees. And to render these yet more complete, because the breath of man's life is in his nostrils, therefore the choicest, most edifying, and most enlivening belches were very wisely conveyed through that vehicle to give them a tincture as they passed. Their gods were the four winds, whom they worshipped as the spirits that pervade and enliven the universe, and as those from whom alone all inspiration can properly be said to proceed. However, the chief of these, to whom they performed the adora- tion of Latria, was the Almighty North, an ancient deity, whom the inhabitants of Megalopolis in Greece had likewise in highest reverence. "Omnium deorum Boream maxime celebrant." 1 This god, though endued with ubiquity, was yet supposed by the profounder ^Eolists to possess one peculiar habitation, or (to speak in form) a calum empyraum, wherein he was more intimately pre- sent. This was situated in a certain region well known to the ancient Greeks, by them called 2xor/, or the Land of Darkness. And although many controversies have arisen upon that matter, 1 Pausanias, 1. 8. S. A TALE OF A TUB. 121 yet so much is undisputed, that from a region of the like denomi- nation the most refined ^Eolists have borrowed their original, from whence in every age the zealous among their priesthood have brought over their choicest inspiration, fetching it with their own hands from the fountain-head in certain bladders, and disploding it among the sectaries in all nations, who did, and do, and ever will, daily gasp and pant after it. Now their mysteries and rites were performed in this manner. It is well known among the learned that the virtuosos of former ages had a contrivance for carrying and preserving winds in casks or barrels, which was of great assistance upon long sea-voyages, and the loss of so useful an art at present is very much to be lamented, though, I know not how, with great negligence omitted by Panci- rollus. It was an invention ascribed to ^Eolus himself, from whom this sect is denominated, and who, in honour of their founder's memory, have to this day preserved great numbers of those barrels, whereof they fix one in each of their temples, first beating out the top. Into this barrel upon solemn days the priest enters, where, having before duly prepared himself by the methods already described, a secret funnel is also conveyed to the bottom of the barrel, which admits new supplies of inspiration from a northern chink or cranny. Whereupon you behold him swell immediately to the shape and size of his vessel. In this posture he disembogues whole tempests upon his auditory, as the spirit from beneath gives him utterance, which issuing ex adytis and penetralibus, is not performed without much pain and gripings. And the wind in breaking forth deals with his face as it does with that of the sea, first blackening, then wrinkling, and at last bursting it into a foam. It is in this guise the sacred ^Eolist delivers his oracular belches to his panting disciples, of whom some are greedily gaping after the sanctified breath, others are all the while hymning out the praises of the winds, and gently wafted to and fro by their own humming, do thus represent the soft breezes of their deities appeased. It is from this custom of the priests that some authors maintain these ^Eolists to have been very ancient in the world, because 122 A TALE OF A TUB. the delivery of their mysteries, which I have just now mentioned, appears exactly the same with that of other ancient oracles, whose inspirations were owing to certain subterraneous effluviums of wind delivered with the same pain to the priest, and much about the same influence on the people. It is true indeed that these were frequently managed and directed by female officers, whose organs were understood to be better disposed for the admission of those oracular gusts, as entering and passing up through a receptacle of greater capacity, and causing also a pruriency by the way, such as with due management has been refined from carnal into a spiritual ecstasy. And to strengthen this profound conjec- ture, it is further insisted that this custom of female priests is kept up still in certain refined colleges of our modern ^Eolists, 1 who are agreed to receive their inspiration, derived through the receptacle aforesaid, like their ancestors the Sybils. And whereas the mind of man, when he gives the spur and bridle to his thoughts, does never stop, but naturally sallies out into both extremes of high and low, of good and evil, his first flight of fancy commonly transports him to ideas of what is most perfect, finished, and exalted, till, having soared out of his own reach and sight, not well perceiving how near the frontiers of height and depth border upon each other, with the same course and wing he falls down plump into the lowest bottom of things, like one who travels the east into the west, or like a straight line drawn by its own length into a circle. Whether a tincture of malice in our natures makes us fond of furnishing every bright idea with its reverse, or whether reason, reflecting upon the sum of things, can, like the sun, serve only to enlighten one half of the globe, leaving the other half by necessity under shade and dark- ness, or whether fancy, flying up to the imagination of what is highest and best, becomes over-short, and spent, and weary, and suddenly falls, like a dead bird of paradise, to the ground; or whether, after all these metaphysical conjectures, I have not entirely missed the true reason ; the proposition, however, which has stood me in so much circumstance is altogether true, that as the most 1 The Quakers allowed women to preach. A TALE OF A TUB. 123 uncivilised parts of mankind have some way or other climbed up into the conception of a God or Supreme Power, so they have seldom forgot to provide their fears with certain ghastly notions, which, instead of better, have served them pretty tolerably for a devil. And this proceeding seems to be natural enough, for it is with men whose imaginations are lifted up very high after the same rate as with those whose bodies are so, that as they are delighted with the advantage of a nearer contemplation upwards, so they are equally terrified with the dismal prospect of the preci- pice below. Thus in the choice of a devil it has been the usual method of mankind to single out some being, either in act or in vision, which was in most antipathy to the god they had framed. Thus also the sect of the ^Eolists possessed themselves with a dread and horror and hatred of two malignant natures, betwixt whom and the deities they adored perpetual enmity was established. The first of these was the chameleon, sworn foe to inspiration, who in scorn devoured large influences of their god, without refunding the smallest blast by eructation. The other was a huge terrible monster called Moulinavent, who with four strong arms waged eternal battle with all their divinities, dexterously turning to avoid their blows and repay them with interest. 1 Thus furnished, and set out with gods as well as devils, was the renowned sect of ^Eolists, which makes at this day so illustrious a figure in the world, and whereof that polite nation of Laplanders are beyond all doubt a most authentic branch, of whom I therefore cannot without injustice here omit to make honourable mention, since they appear to be so closely allied in point of interest as well as inclinations with their brother Relists among us, as not only to buy their winds by wholesale from the same merchants, but also to retail them after the same rate and method, and to customers much alike. Now whether the system here delivered was wholly compiled by Jack, or, as some writers believe, rather copied from the 1 The worshippers of wind or air found their evil spirits in the chameleon, by which it was eaten, and the windmill, Moulin-a-vent, by whose four hands it was beaten. I2 4 A TALE OF A TUB. original at Delphos, with certain additions and emendations suited to times and circumstances, I shall not absolutely deter- mine. This I may affirm, that Jack gave it at least a new turn, and formed it into the same dress and model as it lies deduced by me. I have long sought after this opportunity of doing justice to a society of men for whom I have a peculiar honour, and whose opinions as well as practices have been extremely misrepresented and traduced by the malice or ignorance of their adversaries. For I think it one of the greatest and best of human actions to remove prejudices and place things in their truest and fairest light, which I therefore boldly undertake, without any regards of my own beside the conscience, the honour, and the thanks. A DIGRESSION, ETC. 125 SECTION IX. A DIGRESSION CONCERNING THE ORIGINAL, THE USE, AND IMPROVEMENT OF MADNESS IN A COMMON- WEALTH. OR shall it any ways detract from the just reputation of this famous sect that its rise and institution are owing to such an author as I have described Jack to be, a person whose intellectuals were overturned and his brain shaken out of its natural position, which we commonly suppose to be a distemper, and call by the name of madness or frenzy. For if we take a survey of the greatest actions that have been performed in the world under the influence of single men, which are the establish- ment of new empires by conquest, the advance and progress of new schemes in philosophy, and the contriving as well as the propagating of new religions, we shall find the authors of them all to have been persons whose natural reason hath admitted great revolutions from their diet, their education, the prevalency of some certain temper, together with the particular influence of air and climate. Besides, there is something individual in human minds that easily kindles at the accidental approach and collision of certain circumstances, which, though of paltry and mean ap- pearance, do often flame out into the greatest emergencies of life. For great turns are not always given by strong hands, but by lucky adaptation and at proper seasons, and it is of no import where the fire was kindled if the vapour has once got up into the brain. For the upper region of man is furnished like the middle region of the air ; the materials are formed from causes of the widest difference, yet produce at last the same substance and 126 A DIGRESSION CONCERNING effect. Mists arise from the earth, steams from dunghills, exhala- tions from the sea, and smoke from fire ; yet all clouds are the same in composition as well as consequences, and the fumes issuing from a jakes will furnish as comely and useful a vapour as incense from an altar. Thus far, I suppose, will easily be granted me ; and then it will follow that as the face of Nature never produces rain but when it is overcast and disturbed, so human understanding seated in the brain must be troubled and overspread by vapours ascending from the lower faculties to water the invention and render it fruitful. Now although these vapours (as it hath been already said) are of as various original as those of the skies, yet the crop they produce differs both in kind and degree, merely according to the soil. I will produce two instances to prove and explain what I am now advancing. A certain great prince 1 raised a mighty army, filled his coffers with infinite treasures, provided an invincible fleet, and all this without giving the least part of his design to his greatest minis- ters or his nearest favourites. Immediately the whole world was alarmed, the neighbouring crowns in trembling expectation towards what point the storm would burst, the small politicians everywhere forming profound conjectures. Some believed he had laid a scheme for universal monarchy; others, after much insight, determined the matter to be a project for pulling down the Pope and setting up the Reformed religion, which had once been his own. Some again, of a deeper sagacity, sent him into Asia to subdue the Turk and recover Palestine. In the midst of all these projects and preparations, a certain state-surgeon, 2 gather- ing the nature of the disease by these symptoms, attempted the cure, at one blow performed the operation, broke the bag and out flew the vapour ; nor did anything want to render it a complete remedy, only that the prince unfortunately happened to die in the performance. Now is the reader exceeding curious to learn from whence this vapour took its rise, which had so long set the nations at a gaze ? What secret wheel, what hidden spring, could 1 Henry IV. of France. - Ravaillac, who stabbed Henry IV, MADNESS IN A COMMONWEALTH. 127 put into motion so wonderful an engine ? It was afterwards dis- covered that the movement of this whole machine had been directed by an absent female, who was removed into an enemy's country. What should an unhappy prince do in such ticklish circumstances as these ? He tried in vain the poet's never-failing receipt of corpora quceque, for " Idque petit corpus mens unde est saucia amore ; Unde feritur, eo tendit, gestitque coire." Lucr. Having to no purpose used all peaceable endeavours, the col- lected part of the semen, raised and inflamed, became adust, converted to choler, turned head upon the spinal duct, and ascended to the brain. The very same principle that influences) a bully to break the windows of a woman who has jilted him V naturally stirs up a great prince to raise mighty armies and dream \ of nothing but sieges, battles, and victories. The other instance is what I have read somewhere in a very ancient author of a mighty king, 1 who, for the space of above thirty years, amused himself to take and lose towns, beat armies and be beaten, drive princes out of their dominions, fright children from their bread and butter, burn, lay waste, plunder, dragoon, massacre subject and stranger, friend and foe, male and female. It is recorded that the philosophers of each country were in grave dispute upon causes natural, moral, and political, to find out where they should assign an original solution of this phenomenon. At last the vapour or spirit which animated the hero's brain, being in perpetual circulation, seized upon that region of the human body so renowned for furnishing the zibeta ocdden- talis? and gathering there into a tumour, left the rest of the world for that time in peace. Of such mighty consequence is it where those exhalations fix, and of so little from whence they proceed. 1 Swift's contemporary, Louis XIV. of France. 2 Western civet. Paracelsus was said to have endeavoured to extract a perfume from human excrement that might become as fashionable as civet from the cat. It was called zibeta occidentalis, the back being, according to Paracelsus, the western part of the body. 128 A DIGRESSION CONCERNING The same spirits which in their superior progress would conquer a kingdom descending upon the anus, conclude in a fistula. Let us next examine the great introducers of new schemes in philosophy, and search till we can find from what faculty of the soul the disposition arises in mortal man of taking it into his head to advance new systems with such an eager zeal in things agreed all hands impossible to be known ; from what seeds this dis- position springs, and to what quality of human nature these grand innovators have been indebted for their number of disciples, because it is plain that several of the chief among them, both ancient and modern, were usually mistaken by their adversaries, and, indeed, by all, except their own followers, to have been persons crazed or out of their wits, having generally proceeded in the common course of their words and actions by a method very different from the vulgar dictates of unrefined reason, agreeing for the most part in their several models with their present undoubted successors in the academy of modern Bedlam, whose merits and principles I shall further examine in due place. Of this kind were Epicurus, Diogenes, Apollonius, Lucretius, Para- celsus, Des Cartes, and others, who, if they were now in the world, tied fast and separate from their followers, would in this our undistinguishing age incur manifest danger of phlebotomy, and whips, and chains, and dark chambers, and straw. For what man in the natural state or course of thinking did ever con- ceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and breadth, and height of his own ? Yet this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason. Epicurus modestly hoped that one time or other a certain fortuitous concourse of all men's opinions, after perpetual jostlings, the sharp with the smooth, the light and the heavy, the round and the square, would, by certain clinamina, unite in the notions of atoms and void, as these did in the originals of all things. Cartesius reckoned to see before he died the sentiments of all philosophers, like so many lesser stars in his romantic system, rapt and drawn within his own vortex. Now I would gladly be informed how it is possible to account for such MADNESS IN A COMMONWEALTH. 129 imaginations as these in particular men, without recourse to my phenomenon of vapours ascending from the lower faculties to overshadow the brain, and there distilling into conceptions, for which the narrowness of our mother-tongue has not yet assigned any other name beside that of madness or frenzy. Let us there- fore now conjecture how it comes to pass that none of these great prescribers do ever fail providing themselves and their notions with a number of implicit disciples, and I think the reason is easy to be assigned, for there is a peculiar string in the harmony of human understanding, which in several individuals is exactly of the same tuning. This, if you can dexterously screw up to its right key, and then strike gently upon it whenever you have the good fortune to light among those of the same pitch, they will by a secret necessary sympathy strike exactly at the same time. And in this one circumstance lies all the skill or luck of the matter ; for, if you chance to jar the string among those who are either above or below your own height, instead of subscribing to your doctrine, they will tie you fast, call you mad, and feed you with bread and water. It is therefore a point of the nicest con- duct to distinguish and adapt this noble talent with respect to the differences of persons and of times. Cicero understood this very well, when, writing to a friend in England, with a caution, among other matters, to beware of being cheated by our hackney- coachmen (who, it seems, in those days were as arrant rascals as they are now), has these remarkable words, Est quod gaudeas te in ista loca venisse, ubi aliquid sapere viderere. 1 For, to speak a bold truth, it is a fataLjniscarriage so ill to order affairs as to j>ass for a fool in one company, when in another you might be treated as a philosopher ; which I desire some certain gentlemen ^of my acquaintance to lay up in their hearts as a very seasonable innuendo. This, indeed, was the fatal mistake of that worthy gentleman, my most ingenious friend Mr. Wotton, a person in appearance ordained for great designs as well as performances, whether you will 1 Ep. Fam. vii. 10, to Trebatius, who, as the next sentence in the letter shows, had not gone into England. I I 3 o A DIGRESSION CONCERNING consider his notions or his looks. Surely no man ever advanced into the public with fitter qualifications of body and mind for the propagation of a new religion. Oh, had those happy talents, misapplied to vain philosophy, been turned into their proper channels of dreams and visions, where distortion of mind and countenance are of such sovereign use, the base, detracting world would not then have dared to report that something is amiss, that his brain hath undergone an unlucky shake, which even his brother modernists themselves, like ungrates, do whisper so loud that it reaches up to the very garret I am now writing in. Lastly, whoever pleases to look into the fountains of enthusiasm, from whence in all ages have eternally proceeded such fattening streams, will find the spring-head to have been as troubled and muddy as the current. Of such great emolument is a tincture of this vapour, which the world calls madness, that without its help the world would not only be deprived of those two great blessings, conquests and systems, but even all mankind would unhappily be reduced to the same belief in things invisible. Now the former postulatum being held, that it is of no import from what originals this vapour proceeds, but either in what angles it strikes and spreads over the understanding, or upon what species of brain it ascends, it will be a very delicate point to cut the feather and divide the several reasons to a nice and curious reader, how this numerical difference in the brain can produce effects of so vast a difference from the same vapour as to be the sole point of indi- viduation between Alexander the Great, Jack of Leyden, and Mon- sieur Des Cartes. The present argument is the most abstracted that ever I engaged in ; it strains my faculties to their highest stretch, and I desire the reader to attend with utmost perpensity, for I now proceed to unravel this knotty point. There is in mankind a certain . . . Hie multa desiderantur. .this I take to be a clear solution of the matter. Having, therefore, so narrowly passed through this intricate difficulty, the reader will, I am sure, agree with me in the con- clusion that, if the moderns mean by madness only a disturbance MADNESS IN A COMMONWEALTH. or transposition of the brain, by force of certain vapours issuing up from the lower faculties, then has this madness been the parent of all those mighty revolutions that have happened in empire, in philosophy, and in religion. For the brain in its natural position and state of serenity disposeth its owner to pass his life in the common forms, without any thought of subduing multitudes to his own power, his reasons, or his visions, and the more he shapes his understanding by the pattern of human learning, the less he is inclined to form parties after his particular notions, because that instructs him in his private infirmities, as well as in the stubborn ignorance of the people. But when a man's fancy gets astride on his reason, when imagination is at cuffs with the senses, and common understanding as well as common sense is kicked out of doors, the first proselyte he makes is himself; and when that is once compassed, the difficulty is not so great in bring- ing over others, a strong delusion always operating from without as vigorously as from within. For cant and vision are to the ear and the eye the same that tickling is to the touch. Those enter- tainments and pleasures we most value in life are such as dupe and play the wag with the senses. For if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happmessj as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition, that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived. And first, with relation to the mind or understanding, it is manifest what mighty advantages fiction has over truth, and the reason is just at our elbow : because imagination can build nobler scenes and produce more wonderful revolutions than fortune or Nature will be at the expense to furnish. Nor is mankind so much to blame in his choice thus determining him, if we consider that the debate merely lies between things past and things con- ceived, and so the question is only this : whether things that have place in the imagination may not as properly be said to exist as those that are seated in the memory ? which may be justly held in the affirmative, and very much to the advantage of the former, since this is acknowledged to be the womb of things, and the 132 A DIGRESSION CONCERNING other allowed to be no more than the grave. Again, if we take this definition of happiness and examine it with reference to the senses, it will be acknowledged wonderfully adapt. How sad and insipid do all objects accost us that are not conveyed in the vehicle of delusion ! How shrunk is everything as it appears in the glass of Nature, so that if it were not for the assistance of artificial mediums, false lights, refracted angles, varnish, and tinsel, there would be a mighty level in the felicity and enjoy- ments of mortal men. If this were seriously considered by the world, as I have a certain reason to suspect it hardly will, men would no longer reckon among their high points of wisdom the art of exposing weak sides and publishing infirmities an employ- ment, in my opinion, neither better nor worse than that of un- masking, which, I think, has never been allowed fair usage, either in the world or the playhouse. In the proportion that credulity is a more peaceful possession of the mind than curiosity, so far preferable is that wisdom which converses about the surface to that pretended philosophy which enters into the depths of things and then comes gravely back with informations and discoveries, that in the inside they are good for nothing. The two senses to which all objects first address them- selves are the sight and the touch ; these never examine farther than the colour, the shape, the size, and whatever other qualities dwell or are drawn by art upon the outw?";^ of bodies ; and then comes reason officiously, with tools for cutting, and opening, and mangling, and piercing, offering to demonstrate that they are not of the same consistence quite through. Now I take all this to be the last degree of perverting Nature, one of whose eternal laws it is to put her best furniture forward. And therefore, in order to save the charges of all such expensive anatomy for the time to come, I do here think fit to inform the reader that in such con- clusions as these reason is certainly in the right; and that in most corporeal beings which have fallen under my cognisance, the outside hath been infinitely preferable to the in, whereof I have been further convinced from some late experiments. Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how MADNESS IN A COMMONWEALTH. 133 much it altered her person for the worse. Yesterday I ordered the carcass of a beau to be stripped in my presence, when we were all amazed to find so many unsuspected faults under one suit of clothes. Then I laid open his brain, his heart, and his spleen, but I plainly perceived at every operation that the farther we proceeded, we found the defects increase upon us in number and bulk j from all which I justly formed this conclusion to my- self, that whatever philosopher or projector can find out an art to sodder and patch up the flaws and imperfections of Nature, will deserve much better of mankind and teach us a more useful science than that so much in present esteem, of widening and exposing them (like him who held anatomy to be the ultimate end of physic). And he whose fortunes and dispositions have placed him in a convenient station to enjoy the fruits of this noble art, he that can with Epicurus content his ideas with the films and images that fly off upon his senses from the superfices of things, such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up. This is the sub- lime and refined point of felicity called the possession of being well-deceived, the serene peaceful state of being a fp knaves. But to return to madness. It is certain that, according to the system I have above deduced, every species thereof proceeds from a redundancy of vapour ; therefore, as some kinds of frenzy give double strength to the sinews, so there are of other species which add vigour, and life, and spirit to the brain. Now it usually happens that these active spirits, getting possession of the brain, resemble those that haunt other waste and empty dwellings, which for want of business either vanish and carry away a piece of the house, or else stay at home and fling it all out of the windows. By which are mystically displayed the two principal branches of madness, and which some philosophers, not considering so well as I, have mistook to be different in their causes, over-hastily assigning the first to deficiency and the other to redundance. I think it therefore manifest, from what I have here advanced, that the main point of skill and address is to furnish employment 134 A DIGRESSION CONCERNING for this redundancy of vapour, and prudently to adjust the seasons of it, by which means it may certainly become of cardinal, and catholic emolument in a commonwealth. Thus one man, choosing a proper juncture, leaps into a gulf, from thence proceeds a hero, and is called the saviour of his country. Another achieves the same enterprise, but unluckily timing it, has left the brand of madness fixed as a reproach upon his memory. Upon so nice a distinction are we taught to repeat the name of Curtius with reverence and love, that of Empedocles with hatred and contempt. Thus also it is usually conceived that the elder Brutus only personated the fool and madman for the good of the public; but this was nothing else than a redundancy of the same vapour long misapplied, called by the Latins ingenium par negotiis, or (to translate it as nearly as I can), a sort of frenzy never in its right element till you take it up in business of the state. Upon all which, and many other reasons of equal weight, though not equally curious, I do here gladly embrace an oppor- tunity I have long sought for, of recommending it as a very noble undertaking to Sir Edward Seymour, Sir Christopher Musgrave, Sir John Bowles, John Howe, Esq., and other patriots concerned, that they would move for leave to bring in a Bill for appointing commissioners to inspect into Bedlam and the parts adjacent, who shall be empowered to send for persons, papers, and records, to examine into the merits and qualifications of every student and professor, to observe with utmost exactness their several dispositions and behaviour, by which means, duly distinguishing and adapting their talents, they might produce admirable instru- ments for the several offices in a state, . . . civil and military, proceeding in such methods as I shall here humbly propose. And I hope the gentle reader will give some allowance to my great solicitudes in this important aifair, upon account of that high esteem I have ever borne that honourable society, whereof I had some time the happiness to be an unworthy member. Is any student tearing his straw in piecemeal, swearing and blaspheming, biting his grate, foaming at the mouth, and emptying his vessel in the spectators' faces ? Let the right worshipful the MADNESS IN A COMMONWEALTH. 135 Commissioners of Inspection give him a regiment of dragoons, and send him into Flanders among the rest Is another eternally talking, sputtering, gaping, bawling, in a sound without period or article ? What wonderful talents are here mislaid ! Let him be furnished immediately with a green bag and papers, and three- pence in his pocket, 1 and away with him to Westminster Hall. You will find a third gravely taking the dimensions of his kennel, a person of foresight and insight, though kept quite in the dark ; for why, like Moses, Ecce cornuta erat ejus fades. He walks duly in one pace, entreats your penny with due gravity and ceremony, talks much of hard times, and taxes, and the whore of Babylon, bars up the wooden of his cell constantly at eight o'clock, dreams of fire, and shoplifters, and court-customers, and privileged places. Now what a figure would all these acquirements amount to if the owner were sent into the City among his brethren ! Behold a fourth in much and deep conversation with himself, biting his thumbs at proper junctures, his countenance chequered with business and design ; sometimes walking very fast, with his eyes nailed to a paper that he holds in his hands ; a great saver of time, somewhat thick of hearing, very short of sight, but more of memory ; a man ever in haste, a great hatcher and breeder of business, and excellent at the famous art of whispering nothing ; a huge idolater of monosyllables and procrastination, so ready to give his word to everybody that he never keeps it ; one that has forgot the common meaning of words, but an admirable retainer . of the sound ; extremely subject to the looseness, for his occa- sions are perpetually calling him away. If you approach his grate in his familiar intervals, " Sir," says he, " give me a penny and I'll sing you a song ; but give me the penny first " (hence comes the common saying and commoner practice of parting with money for a song). W T hat a complete system of court-skill is here described in every branch of it, and all utterly lost with wrong application ! Accost the hole of another kennel, first stopping your nose, you will behold a surly, gloomy, nasty, slovenly mortal, raking in his own dung and dabbling in his urine. The best 1 A lawyer's coach-hire. S. 136 A DIGRESSION CONCERNING part of his diet is the reversion of his own ordure, which expiring into steams, whirls perpetually about, and at last reinfunds. His complexion is of a dirty yellow, with a thin scattered beard, exactly agreeable to that of his diet upon its first declination, like other insects, who, having their birth and education in an excrement, from thence borrow their colour and their smell. The student of this apartment is very sparing of his words, but somewhat over-liberal of his breath. He holds his hand out ready to receive your penny, and immediately upon receipt with- draws to his former occupations. Now is it not amazing to think the society of Warwick Lane 1 should have no more concern for the recovery of so useful a member, who, if one may judge from these appearances, would become the greatest ornament to that illustrious body ? Another student struts up fiercely to your teeth, puffing with his lips, half squeezing out his eyes, and very graciously holds out his hand to kiss. The keeper desires you not to be afraid of this professor, for he will do you no hurt ; to him alone is allowed the liberty of the ante-chamber, and the orator of the place gives you to understand that this solemn person is a tailor run mad with pride. This considerable student is adorned with many other qualities, upon which at present I shall not further enlarge. . . . Hark in your ear. ... I am strangely mis- taken if all his address, his motions, and his airs would not then be very natural and in their proper element. I shall not descend so minutely as to insist upon the vast num- ber of beaux, fiddlers, poets, and politicians that the world might recover by such a reformation, but what is more material, beside the clear gain redounding to the commonwealth by so large an acquisition of persons to employ, whose talents and acquirements, if I may be so bold to affirm it, are now buried or at least mis- applied. It would be a mighty advantage accruing to the public from this inquiry that all these would very much excel and arrive at great perfection in their several kinds, which I think is manifest from what I have already shown, and shall enforce by this one plain instance, that even I myself, the author of these momentous 1 The College of Physicians. MADNESS IN A COMMONWEALTH. 137 truths, am a person whose imaginations are hard-mouthed and exceedingly disposed to run away with his reason, which I have observed from long experience to be a very light rider, and easily shook off; upon which account my friends will never trust me alone without a solemn promise to vent my speculations in this or the like manner, for the universal benefit of human kind, which perhaps the gentle, courteous, and candid reader, brimful of that modern charity and tenderness usually annexed to his office, will be very hardly persuaded to believe. 138 A FARTHER DIGRESSION. SECTION X. A FARTHER DIGRESSION. T T is an unanswerable argument of a very refined age the won- derful civilities that have passed of late years between the nation of authors and that of readers. There can hardly pop out a play, a pamphlet, or a poem without a preface full of acknow- ledgments to the world for the general reception and applause they have given it, which the Lord knows where, or when, or how, or from whom it received. In due deference to so laudable a custom, I do here return my humble thanks to His Majesty and both Houses of Parliament, to the Lords of the King's most honourable Privy Council, to the reverend the Judges, to the Clergy, and Gentry, and Yeomanry of this land; but in a more especial manner to my worthy brethren and friends at Will's Coffee-house, and Gresham College, and Warwick Lane, and Moorfields, and Scotland Yard, and Westminster Hall, and Guildhall ; in short, to all inhabitants and retainers whatsoever, either in court, or church, or camp, or city, or country, for their generosity and universal acceptance of this divine treatise. I accept their appro- bation and good opinion with extreme gratitude, and to the utmost of my poor capacity shall take hold of all opportunities to return the obligation. I am also happy that fate has flung me into so blessed an age for the mutual felicity of booksellers and authors, whom I may safely affirm to be at this day the two only satisfied parties in England. Ask an author how his last piece has succeeded, " Why, truly he thanks his stars the world has been very favourable, and he has not the least reason to complain." And yet he wrote it in A FARTHER DIGRESSION. 139 a week at bits and starts, when he could steal an hour from his urgent affairs, as it is a hundred to one you may see further in the preface, to which he refers you, and for the rest to the bookseller. There you go as a customer, and make the same question, " He blesses his God the thing takes wonderful ; he is just printing a second edition, and has but three left in his shop." You beat down the price ; " sir, we shall not differ," and in hopes of your custom another time, lets you have it as reasonable as you please ; " And pray send as many of your acquaintance as you will ; I shall upon your account furnish them all at the same rate." Now it is not well enough considered to what accidents and occasions the world is indebted for the greatest part of those noble writings which hourly start up to entertain it. If it were not for a rainy day, a drunken vigil, a fit of the spleen, a course of physic, a sleepy Sunday, an ill run at dice, a long tailor's bill, a beggar's purse, a factious head, a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, and a just contempt of learning, but for these events, I say, and some others too long to recite (especially a prudent neg- lect of taking brimstone inwardly), I doubt the number of authors and of writings would dwindle away to a degree most woeful to behold. To confirm this opinion, hear the words of the famous troglodyte philosopher. "It is certain," said he, "some grains of folly are of course annexed as part in the composition of human nature ; only the choice is left us whether we please to wear them inlaid or embossed, and we need not go very far to seek how that is usually determined, when we remember it is with human facul- ties as with liquors, the lightest will be ever at the top." There is in this famous island of Britain a certain paltry scribbler, very voluminous, whose character the reader cannot wholly be a stranger to. He deals in a pernicious kind of writings called " Second Parts," and usually passes under the name of " The Author of the First." I easily foresee that as soon as I lay down my pen this nimble operator will have stole it, and treat me as inhumanly as he has already done Dr. Blackmore, Lestrange, and many others who shall here be nameless. I therefore fly for 1 40 A FARTHER DIGRESSION. justice and relief into the hands of that great rectifier of saddles and lover of mankind, Dr. Bentley, begging he will take this enormous grievance into his most modern consideration ; and if it should so happen that the furniture of an ass in the shape of a second part must for my sins be clapped, by mistake, upon my back, that he will immediately please, in the presence of the world, to lighten me of the burthen, and take it home to his own house till the true beast thinks fit to call for it. In the meantime, I do here give this public notice that my reso- lutions are to circumscribe within this discourse the whole stock of matter I have been so many years providing. Since my vein is once opened, I am content to exhaust it all at a running, for the peculiar advantage of my dear country, and for the universal benefit of mankind. Therefore, hospitably considering the number of my guests, they shall have my whole entertainment at a meal, and I scorn to set up the leavings in the cupboard. What the guests cannot eat may be given to the poor, and the dogs under the table may gnaw the bones. 1 This I understand for a more generous proceeding than to turn the company's stomachs by inviting them again to-morrow to a scurvy meal of scraps. If the reader fairly considers the strength of what I have advanced in the foregoing section, I am convinced it will produce a wonderful revolution in his notions and opinions, and he will be abundantly better prepared to receive and to relish the con- cluding part of this miraculous treatise. Readers may be divided into three classes the superficial, the ignorant, and the learned, and I have with much felicity fitted my pen to the genius and advantage of each. The superficial reader will be strangely pro- voked to laughter, which clears the breast and the lungs, is sove- reign against the spleen, and the most innocent of all diuretics. The ignorant reader (between whom and the former the distinc- tion is extremely nice) will find himself disposed to stare, which is an admirable remedy for ill eyes, serves to raise and enliven the spirits, and wonderfully helps perspiration. But the reader truly learned, chiefly for whose benefit I wake when others sleep, 1 The bad critics. A FARTHER DIGRESSION. 141 and sleep when others wake, will here find sufficient matter to employ his speculations for the rest of his life. It were much to be wished, and I do here humbly propose for an experiment, that every prince in Christendom will take seven of the deepest scholars in his dominions and shut them up close for seven years in seven chambers, with a command to write seven ample com- mentaries on this comprehensive discourse. I shall venture to affirm that, whatever difference may be found in their several con- jectures, they will be all, without the least distortion, manifestly deducible from the text. Meantime it is my earnest request that so useful an undertaking may be entered upon (if their Majesties please) with all convenient speed, because I have a strong inclination before I leave the world to taste a blessing which we mysterious writers can seldom reach till we have got into our graves, whether it is that fame being a fruit grafted on the body, can hardly grow and much less ripen till the stock is in the earth, or whether she be a bird of prey, and is lured among the rest to pursue after the scent of a carcass, or whether she conceives her trumpet sounds best and farthest when she stands on a tomb, by the advantage of a rising ground and the echo of a hollow vault It is true, indeed, the republic of dark authors, after they once found out this excellent expedient of dying, have been peculiarly happy in the variety as well as extent of their reputation. For night being the universal mother of things, wise philosophers hold all writings to be fruitful in the proportion they are dark, and therefore the true illuminated (that is to say, the darkest of all) have met with such numberless commentators, whose scholiastic midwifery hath delivered them of meanings that the authors them- selves perhaps never conceived, and yet may very justly be allowed the lawful parents of them, the words of such writers being like seed, which, however scattered at random, when they light upon a fruitful ground, will multiply far beyond either the hopes or imagination of the sower. And therefore, in order to promote so useful a work, I will here take leave to glance a few innuendos that may be of great assistance 142 A FARTHER DIGRESSION. to those sublime spirits who shall be appointed to labour in a universal comment upon this wonderful discourse. And first, I have couched a very profound mystery in the number of o's multiplied by seven and divided by nine. Also, if a devout brother of the Rosy Cross will pray fervently for sixty-three morn- ings with a lively faith, and then transpose certain letters and syllables according to prescription, in the second and fifth section they will certainly reveal into a full receipt of the opus magnum. Lastly, whoever will be at the pains to calculate the whole number of each letter in this treatise, and sum up the difference exactly between the several numbers, assigning the true natural cause for every such difference, the discoveries in the product will plenti- fully reward his labour. But then he must beware of Bythus and Sige, and be sure not to forget the qualities of Acamoth ; a cujus lacrymis humecta prodit substantia^ a risu lurida^ a tristitia solida, etcttimore mobilis^ wherein Eugenius Philalethes 1 hath committed an unpardonable mistake. 1 A name under which Thomas Vaughan wrote. A TALE OF A TUB. 143 SECTION XI. A TALE OF A TUB. A FTER so wide a compass as I have wandered, I do now ^" gladly overtake and close in with my subject, and shall henceforth hold on with it an even pace to the end of my journey, except some beautiful prospect appears within sight of my way, whereof, though at present I have neither warning nor expecta- tion, yet upon such an accident, come when it will, I shall beg my reader's favour and company, allowing me to conduct him through it along with myself. For in writing it is as in travelling. If a man is in haste to be at home (which I acknowledge to be none of my case, having never so little business as when I am there), if his horse be tired with long riding and ill ways, or be naturally a jade, I advise him clearly to make the straightest and the commonest road, be it ever so dirty ; but then surely we must own such a man to be a scurvy companion at best He spatters himself and his fellow-travellers at every step. All their thoughts, and wishes, and conversation turn entirely upon the subject of their journey's end, and at every splash, and plunge, and stumble they heartily wish one another at the devil. On the other side, when a traveller and his horse are in heart and plight, when his purse is full and the day before him, he takes the road only where it is clean or convenient, entertains his company there as agreeably as he can, but upon the first occa- sion carries them along with him to every delightful scene in view, whether of art, of Nature, or of both ; and if they chance to refuse out of stupidity or weariness, let them jog on by themselves, and be d n'd. He'll overtake them at the next town, at which 144 ^ TALE OF A TUB. arriving, he rides furiously through, the men, women, and chil- dren run out to gaze, a hundred noisy curs run barking after him, of which, if he honours the boldest with a lash of his whip, it is rather out of sport than revenge. But should some sourer mongrel dare too near an approach, he receives a salute on the chaps by an accidental stroke from the courser's heels, nor is any ground lost by the blow, which sends him yelping and limp- ing home. I now proceed to sum up the singular adventures of my renowned Jack, the state of whose dispositions and fortunes the careful reader does, no doubt, most exactly remember, as I last parted with them in the conclusion of a former section. There- fore, his next care must be from two of the foregoing to extract a scheme of notions that may best fit his understanding for a true relish of what is to ensue. Jack had not only calculated the first revolution of his brain so prudently as to give rise to that epidemic sect of ^Eolists, but succeeding also into a new and strange variety of conceptions, the fruitfulness of his imagination led him into certain notions which, although in appearance very unaccountable, were not without their mysteries and their meanings, nor wanted followers to countenance and improve them. I shall therefore be extremely careful and exact in recounting such material passages of this nature as I have been able to collect, either from undoubted tradition or indefatigable reading, and shall describe them as graphically as it is possible, and as far as notions of that height and latitude can be brought within the compass of a pen. Nor do I at all question but they will furnish plenty of noble matter for such whose converting imaginations dispose them to reduce all things into types, who can make shadows no thanks to the sun and then mould them into substances no thanks to philo- sophy whose peculiar talent lies in fixing tropes and allegories to the letter, and refining what is literal into figure and mystery. Jack had provided a fair copy of his father's will, engrossed in form upon a large skin of parchment, and resolving to act the part of a most dutiful son, he became the fondest creature of it A TALE OF A TUB. 145 imaginable. For although, as I have often told the reader, it con- sisted wholly in certain plain, easy directions about the manage- ment and wearing of their coats, with legacies and penalties in case of obedience or neglect, yet he began to entertain a fancy that the matter was deeper and darker, and therefore must needs have a great deal more of mystery at the bottom. " Gentlemen," said he, " I will prove this very skin of parchment to be meat, drink, and cloth, to be the philosopher's stone and the universal medicine." In consequence of which raptures he resolved to make use of it in the most necessary as well as the most paltry occasions of life. He had a way of working it into any shape he pleased, so that it served him for a nightcap when he went to bed, and for an umbrella in rainy weather. He would lap a piece of . it about a sore toe ; or, when he had fits, burn two inches under his nose ; or, if anything lay heavy on his stomach, scrape off and swallow as much of the powder as would lie on a silver penny they were all infallible remedies. With analogy to these refinements, his common talk and conversation ran wholly in the praise of his Will, and he circumscribed the utmost of his eloquence within that compass, not daring to let slip a syllable without authority from thence. Once at a strange house he was suddenly taken short upon an urgent juncture, whereon it may not be allowed too parti- cularly to dilate, and being not able to call to mind, with that sudden- ness the occasion required, an authentic phrase for demanding the way to the back, he chose rather, as the more prudent course, to incur the penalty in such cases usually annexed ; neither was it pos- sible for the united rhetoric of mankind to prevail with him to make himself clean again, because, having consulted the will upon this emergency, he met with a passage near the bottom (whether foisted in by the transcriber is not known) which seemed to forbid it. 1 He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his meat, nor could all the world persuade him, as the common phrase is, to eat his victuals like a Christian. 2 1 Revelations xxii. n : " He which is filthy, let him be filthy still ; " "phrase of Ihe will," being Scripture phrase, of either Testament, applied to every occasion, and often in the most unbecoming manner. 2 He did not kneel when he received the Sacrament. C 146 A TALE OF A TUB. He bore a strange kind of appetite to snap-dragon and to the livid snuffs of a burning candle, 1 which he would catch and swallow with an agility wonderful to conceive ; and by this pro- cedure maintained a perpetual flame in his belly, which issuing in a glowing steam from both his eyes, as well as his nostrils and his mouth, made his head appear in a dark night like the skull of an ass wherein a roguish boy hath conveyed a farthing-candle, to the terror of his Majesty's liege subjects. Therefore he made use of no other expedient to light himself home, but was wont to say that a wise man was his own lanthorn. He would shut his eyes as he walked along the streets, and if he happened to bounce his head against a post or fall into the kennel (as he seldom missed either to do one or both), he would tell the gibing apprentices who looked on that he submitted with entire resignation, as to a trip or a blow of fate, with whom he found by long experience how vain it was either to wrestle or to cuff, and whoever durst undertake to do either would be sure to come off with a swingeing fall or a bloody nose. " It was ordained," said he, 2 "some few days before the creation, that my nose and this very post should have a rencounter, and therefore Providence thought fit to send us both into the world in the same age, and to make us countrymen and fellow-citizens. Now, had my eyes been open, it is very likely the business might have been a great deal worse, for how many a confounded slip is daily got by man with all his foresight about him ! Besides, the eyes of the under- standing see best when those of the senses are out of the way, and therefore blind men are observed to tread their steps with much more caution, and conduct, and judgment than those who rely with too much confidence upon the virtue of the visual nerve, which every little accident shakes out of order, and a drop or a film can wholly disconcert ; like a lanthorn among a pack of roaring bullies when they scour the streets, exposing its owner and itself to outward kicks and buffets, which both might have escaped if the vanity of appearing would have suffered them to walk in the dark. But further^ if we examine the conduct of 1 His inward lights. 2 Predestination. A TALE OF A TUB. 147 these boasted lights, it will prove yet a great deal worse than their fortune. It is true I have broke my nose against this post, because Providence either forgot, or did not think it convenient, to twitch me by the elbow and give me notice to avoid it. But let not this encourage either the present age of posterity to trust their noses unto the keeping of their eyes, which may prove the fairest way of losing them for good and all. For, O ye eyes, ye blind guides, miserable guardians are ye of our frail noses; ye, I say, who fasten upon the first precipice in view, and then tow our wretched willing bodies after you to the very brink of destruction. But alas ! that brink is rotten, our feet slip, and we tumble down prone into a gulf, without one hospitable shrub in the way to break the fall a fall to which not any nose of mortal make is equal, except that of the giant Laurcalco, 1 who was Lord of the Silver Bridge. Most properly, therefore, O eyes, and with great justice, may you be compared to those foolish lights which conduct men through dirt and darkness till they fall into a deep pit or a noisome bog." This I have produced as a scantling of Jack's great eloquence and the force of his reasoning upon such abstruse matters. He was, besides, a person of great design and improvement in affairs of devotion, having introduced a new deity, who has since met with a vast number of worshippers, by some called Babel, by others Chaos, who had an ancient temple of Gothic structure upon Salisbury plain, famous for its shrine and celebration by pilgrims. When he had some roguish trick to play, he would down with his knees, up with his eyes, and fall to prayers though in the midst of the kennel. Then it was that those who understood his pranks would be sure to get far enough out of his way ; and whenever curiosity attracted strangers to laugh or to listen, he would of a sudden bespatter them with mud. In winter he went always loose and unbuttoned, and clad as thin as possible to let in the ambient heat, and in summer lapped himself close and thick to keep it out. 2 1 Vide Don Quixote. S. 2 Swift borrowed this from the customs of Moronia Fool's Land in Joseph Hall's Mundus Alter et Idem. 148 A TALE OF A TUB. In all revolutions of government, he would make his court for the office of hangman-general, and in the exercise of that dignity, wherein he was very dexterous, would make use of no other vizard than a long prayer. He had a tongue so musculous and subtile, that he could twist it up into his nose and deliver a strange kind of speech from thence. He was also the first in these kingdoms who began to improve the Spanish accomplishment of braying; and having large ears perpetually exposed and erected, he carried his art to such a perfection, that it was a point of great difficulty to dis- tinguish either by the view or the sound between the original and the copy. He was troubled with a disease the reverse to that called the stinging of the tarantula, and would run dog-mad at the noise of music, especially a pair of bagpipes. 1 But he would cure himself again by taking two or three turns in Westminster Hall, or Billings- gate, or in a boarding-school, or the Royal Exchange, or a state coffee-house. He was a person that feared no colours, but mortally hated all, and upon that account bore a cruel aversion to painters, insomuch that in his paroxysms as he walked the streets, he would have his pockets loaded with stones to pelt at the signs. 2 Having from his manner of living frequent occasions to wash himself, he would often leap over head and ears into the water, though it were in the midst of the winter, but was always observed to come out again much dirtier, if possible, than he went in. 3 He was the first that ever found out the secret of contriving a soporiferous medicine to be conveyed in at the ears. 4 It was a compound of sulphur and balm of Gilead, with a little pilgrim's salve. He wore a large plaister of artificial caustics on his stomach, 1 The Presbyterians objected to church-music, and had no organs in their meeting-houses. 3 Opposed to the decoration of church walls. 3 Baptism by immersion. 4 Preaching. A TALE OF A TUB. 149 with the fervour of which he could set himself a groaning like the famous board upon application of a red-hot iron. He would stand in the turning of a street, and calling to those who passed by, would cry to one, " Worthy sir, do me the honour of a good slap in the chaps ; " to another, " Honest friend, pray favour me with a handsome kick in the rear ; " " Madam, shall I entreat a small box in the ear from your ladyship's fair hands ? " " Noble captain, lend a reasonable thwack, for the love of God, with that cane of yours over these poor shoulders." And when he had by such earnest solicitations made a shift to procure a basting sufficient to swell up his fancy and his sides, he would return home extremely comforted, and full of terrible accounts of what he had undergone for the public good. " Observe this stroke," said he, showing his bare shoulders ; " a plaguy janissary gave it me this very morning at seven o'clock, as, with much ado, I was driving off the Great Turk. Neighbours mine, this broken head deserves a plaister ; had poor Jack been tender of his noddle, you would have seen the Pope and the French King long before this time of day among your wives and your warehouses. Dear Christians, the Great Moghul was come as far as Whitechapel, and you may thank these poor sides that he hath not God bless us already swallowed up man, woman, and child." It was highly worth observing the singular effects of that aver- sion or antipathy which Jack and his brother Peter seemed, even to affectation, to bear towards each other. Peter had lately done some rogueries that forced him to abscond, and he seldom ven- tured to stir out before night for fear of bailiffs. Their lodgings were at the two most distant parts of the town from each other, and whenever their occasions or humours called them abroad, they would make choice of the oddest, unlikely times, and most uncouth rounds that they could invent, that they might be sure to avoid one another. Yet, after all this, it was their perpetual for- tune to n t *et, the reason of which is easy enough to apprehend, for the frenzy and the spleen of both having the same foundation, we may look upon them as two pair of compasses equally extended, and the fixed foot of each remaining in the same centre, which, 150 A TALE OF A TUB. though moving contrary ways at first, will be sure to encounter somewhere or other in the circumference. Besides, it was among the great misfortunes of Jack to bear a huge personal resemblance with his brother Peter. Their humour and dispositions were not only the same, but there was a close analogy in their shape, their size, and their mienj insomuch as nothing was more frequent than for a bailiff to seize Jack by the shoulders and cry, " Mr. Peter, you are the king's prisoner ; " or, at other times, for one of Peter's nearest friends to accost Jack with open arms : " Dear Peter, I am glad to see thee ; pray send me one of your best medicines for the worms." This, we may suppose, was a mortify- ing return of those pains and proceedings Jack had laboured in so long, and rinding how directly opposite all his endeavours had answered to the sole end and intention which he had proposed to himself, how could it avoid having terrible effects upon a head and heart so furnished as his ? However, the poor remainders of his coat bore all the punishment. The orient sun never entered upon his diurnal progress without missing a piece of it. He hired a tailor to stitch up the collar so close that it was ready to choke him, and squeezed out his eyes at such a rate as one could see nothing but the white. What little was left of the main substance of the coat he rubbed every day for two hours against a rough-cast wall, in order 'to grind away the remnants of lace and embroidery, but at the same time went on with so much violence that he pro- ceeded a heathen philosopher. Yet after all he cpuld do of this kind, the success continued still to disappoint his expectation, for as it is the nature of rags to bear a kind of mock resemblance to finery, there being a sort of fluttering appearance in both, which is not to be distinguished at a distance in the dark or by short- sighted eyes, so in those junctures it fared with Jack and his tatters, that they offered to the first view a ridiculous flaunting, which, assisting the resemblance in person and air, thwarted all his projects of separation, and left so near a similitude between them as frequently deceived the very disciples and followers of both. ........... . Desunt nonnulla. A TALE OF A TUB. 151 The old Sclavonian proverb said well that it is with men as with asses ; whoever would keep them fast must find a very good hold at their ears. Yet I think we may affirm, and it hath been verified by repeated experience, that " Effugiet tamen haec sceleratus vincula Proteus." l It is good, therefore, to read the maxims of our ancestors with great allowances to times and persons ; for if we look into primi- tive records we shall find that no revolutions have been so great or so frequent as those of human ears. In former days there was a curious invention to catch and keep them, which I think we may justly reckon among the artes perditce ; and how can it be otherwise, when in these latter centuries the very species is not only diminished to a very lamentable degree, but the poor re- mainder is also degenerated so far as to mock our skilmllest tenure ? For if only the slitting of one ear in a stag hath been found sufficient to propagate the defect through a whole forest, why should we wonder at the greatest consequences, from so many loppings and mutilations to which the ears of bur fathers and our own have been of late so much exposed? It is true, indeed, that while this island of ours was under the dominion of grace, many endeavours were made to improve the growth of ears once more among us. The proportion of largeness was not only looked upon as an ornament of the outward man, but as a type of grace in tne inward. Besides, it is held by naturalists that if there be a protuberancy of parts in the superior region of the body, as in the ears and nose, there must be a parity also in the inferior ; and therefore in that truly pious age the males in every assembly, according as they were gifted, appeared very forward in exposing their ears to view, and the regions about them; because Hippocrates 2 tells us that when the vein behind the ear happens to be cut, a man becomes a eunuch, and the females were nothing backwarder in beholding and edifying by them ; 1 "This wicked Proteus shall escape the chain." Francis s Horace. 2 Lib. de Acre, Locis, et Aquis. S. 152 A TALE OF A TUB. whereof those who had already used the means looked about them with great concern, in hopes of conceiving a suitable offspring by such a prospect ; others, who stood candidates for benevolence, found there a plentiful choice, and were sure to fix upon such as discovered the largest ears, that the breed might not dwindle between them. Lastly, the devouter sisters, who looked upon all extraordinary dilatations of that member as pro- trusions 'of zeal or spiritual excrescences, were sure to honour every head they sat upon as if they had been cloven tongues, but especially that of the preacher, whose ears were usually of the prime magnitude, which upon that account he was very frequent and exact in exposing with all advantages to the people in his rhetorical paroxysms, turning sometimes to hold forth the one, and sometimes to hold forth the other; from which custom the whole operation of preaching is to this very day among their professors styled by the phrase of holding forth. Such was the progress of the saints for advancing the size of that member, and it is thought the success would have been every way answerable, if in process of time a cruel king had not arose, who raised a bloody persecution against all ears above a certain standard ; J upon which some were glad to hide their flourishing sprouts in a black border, others crept wholly under a periwig ; some were slit, others cropped, and a great number sliced off to the stumps. But of this more hereafter in my general " History of Ears," which I design very speedily to bestow upon the public. From this brief survey of the falling state of ears in the last age, and the small care had to advance their ancient growth in the present, it is manifest how little reason we can have to rely upon a hold so short, so weak, and so slippery ; and that whoever desires to catch mankind fast must have recourse to some other methods. Now he that will examine human nature with circum- spection enough may discover several handles, whereof the six 2 1 Charles II., by the Act of Uniformity, which drove two thousand ministers of religion, including some of the most devout, in one day out of the Church of England. 2 "Including Scaliger's," is Swift's note in the margin. The sixth sense was the "common sense" which united and conveyed to the mind as one whole the A TALE OF A TUB. 153 senses afford one apiece, beside a great number that are screwed to the passions, and some few riveted to the intellect. Among these last, curiosity is one, and of all others affords the firmest grasp ; curiosity, that spur in the side, that bridle in the mouth, that ring in the nose of a lazy, an impatient, and a grunting reader. By this handle it is that an author should seize upon his readers ; which as soon as he hath once compassed, all resistance and strug- gling are in vain, and they become his prisoners as close as he pleases, till weariness or dulness force him to let go his grip. And therefore I, the author of this miraculous treatise, having hitherto, beyond expectation, maintained by the aforesaid handle a firm hold upon my gentle readers, it is with great reluctance that I am at length compelled to remit my grasp, leaving them in the perusal of what remains to that natural oscitancy inherent in the tribe. I can only assure thee, courteous reader, for both our comforts, that my concern is altogether equal to thine, for my unhappiness in losing or mislaying among my papers the remain- ing part of these memoirs, which consisted of accidents, turns, and adventures, both new, agreeable, and surprising, and therefore calculated in all due points to the delicate taste of this our noble age. But alas ! with my utmost endeavours I have been able only to retain a few of the heads. Under which there was a full account how Peter got a protection out of the King's Bench, and of a reconcilement between Jack and him, upon a design they had in a certain rainy night to trepan brother Martin into a spunging- house, and there strip him to the skin. How Martin, with much ado, showed them both a fair pair of heels. How a new warrant came out against Peter, upon which Jack left him in the lurch, stole his protection, and made use of it himself. How Jack's tatters came into fashion in court and city ; how he got upon a great horse and ate custard. 1 But the particulars of all these, with information brought in by the other five. Common sense did not originally mean the kind of sense common among the people generally. A person wanting in common sense was one whose brain did not properly combine impressions brought into it by the eye, the ear, &c. 1 Reference here is to the exercise by James II. of a dispensing power which illegally protected Roman Catholics, and incidentally Dissenters also ; to the con- 154 A TALE OF A TUB. several others which have now slid out of my memory, are lost beyond all hopes of recovery. For which misfortune, leaving my readers to condole with each other as far as they shall find it to agree with their several constitutions, but conjuring them by all the friendship that has passed between us, from the title-page to this, not to proceed so far as to injure their healths for an acci- dent past remedy, I now go on to the ceremonial part of an accomplished writer, and therefore by a courtly modern least of all others to be omitted. sequent growth of feeling against the Roman Catholics. "Jack on a great horse and eating custard" represents what was termed the occasional conformity of men who "blasphemed custard through the nose," but complied with the law that required them to take Sacrament in the Church of England as qualification for becoming a Lord Mayor or holding any office of public authority. A TALE OF A TUB. 155 THE CONCLUSION. C^ OING too long is a cause of abortion as effectual, though not so frequent, as going too short, and holds true especially in the labours of the brain. Well fare the heart of that noble Jesuit l who first adventured to confess in print that books must be suited to their several seasons, like dress, and diet, and diversions ; and better fare our noble notion for refining upon this among other French modes. I am living fast to see the time when a book that misses its tide shall be neglected as the moon by day, or like mackerel a week after the season. No man has more nicely observed our climate than the bookseller who bought the copy of this work. He knows to a tittle what subjects will best go off in a dry year, and which it is proper to expose foremost when the weather-glass is fallen to much rain. When he had seen this treatise and consulted his almanac upon it, he gave me to under- stand that he had manifestly considered the two principal things, which were the bulk and the subject, and found it would never take but after a long vacation, and then only in case it should happen to be a hard year for turnips. Upon which I desired to know, considering my urgent necessities, what he thought might be acceptable this month. He looked westward and said, "I doubt we shall have a bit of bad weather. However, if you could prepare some pretty little banter (but not in verse), or a small treatise upon the , it would run like wildfire. But if it hold up, I have already hired an author to write something against Dr. Bentley, which I am sure will turn to account." At length we agreed upon this expedient, that when a customer comes for one of these, and desires in confidence to know the i Pere d'Orleans. S. i5o A TALE OF A TUB. author, he will tell him very privately as a friend, naming which- ever of the wits shall happen to be that week in the vogue, and if Durfey's last play should be in course, I had as lieve he may be the person as Congreve. This I mention, because I am wonderfully well acquainted with the present relish of courteous readers, and have often observed, with singular pleasure, that a fly driven from a honey-pot will immediately, with very good appetite, alight and finish his meal on an excrement. I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late, and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive, therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells. A person with good eyes can see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there; and that often when there is nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and half under ground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason than because it is wondrous dark. I am now trying an experiment very frequent among modern authors, which is to write upon nothing, when the subject is utterly exhausted to let the pen still move on ; by some called the ghost of wit, delighting to walk after the death of its body. And to say the truth, there seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done. By the time that an author has written out a book, he and his readers are become old acquaintance, and grow very loathe to part ; so that I have sometimes known it to be in writing as in visiting, where the ceremony of taking leave has employed more time than the whole conversation before. The conclusion of a treatise resembles the conclusion of human life, which has sometimes been compared to the end of a feast, where few are satisfied to depart ut plenus vita conviva. For men will sit down after the fullest meal, though it be only to dose or to sleep out the rest of the day. But in this latter I differ extremely from other writers, and shall be too proud if, by all my labours, I can have any ways contributed to the repose of mankind in times so turbulent and unquiet as these. A TALE OF A TUB. 157 Neither do I think such an employment so very alien from the office of a wit as some would suppose ; for among a very polite nation in Greece l there were the same temples built and conse- crated to Sleep and the Muses, between which two deities they believed the strictest friendship was established. I have one concluding favour to request of my reader, that he will not expect to be equally diverted and informed by every line or every page of this discourse, but give some allowance to the author's spleen and short fits or intervals of dulness, as well as his own, and lay it seriously to his conscience whether, if he were walking the streets in dirty weather or a rainy day, he would allow it fair dealing in folks at their ease from a window, to criticise his gate and ridicule his dress at such a juncture. In my disposure of employments of the brain, I have thought fit to make invention the master, and to give method and reason the office of its lackeys. The cause of this distribution was from observing it my peculiar case to be often under a temptation of being witty upon occasion where I could be neither wise nor sound, nor anything to the matter in hand. And I am too much a servant of the modern way to neglect any such opportunities, whatever pains or improprieties I may be at to introduce them. For I have observed that from a laborious collection of seven hun- dred and thirty-eight flowers and shining hints of the best modern authors, digested with great reading into my book of common- places, I have not been able after five years to draw, hook, or force into common conversation any more than a dozen. Of which dozen the one moiety failed of success by being dropped among unsuitable company, and the other cost me so many strains, and traps, and ambages to introduce, that I at length resolved to give it over. Now this disappointment (to discover a secret), I must own, gave me the first hint of setting up for an author, and I have since found among some particular friends that it is become a very general complaint, and has produced the same effects upon many others. For I have remarked many a towardly word to be wholly neglected or despised in discourse, 1 Trazenii, Pausan. 1. 2. S, 158 A TALE OF A TUB. which hath passed very smoothly with some consideration and esteem after its preferment and sanction in print. But now, since, by the liberty and encouragement of the press, I am grown abso- lute master of the occasions and opportunities to expose the talents I have acquired, I already discover that the issues of my observanda begin to grow too large for the receipts. Therefore I shall here pause awhile, till I find, by feeling the world's pulse and my own, that it will be of absolute necessity for us both to resume my pen. [In some early editions of " The Tale of a Tub," Swift added, under the title of "What Follows after Section IX.," the following sketch for a " History of Martin."] THE HISTORY OF MARTIN. Giving an account of his departure from Jack, and their setting up for themselves, on which account they were obliged to travel, and meet many disasters ; finding no shelter near Peter's habitation, Martin succeeds in the North: Peter thicnders against Martin for the loss of the large revenue he used to receive from thence ; Harry Huff sent Martin a challenge to fight, which he received ; Peter rewards Harry for the pretended victory, which encouraged Harry to huff Peter also ; with many other extraordinary adventures of the said Martin in several places with many considerable persons. With a digression concerning the nature, usefulness, and necessity of wars and quarrels. T T OW Jack and Martin, being parted, set up each for himself. * -* How they travelled over hills and dales, met many disasters, suffered much from the good cause, and struggled with difficulties and wants, not having where to lay their head; by all which they afterwards proved themselves to be right father's sons, and Peter to be spurious. Finding no shelter near Peter's habitation, Martin travelled northwards, and finding the Thurin- gians, a neighbouring people, disposed to change, he set up his stage first among them, where, making it his business to cry down Peter's powders, plasters, salves, and drugs, which he had sold a long time at a dear rate, allowing Martin none of the profit, though he had been often employed in recommending and putting them off, the good people, willing to save their pence, began to hearken to Martin's speeches, How several great lords took the 160 THE HISTORY OF MARTIN. hint, and on the same account declared for Martin ; particularly one who, not having had enough of one wife, wanted to marry a second, and knowing Peter used not to grant such licenses but at a swingeing price, he struck up a bargain with Martin, whom he found more tractable, and who assured him he had the same power to allow such things. How most of the other Northern lords, for their own private ends, withdrew themselves and their dependants from Peter's authority, and closed in with Martin. How Peter, enraged at the loss of such large territories, and con- sequently of so much revenue, thundered against Martin, and sent out the strongest and most terrible of his bulls to devour him ; but this having no effect, and Martin defending himself boldly and dexterously, Peter at last put forth proclamations declaring Martin and all his adherents rebels and traitors, ordain- ing and requiring all his loving subjects to take up arms, and to kill, burn, and destroy all and every one of them, promising large rewards, &c., upon which ensued bloody wars and desolation. How Harry Huff, 1 lord of Albion, one of the greatest bullies of those days, sent a cartel to Martin to fight him on a stage at cudgels, quarter-staff, backsword, &c. Hence the origin of that genteel custom of prize-fighting so well known and practised to this day among those polite islanders, though unknown everywhere else. How Martin, being a bold, blustering fellow, accepted the challenge; how they met and fought, to the great diversion of the spectators ; and, after giving one another broken heads and many bloody wounds and bruises, how they both drew off vic- torious, in which their example has been frequently imitated by great clerks and others since that time. How Martin's friends applauded his victory, and how Lord Harry's friends complimented him on the same score, and particularly Lord Peter, who sent him a fine feather for his cap, 2 to be worn by himand his successors as a perpetual mark for his bold defence of Lord Peter's cause. How Harry, flushed with his pretended victory over Martin, began to huff Peter also, and at last downright quarrelled with him about a wench. How some of Lord Harry's tenants, ever fond i Henry VIII. 2 " Fidei Defensor." THE HISTORY OF MARTIN. 161 of changes, began to talk kindly of Martin, for which he mauled them soundly, as he did also those that adhered to Peter. How he turned some out of house and hold, others he hanged or burnt, &c. How Harry Huff, after a deal of blustering, wenching, and bullying, died, and was succeeded by a good-natured boy, 1 who, giving way to the general bent of his tenants, allowed Martin's notions to spread everywhere, and take deep root in Ambition. How, after his death, the farm fell into the hands of a lady, 2 who was violently in love with Lord Peter. How she purged the whole country with fire and sword, resolved not to leave the name or remembrance of Martin. How Peter triumphed, and set up shops again for selling his own powders, plasters, and salves, which were now declared the only true ones, Martin's being all declared counterfeit. How great numbers of Martin's friends left the country, and, travelling up and down in foreign parts, grew acquainted with many of Jack's followers, and took a liking to many of their notions and w.ys, which they afterwards brought back into ambition, now under another landlady, 3 more moderate and more cunning than the former. How she endeavoured to keep friendship both with Peter and Martin, and trimmed for some time between the two, not without countenancing and assisting at the same time many of Jack's followers; but find- ing no possibility of reconciling all the three brothers, because each would be master, and allow no other salves, powders, or plasters to be used but his own, she discarded all three, and set up a shop for those of her own farm, well furnished with powders, plasters, salves, and all other drugs necessary, all right and true, composed according to receipts made by physicians and apothecaries ,f her own creating, which they extracted out of Peter's, and Martin's, and Jack's receipt-books, and of this medley or hodge-podge made up a dispensatory of their own, strictly forbidding any other to be used, and particularly Peter's, from which the greatest part of this new dispensatory was stolen. How the lady, farther to confirm this change, wisely imitating 1 Edward VI. - Queen Mary. = Queen Elizabeth. L 162 THE HISTORY OF MARTIN. her father, degraded Peter from the rank he pretended as eldest brother, and set up herself in his place as head of the family, and ever after wore her father's old cap with the fine feather he had got from Peter for standing his friend, which has likewise been worn with no small ostentation to this day by all her successors, though declared enemies to Peter. How Lady Bess and her physicians, being told of many defects and imperfections in their new medley dispensatory, resolve on a further alteration, to purge it from a great deal of Peter's trash that still remained in it, but were prevented by her death. How she was succeeded by a North-Country farmer, 1 who pretended great skill in the managing of farms, though he could never govern his own poor little farm, nor yet this large new one after he got it. How this new land- lord, to show his valour and dexterity, fought against enchanters, weeds, giants, and windmills, and claimed great honour for his victories. How his successor, no wiser than he, occasioned great disorders by the new methods he took to manage his farms. How he attempted to establish in his Northern farm the same dispensatory 2 used in the Southern, but miscarried, because Jack's powders, pills, salves, and plasters were there in great vogue. How the author finds himself embarrassed for having introduced into his history a new sect different from the three he had under- taken to treat of; and how his inviolable respect to the sacred number three obliges him to reduce these four, as he intends to do all other things, to that number ; and for that end to drop the former Martin and to substitute in his place Lady Bess's institu- tion, which is to pass under the name of Martin in the sequel of this true history. This weighty point being cleared, the author goes on and describes mighty quarrels and squabbles between Jack and Martin ; how sometimes the one had the better and sometimes the other, to the great desolation of both farms, till at last both sides concur to hang up the landlord, 3 who pretended to die a martyr for Martin, though he had been true to neither side, and was suspected by many to have a great affection for Peter, 1 James I. 2 Episcopacy. 8 Charles I. . THE HISTORY OF MARTIN. 163 A DIGRESSION ON THE NATURE, USEFULNESS, AND NECESSITY OF WARS AND QUARRELS. This being a matter of great consequence, the author intends to treat it methodically and at large in a treatise apart, and here to give only some hints of what his large treatise contains. The state of war, natural to all creatures. War is an attempt to take by violence from others a part of what they have and we want. Every man, fully sensible of his own merit, and rinding it not duly regarded by others, has a natural right to take from them all that he thinks due to himself; and every creature, finding its own wants more than those of others, has the same right to take everything its nature requires. Brutes, much more modest in their pretensions this way than men, and mean men more than great ones. The higher one raises his pretensions this way, the more bustle he makes about them, and the more success he has, the greater hero. Thus greater souls, in proportion to their superior merit, claim a greater right to take everything from meaner folks. This the true foundation of grandeur and heroism, and of the distinction of degrees among men. War, therefore, necessary to establish subordination, and to found cities, king- doms, &c., as also to purge bodies politic of gross humours. Wise princes find it necessary to have wars abroad to keep peace at home. War, famine, and pestilence, the usual cures for cor- ruption in bodies politic. A comparison of these three the author is to write a panegyric on each of them. The greatest part of mankind loves war more than peace. They are but few and mean-spirited that live in peace with all men. The modest and meek of all kinds always a prey to those of more noble or stronger appetites. The inclination to war universal ; those that cannot or dare not make war in person employ others to do it for them. This maintains bullies, bravoes, cut-throats, lawyers, soldiers, &c. Most professions would be useless if all were peaceable. Hence brutes want neither smiths nor lawyers, magistrates nor joiners, soldiers or surgeons. Brutes having but 164 THE HISTORY OF MARTIN. narrow appetites, are incapable of carrying on or perpetuating war against their own species, or of being led out in troops and multitudes to destroy one another. These prerogatives proper to man alone. The excellency of human nature demonstrated by the vast train of appetites, passions, wants, &c., that attend it. This matter to be more fully treated in the author's panegyric on mankind. THE HISTORY OF MARTIN Continued. How Jack, having got rid of the old landlord, set up another to his mind, quarrelled with Martin, and turned him out of doors. How he pillaged all his shops, and abolished his whole dispen- satory. How the new landlord l laid about him, mauled Peter, worried Martin, and made the whole neighbourhood tremble. How Jack's friends fell out among themselves, split into a thousand parties, turned all things topsy-turvy, till everybody grew weary of them ; and at last, the blustering landlord dying, Jack was kicked out of doors, a new landlord 2 brought in, and Martin re-established. How this new landlord let Martin do what he pleased, and Martin agreed to everything his pious land- lord desired, provided Jack might be kept low. Of several efforts Jack made to raise up his head, but all in vain ; till at last the landlord died, and was succeeded by one 3 who was a great friend to Peter, who, to humble Martin, gave Jack some liberty. How Martin grew enraged at this, called in a foreigner 4 and turned out the landlord ; in which Jack concurred with Martin, because this landlord was entirely devoted to Peter, into whose arms he threw himself, and left his country. How the new landlord secured Martin in the full possession of his former rights, but would not allow him to destroy Jack, who had always been his friend. How Jack got up his head in the North, and put him- self in possession of a whole canton, to the great discontent of Martin, who finding also that some of Jack's friends were allowed i Cromwell. 2 Charles II. 3 j ame s II. < William III. THE HISTORY OF MARTIN. 165 to live and get their bread in the south parts of the country, grew highly discontented with the new landlord he had called in to his assistance. How this landlord kept Martin in order, upon which he fell into a raging fever, and swore he would hang himself or join in with Peter, unless Jack's children were all turned out to starve. Of several attempts to cure Martin, and make peace between him and Jack, that they might unite against Peter ; but all made ineffectual by the great address of a number of Peter's friends, that herded among Martin's, and appeared the most zealous for his interest. How Martin, getting abroad in this mad fit, looked so like Peter in his air and dress, and talked so like him, that many of the neighbours could not distinguish the one from the other; especially when Martin went up and down strutting in Peter's armour, which he had borrowed to fight Jack. 1 What remedies were used to cure Martin's distemper Here the author being seized with a fit of dulness, to which he is very subject, after having read a poetical epistle addressed to ... it entirely composed his senses, so that he has not writ a line since. N.B. Some things that follow after this are not in the MS., but seem to have been written since, to fill up the place of what was not thought convenient then to print. A PROJECT FOR THE UNIVERSAL BENEFIT OF MANKIND. The author, having laboured so long and done so much to serve and instruct the public, without any advantage to himself, has at last thought of a project which will tend to the great benefit of all mankind, and produce a handsome revenue to the author. He intends to print by subscription, in ninety-six large volumes in folio, an exact description of Terra Australis incognita, collected with great care, and prints from 999 learned and pious authors of undoubted veracity. The whole work, illustrated with maps and 1 High Church against Dissent. 1 66 THE HISTORY OF MARTIN. cuts agreeable to the subject, and done by the best masters, will cost but one guinea each volume to subscribers, one guinea to be paid in advance, and afterwards a guinea on receiving each volume, except the last. This work will be of great use for all men, and necessary for all families, because it contains exact accounts of all the provinces, colonies, and mansions of that spacious country, where, by a general doom, all transgressors of the law are to be transported ; and every one having this work may choose out the fittest and best place for himself, there being enough for all, so as every one shall be fully satisfied. The author supposes that one copy of this work will be bought at the public charge, or out of the parish rates, for every parish church in the three kingdoms, and in all the dominions thereunto belonging. And that every family that can command ;io per annum, even though retrenched from less necessary expenses, will subscribe for one. He does not think of giving out above nine volumes nearly; and considering the number requisite, he intends to print at least 100,000 for the first edition. He is to print proposals against next term, with a specimen, and a curious map of the capital city with its twelve gates, from a known author, who took an exact survey of it in a dream. Considering the great care and pains of the author, and the usefulness of the work, he hopes every one will be ready, for their own good as well as his, to contribute cheerfully to it, and not grudge him the profit he may have by it, especially if he comes to a third or fourth edition, as he expects it will very soon. He doubts not but it will be translated into foreign languages by most nations of Europe, as well as Asia and Africa, being of as great use to all those nations as to his own ; for this reason he designs to procure patents and privileges for securing the whole benefit to himself from all those different princes and states, and hopes to see many millions of this great work printed in those different countries and languages before his death. After this business is pretty well established, he has promised to put a friend on another project almost as good as this, by establishing insurance offices everywhere for securing people THE HISTORY OF MARTIN. 167 from shipwreck and several other accidents in their voyage to this country; and these officers shall furnish, at a certain rate, pilots well versed in the route, and that know all the rocks, shelves, quicksands, &c., that such pilgrims and travellers may be exposed to. Of these he knows a great number ready instructed in most countries ; but the whole scheme of this matter he is to draw up at large and communicate to his friend. A FULL AND TRUE ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE FOUGHT LAST FRIDAY BETWEEN THE ANCIENT AND THE MODERN BOOKS IN ST. JAMES'S LIBRARY. THE BOOKSELLER TO THE READER. *~PHE following discourse, as it is unquestionably of the same author, so it seems to have been written about the same time with the former, I mean, the year 1697, when the famous dispute was on foot about ancient and modern learning. The controversy took its rise from an essay of Sir William Temple's upon that subject, which was answered by W Wotton, B.D., with an appendix by Dr. Bentley, endeavouring to destroy the credit of JEsop and Phalaris for authors, whom Sir William Temple had in the essay before mentioned highly commended. In that appendix the Doctor falls hard upon a new edition of Phalaris, put out by the Honourable Charles Boyle (now Earl of Orrery), to which Mr. Boyle replied at large, with great learning and wit, and the Doctor voluminously rejoined. In this dispute the town highly resented to see a person of Sir William Temple's character and merits roughly used by the two reverend gentlemen aforesaid, and without any manner of provocation. At length, there appearing no end of the quarrel, our author tells us that the books in St. James's Library, looking upon themselves as parties principally concerned, took up the controversy, and came to a decisive battle ; but the manuscript, by the injury of fortune or weather, being in several, places imperfect, we cannot learn to which side the victory fell. I must warn the reader to beware of applying to persons what is here meant only of books in the most literal sense. So when Virgil is mentioned, we are not to understand the person of a famous poet called by that name, but only certain sheets of paper bound up in leather, containing in print the works of the said poet, and so of the rest. THE PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR. O ATIRE is a sort of glass, wherein beholders -'do generally ^ discover everybody's face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that GO very few are offended with it. But if it should happen other- wise, the danger is not great; and I have learned from long experience never to apprehend mischief from those understand- ings I have been able to provoke. For anger and fury, though they add strength to the sinews of the body, yet are found to relax those of the mind, and to render all its efforts feeble and impotent. There is a brain that will endure but one scumming ; let the owner gather it with discretion, and manage his little stock with husbandry ; but of all things, let him beware of bringing it under the lash of his betters, because that will make it all bubble up into impertinence, and he will find no new supply \ wit without knowledge being a sort of cream, which gathers in a night to the top, and by a skilful hand may be soon whipped into froth, but once scummed away, what appears underneath will be fit for nothing but to be thrown to the hogs. A FULL AND TRUE ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE FOUGHT LAST FRIDAY, &c. "\ I 7HOEVER examines with due circumspection into the * * " Annual Records of Time " will find it remarked that " War is the child of pride, and pride the daughter of riches ; " l the former of which assertions may be soon granted, but one cannot so easily subscribe to the latter ; for pride is nearly related to beggary and want, either by father or mother, and sometimes by both, and, to speak naturally, it very seldom happens among men to fall out when all have enough, invasions usually travelling from north to south, that is to say, from poverty upon plenty. The most ancient and natural grounds of quarrels are lust and avarice, which, though we may allow to be brethren or collateral branches of pride, are certainly the issues of want. For, to speak in the phrase of writers upon the politics, we may observe in the republic of dogs (which in its original seems to be an institution of the many) that the whole state is ever in the profoundest peace after a full meal, and that civil broils arise among them when it happens for one great bone to be seized on by some leading dog, who either divides it among the few, and then it falls to an 1 " Riches produceth pride ; pride is war's ground," &c. (vide Ephem. de Mary Clarke, opt. edit.). S, 174 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. oligarchy, or keeps it to himself, and then it runs up to a tyranny. The same reasoning also holds place among them in those dis- sensions we behold upon a turgescency in any of their females. For the right of possession lying in common (it being impossible to establish a property in so delicate a case), jealousies and sus- picions do so abound, that the whole commonwealth of that street is reduced to a manifest state of war, of every citizen against every citizen, till some one of more courage, conduct, or fortune than the rest seizes and enjoys the prize ; upon which naturally arises plenty of heart-burning, and envy, and snarling against the happy dog. Again, if we look upon any of these republics engaged in a foreign war, either of invasion or defence, we shall find the same reasoning will serve as to the grounds and occa- sions of each, and that poverty or want in some degree or other, whether real or in opinion, which makes no alteration in the case, has a great share, as well as pride, on the part of the aggressor. Now whoever will please to take this scheme, and either reduce or adapt it to an intellectual state or commonwealth of learning, will soon discover the first ground of disagreement between the two great parties at this time in arms, and may form just conclu- sions upon the merits of either cause. But the issue or events of this war are not so easy to conjecture at ; for the present quarrel is so inflamed by the warm heads of either faction, and the pre- tensions somewhere or other so exorbitant, as not to admit the least overtures of accommodation. This quarrel first began (as I have heard it affirmed by an old dweller in the neighbourhood) about a small spot of ground lying and being upon one of the two tops of the hill Parnassus, the highest and largest of which had, it seems, been time out of mind in quiet possession of certain tenants called the ancients, and the other was held by the moderns. But these disliking their present station, sent certain ambassadors to the ancients, complaining of a great nuisance, how the height of that part of Parnassus quite spoiled the prospect of theirs, especially towards the east ; and therefore, to avoid a war, offered them the choice of this alternative, either that the ancients would please to remove themselves and their effects down to the lower THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 175 summit, which the moderns would graciously surrender to them and advance in their place, or else that the said ancients will give leave to the moderns to come with shovels and mattocks and level the said hill as low as they shall think it convenient. To which the ancients made answer how little they expected such a message as this from a colony whom they had admitted out of their own free grace to so near a neighbourhood. That as to their own seat, they were aborigines of it, and therefore to talk with them of a removal or surrender was a language they did not understand. That if the height of the hill on their side shortened the prospect of the moderns, it was a disadvantage they could not help, but desired them to consider whether that injury (if it be any) were not largely recompensed by the shade and shelter it afforded them. That as to levelling or digging down, it was either folly or ignorance to propose it, if they did or did not know how that side of the hill was an entire rock, which would break their tools and hearts without any damage to itself. That they would therefore advise the moderns rather to raise their own side of the hill than dream of pulling down that of the ancients, to the former of which they would not only give license, but also largely contribute. All this was rejected by the moderns with much indignation, who still insisted upon one of the two expe- dients ; and so this difference broke out into a long and obstinate war, maintained on the one part by resolution, and by the courage of certain leaders and allies, but on the other by the greatness of their number, upon all defeats affording continual recruits. In this quarrel whole rivulets of ink have been exhausted, and the virulence of both parties enormously augmented. Now it must here be understood that ink is the great missive weapon in all battles of the learned, which, conveyed through a sort of engine called a quill, infinite numbers of these are darted at the enemy by the valiant on each side, with equal skill and violence, as if it were an engagement of porcupines. This malignant liquor was compounded by the engineer who invented it of two ingredients, which are gall and copperas, by its bitterness and venom to suit in some degree, as well as to foment the genius of the combatants. 1 76 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. And as the Grecians after an engagement, when they could not agree about the victory, were wont to set up trophies on both sides, the beaten party being content to be at the same expense to keep itself in countenance (a laudable and ancient custom, happily revived of late in the art of war), so the learned, after a sharp and bloody dispute, do on both sides hang out their trophies too, whichever comes by the worst. These trophies have largely inscribed on them the merits of the cause, a full impartial account of such a battle, and how the victory fell clearly to the party that set them up. They are known to the world under several names, as disputes, arguments, rejoinders, brief considerations, answers, replies, remarks, reflections, objections, confutations. For a very few days they are fixed up in all public places, either by them- selves or their representatives, 1 for passengers to gaze at, from whence the chiefest and largest are removed to certain magazines they call libraries, there to remain in a quarter purposely assigned them, and from thenceforth begin to be called books of contro- versy. In these books is wonderfully instilled and preserved the spirit of each warrior while he is alive, and after his death his soul transmigrates there to inform them. This at least is the more common opinion, but I believe it is with libraries as with other cemeteries, where some philosophers affirm that a certain spirit, which they call Brutum hominis^ hovers over the monument till the body is corrupted and turns to dust or to worms, but then vanishes or dissolves. So we may say a restless spirit haunts over every book till dust or worms have seized upon it, which to some may happen in a few days, but to others later ; and there- fore, books of controversy being of all others haunted by the most disorderly spirits, have always been confined in a separate lodge from the rest, and for fear of mutual violence against each other, it was thought prudent by our ancestors to bind them to the peace with strong iron chains. Of which invention the original occasion was this : When the works of Scotus first came out, they were carried to a certain great library, and had lodgings 1 Their title-pages. S. THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 177 appointed them, but this author was no sooner settled than he went to visit his master, Aristotle, and there both concerted together to seize Plato by main force, and turn him out from his ancient station among the divines, where he had peaceably dwelt near eight hundred years. The attempt succeeded, and the two usurpers have reigned ever since in his stead. But to maintain quiet for the future, it was decreed that all polemics of the larger size should be held fast with a chain. By this expedient the public peace of libraries might certainly have been preserved, if a new species of controversial books had not arose of late years, instinct with a most malignant spirit, from the war above mentioned between the learned about the higher summit of Parnassus. When these books were first admitted into the public libraries, I remember to have said upon occasion to several persons con- cerned, how I was sure they would create broils wherever they came, unless a world of care were taken ; and therefore I advised that the champions of each side should be coupled together or otherwise mixed, that, like the blending of contrary poisons, their malignity might be employed among themselves ; and it seems I was neither an ill prophet nor an ill counsellor, for it was nothing else but the neglect of this caution which gave occasion to the terrible fight that happened on Friday last between the ancient and modern books in the King's library. Now, because the talk of this battle is so fresh in everybody's mouth, and the expecta- tion of the town so great to be informed in the particulars, I, being possessed of all qualifications requisite in a historian, and retained by neither party, have resolved to comply with the urgent impor- tunity of my friends by writing down a full impartial account thereof. The guardian of the regal library, a person of great valour, but chiefly renowned for his humanity, had been a fierce champion for the modems, and in an engagement upon Parnassus had vowed with his own hands to knock down two of the ancient chiefs who guarded a small pass on the superior rock; but endeavouring to climb up, was cruelly obstructed by his own If 178 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. unhappy weight and tendency towards his centre, a quality to which those of the modern party are extreme subject; for being light-headed, they have in speculation a wonderful agility, and conceive nothing too high for them to mount, but in reducing to practice, discover a mighty pressure about their posteriors and their heels. Having thus failed in his design, the disappointed champion bore a cruel rancour to the ancients, which he resolved to gratify by showing all marks of his favour to the books of their adversaries, and lodging them in the fairest apartments, when at the same time whatever book had the boldness to own itself for an advocate of the ancients was buried alive in some obscure corner, and threatened upon the least displeasure to be turned out of doors. Besides, it so happened at about this time there was a strange confusion of place among all the books in the library, for which several reasons were assigned. Some imputed it to a great heap of learned dust which a perverse wind blew off from a shelf of moderns into the keeper's eyes. Others affirmed he had a humour to pick the worms out of the schoolmen and swallow them fresh and fasting, whereof some fell upon his spleen, and some climbed up into his head, to the great pertur- bation of both. And lastly, others maintained that by walking much in the dark about the library he had quite lost the situation of it out of his head, and therefore, in replacing his books, he was apt to mistake, and clap Descartes next to Aristotle ; poor Plato had got between Hobbes and the "Seven Wise Masters," and Virgil was hemmed in with Dryden on one side and Withers on the other. Meanwhile, those books that were advocates for the moderns chose out one from among them to make a progress through the whole library, examine the number and strength of their party, and concert their affairs. This messenger performed all things very industriously, and brought back with him a list of their forces, in all fifty thousand, consisting chiefly of light horse, heavy-armed foot, and mercenaries, whereof the foot were in general but sorrily armed and worse clad; their horses large, but extremely out of case and heart. However, some few by THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 179 trading among- the ancients had furnished themselves tolerably enough. While things were in this ferment, discord grew extremely high, hot words passed on both sides, and ill blood was plentifully bred. Here a solitary ancient, squeezed up among a whole shelf of moderns, offered fairly to dispute the case, and to prove by manifest reasons that the priority was due to them from long possession, and in regard of their prudence, antiquity, and above all, their great merits towards the moderns. But these denied the premisses, and seemed very much to wonder how the ancients could pretend to insist upon their antiquity, when it was so plain (if they went to that) that the moderns were much the more ancient of the two. 1 As for any obligations they owed to the ancients, they renounced them all. It is true, said they, we are informed some few of our party have been so mean as to borrow their subsistence from you, but the rest, infinitely the greater number (and especially we French and English), were so far from stooping to so base an example, that there never passed till this very hour six words between us. For our horses are of our own breeding, our arms of our own forging, and our clothes of our own cutting out and sewing. Plato was by chance upon the next shelf, and observing those that spoke to be in the ragged plight mentioned a while ago their jades lean and foundered, their weapons of rotten wood, their armour rusty, and nothing but rags underneath he laughed loud, and in his pleasant way swore by G he believed them. Now the moderns had not proceeded in their late negotiation with secrecy enough to escape the notice of the enemy. For those advocates who had begun the quarrel by setting first on foot the dispute of precedency, talked so loud of coming to a battle, that Temple happened to overhear them, and gave im- mediate intelligence to the ancients, who thereupon drew up their scattered troops together, resolving to act upon the defensive ; upon which several of the moderns fled over to their party, and among the rest Temple himself. This Temple having been 1 According to the modern paradox. S. i8o THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. educated and long conversed among the' ancients," was of all the moderns their greatest favourite, and became their greatest champion. Things were at this crisis when a material accident fell out. For upon the highest corner of a large window there dwelt a certain spider, swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction of infinite numbers of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the gates of his palace like human bones before the cave of some giant. The avenues to his castle were guarded with turnpikes and palisades, all after the modern way of fortification. After you had passed several courts you came to the centre, wherein you might behold the constable himself in his own lodgings, which had windows fronting to each avenue, and ports to sally out upon all occasions of prey or defence. In this mansion he had for some time dwelt in peace and plenty, without danger to his person by swallows from above or to his palace by brooms from below, when it was the pleasure of fortune to conduct thither a wandering bee, to whose curiosity a broken pane in the glass had discovered itself, and in he went ; where expatiating a while, he at last happened to alight upon one of the outward walls of the spider's citadel, which yielding to the unequal weight, sunk down to the very foundation. Thrice he endeavoured to force his pas- sage, and thrice the centre shook. The spider, within feeling the terrible convulsion, supposed at first that Nature was ap- proaching to her final dissolution, or else that Beelzebub with all his legions was come to revenge the death of many thousands of his subjects, whom this enemy had slain and devoured. How- ever, he at length valiantly resolved to issue forth and meet his fate. Meanwhile the bee had acquitted himself of his toils, and, posted securely at some distance, was employed in cleansing his wings and disengaging them from the ragged remnants of the cobweb. By this time the spider was adventured out, when beholding the chasms, and ruins, and dilapidations of his fortress, he was very near at his wits' end ; he stormed and swore like a madman, and swelled till he was ready to burst. At length, casting his eye upon the bee, and wisely gathering causes from THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 181 events (for they knew each other by sight), " A plague split you," said he, " for a giddy son of a gun. Is it you, with a vengeance, that have made this litter here ? Could you not look before you, and be d d ? Do you think I have nothing else to do, in the devil's name, but to mend and repair after your arse ? " " Good words, friend," said the bee (having now preened himself and being disposed to droll) ; " I'll give you my hand and word to come near your kennel no more; I was never in such a con- founded pickle since I was born." " Sirrah," replied the spider, "if it were not for breaking an old custom in our family never to stir abroad against an enemy, I should come and teach you better manners." " I pray have patience," said the bee, " or you will spend your substance, and, for aught I see, you may stand in need of it all towards the repair of your house." " Rogue, rogue," replied the spider, " yet methinks you should have more respect to a person whom all the world allows to be so much your better." " By my troth," said the bee, " the comparison will amount to a very good jest, and you will do me a favour to let me know the reasons that all the world is pleased to use in so hopeful a dis- pute." At this, the spider, having swelled himself into the size and posture of a disputant, began his argument in the true spirit of controversy, with a resolution to be heartily scurrilous and angry, to urge on his own reasons without the least regard to the answers or objections of his opposite, and fully predetermined in his mind against all conviction. " Not to disparage myself," said he, '' by the comparison with such a rascal, what art thou but a vagabond, without house or home, without stock or inheritance ? Born to no possession of your own but a pair of wings and a drone-pipe, your livelihood is a universal plunder upon Nature, a freebooter over fields and gardens ; and for the sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as readily as a violet. Whereas I am a domestic animal, furnished with a native stock within myself. This large castle (to show my im- provements in the mathematics) is all built with my own hands, and the materials extracted altogether out of my own person/' " I am glad," answered the bee, " to hear you grant at least 1 82 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. that I am come honestly by my wings and my voice, for then it seems I am obliged to Heaven alone for my flights and my music, and Providence would never have bestowed me two such gifts without designing them for the noblest ends. I visit indeed all the flowers and blossoms of the field and the garden, but what- ever I collect from thence enriches myself, without the least injury to their beauty, their smell, or their taste. Now for you, and your skill in architecture and other mathematics, I have little to say. In that building of yours there might, for aught I know, have been labour and method enough, but by woeful experience for us both, it is too plain the materials are naught, and I hope you will hence- forth take warning, and consider duration and matter as well as method and art. You boast, indeed, of being obliged to no other creature, but of drawing and spinning out all from yourself, that is to say, if we may judge of the liquor in the vessel by what issues out, you possess a good plentiful store of dirt and poison in your breast ; and though I would by no means lessen or disparage your genuine stock of either, yet I doubt you are somewhat obliged for an increase of both to a little foreign assistance. Your inherent portion of dirt does not fail of acquisitions by sweepings exhaled from below, and one insect furnishes you with a share of poison to destroy another. So that, in short, the question comes all to this, whether is the nobler being of the two, that which, by a lazy contemplation of four inches round, by an overweening pride, which, feeding and engendering on itself, turns all into excrement and venom, producing nothing at all but fly-bane and a cobweb, or that which, by a universal range, with long search, much study, true judgment, and distinction of things, brings home honey and vax?" This dispute was managed with such eagerness, clamour, and warmth, that the two parties of books in arms below stood silent awhile, waiting in suspense what would be the issue, which was not long undetermined ; for the bee, grown impatient at so much loss of time, fled straight away to a bed of roses, without looking for a reply, and left the spider like an orator collected in himself, and just prepared to burst out. THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 183 It happened upon this emergency that yEsop broke silence first. He had been of late most barbarously treated by a strange effect of the Regent's humanity, who had tore off his title-page, sorely defaced half his leaves, and chained him fast among a shelf of moderns. Where soon discovering how high the quarrel was like to proceed, he tried all his arts, and turned himself to a thousand forms. At length in the borrowed shape of an ass the Regent mis- took him for a modern, by which means he had time and oppor- tunity to escape to the ancients just when the spider and the bee were entering into their contest, to which he gave his attention with a world of pleasure, and when it was ended, swore in the loudest key that in all his life he had never known two cases so parallel and adapt to each other as that in the window and this upon the shelves. " The disputants," said he, " have admirably managed the dispute between them, have taken in the full strength of all that is to be said on both sides, and exhausted the substance of every argument pro and con. It is but to adjust the reasonings of both to the present quarrel, then to compare and apply the labours and fruits of each, as the bee has learnedly deduced them, and we shall find the conclusions fall plain and close upon the moderns and us. For pray, gentlemen, was ever anything so~~~\ modern as the spider in his air, his turns, and his paradoxes ? \ He argues in the behalf of you, his brethren, and himself, with I / many boastings of his native stock and great genius, that he spins and spits wholly from himself, and scorns to own any obligation or assistance from without. Then he displays to you his great skill in architecture and improvements in the mathematics. To all this the bee, as an advocate retained by us, the ancients, thinks fit to answer, that if one may judge of the great genius or inventions of the moderns by what they have produced, you will hardly have countenance to bear you out in boasting of either. Erect your schemes with as much method and skill as you please, yet if the materials be nothing but dirt spun out of your own entrails (the guts of modern brains), the edifice will conclude at last in a cobweb, the duration of which, like that of other spiders' webs, may be imputed to their being forgotten, or neglected, or hid in a corner. ** 184 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. For anything else of genuine that the moderns may pretend to, I cannot recollect, unless it be a large vein of wrangling and satire, much of a nature and substance with the spider's poison, which, however, they pretend to spit wholly out of themselves, is improved by the same arts, by feeding upon the insects and vermin of the age. As for us, the ancients, we are content, with the bee, to pre- tend to nothing of our own beyond our wings and our voice, that is to say, our flights and our language ; for the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labour and search, and ranging through every corner of Nature ; the difference is, that instead of dirt and poison we have rather chose to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light." It is wonderful to conceive the tumult arisen among the books upon the close of this long descant of ^Esop. Both parties took the hint, and heightened their animosities so on a sudden, that they resolved it should come to a battle. Immediately the two main bodies withdrew under their several ensigns to the farther parts of the library, and there entered into cabals, and consults upon the present emergency. The moderns were in very warm debates upon the choice of their leaders, and nothing less than the fear impending from their enemies could have kept them from mutinies upon this occasion. The difference was greatest among the horse, where every private trooper pretended to the chief command, from Tasso and Milton to Dryden and Withers. The light-horse were commanded by Cowley and Despreaux. There came the bowmen under their valiant leaders Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes, whose strength was such that they could shoot their arrows beyond the atmosphere, never to fall down again, but turn, like that of Evander, into meteors, or like the cannon-ball into stars. Paracelsus brought a squadron of stink-pot-flingers from the snowy mountains of Rhaetia. There came a vast body of dragoons of different nations under the leading of Harvey, their great Aga, part armed with scythes, the weapons of death, part with lances and long knives, all steeped in poison, part shot bullets of a most malignant nature, and used white powder which THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 185 infallibly killed without report. There came several bodies of heavy-armed foot, all mercenaries, under the ensigns of Guic- cardini, Davila, Polydore, Virgil, Buchanan, Mariana, Camden, and others. The engineers were commanded by Regiomontanus and Wilkins. The rest were a confused multitude led by Scotus, Aquinas, and Bellarmine, of mighty bulk and stature, but without either arms, courage, or discipline. In the last place came infinite swarms of Calones, a disorderly rout led by Lestrange, rogues and ragamuffins, that follow the camp for nothing but the plunder, all without coats to cover them. The army of the ancients was much fewer in number ; Homer led the horse and Pindar the light -horse, Euclid was chief engineeer, Plato and Aristotle commanded the bowmen, Hero- dotus and Livy the foot, Hippocrates the dragoons. The allies, led by Vossius and Temple, brought up the rear. All things violently tending to a decisive battle, Fame, who much frequented and had a large apartment formerly assigned her in the regal library, fled up straight to Jupiter, to whom she delivered a faithful account of all that had passed between the two parties below (for among the gods she always tells the truth). Jove in great concern convokes a council in the Milky Way. The senate assembled, he declares the occasion of convening them ; a bloody battle just impendent between two mighty armies of ancient and modern creatures called books, wherein the celestial interest was but too deeply concerned. Momus, the patron of the moderns, made an excellent speech in their favour, which was answered by Pallas, the protectress of the ancients. The assembly was divided in their affections, when Jupiter commanded the book of fate to be laid before him. Immediately were brought by Mercury three large volumes in folio, containing memoirs of all things past, present, and to come. The clasps were of silver double gilt, the covers of celestial turkey leather, and the paper such as here on earth might almost pass for vellum. Jupiter having silently read the decree, would communicate the import to none, but presently shut up the book. Without the doors of this assembly there attended a vast 1 86 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. number of light, nimble gods, menial servants to Jupiter; these are his ministering instruments in all affairs below. They travel in a caravan, more or less together, and are fastened to each other like a link of galley-slaves by a light chain which passes from them to Jupiter's great toe ; and yet, in receiving or delivering a message, they may never approach above the lowest step of his throne, where he and they whisper to each other through a long hollow trunk. These deities are called by mortal men accidents or events, but the gods call them second causes. Jupiter having delivered his message to a certain number of these divinities, they flew immediately down to the pinnacle of the regal library, and consulting a few minutes, entered unseen and disposed the parties according to their orders. Meanwhile Momus, fearing the worst, and calling to mind an ancient prophecy which bore no very good face to his children the moderns, bent his flight to the region of a malignant deity called Criticism. | She dwelt on the top of a snowy mountain in Nova Zembla ; there Momus found her extended in her den upon the spoils of numberless volumes half-devoured. At her right hand sat Ignorance, her father and husband, blind with age ; at her left Pride, her mother, dressing her up in the scraps of paper herself had torn. There was Opinion^her sister, light of foot, hoodwinked and headstrong, yet giddy and perpetually turning. About her played her children, Noise and Impudence, Dulness and Vanity, Positiveness, Pedantry, and Ill-manners. The god- dess herself had claws like a cat ; her head, and ears, and voice resembled those of an ass ; her teeth fallen out before, her eys turned inward, as if she looked only upon herself; her diet was the overflowing of her own gall ; her spleen was so large as to stand prominent like a dug of the first rate, nor wanted excres- cences in form of teats, at which a crew of ugly monsters were greedily sucking; and, what is wonderful to conceive, the bulk of spleen increased faster than the sucking could diminish it. "Goddess," said Momus, "can you sit idly here while our devout worshippers, the moderns, are this minute entering into a cruel battle, and perhaps now lying under the swords of their enemies ? THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 187 Who then hereafter will ever sacrifice or build altars to our divinities? Haste therefore to the British Isle, and, if possible, prevent their destruction, while I make factions among the gods and gain them over to our party." Momus having thus delivered himself, stayed not for an answer, but left the goddess to her own resentments. Up she rose in a rage, and, as is the form upon such occasions, began a soliloquy. " It is I," said she, " who give wisdom to infants and idiots. By me children grow wiser than their parents. By me beaus become politicians and schoolboys judges of philosophy. By me sophisters debate and conclude upon the depths of knowledge, and coffee- house wits, instinct by me, can correct an author's style and display his minutest errors without understanding a syllable of his matter or his language. By me striplings spend their judgment as they do their estate, before it comes into their hands. It is I who have deposed wit and knowledge from their empire over poetry, and advanced myself in their stead. And shall a few upstart ancients dare to oppose me ? But come, my aged parents, and you, my children dear, and thou, my beauteous sister, let us ascend my chariot and haste to assist our devout moderns, who are now sacrificing to us a hecatomb, as I perceive by that grateful smell which from thence reaches my nostrils. The goddess and her train having mounted the chariot, which was drawn by tame geese, flew over infinite regions, shedding her influence in due places, till at length she arrived at her beloved island of Britain; but in hovering over its metropolis what blessings did she not let fall upon her seminaries of Gresham and Covent Garden ? And now she reached the fatal plain of St. James's Library, at what time the two armies were upon the point to engage, where, entering with all her caravan unseen, and landing upon a case of shelves, now desert, but once inhabited by a colony of virtuosos, she stayed awhile to observe the posture of both armies. But here the tender cares of a mother began to fill her thoughts and move in her breast, for at the head of a troop of modern bow- men she cast her eyes upon her son Wotton, to whom the fates 1 88 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. had assigned a very short thread Wotton, a young hero, whom an unknown father of mortal race begot by stolen embraces with this goddess. He was the darling of his mother above all her children, and she resolved to go and comfort him. But first, according to the good old custom of deities, she cast about to change her shape, for fear the divinity of her countenance might dazzle his mortal sight, and overcharge the rest of his senses. She therefore gathered up her person into an octavo compass ; her body grew white and arid, and split in pieces with dryness, the thick turned into pasteboard, and the thin into paper, upon which her parents and children artfully strewed a black juice, or decoction of gall and soot, in form of letters ; her head, and voice, and spleen kept their primitive form, and that which before was a cover of skin did still continue so ; in which guise she marched on towards the moderns, undistinguishable in shape and dress from the divine Bentley, Wotton's dearest friend. "Brave Wotton," said the goddess, "why do our troops stand idle here to spend their present vigour and opportunity of the day? Away, let us haste to the generals and advise to give the onset immediately." Having spoke thus, she took the ugliest of her monsters, full glutted from her spleen, and flung it invisibly into his mouth, which, flying straight up into his head, squeezed out his eyeballs, gave him a distorted look, and half over- turned his brain. Then she privately ordered two of her be- loved children, Dulness and Ill-manners, closely to attend his person in all encounters. Having thus accoutred him, she vanished in a mist, and the hero perceived it was the goddess, his mother. The destined hour of fate being now arrived, the fight began ; whereof, before I dare adventure to make a particular description, I must, after the example of other authors, petition for a hundred tongues, and mouths, and hands, and pens, which would all be too little to perform so immense a work. Say, goddess that presidest over history, who it was that first advanced in the field of battle. Paracelsus, at the head of his dragoons, observing Galen in the adverse wing, darted his javelin with a mighty force, THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 189 which the brave ancient received upon his shield, the point breaking in the second fold. . . ' . . Hicpauca desunt. They bore the wounded Aga on their shields to his chariot. ' - Desunt non~ nulla. Then Aristotle observing Bacon advance with a furious mien, drew his bow to the head and let fly his arrow, which missed the valiant modern and went hissing over his head ; but Descartes is hit, the steel point quickly found a defect in his headpiece, it pierced the leather and the pasteboard, and went in at his right eye. The torture of the pain whirled the valiant bowman round, till death, like a star of superior influence, drew him into. Ingens hiatus . ^ .- hie in MS. , when Homer appeared at the head of the cavalry, mounted on a furious horse, with difficulty managed by the rider himself, but which no other mortal durst ' approach ; he rode among the enemy's ranks and bore down all before him. Say, goddess, whom he slew first, and whom he slew last. First, Gondibert 7 advanced against him, clad in heavy armour, and mounted on a staid sober gelding, not so famed for his speed as his docility in kneeling whenever his rider would mount or alight. He had made a vow to Pallas that he would never leave the field till he had spoiled Homer of his armour. Madman ! who had never once seen the wearer nor understood his strength. Him Homer over- threw, horse and man to the ground, there to be trampled and choked in the dirt. Then with a long spear he slew Denham, ' a stout modern, who from his father's side derived his lineage from Apollo, but his mother wa? of mortal^race., He fell and bit the earth. The^celestlaT^afTApollo took and made it a star, but the terrestrial lay wallowing upon the ground. Then Homer slew Wesley with a kick of his horse's heel; he took Perrault byt ^ mighty force out of his saddle, then hurled him at Fontenelle ) ' with the same blow dashing out both their brains. On the left wing of the horse Virgil appeared in shining armour IQO THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. completely fitted to his body ; he was mounted on a dapple grey steed, the slowness of whose pace was an effect of the highest mettle and vigour. He cast his eye on the adverse wing with a desire to find an object worthy of his valour, when behold, upon a sorrel gelding of a monstrous size appeared a foe issuing from among the thickest of the enemy's squadrons ; but his speed was less than his noise; for his horse, old and lean, spent the dregs of his strength in a high trot, which, though it made slow advances, yet caused a loud clashing of his armour terrible to hear. The two cavaliers had now approached within the throw ' of a lance, when the stranger desired a parley, and lifting up the vizard of his helmet, a face hardly appeared from within, which ' after a pause was known for that of the renowned Dryden. The / brave ancient suddenly started, as one possessed with surprise and disappointment together \ for the helmet was ninejtimesJ:oQ large for thejiead, which appeared situate far in the hinder part, even like the lady in a lobster, or like a mouse under a canopy of state, or like a shrivelled beau from within the pent-house of a modern periwig, and the voice was suited to the visage, sounding weak and remote. Dryden in a long harangue soothed up the good ancient, caJ^Lgd hiOLjalher, and by a large deduction of I v/ genealogies made it plainly appear that they were nearly related. / \ Then he humbly proposed an exchange of armour, as a lasting mark of hospitality between them. Virgil consented (for the goddess Diffidence came unseen and cast a mist before his eyes), ' though his was of gold and cost a hundred beeves, the other's but of rusty iron. However this glittering armour became the modern yet worse than his own. Then they agreed to exchange horses ; but when it came to the trial, Dryden was afraid, and utterly unable x - tO mount. Alter hiatus in MS. Lucan appeared upon a fiery horse of admirable shape, but head- strong, bearing the rider where he list over the field ; he made a mighty slaughter among the enemy's horse ; which destruction to stop, Blackmore, a famous modern (but one of the mercenaries) strenuously opposed himself, and darted a javelin, with a strong THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 191 hand, which falling short of its mark, struck deep in the earth. Then Lucan threw a lance; but ^Esculapius came unseen and turned off the point "Brave modern," said Lucan, "I perceive some God protects you, for never did my arm so deceive me before ; but what mortal can contend with a god ? Therefore let us fight no longer, but present gifts to each other." Lucan then bestowed on the modern a pair of spurs, and Blackmore gave Lucan a bridle. . - . . . . . .v Pauca v desunt. Creech ; but the goddess Dulness took a cloud, formed into the shape of Horace, armed and mounted, and placed it in a flying posture before him. Glad was the cavalier to begin a combat with a flying foe, and pursued the image, threatening loud, till at last it led him to the peaceful bower of his father Ogleby, by whom he was disarmed and assigned to his repose. Then Pindar slew -, and , and Oldham, and , and Afra the Amazon light of foot ; never advancing in a direct line, but wheeling with incredible agility and force, he made a terrible slaughter among the enemy's light-horse. Him when Cowley observed, his generous heart burnt within him, and he advanced against the fierce ancient, imitating his address, and pace, and career as well as the vigour of his horse and his own skill would allow. When the two cavaliers had approached within the length of three javelins, first Cowley threw a lance, which missed Pindar, and passing into the enemy's ranks, fell ineffectual to the ground ; then Pindar darted a javelin so large and weighty that scarce a dozen cavaliers, as cavaliers are in our degenerate days, could raise it from the ground ; yet he threw it with ease, and it went by an unerring hand singing through the air ; nor could the modern have avoided present death if he had not luckily opposed the shield that had been given him by Venus. And now both heroes drew their swords, but the modern was so aghast and disordered that he knew not where he was. His shield dropped from his hands ; thrice he flew, and thrice he could not escape. At last he turned, and lifting up his hands in the posture of a suppliant, ''God-like Pindar," said he, "spare my life, and possess my horse 192 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. with these arms, besides the ransom which my friends will give when they hear I am alive and your prisoner." "Dog," said Pindar, " let your ransom stay with your friends, but your carcass shall be left for the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field." With that he raised his sword, and with a mighty stroke cleft the wretched modern in twain, the sword pursuing the blow; and one half lay panting on the ground, to be trod in pieces by the horse's feet, the other half was borne by the frightened steed through the field. This Venus took, and washed it seven times in ambrosia, then struck it thrice with a sprig of amarant, upon which the leather grew round and soft and the leaves turned into feathers, and being gilded before, continued gilded still. So it became a dove, and she harnessed it to her chariot l . Hiatus valdl de- Jlendus in MS. Day being far spent, and the numerous forces of the moderns half inclining to a retreat, there issued forth from a squadron of their heavy-armed foot a captain whose name was Bentley, 2 in person the most deformed of all the moderns ; tall, but without shape or comeliness ; large, but without strength or proportion. His armour was patched up of a thousand incoherent pieces, and the sound of it as he marched was loud and dry, like that made by the fall of a sheet of lead which an Etesian wind blows sud- denly down from the roof of some steeple. His helmet was of old rusty iron, but the vizarH was brass, which, tainted by his breath, corrupted into copperas, nor wanted gall from the same fountain ; so that whenever provoked by anger or labour, an atramentous quality of most malignant nature was seen lo distil from his lips. In his right hand he grasped a flail, and (that he might never be unprovided of an offensive weapon) a vessel full of ordure in his left ; thus completely armed, he advanced with, a slow and heavy pace, where the modern chiefs were holding a consult upon the sum of things ; who, as he came onwards, laughed to behold his crooked leg and hump shoulder, which his boot and 1 Cowley's book of love poems, " The Mistress." 2 The Episode of B ntl y and W tt n. S. THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 193 armour vainly endeavouring to hide, were forced to comply with and expose. The generals made use of him for his talent of railing, which, kept within government, proved frequently of great service to their cause, but at other times did more mischief than good ; for at the least touch of offence, and often without any at all, he would, like a wounded elephant, convert it against his leaders. Such, at this juncture, was the disposition of Bentley, grieved to see the enemy prevail, and dissatisfied with everybody's conduct but his own. He humbly gave the modern generals to understand that he conceived, with great submission, they were all a pack of rogues, and fools, and cowards, and confounded logger-heads, and illiterate whelps, and nonsensical scoundrels ; that if himself had been constituted general, those presumptuous dogs, the ancients, would long before this have been beaten out of the field. 1 " You," said he, " sit here idle, but when I, or any other valiant modern, kill an enemy, you are sure to seize the spoil But I will not march one foot against the foe till you all swear to me that whomever I take or kill, his arms I shall quietly possess." Bentley having spoke thus, Scaliger, bestowing on him a sour look, " Miscreant prater," said he, " eloquent only in thine own eyes, thou railest without wit, or truth, or discretion. The malignity of thy temper perverteth Nature, thy learning makes thee more barbarous, thy study of humanity more inhuman, thy converse amongst poets more grovelling, miry, and dull ; all arts of civilising others render thee rud^and untractable ; courts have taught thee ill-manners, and polite conversation has finished thee a pedant; besides, a greater coward burdeneth not the army. But never despond ; I pass my word whatever spoil thou takest shall certainly be thy own, though I hope that vile carcass will first become a prey to kites and worms. Bentley durst not reply, but, half choked with spleen and rage, withdrew in full resolution of performing some great achievement With him for his aid and companion he took his beloved Wotton, resolving by policy cr surprise to attempt some neglected quarter of the ancients' army. They began their march 1 Vide Homer, de Thersite. S. N I 9 4 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. over carcasses of their slaughtered friends, then to the right of their own forces, then wheeled northward till they came to Aldrovandus's tomb, which they passed on the side of the declining sun. And now they arrived with fear towards the enemy's out-guards, looking about if haply they might spy the quarters of the wounded, or some straggling sleepers, unarmed and remote from the rest. As when two mongrel curs, whom native greediness and domestic want provoke and join in partnership, though fearful, nightly to invade the folds of some rich grazier, they, with tails depressed and lolling tongues, creep soft and slow meanwhile the conscious moon, now in her zenith, on their guilty heads darts perpendicular rays ; nor dare they bark, though much provoked at her refulgent visage, whether seen in puddle by reflection or in spear direct, but one surveys the region round while the other scouts the plain, if haply to discover at distance from the flock some carcass half devoured, the refuge of gorged wolves or ominous ravens ; so marched this lovely, loving pair of friends, nor with less fear and circumspection, when, at distance, they might perceive two shining suits of armour hanging upon an oak, and the owners not far off in a profound sleep. The two friends drew lots, and the pursuing of this adventure fell to Bentley. On he went, and in his van Confusion and Amaze, \ while Horror and Affright brought up the rear. As he came near, \ behold two heroes of the ancients' army, Phalaris and JEsop, lay \ fast asleep. Bentley would fain have dispatched them both, and stealing close, aimed his flail at Phalaris's breast ; but then the goddess Affright interposing, caught the modern in her icy arms and dragged him from the danger she foresaw ; for both the dormant heroes happened to turn at the same instant, though soundly sleeping and busy in a dream ; for Phalaris was just that minute dreaming how a most vile poetaster had lampooned him, and how he had got him roaring in his bull ; and ^Esop dreamed that as he and the ancient chiefs were lying on the ground, a wild ass broke loose, ran about trampling and kicking, and dunging in their faces. Bentley, leaving the two heroes asleep, seized on both their armours, and withdrew in quest of his darling Wotton. THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 195 He in the meantime had wandered long in search of some enterprise, till at length he arrived at a small rivulet that issued from a fountain hard by, called in the language of mortal men Helicon. Here he stopped, and, parched with thirst, resolved to allay it in this limpid stream. Thrice, with profane hands, he essayed to raise the water to his lips, and thrice it slipped all through his fingers. Then he stooped prone on his breast, but ere his mouth had kissed the liquid crystal, Apollo came, and in the channel held his shield betwixt the modern and the fountain, so that he drew up nothing but mud. For although no fountain on earth can compare with the clearness of Helicon, yet there lies at bottom a thick sediment of slime and mud, for so Apollo begged of Jupiter, as a punishment to those who durst attempt to taste it with unhallowed lips, and for a lesson to all not to draw too deep or far from the spring. At the fountain-head Wotton discerned two heroes. The one he could not distinguish, but the other was soon known for Temple, general of the allies to the ancients. His back was turned, and he was employed in drinking large draughts in his helmet from the fountain, where he had withdrawn himself to rest from the toils of the war. Wotton observing him, with quaking knees and trembling hands, spoke thus to himself: "Oh, that I could 'kill this destroyer of our army ; what renown should I purchase among the chiefs ! But to issue out against him, man for man, shield against shield, and lance against lance, what modern of us dare? For he fights like a god, and Pallas or Apollo are ever at his elbow. But oh ! mother, if what fame reports be true, that I am the son of so great a goddess, grant me to hit Temple with this lance, that the stroke may send him to hell, and that I may return in safety and triumph, laden with his spoils." The first part of his prayer the gods granted at the inter- cession of his mother and of Momus, but the rest, by a perverse wind sent from fate, was scattered in the air. Then Wotton grasped his lance, and brandishing it thrice over his head, darted it with all his might, the goddess his mother at the same time adding strength to his arm. Away the Innce went hissing, and 196 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. reached even to the belt of the averted ancient, upon which, lightly grazing, it fell to the ground. Temple neither felt the weapon touch him nor heard it fall, and Wotton might have escaped to his army with the honour of having remitted his lance against so great a leader unrevenged ; but Apollo, enraged that a javelin flung by the assistance of so foul a goddess should pollute his fountain, put on the shape of , and softly came to young Boyle, who then accompanied Temple. He pointed first to the lance and then to the distant modern that flung it, and commanded the young hero to take immediate revenge. Boyle, clad in a suit of armour which had been given him by all the gods, immediately advanced against the trembling foe, who now fled before him. As a young lion in the Lybian plains or Arabian desert, sent by his aged sire to hunt for prey, or health, or exercise, he scours along, wishing to meet some tiger from the mountains or a furious boar. If chance a wild ass, with brayings importune, affronts his ear, the generous beast, though loathing to distain his claws with blood so vile, yet much provoked at the offensive noise, which Echo, foolish nymph, like her ill-judging sex, repeats much louder, and with more delight than Philomela's song, he vindicates the honour of the forest, and hunts the noisy, long-eared animal. So Wotton fled, so Boyle pursued. But Wotton, heavy armed and slow of foot, began to slack his course, when his lover, Bentley, appeared, returning laden with the spoils of the two sleeping ancients. Boyle observed him well, and soon discover- ing the helmet and shield of Phalaris, his friend, both which he had lately with his own hands new polished and gilded, rage sparkled in his eyes, and leaving his pursuit after Wotton, he furiously rushed on against this new approacher. Fain would he be revenged on both, but both now fled different ways ; and as a woman in a little house that gets a painful livelihood by spinning, if chance fcer geese be scattered over the common, she courses round the plain from side to side, compelling here and there the stragglers to the flock; they cackle loud, and flutter over the champion ; so Boyle pursued, so fled this pair of friends. Find- ing at length their flight was vain, they bravely joined and threw THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. 197 themselves in phalanx. First Bentley threw a spear with all his force, hoping to pierce the enemy's breast ; but Pallas came unseen, and in the air took off the point and clapped on one of lead, which, after a dead bang against the enemy's shield, fell blunted to the ground. Then Boyle, observing well his time, took a lance of wondrous length and sharpness, and as this pair of friends compacted stood close side to side, he wheeled him to the right, and with unusual force darted the weapon. Bentley saw his fate approach, and flanking down his arms close to his ribs, hoping to save his body, in went the point, passing through arm and side, nor stopped or spent its force till it had also pierced the valiant Wotton, who, going to sustain his dying friend, shared his fate. As when a skilful cook has trussed a brace of woodcocks, he with iron skewer pierces the tender sides of both, their legs and wings close pinioned to their ribs, so was this pair of friends transfixed, till down they fell, joined in their lives, joined in their deaths so closely joined, that Charon will mistake them both for one, and waft them over Styx for half his fare. Farewell, beloved, loving pair. Few equals have you left behind ; and happy and immortal shall you be if all my wit and eloquence can make you. And now * ... r*j*, v . , V . . . . Desunt catera. RESOLUTIONS WHEN I COME TO BE OLD. (WRITTEN IN 1699.) 32. IV j OT to marry a young woman. * ^ Not to keep young company unless they desire it. Not to be peevish, or morose, or suspicious. Not to scorn present ways, or wits, or fashions, or men, or war, &c. Not to be fond of children. Not to tell the same story over and over to the same people. Not to be covetous. Not to neglect decency or cleanliness, for fear of falling into nastiness. Not to be over-severe with young people, but give allowance for their youthful follies and weaknesses. Not to be influenced by or give ear to knavish tattling servants or others. Not to be too free of advice, nor trouble any but those who desire it. To desire some good friends to inform me which of these reso- lutions I break or neglect, and wherein, and reform accordingly, j Not to talk much, nor of myself. Not to boast of my former beauty, of strength, or favour with ladies, &c. Not to hearken to flatteries, nor conceive I can be beloved by a young woman, et eos qui hcereditatem captant, odisse ac vitare. Not to be positive or opinionative. Not to set for observing all these rules, for fear I should observe none. MRS. FRANCES HARRIS'S PETITION. (1700.) r "PO their Excellencies the Lords Justices of Ireland, 1 * The humble petition of Frances Harris, Who must starve and die a maid if it miscarries, Humbly sheweth, that I went to warm myself in Lady Betty's 2 chamber, because I was cold ; And I had in a purse seven pounds four shillings and sixpence, besides farthings, in money and gold ; So because I had been buying things for my lady last night, I was resolved to tell my money, to see if it was right. Now, you must know, because my trunk has a very bad lock, } Therefore all the money I have, which, God knows, is a very | small stock, I I keep in my pocket, tied about my middle, next my smock. J So when I went to put up my purse, as God would have it, my smock was unripped, And instead of putting it into my pocket, down it slipped ; Then the bell rung, and I went down to put my lady to bed, And, God knows, I thought my money was as safe as my maiden- head. So when I came up again, I found my pocket feel very light, But when I searched, and missed my purse, Lord ! I thought I should have sunk outright. 1 The Earls of Berkeley and of Galway. Hawkesworth. 2 Lady Betty Berkeley, afterwards Germain. H. 200 MRS. HARRIS'S PETITION. " Lord ! madam," says Mary, " how d'ye do ? " " Indeed," says I, " never worse : But pray, Mary, can you tell what I have done with my purse ? " (t Lord help me ! " says Mary, " I never stirred out of this place ! " tl Nay," said I, " I had it in Lady Betty's chamber, that's a plain case." So Mary got me to bed and covered me up warm, However, she stole away my garters that I might do myself no harm. So I tumbled and tossed all night, as you may very well think, But hardly ever set my eyes together or slept a wink. So I was a dreamed, methought that we went and searched the folks round, And in a corner of Mrs. Dukes's * box, tied in a rag, the money was found. So next morning we told Whittle, 2 and he fell a swearing : Then my dame Wadgar 3 came ; and she, you know, is thick of hearing. " Dame," said I, as loud as I could bawl, " do you know what a loss I have had?" " Nay," said she, " my Lord Colway's 4 folks are all very sad : For my Lord Dromedary 5 comes a Tuesday without fail." "Pugh !" said I, "but that's not the business that I ail." Says Gary, 6 says he, " I have been a servant this five-and-twenty years come spring, And in all the places I lived I never heard of such a thing/' " Yes," says the steward, 7 " I remember when I was at my Lady Shrewsbury's, Such a thing as this happened, just about the time of gooseberries." So I went to the party suspected, and I found her full of grief: Now, you must know, of all things in the world, I hate a thief; 1 Wife to one of the footmen. H. 2 Earl of Berkeley's valet. H. 3 The old deaf housekeeper. H. 4 Gal way. H. 5 The Earl of Drogheda, who with the Primate was to succeed the two Earls. H. Clerk of the kitchen. H. 7 Ferris, of whom see Journal to Stella, December 21, 1710. N. MRS. HARRIS'S PETITION. 201 However, I was resolved to bring the discourse slily about : "Mrs. Dukes," said I, "here's an ugly accident has happened out, It is not that I value the money three skips of a louse, 1 But the thing I stand upon is the credit of the house. It is true seven pounds four shillings and sixpence makes a great hole in my wages, Besides, as they say, service is no inheritance in these ages. Now, Mrs. Dukes, you know and everybody understands, That though it is hard to judge, yet money can't go without hands." "The devil take me!" said she (blessing herself), "if ever I saw't ! " So she roared like a bedlam, as though I had called her all to naught. So you know, what could I say to her any more ? I e'en left her, and came away as wise as I was before. Well, but then they would have had me gone to the cunning man ! " No," said I, " it is the same thing ; the chaplain 2 will be here anon." So the chaplain came in. Now the servants say he is my sweet- heart, Because he's always in my chamber and I always take his part. So, as the devil would have it, before I was aware, out I blundered. " Parson," said I, " can you cast a nativity when a body's plun- dered?" (Now you must know he hates to be called parson like the divil.) " Truly," says he, " Mrs. Nab, it might become you to be more civil ; If your money be gone, as a learned divine says, d'ye see, You are no text for my handling ; so take that from me : I was never taken for a conjuror before, I'd have you to know." " Lord ! " said I, " don't be angry, I am sure I never thought you so ; 1 A usual saying of hers. H. 2 Dr. Swift. H. 202 MRS. HARRIS'S PETITION. You know I honour the cloth ; I design to be a parson's wife ; I never took one in your coat for a conjuror in all my life." With that he twisted his girdle at me like a rope, as who should say, " Now you may go hang yourself for me ! " and so went away. Well, I thought I should have swooned. " Lord ! :J said I, "what shall I do? I have lost my money, and shall lose my true love too ! " Then my lord called me : " Harry," l said my lord, " don't cry ; I'll give you something toward thy loss." "And," says my lady, "so will I." Oh ! but, said I, what if, after all, the chaplain won't come to ? For that, he said (an't please your Excellencies), I muot petition you. The premises tenderly considered, I desire your Excellencies' protection, And that I may have a share in next Sunday's collection ; And over and above, that I may have your Excellencies' letter, With an order for the chaplain aforesaid, or instead of him a better : And then your poor petitioner, both night and day, Or the chaplain (for 'tis his trade), as in duty bound shall ever pray. 1 A cant word of Lord and Lady Berkeley to Mrs. Harris. H. A TRITICAL ESSAY UPON THE FACULTIES OF THE MIND. To SIR, Being so great a lover of antiquities, it was reasonable to suppose you would be very much obliged with anything that was new. I have been of late offended with many writers of essays and moral discourses for running into stale topics and thread- bare quotations, and not handling their subject fully and closely all which errors I have carefully avoided in the following essay, which I have proposed as a pattern for young writers to imitate. The thoughts and observations being entirely new, the quota- tions untouched by others, the subject of mighty importance, and treated with much order and perspicuity, it has cost me a great deal of time ; and I desire you will accept and consider it as the Utmost effort of my genius. THE ESSAY. PHILOSOPHERS say that man is a microcosm or little world, resembling in miniature every part of the great ; and, in my opinion, the body natural may be compared to the body politic; and if this be so, how can the Epicurean's opinion be true that the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, which I will no more believe than that the accidental 204 A TRITICAL ESSAY UPON THE jumbling of the letters of the alphabet could fall by chance into a most ingenious and learned treatise of philosophy. Risum teneatis amid. 1 This false opinion must needs create many more; it is like an error in the first concoction, which cannot be corrected in the second ; the foundation is weak, and whatever superstruc- ture you raise upon it must of necessity fall to the ground. Thus men are led from one error to another, until, with Ixion, they embrace a cloud instead of Juno, or, like the dog in the fable, lose the substance in gaping at the shadow. For such opinions cannot cohere, but, like the iron and clay in the toes of Nebu- chadnezzar's image, must separate and break in pieces. I have read in a certain author that Alexander wept because he had no more worlds to conquer, which he needed not have done if the fortuitous concourse of atoms could create one ; but this is an opinion fitter for that many-headed beast, the vulgar, to enter- tain than for so wise a man as Epicurus. The corrupt part of his sect only borrowed his name, as the monkey did the cat's claw to draw the chestnut out of the fire. However, the first step to the cure is to know the disease, and though Truth may be difficult to find, because, as the philosopher observes, she lives in the bottom of a well, yet we need not, like blind men, grope in open daylight. I hope I may be allowed, among so many far more learned men, to offer my mite, since a stander-by may sometimes perhaps see more of the game than he that plays it. But I do not think a philosopher obliged to account for every phenomenon in Nature, or drown himself with Aristotle for not being able to solve the ebbing and flowing of the tide, in that fatal sentence he passed upon himself Quia te non capio, tu capies me wherein he was at once the judge and the criminal, the accuser and executioner. Socrates, on the other hand, who said he knew nothing, was pronounced by the oracle to be the wisest man in the world. But to return from this digression ; I think it as clear as any demonstration of Euclid that Nature does nothing in vain. If we were able to dive into her secret recesses, we should find that 1 Swift solemnly verifies the next of his trite quotations from Horace. FACULTIES OF THE MIND. 205 the smallest blade of grass or most contemptible weed has its particular use. But she is chiefly admirable in her minutest com- positions ; the least and most contemptible insect most discovers the art of Nature, if I may so call it, though Nature, which delights in variety, will always triumph over art, and, as the poet observes " Naturam expellas furca licet, usque recurret." 1 Hor. Lib. i. Epist. x. 24. But the various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body, only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom. And if truth be not fled with Astrea, she is cer- tainly as hidden as the source of the Nile, and can be found only in Utopia. Not that I would reflect on those wise sages, which would be a sort of ingratitude, and he that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the evil that a man can be guilty of " Ingratum si dixeris, omnia dicis." But what I blame the philosophers for (though some may think it a paradox) is chiefly their pride ; nothing less than an ipse dixit, and you must pin your faith on their sleeve. And though Dio- genes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato. It is reported of this Diogenes that when Alexander came to see him, and promised to give him whatever he would ask, the cynic only answered, " Take not from me what thou canst not give me, but stand from between me and the light ; " which was almost as extravagant as the philosopher that flung his money into the sea with this remarkable saying How different was this man from the usurer, who, being told his son would spend all he had got, replied, " He cannot take more pleasure in spending than I did in getting it." These men could see the faults of each other, but not their own ; those they flung into the bag behind, non videmus id manticce. quod in tergo est. 1 " For Nature, driven out with proud disdain, All-powerful goddess, will return again. Francis. 206 A TR1TICAL ESSAY UPON THE I may perhaps be censured for my free opinions by those carping Momuses whom authors worship, as the Indians do the devil for fear. They will endeavour to give my reputation as many wounds as the man in the almanac ; but I value it not and perhaps, like flies, they may buzz so often about the candle till they burn their wings. They must pardon me if I venture to give them this advice not to rail at what they cannot under- stand ; it does but discover that self-tormenting passion of envy, than which the greatest tyrant never invented a more cruel tor- ment * c Invidia Siculi non invenere Tyranni Tormentum majus" Hor. Lib. i. Epist. ii. 58. I must be so bold to tell my critics and witlings that they catt no more judge of this than a man that is born blind can have any true idea of colours. I have always observed that your empty vessels sound loudest : I value their lashes as little as the sea did those of Xerxes when he whipped it. The utmost favour a man can expect from them is that which Polyphemus promised Ulysses, that he would devour him the last ; they think to subdue a writer, as Caesar did his enemy, with a Veni, vidi, via. I confess I value the opinion of the judicious few, a Rymer, a Dennis, or a W k ; but for the rest, to give my judgment at once, I think the long dispute among the philosophers about a vacuum may be determined in the affirmative that it is to be found in a critic's head. They are at best but the drones of the learned world, who devour the honey, and will not work themselves ; and a writer heed no more regard them than the moon does the barking of a little senseless cur. For, in spite of their terrible roaring, you may with half an eye discover the ass under the lion's skin. &ut to return to our discourse. Demosthenes being asked what was the first part of an orator, replied, action ; what was the second, action ; what was the third, action ; and so on ad infini- tum. This may be true in oratory ; but contemplation in other things exceeds action. And therefore a wise man is never less alone than when he is alone : Nunquam minus solus, quam cum FACULTIES OF THE MIND. 207 solus. And Archimedes, the famous mathematician, was so intent upon his problems that he never minded the soldiers who came to kill him. Therefore, not to detract from the just praise which belongs to orators, they ought to consider that Nature, which gave us two eyes to see and two ears to hear, has given us but one tongue to speak ; wherein, however, some do so abound, that the virtuosi, who have been so long in search for the perpetual motion, may infallibly find it there. Some men admire republics because orators flourish there most, and are the greatest enemies of tyranny ; but my opinion is that one tyrant is better than a hundred. Besides, these orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness " Ira furor brevis est." Hor. Lib. i. Epist. ii. 62. After which laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through ; but in oratory the greatest art is to hide art : Artis est celare artem. But this must be the work of time ; we must lay hold on all opportunities and let slip no occasion, else we shall be forced to weave Penelope's web, unravel in the night what we spun in the day. And therefore I have observed that time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take time (as we say) by the forelock, for when it is once past there is no recalling it. The mind of man is at first (if you will pardon the expression) like a tabula rasa, or like wax, which, while it is soft, is capable of any impression, till time has hardened it. And at length Death, that grim tyrant, stops us in the midst of our career. The greatest conquerors have at last been conquered by Death, which spares none, from the sceptre to the spade: Mors omnibus communis. All rivers go to the sea, but none return from it. Xerxes wept when he beheld his army, to consider that in less than a hundred years they would be all dead. Anacreon was choked with a grape- stone, and violent joy kills as well as violent grief. There is 2 o8 A TRITICAL ESSAY, ETC. nothing in this world constant but inconstancy ; yet Plato thought that if virtue would appear to the world in her own native dress, all men would be enamoured with her. But now, since interest governs the world, and men neglect the golden mean, Jupiter himself, if he came to the earth, would be despised unless it were, as he did to Danae, in a golden shower; for men now-a-days worship the rising sun, and not the setting " Donee eris felix multos numerabis amicos." Thus have I, in obedience to your commands, ventured to expose myself to censure in this critical age. Whether I have done right to my subject must be left to the judgment of my learned reader. However I cannot but hope that my attempting of it may be encouragement for some able pen to perform it with more success. A MEDITATION UPON A BROOMSTICK, ACCORDING TO THE STYLE AND MANNER OF THE HONOURABLE ROBERT BOYLE. *"PHIS single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest ; it was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs ; but now, in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with Nature by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk ; it is now, at best, but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air ; it is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and, by a capricious kind of fate destined to make other things clean and be nasty itself ; at length, worn to the stumps in the service of the maids, it is either thrown out of doors or condemned to the last use of kindling a fire. When I beheld this, I sighed, and said within myself : SURELY MAN is A BROOMSTICK ; Nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, until the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk ; he then flies to art and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs (all covered with powder), that never grew on his head ; but now, should this our broomstick pretend to enter the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with o 2io A MEDITATION UPON A BROOMSTICK. dust, though the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our own excellences and other men's defaults. But a broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree standing on its head ; and pray what is man but a topsy-turvy creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where his heels should be, grovelling on the earth ! And yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances, rakes into every slut's corner of Nature, bringing hidden corruption to the light, and raises a mighty dust where there was none before ; sharing deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to sweep away. His last days are spent in slavery to women, and generally the least deserving ; till, worn out to the stumps, like his brother besom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of to kindle flames for others to warm themselves by. THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, MORAL AND DIVERTING. (OCTOBER, 1706.) ^ 1 TE have just enough religion to make us hate, but not * * enough to make us love one another. Reflect on things past, as wars, negotiations, factions, &c. We enter so little into those interests, that we wonder how men could possibly be so busy and concerned for things so transitory ; look on the present times, we find the same humour, yet wonder not at all. A wise man endeavours, by considering all circumstances, to make conjectures and form conclusions ; but the smallest acci- dent intervening (and in the course of affairs it is impossible to foresee all) does often produce such turns and changes, that at last he is just as much in doubt of events as the most ignorant and unexperienced person. Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and orators, because he that would obtrude his thoughts and reasons upon a multitude will convince others the more as he appears convinced himself. How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning ? I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon ; that and Time ought to have been there. J No preacher is listened to but Time, which gives us the same 212 THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. train and turn of thought that elder people have tried in vain to put into our heads before. When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of itj when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones. In a glasshouse, the workmen often fling in a small quantity of fresh coals, which seems to disturb the fire, but very much enlivens it. This seems to allude to a gentle stirring of the pas- sions, that the mind may not languish. \j Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy. All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor ; it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue. The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former. Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation to posterity, let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments. Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves ; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or ^Eneas. With historians it is quite the contrary ; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors. When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them. It is unwise to punish cowards with ignominy ; for if they had regarded that, they would not have been cowards : death is their proper punishment, because they fear it most. The greatest inventions were produced in the times of ignor- ance ; as the use of the compass, gunpowder, and printing ; and by the dullest nation, as the Germans. THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 213 One argument to prove that the common relations of ghosts and spectres are generally false may be drawn from the opinion held, that spirits are never seen by more than one person at a time ; that is to say, it seldom happens to above one person in a company to be possessed with any high degree of spleen or melancholy. I am apt to think that, in the day of judgment, there will be small allowance given to the wise for their want of morals, and to the ignorant for their want of faith, because both are without excuse. This renders the advantages equal of ignorance and knowledge. But some scruples in the wise and some vices in the ignorant will perhaps be forgiven upon the strength of tempta- tion to each. The value of several circumstances in story lessens very much by distance of time, though some minute circumstances are very valuable, and it requires great judgment in a writer to distinguish. It is grown a word of course for writers to say, " This critical age," as divines say, " This sinful age." It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next: future ages shall talk of this; this shall be famous to all posterity : whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now. The chameleon, who is said to feed upon nothing but air, has of all animals the nimblest tongue. \/When a man is made a spiritual peer, he loses his surname ; when a temporal, his Christian name. It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side sets up false lights and makes a great noise, to make the enemy believe them more numerous and strong than they really are. f Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudices, eradi- cate virtue, honesty, and religion. In all well-instituted commonwealths, care has been taken to limit men's possessions ; which is done for many reasons, and among the rest, for one which perhaps is not often considered : that when bounds are set to men's desires, after they have ac- quired as much as the laws will permit them, their private interest 214 THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. is at an end, and they have nothing to do but to take care of the public. There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world ; to despise it, to return the like, or to en- deavour to live so as to avoid it : the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second. Herodotus tells us that in cold countries beasts very seldom have horns, but in hot they have very large ones. This might bear a pleasant application. I never heard a finer piece of satire against lawyers than that of astrologers, when they pretend, by rules of art, to tell when a suit will end, and whether to the advantage of the plaintiff or defendant, thus making the matter depend entirely upon the influence of the stars, without the least regard to the merits of the cause. The expression in Apocrypha about Tobit and his dog following him I have often heard ridiculed ; yet Homer has the same words of Telemachus more than once, and Virgil says something like it of Evander ; and I take the Book of Tobit to be partly poetical. I have known some men possessed of good qualities, which were very serviceable to others but useless to themselves ; like a sundial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within. J If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, &c., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last ! What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly, that they neither marry nor are given in marriage. When a man observes the choice of ladies now-a-days in the dispensing of their favours, can he forbear paying some venera- tion to the memory of those mares mentioned by Xenophon, who, while their manes were on, that is, while they were in their beauty, would never admit the embraces of an ass ? THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 215 It is a miserable thing to live in suspense ; it is the life of a spider. " Vive quidem, pende tamen, improba, dixit." Ovid. Me tarn. The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes. J Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death. The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages. If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning-coaches. Nothing more unqualifies a man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt. The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable ; for the happy impute all their success to prudence and merit. Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices ; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping. Ill company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best. ' Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. Although men are accused for not knowing their own weak- ness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of. Satire is reckoned the easiest of all wit ; but I take it to be otherwise in very bad times : for it is as hard to satirise well a man of distinguished vices as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues. It is easy enough to do either to people of moderate characters. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age, so that our judgment grows harder to please when we have fewer things to offer it : this goes through the whole commerce of life. When we are old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or not. 2 i6 THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. No wise man ever wished to be younger. An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before. The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves ; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice. Religion is the best motive of all actions, yet religion is allowed to be the highest instance of self-love. When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterward continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony. Old men view best at a distance with the eyes of their under- standing, as well as with those of Nature. Some people take more care to hide their wisdom than their folly. Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine or women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age, or vanity to a woman. Anthony Henley's farmer dying of an asthma, said, " Well, if I can get this -breath once out, I'll take care it shall never get in again." The humour of exploding many things under the name of trifles, fopperies, and only imaginary goods, is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions. For instance, with regard to fame, there is in most people a reluctance and unwillingness to be forgotten. We observe even among the vulgar how fond they are to have an inscription over their grave. It requires but little philosophy to discover and observe that there is no intrinsic value in all this ; however, if it be founded in our nature as an incitement to virtue, it ought not to be ridiculed. \l Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives, and the sin- cerest part of our devotion. The common fluency of speech in many men and most women THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 217 is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words ; for whoever is a master of language, and has a mind full of ideas, will be apt in speaking to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in, and these are always ready at the mouth ; so people come faster out of a church when it is almost empty than when a crowd is at the door. Few are qualified to shine in company, but it is in most men's power to be agreeable. The reason, therefore, why conversation runs so low at present is not the defect of understanding, but pride, vanity, ill-nature, affectation, singularity, positiveness, or some other vice, the effect of a wrong education. To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. Vain men delight in telling what honours have been done them, what great company they have kept, and the like, by which they plainly confess that these honours were more than their due, and such as their friends would not believe if they had not been told ; whereas a man truly proud thinks the greatest honours below his merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a maxim, that whoever desires the character of a proud man ought to conceal his vanity. law in a free country is, or ought to be, the determination of the majority of those who have property in land. One argument used to the disadvantage of Providence I take to be a very strong one in its defence. It is objected that storms and tempests, unfruitful seasons, serpents, spiders, flies, and other noxious or troublesome animals, with many more instances of the like kind, discover an imperfection in Nature, because human life would be much easier without them, but the design of Providence may clearly be perceived in this proceeding. The motions of the sun and moon, in short, the whole system of the universe, as far as philosophers have been able to discover and observe, are in the utmost degree of regularity and perfection; but wherever God has left to man the power of interposing a remedy by thought or labour, there he has placed things in a state of imperfection on purpose to stir up human industry, 218 THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. without which life would stagnate, or indeed rather could not subsist at all. Curis acuunt mortalia corda. Praise is the daughter of present power. How inconsistent is man with himself. I have known several persons of great fame for wisdom in public affairs and councils governed by foolish servants. I have known great ministers, distinguished for wit and learn- ing, who preferred none but dunces. I have known men of great valour cowards to their wives. I have known men of the greatest cunning perpetually cheated. I knew three great ministers who could exactly compute and settle the accounts of a kingdom, but were wholly ignorant of their own economy. The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or never reclaims the vicious. Princes usually make wiser choices than the servants whom they trust for the disposal of places. I have known a prince more than once choose an able minister, but I never observed that minister to use his credit in the disposal of an employment to a person whom he thought the fittest for it. One of the greatest in this age owned and excused the matter from the violence of parties and the unreasonableness of friends. Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy when great ones are not in the way ; for want of a block he will stumble at a straw. Dignity, high station, or great riches are in some sort neces- sary to old men in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age. Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old. Love of flattery in most men proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves ; in women, from the contrary. If books and laws continue to increase as they have done for fifty years past, I am in some concern for future ages how any man will be learned or any man a lawyer. THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 219 Kings are commonly said to have long hands ; I wish they had as long ears. Princes in their infancy, childhood, and youth are said to discover prodigious parts and wit, to speak things that surprise and astonish; strange so many hopeful princes and so many shameful kings. If they happen to die young, they would have been prodigies of wisdom and virtue ; if they live, they are often prodigies indeed, but of another sort. Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good ministry, for which reason all courts are so full of politics. Silenus, the foster-father of Bacchus, is always carried by an ass, and has horns on his head. The moral is, that drunkards are led by fools, and have a great chance to be cuckolds. Venus, a beautiful good-natured lady, was the goddess of love ; Juno, a terrible shrew, the goddess of marriage, and they were always mortal enemies. vThose who are against religion must needs be fools; and therefore we read that, of all animals, God refused the first-born of an ass. A very little wit is valued in a woman, as we are pleased with a few words spoken plain by a parrot. A nice man is a man of nasty ideas. Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of 'diseases. Both were originally the same trade, and still continue. Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason, their long beards and pretences to foretell events. A person was asked at court what he thought of an ambas- sador and his train, who were all embroidery and lace, full of bows, cringes, and gestures. He said, "It was Solomon's im- portation, gold and apes." There is a story in Pausanias of a plot for betraying a city discovered by the braying of an ass ; the cackling of geese saved the Capitol, and Catiline's conspiracy was discovered by a whore. These are the only three animals, as far as I remember, famous in history as evidences and informers. 220 THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. Most sorts of diversion in men, children, and other animals are in imitation of fighting. Augustus meeting an ass with a lucky name, foretold himself good fortune. I meet many asses, but none of them have lucky names. If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is he keeps his at the same time. Who can deny that all men are violent lovers of truth when we see them so positive in their errors, which they will maintain out of their zeal to truth, although they contradict themselves every day of their lives. That was excellently observed, say I, when I read a passage in an author where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken. As universal a practice as lying is, and as easy a one as it seems, I do not remember to have heard three good lies in all my conversation, even from those who were most celebrated in that faculty. Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are pro- viding to live another time. BAUCIS AND PHILEMON. ON THE EVER-LAMENTED LOSS OF THE TWO YEW TREES IN THE PARISH OF CHILTHORNE, SOMERSET. (1706.) IMITATED FROM THE EIGHTH BOOK OF OVID. T N ancient times, as story tells, -*- The saints would often leave their cells, And stroll about, but hide their quality, To try good people's hospitality. It happened on a winter night, As authors of the legend write, Two brother hermits, saints by trade, Taking their tour in masquerade, Disguised in tattered habits went To a small village down in Kent, Where, in the strollers' canting strain, They begged from door to door in vain, Tried every tone might pity win, But not a soul would let them in. Our wandering saints, in woeful state, Treated at this ungodly rate, Having through all the village passed, To a small cottage came at last 222 BAUCIS AND PHILEMON. Where dwelt a good old honest ye'man, Called in the neighbourhood Philemon, Who kindly did these saints invite In his poor hut to pass the night ; And then the hospitable sire Bid Goody Baucis mend the fire, While he from out the chimney took A flitch of bacon off the hook, And freely from the fattest side Cut out large slices to be fried ; Then stepped aside to fetch them drink, Filled a large jug up to the brink, And saw it fairly twice go round ; Yet (what is wonderful) they found Twas still replenished to the top, As if they ne'er had touched a drop. The good old couple were amazed. And often on each other gazed ; For both were frightened to the heart, And just began to cry, " What art ?" Then softly turned aside, to view Whether the lights were burning blue. The gentle pilgrims, soon aware on't, Told them their calling and their errand : " Good folks, you need not be afraid, We are but saints," the hermits said ; " No hurt shall come to you or yours ; But for that pack of churlish boors, Not fit to live on Christian ground, They and their houses shall be drowned, While you shall see your cottage rise And grow a churcli before your eyes." They scarce had spoke, when, fair and soft, The roof began to mount aloft ; Aloft rose every beam and rafter, The heavy wall climbed slowly after. BAUCIS AND PHILEMON. 223 The chimney widened and grew higher, Became a steeple with a spire ; The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fastened to a joist, But with the upside down, to show Its inclination for below : In vain ; for a superior force Applied at bottom stops its course : Doomed ever in suspense to dwell, '*Tis now no kettle, but a bell. A wooden jack, which had almost Lost by disuse the art to roast, A sudden alteration feels Increased by new intestine wheels ; And what exalts the wonder more, The number made the motion slower. The flier, though J t had leaden feet, Turned round so quick you scarce could see't ; But slackened by some secret power, Now hardly moves an inch an hour. The jack and chimney, near allied, Had never left each other's side : The chimney to a steeple grown, The jack would not be left alone, But, up against the steeple reared, Became a clock, and still adhered ; And still its love to household cares By a shrill voice at noon declares, Warning the cookmaid not to burn That roast-meat which it cannot turn. The groaning chair began to crawl Like a huge snail along the wall ; There stuck aloft in public view, And with small change a pulpit grew. The porringers, that in a row Hung high, and made a glittering show^ 224 BAUCIS AND PHILEMON. To a less noble substance changed, Were now but leathern buckets ranged. The ballads, pasted on the wall, Of Joan of France and English Mall, 1 Fair Rosamond and Robin Hood, The Little Children in the Wood, Now seem'd to look abundance better, Improved in picture, size, and letter; And high in order placed, describe The heraldry of every tribe. 2 A bedstead of the antique mode, Compact of timber many a load, Such as our ancestors did use, Was metamorphosed into pews ; Which still their ancient nature keep, By lodging folks disposed to sleep. The cottage, by such feats as these, Grown to a church by just degrees, The hermits then desired their host To ask for what he fancied most. Philemon, having paused a while, Returned them thanks in homely style ; Then said, " My house is grown so fine, Methinks I still would call it mine. I'm old, and fain would live at ease ; Make me the parson, if you please." He spoke, and presently he feels His grazier's coat fall down his heels ; He sees, yet hardly can believe, About each arm a pudding sleeve ; His waistcoat to a cassock grew, And both assumed a sable hue ; But, being old, continued just As threadbare, and as full of dust. 1 Mall Frith, the Roaring Girl. * The tribes of Israel are sometimes distinguished in country churches by the ensigns given to them by Jacob. Hawkesworth. BAUCIS AND PHILEMON. 225 His talk was now of tithes and dues, He smoked his pipe and read the news j Knew how to preach old sermons next, Vamped in the preface and the text ; At christenings well could act his part, And had the service all by heart ; Wished women might have children fast, And thought whose sow had farrowed last ; Against dissenters would repine, And stood up firm for " right divine ; " Found his head filled with many a system ; But classic authors he ne'er missed 'em. Thus having furbished up a parson, Dame Baucis next they played their farce on. Instead of homespun coifs, were seen Good pinners edged with colberteen ; Her petticoat, transformed apace, Became black satin flounced with lace. Plain " Goody " would no longer down, 'Twas " Madam " in her grogram gown. Philemon was in great surprise, And hardly could believe his eyes, Amazed to see her look so prim ; And she admired as much at him. Thus happy in their change of life, Were several years this man and wife ; When on a day which proved their last, Discoursing o'er old stories past, They went by chance, amid their talk, To the churchyard to take a walk ; When Baucis hastily cried out, " My dear, I see your forehead sprout ! " " Sprout ! " quoth the man ; " what's this you tell us ? I hope you don't believe me jealous ! But yet, methinks, I feel it true ; And really, yours is budding too p 226 BAUCIS AND PHILEMON. Nay now I cannot stir my foot ; It feels as if 'twere taking root." Description would but tire my muse, In short, they both were turned to yews. Old goodman Dobson of the green Remembers he the trees has seen ; He'll talk of them from noon till night, And goes with folks to show the sight ; On Sundays, after evening prayer, He gathers all the parish there ; Points out the place of either yew ; Here Baucis, there Philemon grew : Till once a parson of our town, To mend his barn, cut Baucis down ; At which, 'tis hard to be believed How much the other tree was grieved, Grew scrubbed, died atop, was stunted ; So the next parson stubbed and burnt it. AN ARGUMENT TO PROVE THAT THE ABOLISHING OF CHRISTIANITY IN ENGLAND MAY, AS THINGS NOW STAND, BE ATTENDED WITH SOME INCONVENIENCES, AND PERHAPS NOT PRO- DUCE THOSE MANY GOOD EFFECTS PROPOSED THEREBY. (WRITTEN IN 1708.) T AM very sensible what a weakness and presumption it is to reason against the general humour and disposition of the world. I remember it was, with great justice and a due regard to the freedom both of the public and the press, forbidden, upon several penalties, to write or discourse or lay wagers against the union, even before it was confirmed by Parliament, because that was looked upon as a design to oppose the current of the people, which, beside the folly of it, is a manifest breach of the funda- ment^al law that makes this majority of opinion the voice of God. In like manner, and for the very same reason, it may perhaps be neither safe nor prudent to argue against the abolishing of Chris- tianity at a juncture when all parties appear so unanimously determined upon the point, as we cannot but allow from their actions, their discourses, and their writings. However, I know not how, whether from the affectation of singularity or the per- verseness of human nature, but so it unhappily falls out that I 228 AN ARGUMENT AGAINST cannot be entirely of this opinion. Nay, though I were sure an order were issued for my immediate prosecution by the attorney- general, I should still confess that in the present posture of our affairs at home or abroad I do not yet see the absolute necessity of extirpating the Christian religion from among us. This perhaps may appear too great a paradox, even for our wise and paradoxical age to endure ; therefore I shall handle it with all tenderness, and with the utmost deference to that great and profound majority, which is of another sentiment. And yet the curious may please to observe how much the genius of a nation is liable to alter in half an age : I have heard it affirmed for certain by some very old people that the contrary opinion was, even in their memories, as much in vogue as the other is now, and that a project for the abolishing of Christianity would then have appeared as singular and been thought as absurd as it would be at this time to write or discourse in its defence. Therefore I freely own that all appearances are against me. The system of the gospel, after the fate of other systems, is generally antiquated and exploded, and the mass or body of the common people, among whom it seems to have had its latest credit, are now grown as much ashamed of it as their betters ; opinions, like fashions, always descending from those of quality to the middle sort, and thence to the vulgar, where at length they are dropped and vanish. But here I would not be mistaken, and must therefore be so bold as to borrow a distinction from the writers on the other side, when they make a difference between nominal and real Trinitarians. I hope no reader imagines me so weak to stand up in the defence of real Christianity, such as used, in primitive times (if we may believe the authors of those ages), to have an influence upon men's belief and actions ; to offer at the restoring of that would indeed be a wild project ; it would be to dig up foundations to destroy at one blow all the wit and half the learning of the kingdom, to break the entire frame and constitu- tion of things, to ruin trade, extinguish arts and sciences with the professors of them ; in short, to turn our courts, exchanges, and ABOLISHING CHRISTIANITY. 229 shops into deserts, and would be full as absurd as the proposal of Horace where he advises the Romans all in a body to leave their ^ -^ city, and seek a new seat in some remote part of the world, by way of cure for the corruption of their manners. Therefore I think this caution was in itself altogether unne- cessary (which I have inserted only to prevent all possibility of cavilling), since every candid reader will easily understand my discourse to be intended only in defence of nominal Christianity, the other having been for some time wholly laid aside by general consent as utterly inconsistent with our present schemes of wealth and power. But why we should therefore cast off the name and title of Christians, although the general opinion and resolution be so violent for it, I confess I cannot (with submission) apprehend, nor is the consequence necessary. However, since the under- takers propose such wonderful advantages to the nation by this project, and advance many plausible objections against the system of Christianity, I shall briefly consider the strength of both, fairly allow them their greatest weight, and offer such answers as I think most reasonable ; after which I will beg leave to show what inconveniences may possibly happen by such an innovation in the present posture of our affairs. First, one great advantage proposed by the abolishing of Christianity is, that it would very much enlarge and establish liberty of conscience, that great bulwark of our nation, and of the Protestant religion, which is still too much limited by priestcraft, notwithstanding all the good intentions of the Legislature, as we have lately found by a severe instance. For it is confidently reported that two young gentlemen of real hopes, bright wit, and profound judgment, who, upon a thorough examination of causes and effects, and by the mere force of natural abilities, without the least tincture of learning, having made a discovery that there was no God, and generously communicating their thoughts for the good of the public, were some time ago by an unparalleled severity, and upon I know not what obsolete law, broke for blasphemy. And, as it has been wisely observed, if persecution 230 AN ARGUMENT AGAINST once begins, no man alive knows how far it may reach, or where it will end. In answer to all which, with deference to wiser judgments, I think this rather shows the necessity of a nominal religion among us. Great wits love to be free with the highest objects, and if they cannot be allowed a God to revile or renounce, they will speak evil of dignities, abuse the Government, and reflect upon the Ministry, which I am sure few will deny to be of much more pernicious consequence, according to the saying of Tiberius, Deorum offensa diis curce. As to the particular fact related, I think it is not fair to argue from one instance ; perhaps another cannot be produced ; yet (to the comfort of all those who may be apprehensive of persecution) blasphemy we know is freely spoken a million of times in every coffee-house and tavern, or wherever else good company meet. It. must be allowed, indeed, that to break an English free-born officer only for blasphemy was, to speak the gentlest of such an action, a very high strain of ab- solute power. Little can be said in excuse for the general; perhaps he was afraid it might give offence to the allies, among whom, for aught we know, it may be the custom of the country to believe a God. But if he argued, as some have done, upon a mistaken principle, that an officer, who is guilty of speaking blasphemy, may some time or other proceed so far as to raise a mutiny, the consequence is by no means to be admitted, for surely the commander of an English army is likely to be but ill obeyed whose soldiers fear and reverence him as little as they do a deity. It is further objected against the gospel system that it obliges men to the belief of things too difficult for freethinkers, and such who have shaken off the prejudices that usually cling to a confined education. To which I answer that men should be cautious how they raise objections which reflect upon the wisdom of the nation. Is not everybody freely allowed to be- lieve whatever he pleases, and to publish his belief to the world whenever he thinks fit, especially if it serves to strengthen the party which is in the right? Would any indifferent foreigner ABOLISHING CHRISTIANITY. 231 who should read the trumpery lately written by Asgyll, 1 Tindal, Toland, Coward, 2 and forty more imagine the gospel to be our rule of faith, and confirmed by Parliaments? Does arty man either believe, or say he believes, or desire to have it thought that he says he believes, one syllable of the matter? And is any man worse received upon that score, or does he find his want of nominal faith a disadvantage to him in the pursuit of any civil or military employment ? What if there be an old dormant statute or two against him ? Are they not now obsolete to a degree, that Epsom and Dudley themselves, if they were now alive, would find it impossible to put them in execution ? It is likewise urged that there are, by computation, in this kingdom above ten thousand parsons, whose revenues, added to those of my lords the bishops, would suffice to maintain at least two hundred young gentlemen of wit and pleasure and freethink- ing, enemies to priestcraft, narrow principles, pedantry, and pre- judices, who might be an ornament to the court and town ; and then, again, so great a number of able-bodied divines might be a recruit to our fleet and armies. This indeed appears to be a consideration of some weight ; but then, on the other side, several things deserve to be considered likewise, as first, whether it may not be thought necessary that, in certain tracts of country, like what we call parishes, there shall be one man at least of abilities to read and write. Then it seems a wrong computation that the revenues of the Church throughout this island would be large enough to maintain two hundred young gentlemen, or even half 1 John Asgyll, an ingenious writer and eminent lawyer, died November 10, 1738, aged upwards of fourscore. In 1698 he wrote a treatise entitled, " An Argument proving that, according to the Covenant of Eternal Life revealed in the Scriptures, Man may be translated from hence into that Eternal Life without passing through Death, although the Human Nature of Christ could not thus be translated till He had passed through Death." This publication was the alleged cause of his being expelled the House of Commons in 1707, though it is more probable that the des- perate state of his affairs was the real motive. After his expulsion he became more embarrassed in his circumstances, and spent the last thirty years of his life in prison. During this time he published a multitude of small tracts, most of which were well received. John Nic/iols. 2 Coward asserted the mortality of the soul, and alleged the seat of it to be in the blood. Hawkesworth. 232 AN ARGUMENT AGAINST that number, after the present refined way of living ; that is, to allow each of them such a rent as, in the modern form of speech, would make them easy. But still there is in this project a greater mischief behind j and we ought to beware of the woman's folly who killed the hen that every morning laid her a golden egg. For pray, what would become of the race of men in the next age if we had nothing to trust to beside the scrofulous, consumptive productions furnished by our men of wit and pleasure, when, having squandered away their vigour, health, and estates, they are forced, by some disagreeable marriage, to piece up their broken fortunes, and entail rottenness and politeness on their posterity ? Now here are ten thousand persons reduced, by the wise regula- tions of Henry the Eighth, to the necessity of a low diet and moderate exercise, who are the only great restorers of our breed, without which the nation would, in an age or two, become one great hospital. Another advantage proposed by the abolishing of Christianity is the clear gain of one day in seven, which is now entirely lost, and consequently the kingdom one-seventh less considerable in trade, business, and pleasure ; beside the loss to the public of so many stately structures now in the hands of the clergy, which might be converted into play-houses, market-houses, exchanges, common dormitories, and other public edifices. I hope I shall be forgiven a hard word if I call this a perfect cavil I readily own there has been an old custom, time out of mind, for people to assemble in the churches every Sunday, and that shops are still frequently shut, in order, as it is conceived, to preserve the memory of that ancient practice ; but how this can prove a hindrance to business or pleasure is hard to imagine. What if the men of pleasure are forced, one day in the week, to game at home instead of the chocolate-houses? Are not the taverns and coffee-houses open ? Can there be a more convenient season for taking a dose of physic ? Are fewer claps got upon Sundays than other days ? Is not that the chief day for traders to sum up the accounts of the week, and for lawyers to prepare their briefs ? But I would fain know how it can be pretended ABOLISHING CHRISTIANITY. 233 that the churches are misapplied. Where are more appointments and rendezvouses of gallantry? Where more care to appear in the foremost box with greater advantage of dress? Where more meetings for business? Where more bargains driven of all sorts ? And where so many conveniences or incitements to sleep ? There is one advantage greater than any of the foregoing pro- posed by the abolishing of Christianity, that it will utterly ex- tinguish parties among us by removing those factious distinctions of High and Low Church, of Whig and Tory, Presbyterian and Church of England, which are now so many grievous clogs upon public proceedings, and are apt to dispose men to prefer the gratifying of themselves or depressing of their adversaries before the most important interest of the state. I confess, if it were certain that so great an advantage would redound to the nation by this expedient, I would submit and be silent ; but will any man say that if the words drinking, cheating, lying, stealing, were by Act of Parliament ejected out of the English tongue and dictionaries, we should all awake next morning temperate, honest and just, and lovers of truth? Is this a fair eolisequence ? Or if the physicians should forbid us to pronounce the words gout, rheumatism, and stone, would that expedient serve, like so many talismans, to destroy the diseases themselves ? Are party and faction rooted in men's hearts no deeper than phrases borrowed from religion or founded upon no firmer principles, and is our language so poor that we cannot find other terms to express them ? Are envy, pride, avarice, and ambition such ill nomenclators, that they cannot furnish appella- tions for their owners ? Will not hey dukes and mamelukes, man- darins and patshaws, or any other words formed at pleasure, serve to distinguish those who are in the ministry from others who would be in it if they could ? What, for instance, is easier than to vary the form of speech, and instead of the word church, make it a question in politics whether the Monument be in danger ? Because religion was nearest at hand to furnish a few convenient phrases, is our invention so barren we can find no 234 AN ARGUMENT AGAINST other? Suppose for argument-sake that the Tories favoured Margarita, 1 the Whigs Mrs. Tofts, and the Trimmers Valentini ; would not Margaritians, Toftians, and Valentinians be very toler- able marks of distinction? The Prasini and Veniti, two most virulent factions in Italy, began (if I remember right) by a dis- tinction of colours in ribands, and we might contend with as good a grace about the dignity of the blue and the green, which would serve as properly to divide the court, the Parliament, and the kingdom between them as any terms of art whatsoever borrowed from religion. And therefore I think there is little force in this objection against Christianity, or prospect of so great an advan- tage as is proposed in the abolishing of it. It is again objected as a very absurd, ridiculous custom, that a set of men should be suffered, much less employed and hired, to bawl one day in seven against the lawfulness of those methods most in use toward the pursuit of greatness, riches, and pleasure, which are the constant practice of all men alive on the other six. But this objection is, I think, a little unworthy of so refined an age as ours. Let us argue this matter calmly. I appeal to the breast of any polite freethinker whether, in the pursuit of gratify- ing a predominant passion, he has not always felt a wonderful in- citement by reflecting it was a thing forbidden, and therefore we see, in order to cultivate this taste, the wisdom of the nation has taken special care that the ladies should be furnished with pro- hibited silks and the men with prohibited wine. And indeed it were to be wished that some other prohibitions were promoted in order to improve the pleasures of the town, which, for want of such expedients, begin already, as I am told, to flag and grow languid, giving way daily to cruel inroads from the spleen. It is likewise proposed, as a great advantage to the public, that if we once discard the system of the gospel, all religion will of course be banished for ever, and consequently, along with it, those grievous prejudices of education which, under the names of virtue, conscience, honour, justice, and the like, are so apt to dis- 1 Italian singers then in vogue. Margarita was afterwards married to Dr. Pepusch. Hauakesworth. ' ABOLISHING CHRISTIANITY. 235 turb the peace of human minds, and the notions whereof are so hard to be eradicated by right reason or freethinkin. sometimes during the whole course of our lives. Here I first observe how difficult it is to get rid of a phrase which the world is once grown fond of, though the occasion that first produced it be entirely taken away. For several years past, if a man had but an ill-favoured nose, the deep thinkers of the age would, some way or other, contrive to impute the cause to the prejudice of his education. From this fountain were said to be derived all our foolish notions of justice, piety, love of our country, all our opinions of God or a future state, heaven, hell, and the like, and there might formerly perhaps have been some pretence for this charge. But so effectual care has been since taken to remove those prejudices by an entire change in the methods of education, that (with honour I mention it to our polite innovators) the young gentlemen who are now on the scene seem to have not the least tincture of those infusions or string of those weeds, and, by consequence, the reason for abolishing nominal Christianity upon that pretext is wholly ceased. For the rest, it may perhaps admit a controversy whether the banishing of all notions of religion whatsoever would be con- venient for the vulgar. Not that I am in the least of opinion with those who hold religion to have been the invention of poli- ticians to keep the lower part of the world in awe by the fear of invisible powers, unless mankind were then very different to what it is now, for I look upon the mass or body of our people here in England to be as freethinkers, that is to say, as staunch un- believers, as about any of the highest rank. But I conceive some scattered notions of a superior power to be of singular use for the common people, as furnishing excellent materials to keep children quiet when they grow peevish, and providing topics of amusement on a tedious winter night. Lastly, it is proposed, as a singular advantage, that the abolish- ing of Christianity will very much contribute to the uniting of Protestants by enlarging the terms of communion, so as to take 236 AN ARGUMENT AGAINST in all sorts of Dissenters who are now shut out of the pale upon account of a few ceremonies which all sides confess to be things indifferent ; that this alone will effectually answer the great ends of a scheme for comprehension by opening a large noble gate at which all bodies may enter, whereas the chaffering with Dissenters, and dodging about this or the other ceremony, is but like opening a few wickets and leaving them ajar, by which no more than one can get in at a time, and that not without stooping and sidling and squeezing his body. To all this I answer that there is one darling inclination of mankind which usually affects to be a retainer to religion, though she be neither its parent, its godmother, or its friend; I mean the spirit of opposition, that lived long before Christianity, and can easily subsist without it. Let us, for instance, examine wherein the opposition of sectaries among us consists ; we shall find Christianity to have no share in it at all. Does the gospel anywhere prescribe a starched, squeezed countenance, a stiff, formal gait, a singularity of manners and habit, or any affected modes of speech different from the reasonable part of mankind ? Yet if Christianity did not lend its name to stand in the gap and to employ or divert these humours, they must of necessity be spent in contraventions to the laws of the land and disturbance of the public peace. There is a portion of enthusiasm assigned to every nation, which, if it has not proper objects to work on, will burst out and set all in a flame. If the quiet of a state can be bought by only flinging men a few ceremonies to devour, it is a purchase no wise man would refuse. Let the mastiffs amuse themselves about a sheep's skin stuffed with hay, provided it will keep them from worrying the flock. The institution of convents abroad seems, in one point, a strain of great wisdom, there being few irregularities in human passions that may not have recourse to vent themselves in some of those orders, which are so many retreats for the speculative, the melancholy, the proud, the silent, the politic, and the morose, to spend themselves and evaporate the noxious particles, for each of whom we, in this island, are forced to provide a several sect of religion to keep them quiet ; ABOLISHING CHRISTIANITY. 237 and whenever Christianity shall be abolished, the Legislature must find some other expedient to employ and entertain them. For what imports it how large a gate you open, if there will be always left a number who place a pride and a merit in refusing to enter ? Having thus considered the most important objections against Christianity, and the chief advantages proposed by the abolishing thereof, I shall now, with equal deference and submission to wiser judgments as before, proceed to mention a few inconveniences that may happen if the gospel should be repealed, which perhaps the projectors may not have sufficiently considered. And first I am very sensible how much the gentlemen of wit and pleasure are apt to murmur and be shocked at the sight of so many draggle-tail 'parsons who happen to fall in their way and offend their eyes ; but at the same time these wise reformers do not consider what an advantage and felicity it is for great wits to be always provided with objects of scorn and contempt in order to exercise and improve their talents, and divert their spleen from falling on each other or on themselves, especially when all this may be done without the least imaginable danger to their persons. And to urge another argument of a parallel nature ; if Chris- tianity were once abolished, how could the freethinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning be able to find another subject so calculated in all points whereon to dis- play their abilities ? What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those whose genius by continual practice has been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would therefore never be able to shine or distinguish them- selves upon any other subject ! We are daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us, and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only, topic we have left ? Who would ever have suspected Asgyll for a wit or Toland for a philosopher, if the inexhaustible stock of Christianity had not been at hand to provide them with materials ? What other subject through all art or nature could have produced Tindal for a profound author or furnished him with readers ? It is the wise choice of the subject 238 AN ARGUMENT AGAINST that alone adorns and distinguishes the writer. 1 For had a hundred such pens as these been employed on the side of religion, they would have immediately sunk into silence and oblivion. Nor do I think it wholly groundless, or my fears altogether imaginary, that the abolishing Christianity may perhaps bring the Church into danger, or at least put the Senate to the trouble of another securing vote. I desire I may not be mistaken. I am far from presuming to affirm or think that the Church is in danger at present, or as things now stand, but we know not how soon it may be so, when the Christian religion is repealed. As plausible as this project seems, there may be a dangerous design lurking under it. Nothing can be more notorious than that the Atheists, Deists, Socinians, Antitrinitarians, and other subdivi- sions of freethinkers, are persons of little zeal for the present ecclesiastical establishment ; their declared opinion is for repeal- ing the sacramental test ; they are very indifferent with regard to ceremonies, nor do they hold the jus divinum of episcopacy; therefore this may be intended as one politic step towards alter- ing the constitution of the Church established, and setting up Presbytery in the stead, which I leave to be further considered by those at the helm. In the last place, I think nothing can be more plain than that, by this expedient, we shall run into the evil we chiefly pretend to avoid, and that the abolishment of the Christian religion will be the readiest course we can take to introduce Popery. And I am the more inclined to this opinion, because we know it has been the constant practice of the Jesuits to send over emissaries, with instructions to personate themselves members of the several pre- vailing sects among us. So it is recorded that they have at sundry times appeared in the disguise of Presbyterjans, Anabap- tists, Independents, and Quakers, according as any of these were most in credit ; so, since the fashion has been taken up of explod- ing religion, the Popish missionaries have not been wanting to 1 "This passage," says Dr. Johnson, "deserves to be selected," and he has accordingly given it at full length in his Life of Swift, adding, "the reasonableness of a test is not hard to be proved, but perhaps it must be allowed that the proper test has not been chosen." Nichols, ABOLISHING CHRISTIANITY. 239 mix with the freethinkers, among whom Toland, the great oracle of the Antichristians, is an Irish priest, the son of an Irish priest. And the most learned and ingenious author of a book called " The Rights of the Christian Church " was in a proper juncture reconciled to the Romish faith, whose true son, as appears by a hundred passages in his treatise, he still continues. Perhaps I could add some others to the number ; but the fact is beyond dispute, and the reasoning they proceed by is right ; for suppos- ing Christianity to be extinguished, the people will never be at ease till they find out some other method of worship, which will as infallibly produce superstition as superstition will end in Popery. And therefore if, notwithstanding all I have said, it still be thought necessary to have a bill brought in for repealing Chris- tianity, I would humbly offer an amendment that, instead of the word Christianity, may be put religion in general, which, I con- ceive, will much better answer all the good ends proposed by the projectors of it. For as long as we leave in being a God and His providence, with all the necessary consequences which curious and inquisitive men will be apt to draw from such premisses, we do not strike at the root of the evil, though we should ever so effectually annihilate the present scheme of the gospel ; for of what use is freedom of thought if it will not produce freedom of action ? which is the sole end, how remote soever in appearance, of all objections against Christianity ; and therefore the free- thinkers consider it as a sort of edifice, wherein all the parts have such a mutual dependence on each other, that if you happen to pull out one single nail, the whole fabric must fall to the ground. This was happily expressed by him who had heard of a text brought for proof of the Trinity, which in an ancient manuscript was differently read. He thereupon immediately took the hint, and, by a sudden deduction of a long sorites, most logically con- cluded, "Why, if it be as you say, I may safely whore and drink on, and defy the parson." From which, and many the like instances easy to be produced, I think nothing can be more rnanifest than that the quarrel is not against any particular points. 240 AN ARGUMENT, ETC. of hard digestion in the Christian system, but against religion in general, which, by laying restraints on human nature, is supposed the great enemy to the freedom of thought and action. Upon the whole, if it shall still be thought for the benefit of Church and State that Christianity be abolished, I conceive, how- ever, it may be more convenient to defer the execution to a time of peace, and not venture, in this conjuncture, to disoblige our allies, who, as it falls out, are all Christians, and many of them, by the prejudices of their education, so bigoted as to place a sort of pride in the appellation. If, upon being rejected by them, we are to trust to an alliance with the Turk, we shall find ourselves much deceived, for, as he is too remote, and generally engaged in war with the Persian emperor, so his people would be more scandalised at our infidelity than our Christian neighbours. For the Turks are not only strict observers of religious worship, but, what is worse, believe a God, which is more than is required of us, even while we preserve the name of Christians. To conclude, whatever some may think of the great advantages to trade by this favourite scheme, I do very much apprehend that in six months time after the Act is passed for the extirpation of the gospel, the Bank and East India stock may fall at least one per cent. And since that is fifty times more than ever the wisdom of our age thought fit to venture for the preservation of Chris- tianity, there is no reason we should be at so great a loss merely for the sake of destroying it. PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708: WHEREIN THE MONTH, AND THE DAY OF THE MONTH, ARE SET DOWN, THE PERSONS NAMED, AND THE GREAT ACTIONS AND EVENTS OF NEXT YEAR PARTICULARLY RELATED, AS THEY WILL COME TO PASS. WRITTEN TO PREVENT THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND FROM BEING FURTHER IMPOSED ON BY VULGAR ALMANAC-MAKERS. BY ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, ESQ. PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708.' T HAVE considered the gross abuse of astrology in this king- dom, and upon debating the matter with myself, I could not possibly lay the fault upon the art, but upon those gross impos- tors who set up to be the artists. I know several learned men have contended that the whole is a cheat ; that it is absurd and ridiculous to imagine the stars can have any influence at all upon human actions, thoughts, or inclinations ; and whoever has not bent his studies that way may be excused for thinking so, when he sees in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated by a few mean, illiterate traders between us and the stars, who import a yearly stock of nonsense, lies, folly, and impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine from the planets, though they descend from no greater a height than their own brains. I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational defence of this art, and therefore shall say no more in its justification at present than that it has been in all ages defended by many learned men, and among the rest by Socrates himself, whom I look upon as undoubtedly the wisest of uninspired mortals ; to which if we add that those who have condemned this art, though otherwise learned, having been such as either did not apply their studies this way, or at least did not succeed in their applications, their 1 Dr. Swift, when he had written these Predictions, being at a loss what name to prefix to them, observed a sign over a house where a locksmith dwelt, and found the name of Bickerstaff written under it, which being a name somewhat uncommon, he chose to call himself Isaac Bickerstaff. The name was afterward adopted by Mr. Steele, as author of the Taller. This humorous tract was seriously burnt by the Inquisition in Portugal, as the author was assured by Sir Paul Methuen, then ambassador at that court. John Nichols. 244 PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708. testimony will not be of much weight to its disadvantage, since they are liable to the common objection of condemning what they did not understand. Nor am I at all offended, or do I think it an injury to the art, when I see the common dealers in it, the students in astrology, the philomaths, and the rest of that tribe, treated by wise men with the utmost scorn and contempt, but I rather wonder when I observe gentlemen in the country, rich enough to serve the nation in Parliament, poring in Partridge's almanac to find out the events of the year at home and abroad, not daring to propose a hunting match till Gadbury 1 or he have fixed the weather. I will allow either of the two I have mentioned, or any other of the fraternity, to be not only astrologers, but conjurors too, if I do not produce a hundred instances in all their almanacs to convince any reasonable man that they do not so much as under- stand common grammar and syntax ; that they are not able to spell any word out of the usual road, nor, even in their prefaces, to write common sense or intelligible English. Then for their observations and predictions, they are such as will equally suit any age or country in the world. " This month a certain great person will be threatened with death or sickness." This the newspapers will tell them ; for there we find at the end of the year that no month passes without the death of some person of note ; and it would be hard if it should be otherwise, when there are at least two thousand persons of note in this kingdom, many of them old, and the almanac-maker has the liberty of choosing the sickliest season of the year where he may fix his prediction. Again, " This month an eminent clergyman will be preferred ; " of which there may be many hundreds, half of them with one foot in the grave. Then, " Such a planet in such a house shows great machinations, plots, and conspiracies, that may in time be brought 1 John Gadbury, who was bred a tailor at Oxford, was enabled by the instruc- tions of Lilly to set up the trade of almanac-making and fortune-telling for himself. His pen was employed for many years on nativities, almanacs, and prodigies. He was living in 1690, and was thought to be alive for many years after his decease, as his name continued to be fixed to an almanac similar to that which was published in his lifetime. "The Black Life of John Gadbury " was written by Partridge. John Nichols. PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708. 245 to light ; " after which, if we hear of any discovery, the astrologer gets the honour ; if not, his predictions still stand good. And at last, "God preserve King William from all his open and secret enemies, Amen ; " when, if the King should happen to have died, the astrologer plainly foretold it ; otherwise it passes but for the pious ejaculation of a loyal subject : though it unluckily happened in some of their almanacs that poor King William was prayed for many months after he was dead, because it fell out that he died about the beginning of the year. To mention no more of their impertinent predictions, what have we to do with their advertisements about " pills and drinks for the venereal disease," or their mutual quarrels in verse and prose of Whig and Tory, wherewith the stars have little to do ? Having long observed and lamented these, and a hundred other abuses of this art too tedious to repeat, I resolved to proceed in a new way, which I doubt not will be to the general satisfaction of the kingdom. I can this year produce but a specimen of what I design for the future, having employed most part of my time in adjusting and correcting the calculations I made for some years past, because I would offer nothing to the world of which I am not as fully satisfied as that I am now alive. For these two last years I have not failed in above one or two particulars, and those of no very great moment. I exactly foretold the miscarriage at Toulon, with all its particulars, and the loss of Admiral Shovel, 1 though I was mistaken as to the day, placing that article about thirty-six hours sooner than it happened; but upon reviewing my schemes, I quickly found the cause of that error. I likewise foretold the battle of Almanza ~ to the very day and hour, with the loss on both sides, and the consequences thereof, all which I showed to some friends many months before they happened, that is, I gave them papers sealed up, to open at such a time, after which they were at liberty to read them, and there they found my predictions true in every article, except one or two very minute. 1 Sir Cloudesley Shovel's fleet was wrecked October 22, 1707. Nichols. 2 The battle of Almanza was fought April 25, 1707. Nichols. 246 PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708. As for the few following predictions I now offer the world, I forbore to publish them till I had perused the several almanacs for the year we are now entered upon. I found them all in the usual strain, and I beg the reader will compare their manner with mine. And here I make bold to tell the world that I lay the whole credit of my art upon the truth of these predictions ; and I will be content that Partridge, and the rest of his clan, may hoot me for a cheat and impostor if I fail in any single particular of moment. I believe any man who reads this paper will look upon me to be at least a person of as much honesty and understanding as a common maker of almanacs. I do not lurk in the dark ; I am not wholly unknown in the. world ; I have set my name at length to be a mark of infamy to mankind if they shall find I deceive them. In one thing I must desire to be forgiven, that I talk more sparingly of home affairs ; as it would be imprudence to discover secrets of state, so it might be dangerous to my person ; but in smaller matters, and such as are not of public consequence, I shall be very free ; and the truth of my conjectures will as much appear from these as the other. As for the most signal events abroad in France, Flanders, Italy, and Spain, I shall make no scruple to predict them in plain terms : some of them are of im- portance, and I hope I shall seldom mistake the day they will happen ; therefore I think good to inform the reader that I shall all along make use of the old style observed in England, which I desire he will compare with that of the newspapers at the time they relate the actions I mention. I must add one word more. I know it has been the opinion of several learned persons, who think well enough of the true art of astrology, that the stars do only incline, and not force the actions or wills of men ; and therefore, however I may proceed by right rules, yet I cannot in prudence so confidently assure the events will follow exactly as I predict them. I hope I have maturely considered this objection, which in some cases is of no little weight. For example, a man may, by the influence of an overruling planet, be disposed or inclined to PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708. 247 lust, rage, or avarice, and yet by the force of reason overcome that evil influence ; and this was the case of Socrates : but the great events of the world usually depending upon numbers of men, it cannot be expected they should all unite to cross their in- clinations for pursuing a general design wherein they unanimously agree. Besides, the influence of the stars reaches to many actions and events which are not any way in the power of reason, as sickness, death, and what we commonly call accidents, with many more needless to repeat. But now it is time to proceed to my predictions, which I have begun to calculate from the time that the- sun enters into Aries ; and this I take to be properly the beginning of the natural year. I pursue them to the time that he enters Libra, or somewhat more, which is the busy period of the year. The remainder I have not yet adjusted, upon account of several impediments needless here to mention; besides, I must remind the reader again that this is but a specimen of what I design in succeeding years to treat more at large, if I may have liberty and encourage- ment My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I will mention it to show how ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own concerns. It relates to Partridge the almanac-maker. I have consulted the star of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly die upon the 2pth of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever ; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his affairs in time. The month of April will be observable for the death of many great persons. On the 4th will die the Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop of Paris; on the nth, the young Prince of Asturias, son to the Duke of Anjou ; on the i4th, a great peer of this realm will die at his country-house; on the iQth, an old layman of great fame for learning ; and on the 23rd, an eminent gold- smith in Lombard Street. I could mention others, both at home and abroad, if I did not consider such events of very little use or instruction to the reader or to the world. As to public affairs, on the yth of this month there will be an 248 PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708. insurrection in Dauphine, occasioned by the oppressions of the people, which will not be quieted in some months. On the 1 5th will be a violent storm on the south-east coast of France, which will destroy many of their ships, and some in the very harbour. The i pth will be famous for the revolt of a whole province or kingdom, excepting one city, by which the affairs of a certain prince in the alliance will take a better face. May, against common conjectures, will be no very busy month in Europe, but very signal for the death of the Dauphin, which will happen on the yth, after a short fit of sickness and grievous torments with the strangury. He dies less lamented by the court than the kingdom. On the Qth, a mareschal of France will break his leg by a fall from his horse. I have not been able to discover whether he will then die or not. On the nth will begin a most important siege, which the eyes of all Europe will be upon. I cannot be more particular, for in relating affairs that so nearly concern the confederates, and con- sequently this kingdom, I am forced to confine myself, for several reasons very obvious to the reader. On the 1 5th, news will arrive of a very surprising event, than which nothing can be more unexpected. On the i gth, three noble ladies of this kingdom will, against all expectation, prove with child, to the great joy of their hus- bands. On the 23rd, a famous buffoon of the playhouse will die a ridi- culous death, suitable to his vocation. June. This month will be distinguished at home by the utter dispersing of those ridiculous deluded enthusiasts commonly called the prophets, 1 occasioned chiefly by seeing the time come when 1 About this time there were some English and French Jesuits from Rome, sent to Great Britain and Ireland to divide and distract the people with enthusiastic principles of religion in oppositiorrto the Established Church. These called them- selves French prophets, pretended to inspiration, and deluded many people out of their money as well as reason, but were soon detected as impostors, and obliged to leave the kingdom upon their being found out to be Jesuits in disguise. They PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708. 249 many of their prophecies should be fulfilled, and then finding themselves deceived by contrary events. It is indeed to be admired how any deceiver can be so weak to foretell things near at hand, when a very few months must of necessity discover the imposture to all the world ; in this point less prudent than common almanac-makers, who are so wise to wander in generals and talk dubiously, and leave to the reader the business of interpreting. On the ist of this month a French general will be killed by a random shot of a cannon-ball. On the 6th, a fire will break out in the suburbs of Paris, which will destroy above a thousand houses, and seems to be the fore- boding of what will happen, to the surprise of all Europe, about the end of the following month. On the loth, a great battle will be fought, which will begin at four o'clock in the afternoon and last till nine at night, with great obstinacy, but no very decisive event. I shall not name the place for the reasons aforesaid, but the commanders on each left wing will be killed. I see bonfires and hear the noise of guns for a victory. On the 1 4th, there will be a false report of the French king's death, On the 2oth, Cardinal Portocarero will die of a dysentery with great suspicion of poison ; but the report of his intention to revolt to King Charles will prove false. July. The 6th of this month, a certain general will, by a glorious action, recover the reputation he lost by former mis.- fortunes. On the 1 2th, a great commander will die a prisoner in the hands of his enemies. On the 1 4th, a shameful discovery will be made of a French Jesuit giving poison to a great foreign general ; and when he is put to the torture, he will make wonderful discoveries. occasioned several publications in and about 1708 by Sir Richard Bulkeley, Dr. Woodward, John Lacy, Esq., Mr. Henry Nicholson, and others. Dr. Berkeley, afterwards Bishop of Cloyne, saw a Jesuit at Rome who acknowledged himself to have been one of these prophets. Nichols. 250 PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708. In short, this will prove a month of great action, if I might have liberty to relate the particulars. At home, the death of an old famous senator will happen on the 1 5th at his country-house, worn out with age and diseases. But that which will make this month memorable to all pos- terity is the death of the French king, Louis XIV., after a week's sickness at Marli, which will happen on the 29th, about six o'clock in the evening. It seems to be an effect of the gout in the stomach followed by a flux. And in three days after, Monsieur Chamillard will follow his master, dying suddenly of an apoplexy. In this month likewise an ambassador will die in London, but I cannot assign the day. August. The affairs of France will seem to suffer no change for a while under the Duke of Burgundy's administration ; but the genius that animated the whole machine being gone, will be the cause of mighty turns and revolutions in the following year. The new king makes yet little change either in the army or the Ministry, but the libels against his grandfather, that fly about his very court, give him uneasiness. I see an express in mighty haste, with joy and wonder in his looks, arriving by break of day on the 26th of this month, having travelled in three days a prodigious journey by land and sea. In the evening I hear bells and guns and see the blazing of a thousand bonfires. A young admiral of noble birth does likewise this month gain immortal honour by a great achievement. The affairs of Poland are this month entirely settled. Augustus resigns his pretensions, which he had again taken up for some time; Stanislaus is peaceably possessed of the throne, and the king of Sweden declares for the Emperor. I cannot omit one particular accident here at home, that near the end of this month much mischief will be done at Bartholomew Fair by the fall of a booth. - September. This month begins with a very surprising fit of frosty weather, which will last near twelve days. The Pope having long languished last month, the swellings in PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708. 251 his legs breaking and the flesh mortifying, will die on the nth instant ; and in three weeks' time, after a mighty contest, be suc- ceeded by a cardinal of the Imperial faction, but a native of Tuscany, who is now about sixty-one years old. The French army now acts wholly on the defensive, strongly fortified in their trenches ; and the young French king sends overtures for a treaty of peace by the Duke of Mantua ; which, because it is a matter of state that concerns us here at home, I shall speak no further of. I shall add but one prediction more, and that in mystical terms, which shall be included in a verse out of Virgil "Alter erit jam Tethys, et altera quae vehat Argo Delectos heroas." Upon the 25th day of this month, the fulfilling of this predic- tion will be manifest to everybody. This is the furthest I have proceeded in my calculations for the present year. I do not pretend that these are all the great events which will happen in this period, but that those I have set down will infallibly come to pass. It will perhaps still be objected why I have not spoke more particularly of affairs at home or of the success of our armies abroad, which I might and 'could very largely have done ; but those in power have wisely discouraged men from meddling in public concerns, and I was resolved by no means to give the least offence. This I will venture to say, that it will be a glorious campaign for the Allies, wherein the English forces, both by sea and land, still have their full share of honour; that her Majesty Queen Anne will continue in health and prosperity ; and that no ill accident will arrive to any in the chief Ministry. As to the particular events I have mentioned, the reader may judge by the fulfilling of them whether I am on the level with common astrologers, who, with an old paltry cant and a few pot- hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have, in my opinion, too long been suffered to abuse the world ; but an honest physician ought not to be despised because there are such things as mounte- 252 PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708. banks. I hope I have some share of reputation, which I would not willingly forfeit for a frolic or humour, and I believe no gentleman who reads this paper will look upon it to be of the same cast or mould with the common scribbles that are every day hawked about. My fortune has placed me above the little regard of writing for a few pence, which I neither value nor want ; there- fore let not wise men too hastily condemn this essay, intended for a good design, to cultivate and improve an ancient art, long in disgrace by having fallen into mean, unskilful hands. A little time will determine whether I have deceived others or myself; and I think it no very unreasonable request that men would please to suspend their judgments till then. I was once of the opinion with those who despise all predictions from the stars, till the year 1686 a man of quality showed me, written in his album, that the most learned astronomer, Captain Halley, assured him he would never believe anything of the stars' influence if there were not a great revolution in England in the year 1688. Since that time I began to have other thoughts, and after eighteen years' diligent study and application, I think I have no reason to repent of my pains. I shall detain the reader no longer than to let him know that the account I design to give of next year's events shall take in the principal affairs that happened in Europe, and if I be denied the liberty of offering it to my own country, I shall appeal to the learned world by publishing it in Latin, and giving order to have it printed in Holland. AN ANSWER TO BICKERSTAFF. SOME REFLECTIONS UPON MR. BICKERSTAFF'S PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR MDCCVIII. BY A PERSON OF QUALITY. T HAVE not observed for some years past any insignificant paper to have made more noise or be more greedily bought than that of these Predictions. They are the wonder of the common people, an amusement for the better sort, and a jest only to the wise ; yet among these last I have heard some very much in doubt whether the author meant to deceive others, or is deceived himself. Whoever he was, he seems to have with great art adjusted his paper both to please the rabble and to entertain persons of condition. The writer is without question a gentleman of wit and learning, although the piece seems hastily written in a sudden frolic, with the scornful thought of the pleasure he will have in putting this great town into a wonderment about nothing ; nor do I doubt but he and his friends in the secret laugh often and plentifully in a corner to reflect how many hundred thousand fools they have already made. And he has them fast for some time ; for so they are likely to continue until his prophecies begin to fail in the events. Nay, it is a great question whether the miscarriage of the two or three first will so entirely undeceive people as to hinder them from expecting the accomplishment of the rest. I doubt not but some thousands of these papers are carefully preserved by as many persons to confront with the 254 AN ANSWER TO BICKERSTAFF. events, and try whether the astrologer exactly keeps the day and hour. And these I take to be Mr. BickerstafFs choicest cullies, for whose sake chiefly he wrote his amusement. Meanwhile he has seven weeks good, during which time the world is to be kept in suspense ; for it is so long before the almanac-maker is to die, which is the first prediction, and if that fellow happens to be a splenetic visionary fop, or has any faith in his own art, the pro- phecy may punctually come to pass by very natural means. As a gentleman of my acquaintance, who was ill-used by a mercer in town, wrote him a letter in an unknown hand to give him notice that care had been taken to convey a slow poison into his drink which would infallibly kill him in a month, after which the man began in earnest to languish and decay by the mere strength of imagination, and would certainly have died if care had not been taken to undeceive him before the jest went too far. The like effect upon Partridge would wonderfully raise Mr. Bicker- staff's reputation for a fortnight longer, until we could hear from France whether the Cardinal de Noailles were dead or alive upon the 4th of April, which is the second of his predictions. For a piece so carelessly written, the observations upon astrology are reasonable and pertinent, the remarks just ; and as the paper is partly designed, in my opinion, for a satire upon the credulity of the vulgar, and that idle itch of peeping into futurities, so it is no more than what we all of us deserve. And since we must be teased with perpetual hawkers of strange and wonderful things, I am glad to see a man of sense find leisure and humour to take up the trade for his own and our diversion. To speak in the town phrase, it is a bite ; he has fully had his jest, and may be satisfied. I very much approve the serious air he gives himself in his introduction and conclusion, which has gone far to give some people of no mean rank an opinion that the author believes him- self. He tells us " he places the whole credit of his art on the truth of these predictions, and will be content to be hooted by Partridge and the rest for a cheat if he fails in any one particular," with several other strains of the same kind, wherein I perfectly AN ANSWER TO BICKERSTAFF. 255 believe him, and that he is very indifferent whether Isaac Bicker- staff be a mark of infamy or not. But it seems, although he has joined an odd surname to no very common Christian one, that in this large town there is a man found to own both the names, although, I believe, not the paper. I believe it is no small mortification to this gentleman astro- loger, as well as his bookseller, to find their piece, which they sent out in a tolerable print and paper, immediately seized on by three or four interloping printers of Grub Street, the title stuffed with an abstract of the whole matter, together with the standard epithets of " strange and wonderful," the price brought down a full half, which was but a penny in its prime, and bawled about by hawkers of the inferior class with the concluding cadence of " A halfpenny apiece ; " but sic cecidit Phaeton, and, to comfort him a little, this production of mine will have the same fate ; to-morrow will my ears be grated by the little boys and wenches in straw hats, and I must a hundred times undergo the mortification to have my own work offered me to sale at an under value. Then, which is a great deal worse, my acquaintance in the coffee-house will ask me whether I have seen the "Answer to Squire Bickerstaff's Predictions," and whether I knew the puppy that writ it ; and how to keep a man's countenance in such a juncture is no easy point of conduct. When, in this case, you see a man shy either in praising or condemning, ready to turn off the discourse to another subject, standing as little in the light as he can to hide his blushing, pretending to sneeze or take snuff, or go off as if sudden business called him, then ply him close, observe his look narrowly, see whether his speech be constrained or affected, then charge him suddenly, or whisper and smile, and you will soon discover whether he be guilty. Although this seem not to the purpose I am discoursing on, yet I think it to be so ; for I am much deceived if I do not know the true author of Bickerstaff's Predictions, and did not meet with him some days ago in a coffee-house at Covent Garden. As to the matter of the Predictions themselves, I shall not enter upon the examination of them, but think it very incumbent upon 256 AN ANSWER TO BICKERSTAFF. the learned Mr. Partridge to take them into his consideration, and lay as many errors in astrology as possible to Mr. Bickerstaff's account. He may justly, I think, challenge the Squire to publish the calculation he has made of Partridge's nativity, by the credit of which he so determinately pronounces the time and the manner of his death; and Mr. Bickerstaff can do no less in honour than give Mr. Partridge the same advantage of calculating his, by sending him an account of the time and place of his birth, with other particulars necessary for such a work. By which, no doubt, the learned world will be engaged in the dispute, and take part on each side according as they are inclined. I should likewise advise Mr. Partridge to inquire why Mr. Bickerstaff does not so much as offer one prediction to be ful- filled until two months after the time of publishing his paper. This looks a little suspicious, as if he were desirous to keep the world in play as long as he decently could, else it were hard he could not afford us one prediction between this and the 2 9th of March, which is not so fair dealing as we ha.ve even from Mr. Partridge and his brethren, who give us their predictions (such as they are indeed) for every month in the year. There is one passage in Mr. Bickerstaff's paper that seems to be as high a strain of assurance as I have anywhere met with. It is that prediction for the month of June which relates to the French prophets here in town, where he tells us, "They will utterly disperse by seeing the time come wherein their prophecies should be fulfilled, and then rinding themselves deceived by contrary events." Upon which he adds, with great reason, "his wonder how any deceiver can be so weak to foretell things near at hand, when a very few months must discover the imposture to all the world." This is spoken with a great deal of affected un- concernedness, as if he would have us think himself to be not under the least apprehension that the same in two months will be his own case. With respect to the gentleman, I do not remember to have heard of so refined and pleasant a piece of impudence, which I hope the author will not resent as an uncivil word, because I am sure I enter into his taste, and take it as he meant AN ANSWER TO BICKERSTAFF. 257 it. However, he half deserves a reprimand for writing with so much scorn and contempt for the understandings of the majority. For the month of July, he tells us " of a general who by a glorious action will recover the reputation he lost by former mis- fortunes." This is commonly understood to be Lord Galloway, who, if he be already dead, as some newspapers have it, Mr. Bickerstaff has made a trip. But this I do not much insist on, for it is hard if another general cannot be found under the same circumstances to whom this prediction may be as well applied. The French king's death is very punctually related, but it was unfortunate to make him die at Marli, where he never goes at that season of the year, as I observed myself during three years I passed in that kingdom ; and discoursing some months ago with Monsieur Tallard about the French court, I find that king never goes to Marli for any time but about the season of hunting there, which is not till August. So that there was an unlucky slip of Mr. Bickerstaff for want of foreign education. He concludes with resuming his promise of publishing entire predictions for next year, of which the other astrologers need not be in very much pain. I suppose we shall have them much about the same time with "The General History of Ears." I believe we have done with him for ever in this kind, and though I am no astrologer, may venture to prophesy that Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., is now dead, and died just at the time his predictions were ready for the press ; that he dropped out of the clouds about nine days ago, and in about four hours after mounted up thither again like a vapour; and will one day or other, perhaps, descend a second time, when he has some new, agreeable, or amusing whimsey to pass upon the town, wherein it is very probable he will succeed as often as he is disposed to try the experiment, that is, as long as he can preserve a thorough contempt for his own time and other people's understandings, and is resolved not to laugh cheaper than at the expense of a million of people. THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE FIRST OF MR. BICKERSTAFF'S PREDICTIONS. BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF MR. PARTRIDGE, THE ALMANAC-MAKER, UPON THE 29TH INSTANT, IN A LETTER TO A PERSON OF HONOUR, WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1708. "JV/TY LORD, In obedience to your lordship's commands, as A well as to satisfy my own curiosity, I have some days past inquired constantly after Partridge, the almanac-maker, of whom it was foretold in Mr. BickerstafFs Predictions, published about a month ago, that he should die the 2gih instant, about eleven at night, of a raging fever. I had some sort of knowledge of him when I was employed in the Revenue, because he used every year to present me with his almanac, as he did other gentlemen, upon the score of some little gratuity we gave him. I saw him acci- dentally once or twice about ten days before he died, and observed he began very much to droop and languish, though I hear his friends did not seem to apprehend him in any danger. About two or three days ago he grew ill. was confined first to his chamber, AN ACCOUNT OF PARTRIDGE'S DEATH. 259 and in a few hours after to his bed, where Dr. Case l and Mrs. Kirleus 2 were sent for to visit and to prescribe to him. Upon this intelligence, I sent thrice every day one servant or other to inquire after his health, and yesterday, about four in the after- noon, word was brought me " that he was past hopes," upon which I prevailed with myself to go and see him, partly out of commiseration, and, I confess, partly out of curiosity. He knew me very well, seemed surprised at my condescension, and made me compliments upon it, as well as he could in the condition he was. The people about him said he had been for some time delirious, but when I saw him he had his understanding as well as ever I knew, and spoke strong and hearty, without any seem- ing uneasiness or constraint. After I had told him how sorry I was to see him in those melancholy circumstances, and said some other civilities suitable to the occasion, I desired him to tell me freely and ingenuously whether the predictions Mr. Bickerstaff had published relating to his death had not too much affected and worked on his imagination. He confessed he had often had it in his head, but never with much apprehension till about a fortnight before, since which time it had the perpetual possession of his mind and thoughts, and he did verily believe was the true natural cause of his present distemper ; " for," said he, 1 John Case was many years a noted practitioner in physic and astrology. He was looked upon as the successor of Lilly and of Saffold, and possessed the magical utensils of both. He erased the verses of his predecessor from the sign-post, and substituted in their stead this distich, by which he is said to have got more than Dryden did by all his works "Within this place Lives Doctor Case." He published in 1697 one of the most profound astrological pieces the world ever saw, called "The Angelical Guide : showing men and women their chance in this elementary life," in four books. The diagrams in this work would probably have puzzled Euclid, though he had studied astrology. From the mention made of him by Swift, he appears to have been living in 1708. When Tutchin published his Observators, the Doctor used frequently to advertise himself at the end of that paper. Nichols. 2 Mary Kirleus, widow of John Kirleus, son of Dr. Thomas Kirleus, a collegiate physician of London, and sworn Physician in Ordinary to King Charles II., was a constant advertiser in the Observator, and " dealt with all persons according to their abilities." Nichols. 260 AN ACCOUNT OF PARTRIDGE'S DEATH. I am thoroughly persuaded, and I think I have very good reasons, that Mr. Bickerstaff spoke altogether by guess, and knew no more what will happen this year than I did myself." I told him his discourse surprised me, and I would be glad he were in a state of health to be able to tell me what reason he had to be convinced of Mr. Bickerstaffs ignorance. He replied, " I am a poor ignorant fellow, bred to a mean trade, yet I have sense enough to know that all pretences of foretelling by astrology are deceits, for this manifest reason, because the wise and the learned, who can only judge whether there J)e any truth in this science, do all unanimously agree to laugh at and despise it, and none but the poor ignorant vulgar give it any credit, and that only upon the word of such silly wretches as I and my fellows, who can hardly write or read." I then asked him why he had not calculated his own nativity, to see whether it agreed with Bickerstaffs pre- diction ; at which he shook his head, and said, " Oh, sir, this is no time for jesting, but for repenting those fooleries, as I do now from the very bottom of my heart." " By what I can gather from you," said I, " the observations and predictions you printed with your almanacs were mere impositions on the people." He re- plied, " If it were otherwise, I should have the less to answer for. We have a common form for all those things. As to foretelling the weather, we never meddle with that, but leave it to the printer, who takes it out of any old almanac he thinks fit ; the rest was my own invention, to make my almanac sell, having a wife to maintain, and no other way to get my bread, for mending old shoes is a poor livelihood ; and," added he, sighing, " I wish I may not have done more mischief by my physic than my astro- logy, though I had some good receipts from my grandmother, and my own compositions were such as I thought could at least do no hurt." I had some other discourse with him, which now I cannot call to mind, and I fear have already tired your lordship. I shall only add one circumstance, that on his deathbed he declared himself a Nonconformist, and had a fanatic preacher to be his spiritual guide. After half an hour's conversation I took my AN ACCOUNT OF PARTRIDGE'S DEATH. 261 leave, being almost stifled by the closeness of the room. I imagined he could not hold out long, and therefore withdrew to a little coffee-house hard by, leaving a servant at the house, with orders to come immediately and tell me, as near as he could, the minute when Partridge should expire, which was not above two hours after, when, looking upon my watch, I found it to be above five minutes after seven, by which it is clear that Mr. Bickerstaff was mistaken almost four hours in his calculation. In the other circumstances he was exact enough. But whether he has not been the cause of this poor man's death as well as the predictor, may be very reasonably disputed. However, it must be confessed the matter is odd enough, whether we should endeavour to account for it by chance or the effect of imagination. For my own part, though I believe no man has less faith in these matters, yet I shall wait with some impatience, and not without some expecta- tion, the fulfilling of Mr. Bickerstaffs second prediction, that the Cardinal de Noailles is to die upon the 4th of April, and if that should be verified as exactly as this of poor Partridge, I must own I should be wholly surprised and at a loss, and should infallibly expect the accomplishment of all the rest. A GRUB STREET ELEGY. ON THE SUPPOSED DEATH OF PARTRIDGE, THE ALMANAC-MAKER. (1708.) "\ ^ 7"ELL, 'tis as Bickerstaff has guessed, Though we all took it for a jest : Partridge is dead, nay, more, he died Ere he could prove the good Squire lied. Strange an astrologer should die Without one wonder in the sky : Not one of all his crony stars To pay their duty at his hearse ! No meteor, no eclipse appeared, No comet with a flaming beard ! The sun has rose and gone to bed, Just as if Partridge were not dead, Nor hid himself behind the moon To make a dreadful night at noon ; He at fit periods walks through Aries, Howe'er qur earthly motion varies ; And twice a year he'll cut the Equator, As if there had been no such matter Some wits have wondered what analogy There is 'twixt cobbling l and astrology \ 1 Partridge was a cobbler. S. A GRUB STREET ELEGY. 263 How Partridge made his optics rise From a shoe-sole to reach the skies. A list the cobbler's temples ties, To keep the hair out of his eyes ; From whence 'tis plain the diadem That princes wear derives from them ; And therefore crowns are now-a-days Adorned with golden stars and rays, Which plainly shows the near alliance 'Twixt cobbling and the planets' science. Besides, that slow-paced sign Bootes, As 'tis miscalled, we know not who 'tis ; But Partridge ended all disputes, He knew his trade, and called it boots. 1 The horned moon, which heretofore Upon their shoes the Romans wore, Whose wideness kept their toes from corns, And whence we claim our shoeing-horns, Shows how the art of cobbling bears A near resemblance to the spheres. A scrap of parchment hung by geometry (A great refiner in barometry) Can, like the stars, foretell the weather ; And what is parchment else but leather, Which an astrologer might use Either for almanacs or shoes ? Thus Partridge, by his wit and parts, At once did practise both these arts, And as the boding owl (or rather The bat, because her wings are leather) Steals from her private cell by night, And flies about the candle-light ; So learned Partridge could as well Creep in the dark from leathern cell, And in his fancy fly as far To peep upon a twinkling star. 1 See his Almanac. S. 264 A GRUB STREET ELEGY. Besides, he could confound the spheres And set the planets by the ears ; To show his skill, he Mars could join To Venus in aspect malign, Then call in Mercury for aid, And cure the wounds that Venus made. Great scholars have in Lucian read When Philip, king of Greece, was dead, His soul and spirit did divide, And each part took a different side ; One rose a star, the other fell Beneath, and mended shoes in Hell. Thus Partridge still shines in each art, The cobbling and star-gazing part, And is installed as good a star As any of the Caesars are. Triumphant star ! some pity show On cobblers militant below, Whom roguish boys, in stormy nights, Torment by putting out their lights, Or through a chink convey their smoke, Enclosed artificers to choke. Thou, high exalted in thy sphere, Mayst follow still thy calling there ; To thee the Bull will lend his hide, By Phcebus newly tanned and dried ; For thee they Argo's hulk will tax, And scrape her pitchy sides for wax ; Then Ariadne kindly lends Her braided hair to make thee ends ; The points of Sagittarius' dart Turns to an awl by heavenly art ; And Vulcan, wheedled by his wife, Will forge for thee a paring knife. For want of room by Virgo's side, She'll strain a point and sit astride, 1 1 " Tibi brachia contrahit ingens Scorpius," &c. A GRUB STREET ELEGY. 265 To take thee kindly in between, And then the signs will be thirteen. THE EPITAPH. HERE, five feet deep, lies on his back A cobbler, starmonger, and quack, Who to the stars, in pure goodwill, Does to his best look upward still. Weep, all you customers that use His pills, his almanacs, or shoes, And you that did your fortune seek, Step to his grave but once a week ; This earth which bears his body's print, You'll find has so much virtue in't, That I durst pawn my ears 'twill tell Whate'er concerns you full as well, In physic, stolen goods, or love, As he himself could when above. A DESCRIPTION OF THE MORNING. WRITTEN IN APRIL 1709, AND FIRST PRINTED IN THE TATLER. TVT OW hardly here and there a hackney-coach *" ^ Appearing, showed the ruddy morn's approach ; The slipshod 'prentice from his master's door Had pared the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor. Now Moll had whirled her mop with dextrous airs, Prepared to scrub the entry and the stairs ; The youth with broomy stumps began to trace The kennel's edge where wheels had worn the place ; The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep, Till drowned in shriller notes of chimney-sweep ; Duns at his lordship's gate began to meet, And brickdust Moll had screamed through half the street. The turnkey now his flock returning sees, Duly let out anights to steal for fees ; The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands, And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands. A DESCRIPTION OF A CITY SHOWER. 1 IN IMITATION OF VIRGIL'S GEORGICS. WRITTEN IN OCTOBER 1710, AND FIRST PRINTED IN THE TATLER, /CAREFUL observers may foretell the hour ^^ (By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower. While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more ; Returning home at night, you'll find the sink Strike your offended sense with double stink. If you be wise, then go not far to dine ; You'll spend in coach-hire more than save in wine. A coming shower your shooting corns presage, Old aches 2 will throb, your hollow tooth will rage ; 1 " This day came out the Tatler, made up wholly of my ' Shower' and a pre- face to it. They say it is the best thing I ever writ, and I think so too. I suppose the Bishop of Clogher will show it you. Pray tell me how you like it." Journal to Stella, October 17, 1710. "Tell me how my 'Shower' is liked in Ireland. I never knew anything pass better here. There never was such a ' Shower ' since Danae's," &c. Ibid. "I am writing my poetical description of a 'Shower* in London, and will send it to the Tatler" Ibid. "The Bishop of Clogher says I bid him read the London 'Shaver,' and that you both swore it was 'Shaver,' and not ' Shower." You lie, and you are puppies, and can't read Presto's hand." Ibid., November 28, 1710. "My ' Shower' admired with you ; why, the Bishop of Clogher says he has seen something of mine of the same sort better than the 'Shower.' I suppose he means 'The Morning,' but it is not half so good." Ibid., November 30, 1710. " Mr. Dopping I have seen, and he tells me coldly my ' Shower' is liked well enough ; there's your Irish judgment." Ibid. 2 In the old folio and first octavo this word was used as a dissyllable, "Old 268 A DESCRIPTION OF A CITY SHOWER. Sauntering in coffee-house is Dulman seen, He damns the climate and complains of spleen. Meanwhile the South, rising with dabbled wings, A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings, That swilled more liquor than it could contain, And, like a drunkard, gives it up again. Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope, While the first drizzling shower is borne aslope ; Such is that sprinkling which some careless queen Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean ; You fly, invoke the gods ; then turning, stop To rail ; she, singing, still whirls on her mop. Not yet the dust had shunned th' unequal strife, But, aided by the wind, fought still for life, And wafted with its foe by violent gust, 'Twas doubtful which was rain and which was dust. 1 Ah ! where must needy poet seek for aid When dust and rain at once his coat invade ? Sole coat ! 2 where dust, cemented by the rain, Erects 2 the nap, and leaves a cloudy stain ! Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down, Threatening with deluge this devoted town. To shops in crowds the daggled females fly, Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy. The Templar spruce, while every spout's abroach, Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach. The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oiled umbrella's sides. Here various kinds, by various fortunes led, Commence acquaintance underneath a shed. a-ches throb," &c., and so it has continued in all the subsequent editions both of the Tatler and Swift's " Works," till the collection of the English poets was pub- lished in 1779 by Dr. Johnson. 1 " Twas doubtful which was sea and which was sky." Garth's Dispensary. 2 Originally thus, but altered when Pope published the " Miscellanies," " His only coat, where dust, confused with rain, Roughens the nap, and leaves a mingled stain." A DESCRIPTION OF A CITY SHOWER. 269 Triumphant Tories and desponding Whigs, 1 Forget their feuds and join to save their wigs. Boxed in a chair the Beau impatient sits, While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits, And ever and anon with frightful din The leather sounds, he trembles from within. So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed, Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed (Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do, Instead of paying chairmen, ran them through), Laocoon struck the outside with his spear, And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear. Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow, And bear their trophies with them as they go ; Filths of all hues and odour seem to tell What street they sailed from by their sight and smell ; They, as each torrent drives with rapid force, From Smithfield to St. Pulchre's shape their course, And in huge confluence joined at Snowhill ridge, Fall from the conduit prone to Holborn bridge ; Sweepings from butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud, Dead cats and turnip-tops come tumbling down the flood. 1 Written in the first year of the Earl of Oxford's Ministry. A PROJECT FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF RELIGION AND THE REFORMATION OF MANNERS. 1 O ! si quis volet impias Caedes et rabiem tollere civicam : Si quaeret pater urbium Subscribi statuis, indomitam audeat Refhenare licentiam. 2 Hor. 3 Od. xxiv. 25. BY A PERSON OF QUALITY. WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1709. 1 " Will's Coffee-house, April 20, 1709. This week being sacred to holy things, and no public diversions allowed, there has been taken notice of even here a little treatise, called 'A Project for the Advancement of Religion,' dedicated to the Countess of Berkeley. The title was so uncommon, and promised so peculiar a way of thinking, that every man here has read it, and as many as have done so have approved it. It is written with the spirit of one who has seen the world enough to undervalue it with good-breeding. The author must certainly be a man of wisdom as well as piety, and have spent much time in the exercise of both. The real causes of the decay of the interest of religion are set forth in- a clear and lively manner, without unseasonable passions ; and the whole air of the book, as to the language, the sentiments, and the reasonings, shows it was written by one whose virtue sits easy about him, and to whom vice is thoroughly contemptible. It was said by one in company, alluding to that knowledge of the world this author seems to have, the man writes much like a gentleman, and goes to heaven with a very good mien." Tatler, No. 5. H. "The gentleman I here intended was Dr. Swift; this kind of man I thought him at that time. We have not met of late, but I hope he deserves this character still." Steetis Apology, p. 49. N. 2 " Oh ! that some Patriot, wise and good, Would stop this impious thirst of civil blood, And joy on statues to behold His name, the father of the state, enrolled." Francis. TO THE COUNTESS OF BERKELEY. 1 TV /fADAM, My intention of prefixing your ladyship's name is not, after the common form, to desire your protection of the following papers, which I take to be a very unreasonable request, since by being inscribed to your ladyship, though with- out your knowledge and from a concealed hand, you cannot recommend them without some suspicion of partiality. My real design is, I confess, the very same I have often detested in most dedications, that of publishing your praises to the world; not upon the subject of your noble birth, for I know others as noble ; or of the greatness of your fortune, for I know others far greater ; or of that beautiful race (the images of their parents) which call you mother, for even this may perhaps have been equalled in some other age or country. Besides, none of these advantages do derive any accomplishments to the owners, but serve at best only to adorn what they really possess. What I intend is, your piety, truth, good sense, and good nature, affability, and charity, wherein I wish your ladyship had many equals or any superiors ; and I wish I could say I knew them too, for then your ladyship might have had a chance to escape this address. In the mean- time, I think it highly necessary for the interest of virtue and religion that the whole kingdom should be informed in some parts of your character ; for instance, that the easiest and politest conversation, joined with the truest piety, may be observed in your ladyship, in as great perfection as they were ever seen apart 1 Elizabeth, daughter of Baptist Noel, Viscount Campden, and sister to Edward Earl of Gainsborough. To the kindness of this lady it is not unlikely that Swift was indebted for his benefices. Johnson. S 274 A PROJECT, ETC. in any other persons; that by your prudence and management under several disadvantages you have preserved the lustre of that most noble family into which you are grafted, and which the unmeasurable profusion of ancestors for many generations had too much eclipsed. Then how happily you perform every office of life to which Providence has called you, in the education of those two incomparable daughters, whose conduct is so universally admired ; in every duty of a prudent, complying, affectionate wife ; in that care which descends to the meanest of your domestics ; and lastly, in that endless bounty to the poor, and discretion where to distribute it. I insist on my opinion that it is of import- ance for the public to know this and a great deal more of your ladyship ; yet whoever goes about to inform them shall, instead of finding credit, perhaps be censured for a flatterer. To avoid so usual a reproach, I declare this to be no dedication, but merely an introduction to a proposal for the advancement of religion and morals, by tracing, however imperfectly, some few lineaments in the character of a lady who has spent all her life in the practice and promotion of both. A PROJECT, &c. A MONO all the schemes offered to the public in this pro- 7^ jecting age, I have observed, with some displeasure, that there have never been any for the improvement of religion and morals, which, besides the piety of the design, from the conse- quence of such a reformation in a future life, would be the best natural means for advancing the public felicity of the state, as well as the present happiness of every individual. For, as much as faith and morality are declined among us, I am altogether confident they might, in a short time, and with no very great trouble, be raised to as high a perfection as numbers are capable of receiving. Indeed, the method is so easy and obvious, and some present opportunities so good, that, in order to have this project reduced to practice, there seems to want nothing more than to put those in mind who, by their honour, duty, and inte- rest, are chiefly concerned. But because it is idle to propose remedies before we are assured of the disease, or to be in fear till we are convinced of the danger, I shall first show in general that the nation is extremely corrupted in religion and morals, and then I will offer a short scheme for the reformation of both. As to the first, I know it is reckoned but a form of speech when divines complain of the wickedness of the age ; however, I believe, upon a fair comparison with other times and countries, it would be found an undoubted truth. For first, to deliver nothing but plain matter of fact, without 276 A PROJECT FOR THE exaggeration or satire, I suppose it will be granted that hardly one in a hundred among our people of quality or gentry appears to act by any principle of religion ; that great numbers of them do entirely discard it, and are ready to own their disbelief of all revelation in ordinary discourse. Nor is the case much better among the vulgar, especially in great towns, where the profane- ness and ignorance of handicraftsmen, small traders, servants, and the like, are to a degree very hard to be imagined greater. Then it is observed abroad that no race of mortals have so little sense of religion as the English soldiers ; to confirm which I have been often told by great officers of the army that, in the whole compass of their acquaintance, they could not recollect three of their pro- fession who seemed to regard or believe one syllable of the Gospel. And the same at least may be affirmed of the Fleet. The conse- quences of all which upon the actions of men are equally manifest. They never go about, as in former times, to hide or palliate their vices, but expose them freely to view, like any other common occurrences of life, without the least reproach from the world or themselves. For instance, any man will tell you he intends to be drunk this evening, or was so last night, with as little ceremony or scruple as he would tell you the time of the day. He will let you know he is going to a wench, or that he has got the venereal dis- ease, with as much indifferency as he would a piece of public news. He will swear, curse, or blaspheme without the least passion or provocation. And though all regard for reputation is not quite laid aside in- the other sex, it is however at so low an ebb, that very few among them seem to think virtue and conduct of abso- lute necessity for preserving it. If this be not so, how comes it to pass that women of tainted reputations find the same counte- nance and reception in all public places with those of the nicest virtue, who pay and receive visits from them without any manner of scruple ? which proceeding, as it is not very old among us, so I take it to be of most pernicious consequence ; it looks like a sort of compounding between virtue and vice, as if a woman were allowed to be vicious provided she be not a profligate ; as if there were a certain point where gallantry ends and infamy begins, or ADVANCEMENT OF RELIGION. 277 that a hundred criminal amours were not as pardonable as half a score. Beside those corruptions already mentioned, it would be endless to enumerate such as arise from the excess of play or gaming ; the cheats, the quarrels, the oaths, and blasphemies among the men; among the women, the neglect of household affairs; the unlimited freedoms, the indecent passion, and lastly, the known inlet to all lewdness, when, after an ill run, the person must answer the defects of the purse, the rule on such occasions holding true in play as it does in law, quod non habet in crumena^ luat in corpore. But all these are trifles in comparison if we step into other scenes, and consider the fraud and cozenage of trading men and shopkeepers ; that insatiable gulf of injustice and oppression, the law ; the open traffic for all civil and military employments (I wish it rested there), without the least regard to merit or qualifications ; the corrupt management of men in office ; the many detestable abuses in choosing those who represent the people, with the management of interest and factions among the representatives ; to which I must be bold to add, the ignorance of some of the lower clergy ; the mean servile temper of others ; the pert prag- matical demeanour of several young stagers in divinity, upon their first producing themselves into the world ; with many other circumstances, needless, or rather invidious, to mention, which falling in with the corruptions already related, have, however un- justly, almost rendered the whole order contemptible. This is a short view of the general depravities among us, without entering into particulars, which would be an endless labour. Now, as universal and deep-rooted as these appear to be, I am utterly deceived if an effectual remedy might not be applied to most of them ; neither am I at present upon a wild speculative project, but such a one as may be easily put in execution. For while the prerogative of giving all employments continues in the crown, either immediately or by subordination, it is in the power of the prince to make piety and virtue become the fashion of the age, if at the same time he would make them necessary qualifications for favour and preferment. 278 A PROJECT FOR THE It is clear from present experience that the bare example of the best prince will not have any mighty influence where the age is very corrupt. For when was there ever a better prince on the throne than the present Queen ? I do not talk of her talent for government, her love of the people, or any other qualities that are purely regal; but her piety, charity, temperance, conjugal love, and whatever other virtues do best adorn a private life, wherein, without question or flattery, she has no superior; yet neither will it be satire or peevish invective to affirm that infi- delity and vice are not much diminished since her coming to the crown, nor will, in all probability, till more effectual remedies be provided. Thus human nature seems to lie under the disadvantage that the example alone of a vicious prince will in time corrupt an age, but the example of a good one will not be sufficient to reform it without further endeavours. Princes must therefore supply this defect by a vigorous exercise of that authority which the law has left them, by making it every man's interest and honour to cul- tivate religion and virtue, by rendering vice a disgrace, and the certain ruin to preferment or pretensions, all which they should first attempt in their own courts and families. For instance, might not the Queen's domestics of the middle and lower sort be obliged, upon penalty of suspension or loss of their employ- ments, to a constant weekly attendance at least on the service of the Church, to a decent behaviour in it, to receive the sacrament four times in the year, to avoid swearing and irreligious profane discourse, and to the appearance at least of temperance and chastity? Might not the care of all this be committed to the strict inspection of proper officers ? Might not those of higher rank and nearer access to her Majesty's person receive her own com- mands to the same purpose, and be countenanced or disfavoured according as they obey ? Might not the Queen lay her injunctions on the bishops and other great men of undoubted piety to make diligent inquiry, and give her notice if any person about her should happen to be of libertine principles or morals ? Might not all those who enter upon any office in her Majesty's family be ADVANCEMENT OF RELIGION. 279 obliged to take an oath parallel with that against simony which is administered to the clergy ? It is not to be doubted but that if these or the like proceedings were duly observed, morality and religion would soon become fashionable court virtues, and be taken up as the only methods to get or keep employments there, which alone would have mighty influence upon many of the nobility and principal gentry. But if the like methods were pursued as far as possible with regard to those who are in the great employments of state, it is hard to conceive how general a reformation they might in time produce among us. For if piety and virtue were once reckoned qualifications necessary to preferment, every man thus endowed, when put into great stations, would readily imitate the Queen's example in the distribution of all offices in his disposal, especially if any apparent transgression, through favour or partiality, would be imputed to him for a misdemeanour, by which he must certainly forfeit his favour and station, and there being such great numbers in employment scattered through every town and county in this kingdom, if all these were exemplary in the conduct of their lives, things would soon take a new face, and religion receive a mighty encouragement ; nor would the public weal be less advanced, since of nine offices in ten that are ill executed, the defect is not in capacity or understanding, but in common honesty. I know no employment for which piety disqualifies any man, and if it did, I doubt the objection would not be very seasonably offered at present, because it is perhaps too just a reflection that, in the disposal of places, the question whether a person be fit for what he is recommended to is generally the last that is thought on or regarded. I have often imagined that something parallel to the office of censors anciently in Rome would be of mighty use among us, and could be easily limited from running into any exorbitances. The Romans understood liberty at least as well as we, were as jealous of it, and upon every occasion as bold assertors. Yet I do not remember to have read any great complaint of the abuses in that office among them, but many admirable effects of it are 2 8o A PROJECT FOR THE left upon record. There are several pernicious vices frequent and notorious among us, that escape or elude the punishment of any law we have yet invented, or have had no law at all against them, such as atheism, drunkenness, fraud, avarice, and several others, which, by this institution, wisely regulated, might be much reformed. Suppose, for instance, that itinerary commissioners were appointed to inspect everywhere throughout the kingdom into the conduct at least of men in office, with respect to their morals and religion as well as their abilities, to receive the com- plaints and informations that should be offered against them, and make their report here upon oath to the Court or the Ministry, who should reward or punish accordingly. I avoid entering into the particulars of this or any other scheme, which, coming from a private hand, might be liable to many defects, but would soon be digested by the wisdom of the nation, and surely six thousand pounds a year would not be ill laid out among as many commis- sioners duly qualified, who in three divisions should be personally obliged to take their yearly circuits for that purpose. But this is beside my present design, which was only to show what degree of reformation is in the power of the Queen, with- out the interposition of the Legislature, and which her Majesty is, without question, obliged in conscience to endeavour by her authority as much as she does by her practice. It will be easily granted that the example of this great town has a mighty influence over the whole kingdom, and it is as manifest that the town is equally influenced by the Court and the Ministry, and those who by their employments or their hopes depend upon them. Now if under so excellent a princess as the present Queen, we would suppose a family strictly regulated as I have above pro- posed, a Ministry where every single person was of distinguished piety ; if we should suppose all great offices of state and law filled after the same manner, and with such as were equally diligent in choosing persons, who in their several subordinations would be obliged to follow the examples of their superiors, under the penalty of loss of favour and place, will not everybody grant that the empire of vice and irreligion would be soon destroyed in this ADVANCEMENT OF RELIGION. 281 great metropolis, and receive a terrible blow through the whole island, which has so great an intercourse with it, and so much affects to follow its fashions ? For if religion were once understood to be the necessary step to favour and preferment, can it be imagined that any man would openly offend against it who had the least regard for his reputa- tion or his fortune ? There is no quality so contrary to any nature which men cannot affect and put on upon occasion in order to serve an interest or gratify a prevailing passion. The proudest man will personate humility, the morosest learn to flatter, the "laziest will be sedulous and active where he is in pursuit of what he has much at heart ; how ready therefore would most men be to step into the paths of virtue and piety if they infallibly led to favour and fortune ! If swearing and profaneness, scandalous and avowed lewdness, excessive gaming and intemperance, were a little discountenanced in the army, I cannot readily see what ill consequences could be apprehended. If gentlemen of that profession were at least obliged to some external decorum in their conduct, or even if a profligate life and character were not a means of advancement, and the appearance of piety a most infallible hindrance, it is impossible the corruptions there should be so universal and exor- bitant. I have been assured by several great officers that no troops abroad are so ill disciplined as the English, which cannot well be otherwise while the common soldiers have perpetually before their eyes the vicious example of their leaders, and it is hardly possible for those to commit any crime whereof these are not infinitely more guilty, and with less temptation. It is commonly charged upon the gentlemen of the army that the beastly vice of drinking to excess has been lately, from their example, restored among us, which for some years before was almost dropped in England. But whoever the introducers were, they have succeeded to a miracle. Many of the young nobility and gentry are already become great proficients, and are under no manner of concern to hide their talent, but are got beyond all sense of shame or fear of reproach. 282 A PROJECT FOR THE This might soon be remedied if the Queen would think fit to declare that no young person of quality whatsoever, who was notoriously addicted to that or any other vice, should be capable of her favour, or even admitted into her presence, with positive command to her Ministers and others in great office to treat them in the same manner ; after which all men who had any regard for their reputation or any prospect of preferment would avoid their commerce. This would quickly make that vice so scandalous, that those who could not subdue would at least endeavour to disguise it. By the like methods a stop might be put to that ruinous prac- tice of deep gaming ; and the reason why it prevails so much is because a treatment directly opposite in every point is made use of to promote it, by which means the laws enacted against this abuse are wholly eluded. It cannot be denied that the want of strict discipline in the universities has been of pernicious consequences to the youth of this nation, who are there almost left entirely to their own management, especially those among them of better quality and fortune, who, because they are not under a necessity of making learning their maintenance, are easily allowed to pass their time and take their degrees with little or no improvement, than which there cannot well be a greater absurdity. For if no advancement of knowledge can be had from those places, the time there spent is at best utterly lost, because every ornamental part of education is better taught elsewhere ; and as for keeping youths out of harm's way, I doubt, where so many of them are got together at full liberty of doing what they please, it will not answer the end. But whatever abuses, corruptions, or deviations from statutes have crept into universities through neglect or length of time, they might in a great degree be reformed by strict injunctions from Court (upon each particular) to the visitors and heads of houses, besides the peculiar authority the Queen may have in several colleges, whereof her predecessors were the founders. And among other regulations, it would be very convenient to prevent the excess of drinking, with that scurvy custom among ADVANCEMENT OF RELIGION. 283 the lads, and parent of the former vice, the taking of tobacco, where it is not absolutely necessary in point of health. From the universities the young nobility and others of great fortunes are sent for early up to town, for fear of contracting any airs of pedantry by a college education. Many of the younger gentry retire to the Inns of Court, where they are wholly left to their own discretion. And the consequence of this remissness in education appears by observing that nine in ten of those who rise in the Church or the Court, the Law, or the Army, are younger brothers or new men, whose narrow fortunes have forced them upon industry and application. As for the Inns of Court, unless we suppose them to be much degenerated, they must needs be the worst instituted seminaries in any Christian country; but whether they may be corrected without interposition of the Legislature, I have not skill enough to determine. However, it is certain that all wise nations have agreed in the necessity of a strict education, which consisted, among other things, in the observance of moral duties, especially justice, temperance, and chastity, as well as the knowledge of arts and bodily exercises ; but all these among us are laughed out of doors. Without the least intention to offend the clergy, I cannot but think that, through a mistaken notion and practice, they prevent themselves from doing much service, which otherwise might lie in their power, to religion and virtue ; I mean, by affecting so much to converse with each other, and caring so little to mingle with the laity. They have their particular clubs and particular coffee-houses, where they generally appear in clusters ; a single divine dares hardly show his person among numbers of fine gentlemen, or, if he happens to fall into such company, he is silent and suspicious, in continual apprehension that some pert man of pleasure should break an unmannerly jest and render him ridiculous. Now I take this behaviour of the clergy to be just as reasonable as if the physicians should agree to spend their time in visiting one another or .their several apothecaries, and leave their patients to shift for themselves. In my humble opinion, the 284 A PROJECT FOR THE clergy's business lies entirely among the laity ; neither is there perhaps a more effectual way to forward the salvation of men's souls than for spiritual persons to make themselves as agreeable as they can in the conversations of the world, for which a learned education gives them great advantage, if they would please to improve and apply it. It so happens that the men of pleasure, who never go to church nor use themselves to read books of devotion, form their ideas of the clergy from a few poor strollers they often observe in the streets or sneaking out of some person of quality's house, where they are hired by the lady at ten shillings a month, while those of better figure and parts do seldom appear to correct these notions. And let some reasoners think what they please, it is certain that men must be brought to esteem and love the clergy before they can be persuaded to be in love with religion. No man values the best medicine if administered by a physician whose person he hates or despises. If the clergy were as forward to appear in all companies as other gentlemen, and would a little study the arts of conversation to make themselves agreeable, they might be welcome at every party where there was the least regard for politeness or good sense, and consequently prevent a thousand vicious or profane discourses, as well as actions ; neither would men of understanding complain that a clergyman was a constraint upon the company because they could not speak blasphemy or obscene jests before him. While the people are so jealous of the clergy's ambition as to abhor all thoughts of the return of ecclesiastic discipline among them, I do not see any other method left for men of that function to take in order to reform the world than by using all honest arts to make themselves acceptable to the laity. This, no doubt, is part of that wisdom of the serpent which the Author of Christianity directs, and is the very method used by St. Paul, who became all things to all men, to the Jews a Jew, and a Greek to the Greeks. How to remedy these inconveniences may be a matter of some difficulty, since the clergy seem to be of an opinion that this humour of sequestering themselves is a part of their duty ; nay, ADVANCEMENT OF RELIGION. 285 as I remember, they have been told so by some of their bishops in their pastoral letters, particularly by one among them of great merit and distinction, 1 who yet, in his own practice, has all his lifetime taken a course directly contrary. But I am deceived if an awkward shame and fear of ill-usage from the laity have not a greater share in this mistaken conduct than their own inclinations. However, if the outward profession of religion and virtue were once in practice and countenance at Court as well as among all men in office, or who have any hopes or dependence for prefer- ment, a good treatment of the clergy would be the necessary consequence of such a reformation, and they would soon be wise enough to see their own duty and interest in qualifying themselves for lay conversation, when once they were out of fear of being choked by ribaldry and profaneness. There is one further circumstance upon this occasion which I know not whether it will be very orthodox to mention ; the clergy are the only set of men among us who constantly wear a distinct habit from others ; the consequence of which (not in reason, but in fact) is this, that as long as any scandalous persons appear in that dress, it will continue in some degree a general mark of con- tempt. Whoever happens to see a scoundrel in a gown reeling home at midnight (a sight neither frequent nor miraculous), is apt to entertain an ill idea of the whole order, and at the same time to be extremely comforted in his own vices. Some remedy might be put to this if those straggling gentlemen who come up to town to seek their fortunes were fairly dismissed to the West Indies, where there is work enough, and where some better provision should be made for them than I doubt there is at present. Or what if no person were allowed to wear the habit who had not some prefer- ment in the Church, or at least some temporal fortune sufficient to keep him out of contempt ? though, in my opinion, it were infinitely better if all the clergy (except the bishops) were permitted to appear like other men of the graver sort, unless at those seasons when they are doing the business of their function. There is one abuse in this town which wonderfully contributes 1 Supposed to be Dr. Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury. Hawkes-worth. 286 A PROJECT FOR THE to the promotion of vice, that such men are often put into the commission of the peace whose interest it is that virtue should be utterly banished from among us ; who maintain, or at least enrich themselves by encouraging, the grossest immoralities ; to whom all the bawds of the ward pay contribution for shelter and protection from the laws. Thus these worthy magistrates, instead of lessening enormities, are the occasion of just twice as much debauchery as there would be without them. For those infamous women are forced upon doubling their work and industry, to answer double charges, of paying the justice, and supporting them- selves, like thieves who escape the gallows, and are let out to steal in order to discharge the gaoler's fees. It is not to be questioned but the Queen and Ministry might easily redress this abominable grievance by enlarging the num- ber of justices of the peace, by endeavouring to choose men of virtuous principles, by admitting none who have not considerable fortunes, perhaps by receiving into the number some of the most eminent clergy ; then by forcing all of them upon severe penalties to act when there is occasion, and not permitting any who are offered to refuse the commission; but in these two last cases, which are very material, I doubt there will be need of the Legis- lature. The reformation of the stage is entirely in the power of the Queen, and in the consequences it has upon the minds of the younger people does very well deserve the strictest care. Besides the indecent and profane passages, besides the perpetual turning into ridicule the very function of the priesthood, with other irregularities in most modern comedies which have been often objected to them, it is worth observing the distributive justice of the authors, which is constantly applied to the punishment of virtue and the reward of vice, directly opposite to the rules of their best critics, as well as to the practice of dramatic poets in all other ages and countries. For example, a country squire who is represented with no other vice but that of being a clown, and having the provincial accent upon his tongue, which is neither a fault nor in his power to remedy, must be condemned to marry a ADVANCEMENT OF RELIGION. 287 cast wench or a cracked chambermaid. On the other side, a rakehell of the town, whose character is set off with no other accomplishment but excessive prodigality, profaneness, intem- perance, and lust, is rewarded with a lady of great fortune to repair his own, which his vices had almost ruined. And as in a tragedy the hero is represented to have obtained many victories in order to raise his character in the minds of the spectators, so the hero of a comedy is represented to have been victorious in all his intrigues for the same reason. I do not remember that our English poets ever suffered a criminal amour to succeed upon the stage till the reign of King Charles the Second. Ever since that time the alderman is made a cuckold, the deluded virgin is debauched, and adultery and fornication are supposed to be committed behind the scenes as part of the action. These and many more corruptions of the theatre peculiar to our age and nation need continue no longer than while the Court is content to connive at or neglect them. Surely a pension would not be ill employed on some men of wit, learning, and virtue who might have power to strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays already written, as well as those that may be offered to the stage for the future; by which and other wise regulations the theatre might become a very innocent and useful diversion, instead of being a scandal and reproach to our religion and country. The proposals I have hitherto made for the advancement of religion and morality are such as come within reach of the Ad- ministration ; such as a pious active prince with a steady reso- lution might soon bring to effect. Neither am I aware of any objections to be raised against what I have advanced, unless it should be thought that making religion a necessary step to interest and favour might increase hypocrisy among us ; and I readily believe it would. But if one in twenty should be brought over to true piety by this or the like methods, and the other nineteen be only hypocrites, the advantage would still be great. Besides, hypocrisy is much more eligible than open infidelity and vice ; it wears the livery of religion ; it acknowledges her autho- 288 A PROJECT FOR THE rity, and is cautious of giving scandal. Nay, a long-continued disguise is too great a constraint upon human nature, especially an English disposition ; men would leave off their vices out of mere weariness, rather than undergo the toil and hazard, and perhaps the expense, of practising them perpetually in private. And I believe it is often with religion as it is with love, which, by much dissembling, at last grows real. All other projects to this great end have proved hitherto ineffec- tual. Laws against immorality have not been executed, and pro- clamations occasionally issued out to enforce them are wholly unregarded as things of form. Religious societies, though begun with excellent intention, and by persons of true piety, are said, I know not whether truly or not, to have dwindled into factious clubs, and grown a trade to enrich little knavish informers of the meanest rank, such as common constables and broken shop- keepers. And that some effectual attempt should be made toward such a reformation is perhaps more necessary than people commonly apprehend, because the ruin of a state is generally preceded by a universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion, which is entirely our case at present. " Diis te minorem, quod geris, imperas." 1 Hor. 3 Od. vi. 5. Neither is this a matter to be deferred till a more convenient time of peace and leisure, because a reformation in men's faith and morals is the best natural as well as religious means to bring the war to a good conclusion. For if men in trust per- formed their duty for conscience-sake, affairs would not suffer through fraud, falsehood, and neglect, as they now perpetually do. And if they believed a God and His providence, and acted accordingly, they might reasonably hope for His divine assist- ance in so just a cause as ours. Nor could the majesty of the English crown appear upon any i ' ' That you the Power Divine obey, Boundless on earth extends your sway." Francis. ADVANCEMENT OF RELIGION. 289 occasion in a greater lustre, either to foreigners or subjects, than by an Administration which, producing such great effects, would discover so much power. And power being the natural appetite of princes, a limited monarch cannot so well gratify it in any- thing as a strict execution of the laws. Besides, all parties would be obliged to close with so good a work as this for their own reputation ; neither is any expedient more likely to unite them ; for the most violent party-men I have ever observed are such as, in the conduct of their lives, have dis- covered least sense of religion or morality ; and when all such are laid aside, at least those among them as shall be found incor- rigible, it will be a matter perhaps of no great difficulty to reconcile the rest. The many corruptions at present in every branch of business are almost inconceivable. I have heard it computed by skilful persons that of six millions raised every year for the service of the public, one third, at least, is sunk and intercepted through the several classes and subordinations of artful men in office before the remainder is applied to the proper uses. This is an accidental ill effect of our freedom. And while such men are in trust, who have no check from within nor any views but toward their interest, there is no other fence against them but the certainty of being hanged upon the first discovery by the arbitrary will of an unlimited monarch or his vizier. Among us the only danger to be apprehended is the loss of an em- ployment, and that danger is to be eluded a thousand ways. Besides, when fraud is great, it furnishes weapons to defend itself, and at worst, if the crimes be so flagrant that a man is laid aside out of perfect shame (which rarely happens), he re- tires loaded with the spoils of the nation ; et fruitur diis iratis. I could name a commission where several persons, out of a salary of five hundred pounds, without other visible revenues, have always lived at the rate of two thousand, and laid out forty or fifty thousand upon purchases of land annuities. A hundred other instances of the same kind might easily be pro- duced. What remedy, therefore, can be found against such T 290 A PROJECT FOR THE grievances, in a constitution like ours, but to bring religion into countenance, and encourage those who, from the hope of future reward and dread of future punishment, will be moved to act with justice and integrity ? This is not to be accomplished in any other way than by intro- ducing religion as much as possible to be the turn and fashion of the age, which only lies in the power of the Administration, the prince with utmost strictness regulating the court, the Ministry, and other persons in great employment, and these, by their example and authority, reforming all who have dependence on them. It is certain that a reformation successfully carried on in this great town would in time spread itself over the whole kingdom, since most of the considerable youth pass here that season of their lives wherein the strongest impressions are made in order to improve their education or advance their fortune, and those among them who return into their several counties are sure to be followed and imitated, as the greatest patterns of wit and good-breeding. And if things were once in this train, that is, if virtue and religion were established as the necessary titles to reputation and preferment, and if vice and infidelity were not only laden with infamy, but made the infallible ruin of all men's preten- sions, our duty, by becoming our interest, would take root in our natures and mix with the very genius of our people, so that it would not be easy for the example of one wicked prince to bring us back to our former corruptions. I have confined myself (as it is before observed) to those methods for the advancement of piety which are in the power of a prince limited, like ours, by a strict execution of the laws already in force ; and this is enough for a project that comes without any name or recommendation, I doubt a great deal more than will suddenly be reduced into practice; though, if any disposition should appear toward so good a work, it is certain that the assistance of the legislative power would be necessary to make it more complete. I will instance only a few particulars. In order to reform the vices of this town, which, as we have ADVANCEMENT OF RELIGION., 291 said, has so mighty an influence on the whole kingdom, it would be very instrumental to have a law made that all taverns and alehouses should be obliged to dismiss their company by twelve at night and shut up their doors, and that no woman should be suffered to enter any tavern or alehouse upon any pretence what' soever. It is easy to conceive what a number of ill consequences such a law would prevent ; the mischiefs of quarrels, and lewd- ness, and thefts, and midnight brawls, the diseases of intemper- ance and venery, and a thousand other evils needless to mention. Nor would it be amiss if the masters of those public-houses were obliged, upon the severest penalties, to give only a proportioned quantity of drink to every company, and when he found his guests disordered with excess, to refuse them any more. I believe there is hardly a nation in Christendom where all kind of fraud is practised in so unmeasurable a degree as with us ; the lawyer, the tradesman, the mechanic, have found so many arts to deceive in their several callings, that they far outgrow the common prudence of mankind, which is in no sort able to fence against them. Neither could the Legislature in anything more consult the public good than by providing some effectual remedy against this evil, which in several cases deserves greater punishment than many crimes that are capital among us. The vintner who, by mixing poison with his wines, destroys more lives than any one disease in the bill of mortality, the lawyer who persuades you to a purchase which he knows is mortgaged for more than the worth, to the ruin of you and your family, the goldsmith or scrivener who takes all your fortune to dispose of, when he has beforehand resolved to break the following day, do surely deserve the gallows much better than the wretch who is carried thither for stealing a horse. It cannot easily be answered to God or man why a law is not made for limiting the press, at least so far as to prevent the pub- lishing of such pernicious books as, under pretence of free-think ing, endeavour to overthrow those tenets in religion which have been held inviolable almost in all ages by every sect that pretend to be Christian, and cannot therefore, with any colour of reason, 292 A PROJECT FOR THE be called points in controversy or matters of speculation, as some would pretend. The doctrine of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the immortality of the soul, and even the truth of all revelation, are daily exploded and denied in books openly printed, though it is to be supposed neither party will avow such principles, or own the supporting of them to be any way neces- sary to their service. It would be endless to set down every corruption or defect which requires a remedy from the legislative power. Senates are likely to have little regard for any proposals that come from without doors, though, under a due sense of my own inabilities, I am fully convinced that the unbiassed thoughts of an honest and wise man employed on the good of his country may be better digested than the results of a multitude, where faction and interest too often prevail, as a single guide may direct the way better than five hundred who have contrary views, or look asquint, or shut their eyes. I shall, therefore, mention but one more particular which I think the Parliament ought to take under consideration, whether it be not a shame to our country and a scandal to Christianity, that in many towns where there is a prodigious increase in the number of houses and inhabitants, so little care should be taken for the building of churches, that five parts in six of the people are absolutely hindered from hearing divine service, particularly here in London, 1 where a single minister, with one or two sorry curates, has the care sometimes of above twenty thousand souls incumbent on him, a neglect of religion so ignominious, in my opinion, that it can hardly be equalled in any civilised age or country. But to leave these airy imaginations of introducing new laws for the amendment of mankind, what I principally insist on is a due execution of the old, which lies wholly in the Crown, and in the authority thence derived ; I return therefore to my former 1 This paragraph is known to have given the first hint to certain prelates, par- ticularly to Bishop Atterbury, in the Earl of Oxford's Ministry, to procure a fund for building fifty new churches in London. Hawkesworth. ADVANCEMENT OF RELIGION. 293 assertion, that if stations of power, trust, profit, and honour were constantly made the rewards of virtue and piety, such an Adminis- tration must needs have a mighty influence on the faith and morals of the whole kingdom, and men of great abilities would then endeavour to excel in the duties of a religious life, in order to qualify themselves for public service. I may possibly be wrong in some of the means I prescribe towards this end, but that is no material objection against the design itself. Let those who are at the helm contrive it better, which perhaps they may easily do. Everybody will agree that the disease is manifest as well as dangerous, that some remedy is necessary, and that none yet applied has been effectual, which is a sufficient excuse for any man who wishes well to his country to offer his thoughts when he can have no other end in view but the public good. The present Queen is a princess of as many and great virtues as ever filled a throne ; how would it brighten her character to the pre- sent and after ages if she would exert her utmost authority to instil some share of those virtues into her people, which they are too degenerate to learn only from her example. And be it spoke with all the veneration possible for so excellent a sovereign, her best endeavours in this weighty affair are a most important part of her duty, as well as of her interest and her honour. But it must be confessed that, as things are now, every man thinks he has laid in a sufficient stock of merit, and may pretend to any employment, provided he has been loud and frequent in declaring himself hearty for the Government. It is true he is a man of pleasure and a free-thinker, that is, in other words, he is profligate in his morals and a despiser of religion ; but in point of party he is one to be confided in ; he as an assertor of liberty and property; he rattles it out against Popery and arbitrary power, and priestcraft and High Church. It is enough : he is a person fully qualified for any employment, in the court or the navy, the law or the revenue, where he will be sure to leave no arts untried of bribery, fraud, injustice, oppression, that he can practise with any hope of impunity. No wonder such men are true to a Government where liberty runs high, where property, 294 A PROJECT, ETC. however attained, is so well secured, and where the Administration is at least so gentle : it is impossible they could choose any other constitution without changing to their loss. Fidelity to a present establishment is indeed the principal means to defend it from a foreign enemy, but without other qualifications will not prevent corruptions from within, and states are more often ruined by these than the other. To conclude : whether the proposals I have offered toward a reformation be such as are most prudent and convenient, may probably be a question ; but it is none at all whether some reformation be absolutely necessary, because the nature of things is such, that if abuses be not remedied they will certainly increase, nor ever stop till they end in the subversion of a commonwealth. As there must always of necessity be some corruptions, so in a well-instituted state the executive power will be always contending against them by reducing things (as Machiavel speaks) to their first principles, never letting abuses grow inveterate, or multiply so far that it will be hard to find remedies, and perhaps im- possible to apply them. As he that would keep his house in repair must attend every little breach or flaw and supply it immediately, else time alone will bring all to ruin, how much more the common accidents of storm and rain ! He must live in perpetual danger of his house falling about his ears, and will find it cheaper to throw it quite down and build it again from the ground, perhaps upon a new foundation, or at least in a new form, which may neither be so safe nor so convenient as the old. PART II. FROM THE AGE OF FORTY-SIX TO DEATH. (1713-1745.) INTRODUCTION. HPHE first letters of Swift's Journal to Stella, which will be found in the Appendix to this volume, were written in the year 1710. They show the old affectionate and playful ways of speech, begun with the child and continued in association with the closest ties that bound Swift to this world. He was " Pdfr," sometimes "Podefar" or "FR," which means "Poor dear" something ; " Fellow," " Foolish Rogue," or what you will. She was " Ppt," which may stand for Pretty Pet," or for " Poppet," or for some other pet phrase that could be so contracted. "M.D." meant "My dear," or "My dears," when sometimes applied to Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley. The first publication of any of these letters was by Dr. Hawkes- worth in 1766, in a continuation of his edition of Swift's works published ten years before. That continuation included the last twenty-five letters of the Journal to Stella. In 1768 Mr. Deane Swift published in three volumes more of Swift's letters, including the Journal to Stella from its opening in 1710 to the 9th February 1712. Both editors took liberties, Deane Swift more freely than Hawkesworth ; and as only the first letter of the series he printed is now to be found in the original, we can only conjecturally restore the " Pdfr " and " Ppt," which he transformed into " Presto " and " Stella," though those were names not used by Swift in 1710. In a few cases I have allowed the word "Stella" 296 JONATHAN SWIFT. to remain in the text, but it is always Deane Swift who has given it in place of something else that Jonathan Swift had written. How close we come to Swift himself in these letters of private personal diary ! The power of a childlike tenderness within the proud, strong man is to be inferred sometimes from his writing for the world, without it where would have been the playfulness that made " Gulliver," with all its scorn for the corrup- tion of society, a book pleasant to children ? but the childlike tenderness is all to be found in his writing to the woman who brought light into his life. In one of these first letters to Stella, Swift records his removal to Bury Street, and an occasional dinner with his neighbour, Mrs. Vanhomrigh, who lived five doors off. She was the widow of Bartholomew Vanhomrigh, a merchant of Amsterdam, who settled in Dublin in the reign of Charles the Second, and was Commissary of the Stores when King William III. was with his army in Ire- land. He was made afterwards a Commissioner of the Revenue, and died in 1703, eighteen years after his marriage to a lady born in Dublin of English parents. He left to his family a widow, with two sons and two daughters sixteen thousand pounds. The family must have been of weakly constitution. The two sons died, one after the other, within six years after their father. Mrs. Van- homrigh and her two daughters came to England in 1709. In London the widow lived beyond her income, using some part of the money in trust for her children, until her own death in 1714. This widow, with two daughters, was visited by persons of fashion. Swift, who called them " the Vans," often looked in, and he concerned himself with friendly help towards the educa- tion of the elder daughter, Hester Vanhomrigh, whom he called Vanessa. The early deaths of all the members of the family bear witness to a weakliness of constitution. The relation of Hester Vanhomrigh to Swift was that of a poor girl who might be liable, through green sickness, to try her teeth on cinders and slate-pencil, and who not only fell ridiculously ** in love " with her elderly friend, but was unhealthy enough to tell him that she had done so. The situation was for Swift, embarrassing in those days of a JONATHAN SWIFT. 297 too formal politeness. He put his reasoning with her, and his ex- pression of regret and astonishment, into a poem of *' Cadenus " (Decanus, the Dean) " and Vanessa," which speaks clearly enough to any one who reads it without prejudice, and allows fairly for the ceremony of days when a contemptuous No could be expressed clearly enough to rebuff a Duke in the beautiful language of Yes. " Cadenus and Vanessa " was a sugar-coated pill, in which the unbiassed reader will not fail to find the pill where to poor, sickly Hester Vanhomrigh there was nothing apparent but the surface sugar. Swift, no doubt, might have dealt more wisely with his problem, but even in our days of plainer speaking a kind-hearted man would find the problem difficult. Swift was then leaving for Dublin. The death of Queen Anne and the succession of George I. brought the Whigs back into power, and put an end to his concern with English politics. He went to his Deanery at St. Patrick's, where he soon made his activity felt in Irish questions. Mrs. Vanhomrigh died in 1714, and left her daughters joint- executors. Her debts caused them embarrassment, and some needless fears of arrest. Therefore in 1715 they crossed over to Ireland, and lived quietly at Cellbridge, in Marley Abbey, on the Liffey, about ten miles from Dublin. Swift at first visited them, but in 1716, finding Hester's attachment to him uncomfort- ably obtrusive, he kept away from her, and humoured her only with letters, in which he laboured to give returns that would please her without assent to her delusion, upon which he directly entreated that she " would not make herself or him unhappy by imaginations." He tried also in vain to get her married to one of two possible husbands. In the same year, 1716, Esther Johnson was privately married to Swift in the garden of the Deanery, by Dr. Ashe, then Bishop of Clogher. The marriage was regarded as beyond question by Lord Orrery, and by Swift's friend, Dr. Delany. It was told by Stella to Swift's friend, Dr. Sheridan. It is affirmed as a fact by George Monck Berkeley, who said in an " Inquiry into the Life of Swift," that he had learnt it directly from the widow of Bishop 298 JONATHAN SWIFT. Berkeley, to whom it had been told by Swift himself. But Esther Johnson kept the secret from the world, and she bequeathed her property as a single woman, signing her will with her maiden name. For 'the marriage was not meant for marriage in the sight of man, though many a pure womanly thought may have caused Esther Johnson, who was religious, and was full of works of charity, to wish that her devotion to Jonathan Swift should be consecrated before God. But how could this consecration have been other than most private, if the motive for Swift's avoidance of full marriage was that which I have already suggested. He and Stella, though as much together as they could be, though she took often the wife's place at the head of his table, lived in Dublin on opposite sides of the Liffey. If the world knew that they were married, what would the world say ? It is sufficiently proud now of what it calls its pessimism, in discussions of life and character. It was then miserably critical in the bad way of cen- sure. " Why do not the Dean and Mrs. Swift live together like other married couples ? " The true answer being given, the remark would be, " Oh, indeed ! dread of transmitting his insanity to children ? A pretty fellow to set up as counsellor to ME ! " Swift was compelled to keep his own sad counsel. But within that bound why might not Stella feel that she had looked straight to God for His blessing on her self-devoting love. Alas for the rarity of Christian charity, when a deep human sore like this attracts chiefly the blow-flies of scandalous opinion ! Hester Vanhomrigh's sister died in Ireland, leaving her the one survivor of the short-lived family. Swift's wish to be kind to her in her desolation caused him then to visit her again. To please her he revised in 1719 "Cadenus and Vanessa," which then took the precise form in which it now appears. But the unhealthy craze then gained such mastery over Hester Vanhomrigh, that in 1720 she wrote a jealous letter to Esther Johnson, asking her whether she was Swift's wife. Esther Johnson gave the letter to Swift, who at once rode with it to Marley Abbey, angrily laid it down before Hester Vanhomrigh, and left her without a word. He never again saw her or wrote to her. She had long tried his JONATHAN SWIFT. 299 patience, and now she had broken it. She had made a will leaving her property to Swift This she now altered. She was not killed by his cruelty, but lived on until the close of May 1723, when she died of a fever, last survivor of a short-lived family ; father, mother, her two brothers, and her sister having all passed away before her. Had Swift been very wrong in his endeavours to deal kindly with this poor weakling ? A harsh man would have found no difficulty in the position, if it were even possible that a harsh man should be made the object of an uncontrolled affection. But if the gentle reader will be good enough to imagine himself in Swift's place, or recall, if he has had it, any similar experience, and he will surely be a gentle critic of Swift's conduct in the matter. Surely, also, he will break for ever with the miserable tattle of the first years of the Georges, when rakes talked senti- ment, and through mists of their own Slough of Despond could not see the simple truths of life. For Swift himself there was no pairing of the names of Stella and Vanessa. When Hester Van- homrigh died, her will was found to require the publication of " Cadenus and Vanessa " and of Swift's letters to her. Her execu- tors used judgment in carrying out a part of this instruction, bred of a sick fancy. " Cadenus and Vanessa " was published, but the letters were not printed until a transcript of them came into the hands of Sir Walter Scott. Stella left Dublin to escape the nine days' tattle of the town. Surely, said somebody to her, the Dean must have loved Miss Vanhomrigh very much, to write such a beautiful poem for her as " Cadenus and Vanessa." " It is well known," Stella replied, " that the Dean can write beautifully on a broomstick." And even that reasonable way of saying "Pooh" has been interpreted into an utterance of jealousy ! Let us try, at least in this Library, to see in our books real men and women, not fantasies cut by the ingenious out of printed paper, shaped as men never were, and never will be, until they can be ordered like clothes from the tailor. With a strong sense of the griefs of Ireland, and no good-will to Whig Ministers in England, Swift published at Dublin, in 1720, a " Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures." The 300 JONATHAN SWIFT. Government proceeded against the printer, but with little effect. Irish traders were in difficulty through scarcity of copper money, and were often unable to give change in their retail dealings. On the 1 2th of July 1722 the Government authorised a Wolver- hampton ironmaster, William Wood, to make ^80,000 worth of copper money for Ireland during fourteen years. Swift denounced the contract as a robbery of Ireland by exchange of nominal for substantial values, and he wrote four letters signed "M. B. Drapier " to urge his views upon the Irish people and persuade them to refuse to take the new coin in their dealings. Govern- ment offered a reward of ^300 for proof of the authorship of the fourth of his letters, dated October 13, 1724, and arrested the printer. But Swift triumphed. Wood's halfpence were recalled, and the " Drapier's Head " became a sign for many an Irish tavern ; the Drapier became famous as an Irish patriot. * In 1726 Swift visited Pope at Twickenham, and brought with him " Gulliver's Travels " ready for publication. He was recalled by letters telling him that Esther Johnson was more seriously ill. The book was published in his absence, without his name upon the title-page. Stella's health having improved, Swift was in London again in 1727, but had again to hurry back. He was ill himself in October 1727. and wrote then the touching lines "To Stella Visiting me in my Sickness." Three months later Stella died, on the 28th of January 1728. He was too ill to be at her burial in JSt. Patrick's, but he had chosen the grave both for him- self and her. Their bones were found afterwards side by side in the same coffin. From the time of Stella's death until his body was laid in her coffin Swift's outer manner hardened and his life began to droop, although he lived on for another seventeen years, and loved his friends, and punned with them, and made merry after his own way. The " Polite Conversation '* and " Directions to Servants" he was busy upon in 1731. In 1736 he was seized with a fit while writing, and he wrote no more. His last work had been at revision of his " History of the Last Four Years of Queen Anne," which had been written in 1712. In 1741 his memory was almost gone. The only prayer he could remember J ON A THA N S WIFT. 30 r was the Lord's Prayer, and he would repeat ic as he paced his room in pain, hour after hour. In March 1742 he was placed under guardians by the Court of Chancery, and in September of that year, when distressed with pain in the eyeball, it required the strength of five men to prevent him from tearing out his eye. The last three years were of listless imbecility, in which he seldom spoke ; once, seeing his own face in the glass, he is said to have exclaimed, "Poor old man !" He died on the igih of October 1 745, leaving ten or eleven thousand pounds for the foundation of his Hospital for Lunatics and Incurables, leaving tithes he had bought to the vicars of Laracor, and remembrances to his old servants and old friends, even to such small keepsakes as the hat he wore. The long list of such remembrances reads little like the work of a misanthrope. But Swift was none. He said that he could love Peter and Jack, but that he hated the whole race of man. Whoever will may be a misanthrope upon those terms. If he will be kindly in all relations with the men he meets, he may think as ill as he pleases of the race as an abstraction. Swift's misanthropy is said to be found in " Gulliver's Travels." "Gulliver" is a book revealing, with the vigour of Swift's genius, the most vital of the forces that were in its time shaping the future of Europe. Causes not difficult to trace had corrupted society in France, England, and elsewhere. The corruption led, at the close of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, to doubt whether a just and wise God guided the affairs of men. There arose and grew an honest scepticism that struck at the root of all religion. Before there can be a real struggle for reformation there must be a real and deep conviction of the evil to be put away. Gulliver was the most vigorous expression of that deep conviction. Two years later, the good-natured Gay expressed it in " The Beggars' Opera," and immediately afterwards, in its sequel " Polly," with a scorn that placed what called itself a civilised community below the pirate, far below the savage. We were on the way that would lead, through Rousseau among others, to the great outburst of which the French Revolution was an outward sign. Swift showed 3 o2 JONATHAN SWIFT. in the Lilliputians the smallness of the aims of men. If reduc- tion of scale from a foot to an inch made men look down upon their own low thoughts, what must they seem when looked at from the height of heaven? Lest his readers should miss the moral, he reversed the glass; took Gulliver to Brobding- nag, there placed him as a Lilliputian among men who ex- celled him in dimensions exactly as much as he had excelled the Lilliputians ; and then put Gulliver upon the table of the king of Brobdingnag, to tell him of the slaughterings and plunderings and burnings that made the glory of his nation's history. The tale of struggle through low civilisation to the half civilisation that even in this our day England and her neighbours scarcely have attained, earned from the calm Brobdingnagian the conclusion that the bulk of his countrymen must be " the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." Swift took Gulliver to Laputa that he might laugh at the vain pride of learning ; and to the Houyhnhnms to place an honest horse above the man de- graded by his vanities and vices. In the working out of this design, conceived as early as the year 1712, there was wit and whim, and the child-like playfulness that was a part of Swift's best nature, with touches that are pathetic when we think from whom they came. It has a religious purpose as direct and true as that which inspired his sermons on the Wisdom of this World, and on Bearing one another's Burdens, which the reader will find in the later pages of this volume. Could a misanthrope have written those sermons, or the playful, loving birthday greetings year by year to Stella ? It has been said that Swift dealt hardly by his sister Jane in endeavouring to stop her marriage. She married a currier named Fenton, who was a dunce, and became bankrupt. Swift paid then an annuity to her, told Stella he pitied poor Jenny's deafness, but in respect of her husband she was no loser by it; and in her latter years she was dependent wholly on her brother. It was only by accident in the last years of his life, when he had lost the old use of his mind, that Swift was J ON A THA N S WIFT. 303 found to have been year by year paying an annuity from his own means to Rebecca Dingley, while leaving her always to suppose that she had a right to it as part of her own property. When asked for it he would sometimes profess that he had not received it, and a day or two later send it to her. He had secret charities and secret kindnesses, and was clever in putting bad constructions on his own good deeds. A friend stayed a fortnight at his house without discovering that the Dean began his days with household prayer. Swift knew that a poor man is often ruined for want of a small sum of money at a critical time. In such cases he lent the money needed, without interest. But he knew also that the poor grow poorer through improvidence. He required, therefore, that the borrower should look forward and name the day on which he would be able to repay. To that day Swift bound him with the strictness of the hardest creditor. No man was firmer in his friendships great and small, though in three or four cases they were warped or destroyed by the heats of political opinion. And Swift was proud, somewhat in Words- worth's way. Hazlitt, accused of saying that Wordsworth was as proud as the devil, replied that he could not have said that. It might have been that the devil was perhaps as proud as Words- worth. Swift's pride suffered at Moor Park because he could not bend the knee to a great man without feeling a twinge. " I would endeavour," he wrote to Bolingbroke, "that my betters should seek me by the merit of something distinguishable, instead of my seeking them." To Harley, who had once appeared to treat him coldly, he said plainly that he expected every great Minister who honoured him with his acquaintance, " if he heard or saw anything to my disadvantage, would let me know it in plain words, and not put me in pain to guess by the change or coldness of his counte- nance or behaviour, for it was what I would hardly bear from a crowned head, and I thought no subject's favour was worth it." Swift saved money and has been called parsimonious. His income was never large. It was very small when from his lodgings in Bury Street he wrote to Stella that he had lately bought half a bushel of coals ; that his extravagant man had made 304 DR. SWIFTS WILL. him a fire, but he had picked the coals off. He said in one of his letters, "Wealth is liberty; and liberty is a blessing fittest for a philosopher. Gay is a slave just by two thousand pounds too little." In another letter he said that he could not afford to make any abatement in his liberalities. And he said to Pope, "Your wants are so few that you need not be rich to supply them ; and my wants are so many that a king's seven millions of guineas would not support me." Here I leave Swift for the present, trusting that in this volume of his writings not his wit only but his worth may be made known widely. But we will look yet more nearly at Swift, by gathering some day into another of these volumes other writings that will show his life's work from another point of view. H. M. CARISBROOKE, January 1888. THE LITTLE LEGACIES IN SWIFT'S WILL. I leave, moreover, to the said Martha [Whiteway], my repeating gold watch, my yellow tortoiseshell snuff-box, and her choice of four gold rings, out of seven which I now possess. Item : I bequeath to Mrs. Mary Swift, alias Harrison, daughter of the said Martha, my plain gold watch made by Quare, to whom also I give my Japan writing-desk, bestowed to me by my lady Worsley, my square tortoiseshell snuff-box, richly lined and inlaid with gold, given to me by the right honourable Henrietta, now countess of Oxford, and the seal with a pegasus, given to me by the countess of Granville. Item : I bequeath to Mr. Ffolliot Whiteway, eldest son of the afore- said Martha, who is bred to be an attorney, the sum of sixty pounds, as also five pounds to be laid out in the purchase of such law books as the honourable Mr. Justice Lyndsay, Mr. Stannard, or Mr. M'Aulay shall judge proper for him. Item : I bequeath to Mr. John Whiteway, youngest son of the said Martha, who is to be brought up a surgeon, the sum of one hundred DR. SWIFTS WILL. 305 pounds, in order to qualify him for a surgeon, but under the direction of his mother : which said sum of one hundred pounds is to be paid to Mrs. Whiteway, in behalf of her said son John, out of the arrears which shall be due to me from my church livings (except those of the deanery tithes, which are now let to the rev. Doctor Wilson) as soon as the said arrears can be paid to my executors. I also leave the said John five pounds to be laid out in buying such physical or chirurgical books, as Doctor Grattan and Mr. Nichols shall think fit for him. Item : I bequeath to Mrs. Ann Ridgeway, now in my family, the profits of the leases of two houses let to John Cownly, for forty years, of which only eight or nine are expired, for which the said Cownly payeth me nine pounds sterling for rent, yearly. I also bequeath to the said Anne, the sum of one hundred pounds sterling, to be paid her by my executors in six weeks after my decease, out of whatever money or bank bills I may possess when I die ; as also three gold rings, the remainder of the seven above-mentioned, after Mrs. Whiteway hath made her choice of four : and all my small pieces of plate not exceed- ing in weight one ounce and one-third part of an ounce. Item : I bequeath to my dearest friend Alexander Pope of Twicken- ham, esq. my picture in miniature, drawn by Zinck, of Robert late Earl of Oxford. Itejn : I leave to Edward now Earl of Oxford, my seal of Julius Caesar, as also another seal, supposed to be a young Hercules, both very choice antiques, and set in gold ; both which I choose to bestow to the said earl, because they belonged to her late most excellent Majesty queen Anne, of ever glorious, immortal, and truly pious memory, the real nursing mother of her kingdoms. Item : I leave to the reverend Mr. James Stopford, vicar of Finglass, my picture of king Charles the First, drawn by Vandyck, which was given to me by the said James ; also, my large picture of birds, which was given to me by Thomas earl of Pembroke. Item : I bequeath to the reverend Mr. Robert Grattan, prebendary of St. Audoen's, my gold bottlescrew, which he gave me, and my strong box, on condition of his giving the sole use of the said box to his brother Dr. James Grattan, during the life of the said Doctor, who hath more occasion for it, and the second best beaver hat I shall die possessed of. Item : I bequeath to Mr. John Grattan, prebendary of Clonmethan, my silver box in which the freedom of the city of Cork was presented U 3e DR. SWIFT'S WILL. to me ; in which I desire the said John to keep the tobacco he usually cheweth, called pigtail. Item: I bequeath all my horses and mares to the reverend Mr. John Jackson, vicar of Santry, together with all my horse furniture : lamenting that I had not credit enough with any chief governor (since the change of times) to get some additional church preferment for so virtuous and worthy a gentleman. I also leave him my third best beaver hat. Item : I bequeath to the reverend Doctor Francis Wilson, the works of Plato in three folio volumes, the earl of Clarendon's History in three folio volumes, and my best Bible ; together with thirteen small Persian pictures in the drawing-room, and the small silver tankard given to me by the contribution of some friends, whose names are engraved at the bottom of the said tankard. Item : I bequeath to the earl of Orrery the enamelled silver plates to distinguish bottles of wine by, given to me by his excellent lady, and the half-length picture of the late countess of Orkney in the drawing-room. Item : I bequeath to Alexander M'Aulay, esq. the gold box in which the freedom of the city of Dublin was presented to me, as a testimony of the esteem and love \ have for him on account of his great learn- ing, fine natural parts, unaffected piety and benevolence, and his truly honourable zeal in defence of the legal rights of the clergy, in opposi- tion to all their unprovoked oppressors. Item: I bequeath to Deane Swift, esq. my large silver standish, consisting of a large silver plate, an ink-pot, a sand-box and bell of the same metal. Item : I bequeath to Mrs. Mary Barber the medal of queen Anne and prince George, which she formerly gave me. Item: I leave to the reverend Mr. John Worrall, my best beaver hat. Item : I bequeath to the reverend Doctor Patrick Delany my medal of queen Anne in silver, and on the reverse the bishops of England kneeling before her most sacred majesty. Item: I bequeath to the reverend Mr. James King, prebendary of Tipper, my large gilded medal of king Charles the First, and on the reverse a crown of martyrdom with other devices. HORACE. BOOK I. EP. VII. ADDRESSED TO THE EARL. OF OXFORD. TT ARLEY, the nation's great support, Returning home one day from court (His mind with public cares possessed, All Europe's business in his breast), Observed a parson near Whitehall Cheapening old authors on a stall. The priest was pretty well in case, And showed some humour in his face, Looked with an easy, careless mien, A perfect stranger to the spleen ; Of size that might a pulpit fill, But more inclining to sit still. My lord (who, if a man may say it, Loves mischief better than his meat) Was now disposed to crack a jest, And bid friend Lewis l go in quest (This Lewis is a cunning shaver, And very much in Harley's favour), In quest who might this parson be, What was his name, of what degree ; If possible, to learn his story, And whether he were Whig or Tory. 1 Erasmus Lewis, Esq., the Treasurers secretary. Nichols. 3 o8 HORACE, BOOK I. EP. VII. Lewis his patron's humour knows, Away upon his errand goes, And quickly did the matter sift ; Found out that it was Doctor Swift, A clergyman of special note For shunning those of his own coat ; Which made his brethren of the gown Take care betimes to run him down ; No libertine, nor over-nice, Addicted to no sort of vice ; Went where he pleased, said what he thought Not rich, but owed no man a groat : In state opinions d la mode, He hated Wharton like a toad, Had given the faction many a wound, And libelled all the junto round ; Kept company with men of wit, Who often fathered what he writ ; His works were hawked in every street, But seldom rose above a sheet ; Of late indeed the paper stamp Did very much his genius cramp, And since he could not spend his fire, He now intended to retire. Said Harley, " I desire to know From his own mouth if this be so ; Step to the Doctor straight and say, I'd have him dine with me to-day." Swift seemed to wonder what he meant, Nor would believe my lord had sent ; So never offered once to stir, But coldly said, "Your servant, sir ! " " Does he refuse me ? " Harley cried. " He does, with insolence and pride." Some few days after, Harley spies The Doctor fastened by the eyes HORACE, BOOK I. EP. VII. 309 At Charing-cross among the rout, Where painted monsters are hung out ; He pulled the string and stopped his coach, Beckoning the Doctor to approach. Swift, who could neither fly nor hide, Came sneaking to the chariot side, And offered many a lame excuse ; He never meant the least abuse " My lord the honour you designed Extremely proud but I had dined I'm sure I never should neglect No man alive has more respect " " Well, I shall think of that no more, If you'll be sure to come at four." The Doctor now obeys the summons, Likes both his company and commons, Displays his talents, sits till ten ; Next day invited, comes again ; Soon grows domestic, seldom fails Either at morning or at meals ; Came early and departed late ; In short, the gudgeon took the bait. My lord would carry on the jest, And down to Windsor takes his guest. Swift much admires the place and air, And longs to be a Canon there ; In summer round the park to ride, In winter never to reside. " A Canon ! that's a place too mean ; No, Doctor, you shall be a Dean ; Two dozen Canons round your stall, And you the tyrant o'er them all ; You need but cross the Irish seas, To live in plenty, power, and ease." Poor Swift departs ; and what is worse, With borrowed money in his purse, 3io HORACE, BOOK I. EP. VII. Travels at least a hundred leagues, And suffers numberless fatigues. Suppose him now a Dean complete, Demurely lolling in his seat, The silver verge, with decent pride, Stuck underneath his cushion side : Suppose him gone through all vexations, Patents, instalments, abjurations, First-fruits and tenths, and chapter-treats, Dues, payments, fees, demands, and cheats- The wicked laity's contriving To hinder clergymen from thriving. Now all the Doctor's money spent, His tenants wrong him in his rent ; The farmers spitefully combined, Force him to take his tithes in kind $ And Parvisol 1 discounts arrears By bills for taxes and repairs. Poor Swift, with all his losses vexed, Not knowing where to turn him next, Above a thousand pounds in debt, Takes horse, and, in a mighty fret, Rides day and night at such a rate, He soon arrives at Harley's gate ; But was so dirty, pale, and thin, Old Read 2 would hardly let him in. Said Harley, " Welcome, Reverend Ctean ! What makes your worship look so lean ? Why, sure you won't appear in town In that old wig and rusty gown ? I doubt your heart is set on pelf So much, that you neglect yourself. What ! I suppose now stocks are high^ You've some good purchase in your eye ? 1 The Dean's agent, a Frenchman. Hawkesworth. 2 The Lord Treasurer's porter. Hawkeswortk. HORACE, BOOK I. EP. VII. 311 Or is your money out at use ? " " Truce, good my lord ; I beg a truce " (The Doctor in a passion cried), " Your raillery is misapplied ; Experience I have dearly bought ; You know I am not worth a groat, But you resolved to have your jest, And 'twas a folly to contest ; Then, since you now have done your worst, Pray leave me where you found me first." THE AUTHOR UPON HIMSELF. \Afeiv of the first lines are wanting^ . by an old pursued A crazy prelate, 1 and a royal prude ; 2 By dull divines, who look with envious eyes On every genius that attempts to rise, And pausing o'er a pipe, with doubtful nod, Give hints that poets ne'er believe in God. So clowns on scholars as on wizards look, And take a folio for a conjuring book. Swift had the sin of wit, no venial crime ; Nay, 'tis affirmed he sometimes dealt in rhyme ; Humour and mirth had place in all he writ ; He reconciled divinity and wit ; He moved, and bowed, and talked with too much grace, Nor showed the parson in his gait or face ; Despised luxurious wines and costly meat, Yet still was at the tables of the great ; 1 Dr. John Sharpe, who, for some unbecoming reflections in his sermons, had been suspended, May 14, 1686, was raised from the Deanery of Canterbury to the Archbishopric of York, July 5, 1691, and died February 2, 1712-13. According to Dr. Swift's account, the Archbishop had represented him to the Queen as a person that was not a Christian ; a great lady had supported the aspersion, and the Queen, upon such assurances, had given away a bishopric contrary to her Majesty's first intentions [which were in favour of Swift]. Orrery. 2 Queen Anne. Hawkesworth. THE AUTHOR UPON HIMSELF. 313 Frequented lords, saw those that saw the Queen ; At Child's or Truby's never once had been, Where town and country vicars flock in tribes, Secured by numbers from the laymen's gibes, And deal in vices of the graver sort, Tobacco, censure, coffee, pride, and port. But, after sage monitions from his friends, His talents to employ for nobler ends, To better judgments willing to submit, He turns to politics his dangerous wit. And now, the public interest to support, By Harley Swift invited comes to court ; In favour grows with ministers of state, Admitted private when superiors wait. And Harley, not ashamed his choice to own, Takes him to Windsor in his coach alone. At Windsor Swift no sooner can appear, But St. John comes and whispers in his ear ; The waiters stand in ranks ; the yeomen cry, Make room, as if a duke were passing by. Now Finch 1 alarms the Lords ; he hears for certain This dangerous priest is got behind the curtain. Finch, famed for tedious elocution, proves That Swift oils many a spring which Harley moves. Walpole and Aislaby, 2 to clear the doubt, Inform the Commons that the secret's out : " A certain Doctor is observed of late To haunt a certain minister of state, From whence with half an eye we may discover The peace is made, and Perkin must come over." York is from Lambeth sent, to show the Queen A dangerous treatise s writ against the spleen, 1 Daniel Finch, Earl of Nottingham. Nichols. 2 John Aislaby, then M.P. for Ripon. They both spoke against him in the House of Commons. Haivkesworth. 3 " Tale of a Tub."Hcnvkesworth. 3 i4 THE AUTHOR UPON HIMSELF. Which by the style, the matter, and the drift, 'Tis thought could be the work of none but Swift. Poor York ! the harmless tool of others' hate, He sues for pardon, 1 and repents too late. Now angry Somerset 2 her vengeance vows On Swift's reproaches for her . . . spouse ; From her red locks her mouth with venom fills, And thence into the royal ear instils. The Queen, incensed, his services forgot, Leaves him a victim to the vengeful Scot. 3 Now through the realm a proclamation spread, To fix a price on his devoted head, 4 While, innocent, he scorns ignoble flight, His watchful friends preserve him by a sleight. By Harley's favour once again he shines, Is now caressed by candidate divines, Who change opinions with the changing scene : Lord ! how were they mistaken in the Dean ! Now Delawar 5 again familiar grows, And in Swift's ear thrusts half his powdered nose. The Scottish nation, whom he durst offend, Again apply that Swift would be their friend. 6 By faction tired, with grief he waits a while, His great contending friends to reconcile, Performs what friendship, justice, truth require ; What could be more, but decently retire ? 1 He sent a message to ask Swift's pardon. Haivkesworth. 2 See the Windsor Prophecy. Nichols. 3 The Duke of Argyll. Hawkesworth. 4 For writing " The Public Spirit of the "Wttigs,." Hawkesworth. 5 Then Lord Treasurer of the Household, who cautiously avoided Swift while the proclamation was impending. Hawkesworth. 6 He was visited by the Scotch lords more than ever. IMITATION OF PART OF THE SIXTH SATIRE Of fM SECOND BOOK ON HORACE. (1714-) T 'VE often wished that I had clear, * For life, six hundred pounds a year, A handsome house to lodge a friend, A river at my garden's end, A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood. Well, now I have all this and more, I ask not to increase my store ; [" l But here a grievance seems to lie, All this is mine but till I die ; I can't but think 'twould sound more clevef, To me and to my heirs for ever. If I ne'er got or lost a groat By any trick or any fault ; And if I pray by reason's rules, And not like forty other fools : And thus, * Vouchsafe, O gracious Maker ! To grant me this and t'other acre : Or, if it be Thy will and pleasure, Direct my plough to find a treasure ! ' 1 The twenty lines within hooks were added by Mr. Pope. Nichols. 3 i6 HORACE, BOOK II. SAT. VI. But only what my station fits, And to be kept in my right wits, 1 Preserve, Almighty Providence ! Just what you gave me, competence : And let me in these shades compose Something in verse as true as prose ; Removed from all the ambitious scene, Nor puffed by pride, nor sunk by spleen."] In short, I'm perfectly content, Let me but live on this side Trent ; 2 Nor cross the Channel twice a year, To spend six months with statesmen here. I must by all means come to town, 'Tis for the service of the crown. " Lewis, the Dean will be of use ; Send for him up, take no excuse." The toil, the danger of the seas, Great ministers ne'er think of these ; Or let it cost five hundred pound, No matter where the money's found ; 1 An apprehension of the loss of intellect gave the Dean great uneasiness through life. Some hereditary expectation or some peculiarity of feeling, I presume, occasioned a perpetual anticipation of that sad event which at length befell him. Pope's part of the imitation begins at verse 125, but I cannot accede to Warburton's opinion, that his portion of the performance is executed with more dexterity than that of Swift, who is unexceptionably excellent, and preserves with the most happy accommodation the playful urbanity of his author. There are indeed several strokes in the more humorous passage of Pope's division after Swift's best manner, but the following seems to me the most successful : " Tells all their names, lays down the law : Que $a est bon ! Ah goutez $a ! That jelly's rich, this malmsey's healing : Pray dip your whiskers and your tail in ! " Wakefield. 2 Swift was perpetually expressing his deep discontent at his Irish preferment, and forming schemes for exchanging it for a smaller in England, and courted Queen Caroline and Sir Robert Walpole to effect such a change. A negotiation had nearly taken place between the Dean and a Mr. Talbot for the living of Burfield, in Berkshire. Mr. Talbot himself informed me of this negotiation. Burfield is in the neighbourhood of Bucklebury, Lord Bolingbroke's seat." Warton. HORACE, BOOK II. SAT. VI. 317 It is but so much more in debt, And that they ne'er considered yet " Good Mr. Dean, go change your gown, Let my lord know you're come to town." I hurry me in haste away, Not thinking it is levee-day ; And find his honour in a pound, Hemmed by a triple circle round, Chequered with ribbons blue and green. How should I trust myself between ? Some wag observes me thus perplexed, And, smiling, whispers to the next, " I thought the Dean had been too proud To jostle here among a crowd ! " Another in a surly fit Tells me I have more zeal than wit : " So eager to express your love, You ne'er consider whom you shove, But rudely press before a duke." I own I'm pleased with this rebuke, And take it kindly meant, to show What I desire the world should know. I get a whisper and withdraw ; When twenty fools I never saw Come with petitions fairly penned, Desiring I would stand their friend. This humbly offers me his case That begs my interest for a place A hundred other men's affairs, Like bees, are humming in my ears. " To-morrow my appeal comes on, Without your help the cause is gone " " The Duke expects my lord and you About some great affair at two " " Put my Lord Bolingbroke in mind To get my warrant quickly sign'd ; 3I 8 HORACE, BOOK II. SAT. VI. Consider, 'tis my first request."- Be satisfied, I'll do my best ; Then presently he falls to tease, " You may for certain, if you please ; I doubt not, if his lordship knew- And, Mr. Dean, one word from you )? Tis (let me see) three years and more (October next it will be four) Since Harley bid me first attend, And chose me for an humble friend ; Would take me in his coach to chat, And question me of this and that ; As "What's o'clock?" and "How's the wind?" " Whose chariot's that we left behind ? " Or gravely try to read the lines Writ underneath the country signs. ; : Or " Have you nothing new to-day From Pope, from Parnell, or from Gay ? J> Such tattle often entertains My lord and me as far as Staines, As once a week we travel down To Windsor, and again to town, Where all that passes inter nos Might be proclaimed at Charing Cross, Yet some I know with envy swell Because they see me used so well. " How think you of our friend the Dean ? I wonder what some people mean ! 1 Another of their amusements in these excursions consisted in Lord Oxford and Swift's counting the poultry on the road, and whichever reckoned thirty-one first, or saw a cat, or an old woman, won the game. Bolingbroke, overtaking them one day in their road to Windsor, got into Lord Oxford's coach, and began some political conversation. Lord Oxford said, "Swift, I am up ; there is a cat." Bolingbroke was disgusted with this levity, and went again into his own carriage. This was '' Nugari et disci with a witness. Warton. HORACE, BOOK II. SAT. VI. 319 My lord and he are grown so great, Always together, tete-h-tetc ; What ! they admire him for his jokes ? See but the fortune of some folks ! " There flies about a strange report Of some express arrived at court ; I'm stopped by all the fools I meet, And catechised in every street. " You, Mr. Dean, frequent the great ; Inform us, will the Emperor treat ? Or do the prints and papers lie ? " Faith, sir, you know as much as I. " Ah, Doctor, how you love to jest ! 'Tis now no secret " I protest Tis one to me " Then tell us, pray, When are the troops to have their pay ? " And though I solemnly declare I know no more than my Lord Mayor, They stand amazed, and think me grown The closest mortal ever known. Thus in a sea of folly tost, My choicest hours of life are lost ; Yet always wishing to retreat, Oh, could I see my country-seat ! There leaning near a gentle brook, Sleep, or peruse some ancient book ; And there in sweet oblivion drown Those cares that haunt the court and town. 1 1 Thus far was translated by Dr. Swift in 1714. The remaining part of the ode was afterward added by Mr. Pope, in whose works the whole is printed. See Dr. Warton's edition, vol. vi. p. 13. Niclwls. CADENUS AND VANESSA. (WRITTEN AT WINDSOR, 1713.) HPHE shepherds and the nymphs were seen * Pleading before the Cyprian queen ; The counsel for the fair began, Accusing the false creature Man. The brief with weighty crimes was charged, On which the pleader much enlarged, That Cupid now has lost his art, Or blunts the point of every dart ; His altar now no longer smokes, His mother's aid no youth invokes : This tempts free-thinkers to refine, And bring in doubt their powers divine ', Now love is dwindled to intrigue, And marriage grown a money league, Which crimes aforesaid (with her leave; Were (as he humbly did conceive) Against our sovereign lady's peace, Against the statute in that case, Against her dignity and crown, Then prayed an answer, and sat down. The nymphs with scorn beheld their foes : When the defendant's counsel rose, And, what no lawyer ever lacked, With impudence owned all the fact ; But, what the gentlest heart would vex, Laid all the fault on t'other sex. CADENUS AND VANESSA. 321 That modern love is no such thing As what those ancient poets sing, A fire celestial, chaste, refined, Conceived and kindled in the mind, Which, having found an equal flame, Unites, and both become the same, In different breasts together burn, Together both to ashes turn. But women now feel no such fire, And only know the gross desire ; Their passions move in lower spheres, Where'er caprice or folly steers ; A dog, a parrot, or an ape, Or some worse brute in human shape Engross the fancies of the fair The few soft moments they can spare From visits to receive and pay, From scandal, politics, and play, From fans, and flounces, and brocades, From equipage and park parades, From all the thousand female toys, From every trifle that employs The out or inside of their heads Between their toilets and their beds. In a dull stream, which, moving slow, You hardly see the current flow, If a small breeze obstruct the course, It whirls about, for want of force, And in its narrow circle gathers Nothing but chaff, and straws, and feathers. The current of a female mind Stops thus, and turns with every wind ; Thus whirling round, together draws Fools, fops, and rakes, for chaff and straws. Hence we conclude no women's hearts Are won by virtue, wit, and parts ; x 322 CADENUS AND VANESSA. Nor are the men of sense to blame For breasts incapable of flame ; The fault must on the nymphs be placed, Grown so corrupted in their taste, The pleader, having spoke his best, Had witness ready to attest, Who fairly could on oath depose, When questions on the fact arose, That every article was true ; Nor further those deponents knew : Therefore he humbly would insist The bill might be with costs dismissed. The cause appeared with so much weight, That Venus, from her judgment-scat, Desired them not to talk so loud, Else she must interpose a cloud : For if the heavenly folks should know These pleadings in the courts below, That mortals here disdain to love, She ne'er could show her face above ; For gods, their betters, are too wise, To value that which men despise. And then, said she, my son and I Must stroll in air, 'twixt land and sky, Or else, shut out from heaven and earth, Fly to the sea, my place of birth, There live, with daggled mermaids pent, And keep on fish perpetual Lent. But, since the case appeared so nice, She thought it best to take advice. The Muses, by the king's permission, Though foes to love, attend the session, And on the right hand took their places In order ; on the left the Graces, To whom she might her doubts propose On all emergencies that rose. C A DEN US AND VANESSA. 323 The Muses oft were seen to frown, The Graces, half ashamed, looked down, And 'twas observed there were but few Of either sex among the crew Whom she or her assessors knew. The goddess soon began to see Things were not ripe for a decree, And said she must consult her books, The lovers' Fletas, Bractons, Cokes. First to a dapper clerk she beckoned To turn to Ovid, book the second ; She then referred them to a place In Virgil, vide Dido's case. As for Tibullus's reports, They never passed for law in courts ; For Cowley's briefs, and pleas of Waller, Still their authority was smaller. There was on both sides much to say : She'd hear the cause another day. And so she did ; and then a third She heard it there she kept her word ; But, with rejoinders or replies, Long bills, and answers stuffed with lies, Demur, imparlance, and essoign, The parties ne'er could issue join. For sixteen years the cause was spun, And then stood where it first begun. Now, gentle Clio, sing, or say, What Venus meant by this delay ? The goddess, much perplexed in mind To see her empire thus declined, When first this grand debate arose, Above her wisdom to compose, Conceived a project in her head To work her ends, which, if it sped, 324 CADENUS AND VANESSA. Would show the merits of the cause Far better than consulting laws. In a glad hour Lucina's aid Produced on earth a wondrous maid, On whom the Queen of Love was bent To try a new experiment. She threw her law-books on the shelf, And thus debated with herself : " Since men allege they ne'er can find Those beauties in a female mind Which raise a flame that will endure For ever uncorrupt and pure ; If 'tis with reason they complain, This infant shall restore my reign. I'll search where every virtue dwells, From courts inclusive down to cells ; What preachers talk or sages write, These I will gather and unite, And represent them to mankind Collected in that infant's mind." This said, she plucks in heaven's high bowers A sprig of amaranthine flowers ; In nectar thrice infuses bays, Three times refined in Titan's rays ; Then calls the Graces to her aid, And sprinkles thrice the new-born maid, From whence the tender skin assumes A sweetness above all perfumes ; From whence a cleanliness remains, Incapable of outward stains From whence that decency of mind, So lovely in the female kind, Where not one careless thought intrudes, Less modest than the speech of prudes ; Where never blush was called in aid, That spurious virtue in a maid, CADBNUS AND VANESSA. 325 A virtue but at second-hand They blush because they understand. The Graces next would act their part, And showed but little of their art ; Their work was half already done, The child with native beauty shone ; The outward form no help required : Each, breathing on her thrice, inspired That gentle, soft, engaging air, Which in old times adorned the fair, And said, " Vanessa be the name By which thou shalt be known to fame : Vanessa, by the gods enrolled, Her name on earth shall not be told." But still the work was not complete, When Venus thought on a deceit. Drawn by her doves, away she flies, And finds out Pallas in the skies. " Dear Pallas, I have been this morn To see a lovely infant born ; A boy in yonder isle below, So like my own without his bow ; By beauty could your heart be won, You'd swear it is Apollo's son : But it shall ne'er be said a child So hopeful has by me been spoil'd ; I have enough besides to spare, And give him wholly to your care." Wisdom's above suspecting wiles ; The Queen of Learning gravely smiles, Down from Olympus comes with joy, Mistakes Vanessa for a boy ; Then sows within her tender mind Seeds long unknown to womankind ; For manly bosoms chiefly fit, The seeds of knowledge, judgment, wit. CADENUS AND VANESSA. Her soul was suddenly endued With justice, truth, and fortitude ; With honour, which no breath can stain, Which malice must attack in vain ; With open heart and bounteous hand, But Pallas here was at a stand. She knew, in our degenerate days, Bare virtue could not live on praise ; That meat must be with money bought : She therefore, upon second thought, Infused, yet as it were by stealth, Some small regard for state and wealth ; Of which, as she grew up, there staid A tincture in the prudent maid ; She managed her estate with care, Yet liked three footmen to her chair. But, lest he should neglect his studies Like a young heir, the thrifty goddess (For fear young master should be spoiled) Would use him like a younger child ; And, after long computing, found 'Twould come to just five thousand pound. The Queen of Love was pleased and proud To see Vanessa thus endowed ; She doubted not but such a dame Through every breast would dart a flame, That every rich and lordly swain With pride would drag about her chain ; That scholars would forsake their books To study bright Vanessa's looks ; As she advanced, that womankind \Vould by her model form their mind, And all their conduct would be tried By her, as an unerring guide ; Offending daughters oft would hear Vanessa's praise rung in their ear ; CADENUS AND VANESSA. 327 Miss Betty, when she does a fault, Lets fall her knife or spills the salt, Will thus be by her mother chid, "Tis what Vanessa never did !" " Thus by the nymphs and swains adored, My power shall be again restored, And happy lovers bless my reign " So Venus hoped, but hoped in vain. For when in time the martial maid Found out the trick that Venus played, She shakes her helm, she knits her brows, And, fired with indignation, vows To-morrow ere the setting sun She'd all undo that she had done. But in the poets we may find A wholesome law, time out of mind, Had been confirmed by Fate's decree, That gods, of whatsoe'er degree, Resume not what themselves have given, Or any brother god in heaven ; Which keeps the peace among the gods, Or they must always be at odds ; And Pallas, if she broke the laws, Must yield her foe the stronger cause ; A shame to one so much adored For wisdom at Jove's council-board. Besides, she feared the Queen of Love Would meet with better friends above, And though she must with grief reflect, To see a mortal virgin decked With graces hitherto unknown To female breasts, except her own, Yet she would act as best became A goddess of unspotted fame. She knew by augury divine Venus would fail in her design : 328 CADENUS AND VANESSA. She studied well the point, and found Her foe's conclusions were not sound, From premises erroneous brought, And therefore the deduction's naught, And must have contrary effects To what her treacherous foe expects. In proper season Pallas meets The Queen of Love, whom thus she greets, (For gods, we are by Homer told, Can in celestial language scold) : " Perfidious goddess ! but in vain You formed this project in your brain, A project for thy talents fit, With much deceit and little wit. Thou hast, as thou shalt quickly see, Deceived thyself instead of me ; For how can heavenly wisdom prove An instrument to earthly love ? Know'st thou not yet that men commence Thy votaries for want of sense ? Nor shall Vanessa be the theme To manage thy abortive scheme : She'll prove the greatest of thy foes, And yet I scorn to interpose, But, using neither skill nor force, Leave all things to their natural course." The goddess thus pronounced her doom, When lo ! Vanessa in her bloom Advanced like Atalanta's star, But rarely seen, and seen from far ; In a new world with caution stept, Watched all the company she kept, Well knowing, from the books she read, What dangerous paths young virgins tread; Would seldom at the Park appear, Nor saw the playhouse twice a year ; CADENUS AND VANESSA. 329 Yet, not incurious, was inclined To know the converse of mankind. First issued from perfumers' shops A crowd of fashionable fops ; They asked her how she liked the play, Then told the tattle of the day ; A duel fought last night at two, About a lady you knew who ; Mentioned a new Italian, come Either from Muscovy or Rome ; Gave hints of who and who's together ; Then fell to talking of the weather ; Last night was so extremely fine, The ladies walked till after nine ; Then in soft voice and speech absurd, With nonsense every second word, With fustian from exploded plays, They celebrate her beauty's praise ; Run o'er their cant of stupid lies, And tell the murders of her eyes. With silent scorn Vanessa sat, Scarce listening to their idle chat, Further than sometimes by a frown, When they grew pert, to pull them down. At last she spitefully was bent To try their wisdom's full extent, And said she valued nothing less Than titles, figures, shape, and dress ; That merit should be chiefly placed In judgment, knowledge, wit, and taste, And these, she offered to dispute, Alone distinguished man from brute ; That present times have no pretence To virtue in the noble sense By Greeks and Romans understood, To perish for our country's good. 330 CADENUS AND VANESSA. She named the ancient heroes round, Explained for what they were renowned ; Then spoke with censure or applause Of foreign customs, rites, and laws ; Through nature and through art she ranged, And gracefully her subject changed ; In vain ! her hearers had no share In all she spoke except to stare. Their judgment was, upon the whole, " That lady is the dullest soul ! " Then tapped their forehead in a jeer, As who should say " She wants it here ! " She may be handsome, young, and rich, But none will burn her for a witch ! A party next of glittering dames, From round the purlieus of St. James, Came early, out of pure goodwill, To see the girl in dishabile. Their clamour, lighting from their chairs, Grew louder all the way upstairs ; At entrance loudest, where they found The room with volumes littered round. Vanessa held Montaigne, and read While Mrs. Susan combed her head. They called for tea and chocolate, And fell into their usual chat, Discoursing with important face On ribands, fans, and gloves, and lace ; Showed patterns just from India brought, And gravely asked her what she thought, Whether the red or green were best, And what they cost ? Vanessa guessed As came into her fancy first, Named half the rates, and liked the worst. To scandal next " What awkward thing Was that last Sunday in the ring ? CADENUS AND VANESSA. 331 I'm sorry Mopsa breaks so fast ; I said her face would never last Corinna, with that youthful air, Is thirty and a bit to spare ; Her fondness for a certain Earl Began when I was but a girl ! Phillis, who but a month ago Was married to the Tunbridge beau, I saw coquetting t'other night In public with that odious knight ! " They rallied next Vanessa's dress " That gown was made for old Queen Bess. Dear madam, let me see your head ; Don't you intend to put on red ? A petticoat without a hoop ! Sure, you are not ashamed to stoop ! With handsome garters at your knees, No matter what a fellow sees." Filled with disdain, with rage inflamed, Both of herself and sex ashamed, The nymph stood silent out of spite, Nor would vouchsafe to set them right. Away the fair detractors went, And gave by turns their censures vent. " She's not so handsome in my eyes j For wit, I wonder where it lies She's fair and clean, and that's the most ; But why proclaim her for a toast ? A baby face ; no life, no airs, But what she learned at country fairs ; Scarce knows what difference is between Rich Flanders lace and Colberteen. I'll undertake my little Nancy In flounces has a better fancy ; With all her wit, I would not ask Her judgment how to buy a mask. 332 C A DEN US AND VANESSA. We begged her but to patch her face, She never hit one proper place, Which every girl at five years old Can do as soon as she is told. I own that out-of-fashion stuff Becomes the creature well enough ; The girl might pass, if we could get her To know the world a little better." (To know the world ! a modern phrase For visits, ombre, balls, and plays.) Thus, to the world's perpetual shame, The Queen of Beauty lost her aim, Too late with grief she understood Pallas had done more harm than good, For great examples are but vain Where ignorance begets disdain. Both sexes, armed with guilt and spite, Against Vanessa's power unite ; To copy her few nymphs aspired, Her virtues fewer swains admired. So stars beyond a certain height Give mortals neither heat nor light. Yet some of either sex, endowed With gifts superior to the crowd, With virtue, knowledge, taste, and wit, She condescended to admit ; With pleasing arts she could reduce Men's talents to their proper use, And with address each genius held To that wherein it most excelled ; Thus, making others' wisdom known, Could please them and improve her own. A modest youth said something new ; She placed it in the strongest view. All humble worth she strove to raise ; Would not be praised, yet loved to praise. CADENUS AND VANESSA. 333 The learned met with free approach, Although they came not in a coach. Some clergy too she would allow, Nor quarrelled at their awkward bow ; But this was for Cadenus' sake, A gownman of a different make, Whom Pallas once, Vanessa's tutor, Had fixed on for her coadjutor. But Cupid, full of mischief, longs To vindicate his mother's wrongs. On Pallas all attempts are vain : One way he knows to give her pain ; Vows on Vanessa's heart to take Due vengeance, for her patron's sake. Those early seeds by Venus sown, In spite of Pallas, now were grown ; And Cupid hoped they would improve By time, and ripen into love. The boy made use of all his craft, In vain discharging many a shaft, Pointed at colonels, lords, and beaux. Cadenus warded off the blows ; For, placing still some book betwixt, The darts were in the cover fixed, Or, often blunted and recoiled, On Plutarch's morals struck, were spoiled. The Queen of Wisdom could foresee, But not prevent, the Fate's decree ; And human caution tries in vain To break that adamantine chain. Vanessa, though by Pallas taught, By love invulnerable thought, Searching in books for wisdom's aid, Was in the very search betrayed. Cupid, though all his darts were lost, Yet still resolved to spare no cost ; 334 CADENUS AND VANESSA. He could not answer to his fame The triumphs of that stubborn dame, A nymph so hard to be subdued, Who neither was coquette nor prude. " I find," said he, " she wants a doctor, Both to adore her and instruct her ; I'll give her what she most admires Among those venerable sires. Cadenus is a subject fit, Grown old in politics and wit, Caressed by ministers of state, Of half mankind the dread and hate. Whate'er vexations love attend, She need no rivals apprehend. Her sex, with universal voice, Must laugh at her capricious choice." Cadenus many things had writ, Vanessa much esteemed his wit, And called for his poetic works. Meantime the boy in secret lurks, And, while the book was in her hand, The urchin from his private stand Took aim, and shot with all his strength A dart of such prodigious length ; It pierced the feeble volume through And deep transfixed her bosom too. Some lines, more moving than the rest, Stuck to the point that pierced her breast, And, borne directly to the heart, With pains unknown increased her smart. Vanessa, not in years a score, Dreams of a gown of forty-four, Imaginary charms can find In eyes with reading almost blind. Cadenus now no more appears Declined in health, advanced in years ; CADENUS AND VANESSA. 335 She fancies music in his tongue, Nor further looks, but thinks him young. What mariner is not afraid To venture in a ship decayed ? What planter will attempt to yoke A sapling with a falling oak ? As years increase she brighter shines, Cadenus with each day declines ; And he must fall a prey to time, While she continues in her prime. Cadenus, common forms apart, In every scene had kept his heart, Had sighed and languished, vowed and writ, For pastime or to show his wit, But books, and time, and state affairs, Had spoiled his fashionable airs ; He now could praise, esteem, approve, But understood not what was love. His conduct might have made him styled A father, and the nymph his child. That innocent delight he took To see the virgin mind her book, Was but the master's secret joy In school to hear the finest boy. Her knowledge with her fancy grew, She hourly pressed for something new ; Ideas came into her mind So fast, his lessons lagged behind ; She reasoned without plodding long. Nor ever gave her judgment wrong. But now a sudden change was wrought ; She minds no longer what he taught. Cadenus was amazed to find Such marks of a distracted mind ; For though she seemed to listen more To all he spoke than e'er before, 336 CADENUS AND VANESSA. He found her thoughts would absent range, Yet guessed not whence could spring the change ; And first he modestly conjectures His pupil might be tired with lectures, Which helped to mortify his pride, Yet gave him not the heart to chide ; But in a mild dejected strain At last he ventured to complain : Said she should be no longer teased, Might have her freedom when she pleased ; Was now convinced he acted wrong To hide her from the world so long, And in dull studies to engage One of her tender sex and age ; That every nymph with envy owned How she might shine in the grande monde ; And every shepherd was undone To see her cloistered like a nun. This was a visionary scheme : He waked, and found it but a dream ; A project far above his skill, For Nature must be Nature still. If he were bolder than became A scholar to a courtly dame, She might excuse a man of letters, Thus tutors often treat their betters : And, since his talk offensive grew, He came to .take his last adieu. Vanessa, filled with just disdain, Would still her dignity maintain, Instructed from her early years To scorn the art of female tears. Had he employed his time so long To teach her what was right and wrong ; Yet could such notions entertain That all his lectures were in vain ? C A DEN US AND VANESSA. 337 She owned the wandering of her thoughts, But he must answer for her faults. She well remembered, to her cost, That all his lessons were not lost. Two maxims she could still produce, And sad experience taught their use ; That virtue, pleased by being shown, Knows nothing which it dares not own ; Can make us without fear disclose Our inmost secrets to our foes : That common forms were not designed Directors to a noble mind. " Now," said the nymph, " to let you see My actions with your rules agree, That I can vulgar forms despise, And have no secrets to disguise ; I knew, by what you said and writ, How dangerous things were men of wit ; You cautioned me against their charms, But never gave me equal arms ; Your lessons found the weakest part, Aimed at the head, but reached the heart." Cadenus felt within him rise Shame, disappointment, guilt, surprise ; He knew not how to reconcile Such language with her usual style : And yet her words were so expressed, He could not hope she spoke in jest His thought had wholly been confined To form and cultivate her mind ; He hardly knew, till he was told, Whether the nymph were young or old ; Had met her in a public place Without distinguishing her face : Much less could his declining age Vanessa's earliest thoughts engage ; 338 CADENUS AND VANESSA. And, if her youth indifference met, His person must contempt beget : Or, grant her passion be sincere, How shall his innocence be clear ? Appearances were all so strong, The world must think him in the wrong Would say he made a treacherous use Of wit to flatter and seduce : The town would swear he had betrayed By magic spells the harmless maid ; And every beau would have his jokes That scholars were like other folks ; And, when Platonic flights were over, The tutor turned a mortal lover ! So tender of the young and fair, It showed a true paternal care Five thousand guineas in her purse ! The Doctor might have fancied worse. Hardly at length he silence broke, And faltered every word he spoke ; Interpreting her complaisance, Just as a man sans consequence. She rallied well, he always knew, Her manner now was something new ; And what she spoke was in an air As serious as a tragic player. But those who aim at ridicule Should fix upon some certain rule Which fairly hints they are in jest, Else he must enter his protest ; For, let a man be ne'er so wise, He may be caught with sober lies, A science which he never taught, And, to be free, was dearly bought ; For, take it in its proper light, J Tis just what coxcombs call a bite. CADENUS AND VANESSA. 339 But, not to dwell on things minute, Vanessa finished the dispute ; Brought weighty arguments to prove That reason was her guide in love. She thought he had himself described His doctrines when she first imbibed : What he had planted now was grown, His virtues she might call her own ; As he approves, as he dislikes, Love or contempt her fancy strikes. Self-love, in nature rooted fast, Attends us first and leaves us last : Why she likes him, admire not at her, She loves herself and that's the matter. How was her tutor wont to praise The geniuses of ancient days ! (Those authors he so oft had named, For learning, wit, and wisdom famed) Was struck with love, esteem, and awe For persons whom he never saw. Suppose Cadenus flourished then, He must adore such godlike men. If one short volume could comprise All that was witty, learned, and wise, How would it be esteemed and read Although the writer long were dead ! If such an author were alive, How all would for his friendship strive, And come in crowds to see his face ! And this she takes to be her case. Cadenus answers every end, The book, the author, and the friend ; The utmost her desires will reach Is but to learn what he can teach : His converse is a system fit Alone to fill up all her wit ; 34 o C A DEN US AND VANESSA. While every passion of her mind In him is centred and confined. Love can with speech inspire a mute, And taught Vanessa to dispute. This topic, never touched before, Displayed her eloquence the more : Her knowledge, with such pains acquired, By this new passion grew inspired ; Through this she made all objects pass, Which gave a tincture o'er the mass ; As rivers, though they bend and twine, Still to the sea their course incline ; Or as philosophers, who find Some favourite system to their mind, In every point to make it fit, Will force all Nature to submit. Cadenus, who could ne'er suspect His lessons would have such effect, Or be so artfully applied, Insensibly came on her side. It was an unforeseen event ; Things took a turn he never meant. Whoe'er excels in what we prize Appears a hero in our eyes ; Each girl, when pleased with what is taught, Will have the teacher in her thought. When miss delights in her spinnet, A fiddler may a fortune get ; A blockhead with melodious voice In boarding-schools may have his choice; And oft the dancing-master's art Climbs from the toe to touch the heart. In learning let a nymph delight, The pedant gets a mistress by it. Cadenus, to his grief and shame, Could scarce oppose Vanessa's flame ; CADENUS AND VANESSA. 341 And, though her arguments were strong, At least could hardly wish them wrong. Howe'er it came, he could not tell, But sure she never talked so well. His pride began to interpose ; Preferred before a crowd of beaux I So bright a nymph to come unsought ! Such wonder by his merit wrought ! 'Tis merit must with her prevail ! He never knew her judgment fail ! She noted all she ever read And had a most discerning head ! 'Tis an old maxim in the schools That flattery's the food of fools ; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit. So, when Cadenus could not hide, He chose to justify his pride ; Construing the passion he had shown, Much to her praise, more to his own. Nature in him had merit placed, In her a most judicious taste. Love, hitherto a transient guest, Ne'er held possession of his breast ; So long attending at the gate, Disdained to enter in so late. Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all ? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet ; Where pleasures mixed with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear; Wherein his dignity and age Forbid Cadenus to engage. But friendship, in its greatest height, A constant, rational delight, 342 C A DEN US AND VANESSA. On virtue's basis fixed to last, When love allurements long are past, Which gently warms, but cannot burn, He gladly offers in return ; His want of passion will redeem With gratitude, respect, esteem ; With that devotion we bestow When goddesses appear below. While thus Cadenus entertains Vanessa in exalted strains, The nymph in sober words entreats A truce with all sublime conceits ; For why such raptures, flights, and fancies, To her who durst not read romances, In lofty style to make replies, Which he had taught her to despise ? But when her tutor will affect Devotion, duty, and respect, He fairly abdicates the throne ; The government is now her own ; He has a forfeiture incurred ; She vows to take him at his word, And hopes he will not think it strange If both should now their stations change; The nymph will have her turn to be The tutor, and the pupil he, Though she already can discern Her scholar is not apt to learn, Or wants capacity to reach The science she designs to teach ; Wherein his genius was below The skill of every common beau, Who, though he cannot spell, is wise Enough to read a lady's eyes, And will each accidental glance Interpret for a kind advance. C ADEN US AND VANESSA. 343 But what success Vanessa met Is to the world a secret yet, Whether the nymph, to please her swain, Talks in a high romantic strain, Or whether he at lasts descends To act with less seraphic ends, Or, to compound the business, whether They temper love and books together, Must never to mankind be told, Nor shall the conscious Muse unfold. Meantime the mournful Queen of Love Led but a weary life above. She ventures now to leave the skies, Grown by Vanessa's conduct wise ; For, though by one perverse event Pallas had crossed her first intent, Though her design was not obtained, Yet had she much experience gained, And, by the project vainly tried, Could better now the cause decide. She gave due notice that both parties, Coram Regina, prox 1 die Martis, Should at their peril, without fail, Come and appear, and save their bail. All met ; and, silence thrice proclaimed, One lawyer to each side was named. The judge discovered in her face Resentments for her late disgrace, And, full of anger, shame, and grief, Directed them to mind their brief, Nor spend their time to show their reading ; She'd have a summary proceeding. She gathered under every head The sum of what each lawyer said, Gave her own reasons last, and then Decreed the cause against the men. 344 C ADEN US AND VANESSA. But, in a weighty case like this, To show she did not judge amiss, Which evil tongues might else report, She made a speech in open court, Wherein she grievously complains How she was cheated by the swains ; On whose petition (humbly showing That women were not worth the wooing, And that, unless the sex would mend, The race of lovers soon must end) She was at Lord knows what expense To form a nymph of wit and sense, A model for her sex designed, Who never could one lover find. She saw her favour was misplaced ; The fellows had a wretched taste ; She needs must tell them to their face They were a stupid, senseless race ; And, were she to begin again, She'd study to reform the men, Or add some grains of folly more To women than they had before, To put them on an equal foot ; And this, or nothing else, would do't. This might their mutual fancy strike, Since every being loves its like. But now, repenting what was done, She left all business to her son ; She put the world in his possession, And let him use it at discretion. The crier was ordered to dismiss The court, so made his last " O yes ! " The goddess would no longer wait, But, rising from her chair of state, Left all below at six and seven, Harnessed her doves, and flew to heaven. A REBUS. BY VANESSA. UT the name of the man 1 who his mistress denied, And let the first of it be only applied To join with the prophet 2 who David did chide ; Then say what a horse is that runs very fast, 3 And that which deserves to be first put the last ; Spell all then, and put them together, to find The name and the virtues of him I designed. Like the patriarch in Egypt, he's versed in the state ; Like the prophet in Jewry, he's free with the great ; Like a racer he flies, to succour with speed, When his friends want his aid or desert is in need. 1 Jo-seph. 2 Nathan. 3 Swift. THE DEAN'S ANSWER. '"PHE nymph who wrote this in an amorous fit, - 1 - I cannot but envy the pride of her wit, Which thus she will venture profusely to throw On so mean a design and a subject so low. For mean's her design, and her subject as mean, The first but a rebus, the last but a Dean. A Dean's but a parson ; and what is a rebus ? A thing never known to the Muses or Phoebus. The corruption of verse ; for, when all is done, It is but a paraphrase made on a pun. But a genius like her's no subject can stifle, It shows and discovers itself through a trifle. By reading this trifle, I quickly began To find her a great wit, but the Dean a small man. Rich ladies will furnish their garrets with stuff Which others for mantuas would think fine enough ; So the wit that is lavishly thrown away here Might furnish a second-rate poet a year. Thus much for the verse, we proceed to the next, Where the nymph has entirely forsaken her text ; Her fine panegyrics are quite out of season, And what she describes to be merit is treason. The changes which faction has made in the state Have put the Dean's politics quite out of date ; Now no one regards what he utters with freedom, And, should he write pamphlets, no great man would read 'em; And should want or desert stand in need of his aid, This racer would prove but a dull, foundered jade. IN SICKNESS. WRITTEN IN IRELAND IN OCTOBER 1714. IS true then why should I repine To see my life so fast decline ? But why obscurely here alone, Where I am neither loved nor known ? My state of health none care to learn, My life is here no soul's concern ; And those with whom I now -converse Without a tear will tend my hearse. Removed from kind Arbuthnot's aid, Who knows his art but not his trade, Preferring his regard for me Before his credit or his fee. Some formal visits, looks, and words, What mere humanity affords, I meet, perhaps, from three or four From whom I once expected more, Which those who tend the sick for pay Can act as decently as they ; But no obliging tender friend To help at my approaching end. My life is now a burden grown To others, ere it be my own. Ye formal weepers for the sick, In your last offices be quick, And spare my absent friends the grief To hear, yet give me no relief; Expired to-day, intombed to-morrow, When known, will save a double sorrow. POEMS TO STELLA. STELLA'S BIRTHDAY. (MARCH 13, 1718-19.) TELL A this day is thirty-four (We shan't dispute a year or more). However, Stella, be not troubled, Although thy size and years are doubled Since first I saw thee at sixteen, The brightest virgin on the green ; So little is thy form declined, Made up so largely in thy mind. Oh, would it please the gods to split Thy beauty, size, and years, and wit ! No age could furnish out a pair Of nymphs so graceful, wise, and fair, With half the lustre of your eyes, With half your wit, your years, and size. And then, before it grew too late, How should I beg of gentle Fate (That either nymph might have her swain) To split my worship too in twain ! POEM'S TO STELLA. 349 STELLA'S BIRTHDAY. (1719-20.) A LL travellers at first incline Where'er they see the fairest sign ; And if they find the chambers neat, And like the liquor and the meat, Will call again, and recommend The Angel Inn to every friend. What though the painting grows decayed, The house will never lose its trade ; Nay, though the treacherous tapster, Thomas, Hang a new Angel two doors from us, As fine as dauber's hands can make it, In hopes that strangers may mistake it ; We think it both a shame and sin To quit the true old Angel Inn. Now this is Stella's case in fact, An angel's face a little cracked, Could poets or could painters fix How angels look at thirty-six. This drew us in at first to find In such a form an angel's mind ; And every virtue now supplies The fainting rays of Stella's eyes. See at her levee crowding swains, Whom Stella freely entertains With breeding, humour, wit, and sense, And puts them but to small expense ; Their mind so plentifully fills, And makes such reasonable bills, So little gets for what she gives, We really wonder how she lives ! And had her stock been less, no doubt She must have long ago run out. 350 POEMS TO STELLA. Then who can think we'll quit the place When Doll hangs out a newer face, Or stop and light at Chloe's Head, With scraps and leavings to be fed ? Then, Chloe, still go on to prate Of thirty-six and thirty-eight ; Pursue your trade of scandal-picking, Your hints that Stella is no chicken ; Your innuendoes when you tell us That Stella loves to talk with fellows j And let me warn you to believe A truth for which your soul should grieve, That should you live to see the day When Stella's locks must all be grey, When age must print a furrowed trace On every feature of her face, Though you and all your senseless tribe, Could art, or time, or Nature bribe To make you look like Beauty's Queen And hold for ever at fifteen, No bloom of youth can ever blind The cracks and wrinkles of your mind ; All men of sense will pass your door, And crowd to Stella's at fourscore. TO STELLA, WHO COLLECTED AND TRANSCRIBED HIS POEMS. (1720.) A S when a lofty pile is raised, We never hear the workmen praised Who bring the lime or place the stones, But all admire Inigo Jones ; POEMS TO STELLA. 351 So, if this pile of scattered rhymes Should be approved in aftertimes ; If it both pleases and endures, The merit and the praise are yours. Thou, Stella, wert no longer young When first for thee my harp was strung, Without one word of Cupid's darts, Of killing eyes or bleeding hearts ; With friendship and esteem possest, I ne'er admitted love a guest. In all the habitudes of life, The friend, the mistress, and the wife, Variety we still pursue, In pleasure seek for something new ; Or else, comparing with the rest, Take comfort that our own is best ; The best we value by the worst, As tradesmen show their trash at first ; But his pursuits are at an end Whom Stella chooses for a friend. A poet starving in a garret, Conning all topics like a parrot, Invokes his mistress and his Muse, And stays at home for want of shoes ; Should but his Muse descending drop A slice of bread and mutton-chop, Or kindly, when his credit's out, Surprise him with a pint of stout, Or patch his broken stocking soles, Or send him in a peck of coals ; Exalted in his mighty mind, He flies, and leaves the stars behind ; Counts all his labours amply paid, Adores her for the timely aid. Or should a porter make inquiries For Chloe, Sylvia, Phyllis, Iris, 35 2 POEMS TO STELLA. Be told the lodging, lane, and sign, The bowers that hold those nymphs divine ; Fair Chloe would perhaps be found With footmen tippling underground ; The charming Sylvia beating flax, Her shoulders marked with bloody tracks ; Bright Phyllis mending ragged smocks ; And radiant Iris in the pox." These are the goddesses enrolled In Curll's collection, new and old, Whose scoundrel fathers would not know 'em, If they should meet them in a poem. True poets can depress and raise, Are lords of infamy and praise ; They are not scurrilous in satire, Nor will in panegyric flatter. Unjustly poets we asperse; Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true. Now, should my praises owe their truth To beauty, dress, or paint, or youth, What stoics call without our power, They could not be ensured an hour ; 'Twere grafting on an annual stock, That must our expectation mock, And making one luxuriant shoot, Die the next year for want of root Before I could my verses bring, Perhaps you're quite another thing. So Maevius, when he drained his skull To celebrate some suburb trull, His similes in order set, And every crambo he could get, Had gone through all the common -places Worn out by wits who rhyme on faces ; POEMS TO STELLA. Before he could his poem close, The lovely nymph had lost her nose. Your virtues safely I commend ; They on no accidents depend ; Let Malice look with all her eyes, She dares not say the poet lies. Stella, when you these lines transcribe, Lest you should take them for a bribe, Resolved to mortify your pride, I'll here expose your weaker side. Your spirits kindle to a flame, Moved with the lightest touch of blame ; And when a friend in kindness tries To show you where your error lies, Conviction does but more incense ; Perverseness is your whole defence ; Truth, judgment, wit, give place to spite, Regardless both of wrong and right ; Your virtues, all suspended, wait Till Time has opened Reason's gate ; And what is worse, your passion bends Its force against your nearest friends, Which manners, decency, and pride Have taught you from the world to hide ; In vain ; for see, your friend has brought To public light your only fault ; And yet a fault we often find Mixed in a noble, generous mind, And may compare to ^Etna's fire, Which, though with trembling, all admire The heat, that makes the summit glow, Enriching all the vales below. Those who in warmer climes complain From Phoebus' rays they suffer pain, Must own that pain is largely paid By generous wines beneath a shade. 353 354 POEMS TO STELLA. Yet, when I find your passions rise, And anger sparkling in your eyes, I grieve those spirits should be spent, For nobler ends by Nature meant. One passion, with a different turn, Makes wit inflame or anger burn ; So the sun's heat, with different powers, Ripens the grape, the liquor sours. Thus Ajax, when with rage possest, By Pallas breathed into his breast, His valour would no more employ, Which might alone have conquered Troy, But, blinded by resentment, seeks For vengeance on his friends the Greeks. You think this turbulence of blood From stagnating preserves the flood, Which, thus fermenting by degrees, Exalts the spirits, sinks the lees. Stella, for once you reason wrong, For, should this ferment last too long, By time subsiding, you may find Nothing but acid left behind ; From passion you may then be freed, When peevishness and spleen succeed. Say, Stella, when you copy next, Will you keep strictly to the text ? Dare you let these reproaches stand, And to your failing set your hand ? Or, if these lines your anger fire, Shall they in baser flames expire ? Whene'er they burn, if burn they must, They'll prove my accusation just. POEMS TO STELLA. 355 TO STELLA. VISITING ME IN MY SICKNESS. (1720.) "DALLAS, observing Stella's wit Was more than for her sex was fit, And that her beauty, soon or late, Might breed confusion in the state, In high concern for human kind, Fixed honour in her infant mind. But (not in wranglings to engage With such a stupid, vicious age) If honour I would here define, It answers faith in things divine. As natural life the body warms, And, scholars teach, the soul informs, So honour animates the whole, And is the spirit of the soul. Those numerous virtues, which the tribe Of tedious moralists describe, And by such various titles call, True honour comprehends them all. Let melancholy rule supreme, Choler preside, or blood, or phlegm, It makes no difference in the case, Nor is complexion honour's place. But, lest we should for honour take The drunken quarrels of a rake, Or think it seated in a scar, Or on a proud triumphal car ; Or in the payment of a debt We lose with sharpers at picquet : 356 POEMS TO STELLA. Or that on which his lordship swears, When vulgar knaves would lose their ears ; Let Stella's fair example preach A lesson she alone can teach. In points of honour to be tried, All passions must be laid aside ; Ask no advice, but think alone ; Suppose the question not your own. * How shall I act 7 is not the case, But how would Brutus in my place ? In such a case would Cato bleed ? And how would Socrates proceed ? Drive all objections from your mind, Else you relapse to human kind : Ambition, avarice, and lust, A factious rage, and breach of trust, And flattery tipped with nauseous fleer, And guilty shame, and servile fear, Envy, and cruelty, and pride Will in your tainted heart preside. Heroes and heroines of old By honour only were enrolled Among their brethren in the skies, To which (though late) shall Stella rise. Ten thousand oaths upon record Are not so sacred as her word ; The world shall in its atoms end Ere Stella can deceive a friend. By honour seated in her breast She still determines what is best : What indignation in her mind Against enslavers of mankind, Base kings and ministers of state, Eternal objects of her hate ! She thinks that Nature ne'er designed Courage to man alone confined. POEMS TO STELLA. 357 Can cowardice her sex adorn, Which most exposes ours to scorn ? She wonders where the charm appears In Florimel's affected fears ; For Stella never learned the art At proper times to scream and start; Nor calls up all the house at night, And swears she saw a thing in white. Doll never flies to cut her lace, Or throw cold water in her face Because she heard a sudden drum, Or found an earwig in a plum. Her hearers are amazed from whence Proceeds that fund of wit and sense, Which, though her modesty would shroud, Breaks like the sun behind a cloud ; While gracefulness its art conceals, And yet through every motion steals. Say, Stella, was Prometheus blind, And, forming you, mistook your kind ? No ; 'twas for you alone he stole The fire that forms a manly soul ; Then, to complete it every way, He moulded it with female clay. To that you owe the nobler flame, To this the beauty of your frame. How would Ingratitude delight, And how would Censure glut her spite, If I should Stella's kindness hide In silence, or forget with pride ! When on my sickly couch I lay, Impatient both of night and day, Lamenting in unmanly strains, Called every power to ease my pains, Then Stella ran to my relief, With cheerful face and inward grief; 35 8 POEMS TO STELLA. And, though by Heaven's severe decree She suffers hourly more than me, No cruel master could require From slaves employed for daily hire What Stella, by her friendship warmed, With vigour and delight performed : My sinking spirits now supplies With cordials in her hands and eyes ; Now with a soft and silent tread Unheard she moves about my bed ; I see her taste each nauseous draught, And so obligingly am caught ; I bless the hand from whence they came, Nor dare distort my face for shame. Best pattern of true friends, beware ! You pay too dearly for your care, If, while your tenderness secures My life, it must endanger yours ; For such a fool was never found, Who pulled a palace to the ground, Only to have the ruins made Materials for a house decayed. TO STELLA. ON HER BIRTHDAY. (1721-22.) YX 7"HILE, Stella, to your lasting praise, The Muse her annual tribute pays, While I assign myself a task Which you expect but scorn to ask ; If I perform this task with pain, Let me of partial Fate complain. POEMS TO STELLA. 359 You every year the debt enlarge, I grow less equal to the charge ; In you each virtue brighter shines, But my poetic vein declines. My harp will soon in vain be strung, And all your virtues left unsung ; For none among the upstart race Of poets dare assume my place ; Your worth will be to them unknown, They must have Stellas of their own ; And thus my stock of wit decayed, I dying leave the debt unpaid, Unless Delany, as my heir, Will answer for the whole arrear. STELLA'S BIRTHDAY. A GREAT BOTTLE OF WINE, LONG BURIED, BEING THAT DAY DUG UP. (1722-23.) 73 ESOLVED my annual verse to pay, By duty bound, on Stella's day, Furnished with paper, pens, and ink, I gravely sat me down to think. I bit my nails, and scratched my head, But found my wit and fancy fled ; Or if, with more than usual pain, A thought came slowly from my brain, It cost me Lord knows how much time To shape it into sense and rhyme ; And, what was yet a greater curse, Long thinking made my fancy worse. Forsaken by th' inspiring Nine, I waited at Apollo's shrine ; 3 6o POEMS TO STELLA. I told him what the world would say If Stella were unsung to-day ; How I should hide my head for shame When both the Jacks and Robin came, How Ford would frown, how Jim would leer, How Sheridan, the rogue, would sneer, And swear it does not always follow That semel in anno ridet Apollo. I have assured them twenty times That Phcebus helped me in my rhymes, Phoebus inspired me from above, And he and I were hand and glove ; But, finding me so dull and dry since, They'll call it all poetic licence, And when I brag of aid divine, Think Eusden's right as good as mine. Nor do I ask for Stella's sake, 'Tis my own credit lies at stake ; And Stella will be sung while I Can only be a stander-by. Apollo, having thought a little, Returned this answer to a tittle. " Though you should live like old Methusalem, I furnish hints, and you shall use all 'em, You yearly sing as she grows old, You'd leave her virtues half untold. But, to say truth, such dulness reigns Through the whole set of Irish Deans, I'm daily stunned with such a medley Dean W , Dean D , and Dean Smedley, That, let what Dean soever come, My orders are, I'm not at home, And if your voice had not been loud, You must have passed among the crowd. But now, your danger to prevent, You must apply to Mrs. Brent, POEMS TO STELLA. 361 For she, as priestess, knows the rites Wherein the god of earth delights. First, nine ways looking, let her stand With an old poker in her hand; Let her describe a circle round In Saunders' cellar on the ground ; A spade let prudent Archy hold, And with discretion dig the mould ; Let Stella look with watchful eye, Rebecca, Ford, and Grattans by. Behold the bottle where it lies, With neck elated toward the skies ! The god of winds and god of fire Did to its wondrous birth conspire, And Bacchus for the poet's use Poured in a strong inspiring juice. See ! as you raise it from its tomb, It drags behind a spacious womb, And in the spacious womb contains A sovereign medicine for the brains. You'll find it soon, if fate consents ; If not, a thousand Mrs. Brents, Ten thousand Archys, armed with spades, May dig in vain to Pluto's shades. From thence a plenteous draught infuse, And boldly then invoke the Muse ; But first let Robert on his knees With caution drain it from the lees ; The Muse will at your call appear, With Stella's praise to crown the year." 362 POEMS TO STELLA. STELLA AT WOOD PARK. A HOUSE OF CHARLES FORD, ESQ., NEAR DUBLIN. " Cuicumque nocere volebat, Vestimenta dabat pretiosa." F)ON CARLOS, in a merry spite, Did Stella to his house invite ; He entertained her half a year With generous wines and costly cheer. Don Carlos made her chief director, That she might o'er the servants hector. In half a week the dame grew nice, Got all things at the highest price ; Now at the table-head she sits, Presented with the nicest bits ; She looked on partridges with scorn, Except they tasted of the corn ; A haunch of venison made her sweat, Unless it had the right fumette. Don Carlos earnestly would beg, " Dear madam, try this pigeon's leg ; " Was happy when he could prevail To make her only touch a quail. Through candle-light she viewed the wine, To see that every glass was fine. At last, grown prouder than the devil With feeding high and treatment civil, Don Carlos now began to find His malice work as he designed. The winter sky began to frown, Poor Stella must pack off to town ; From purling streams and fountains bubbling, To Liffey's stinking tide at Dublin ; POEMS TO STELLA. 363 From wholesome exercise and air, To sossing in an easy-chair ; From stomach sharp and hearty feeding, To piddle like a lady breeding ; From ruling there the household singly, To be directed here by Dingley ; l From every day a lordly banquet, To have a joint, and God be thanked ; From every meal Pontac in plenty, To half a pint one day in twenty ; From Ford attending at her call, To visits of From Ford, who thinks of nothing mean, To the poor doings of the Dean ; From growing richer with good cheer, To running out by starving here. But now arrives the dismal day ; She must return to Ormond Quay. 2 The coachman stopped ; she looked, and swore The rascal had mistook the door ; At coming in, you saw her stoop ; The entry brushed against her hoop ; Each moment rising in her airs, She cursed the narrow winding stairs ; Began a thousand faults to spy : The ceiling hardly six feet high ; The smutty wainscoat full of cracks ; And half the chairs with broken backs Her quarter's out at Ladyday, She vows she will no longer stay In lodgings like a poor Grisette, While there are houses to be let. Howe'er, to keep her spirits up, She sent for company to sup, 1 The constant companion of Stella, Rebecca Dingley. 2 Where the two ladies lodged. 364 POEMS TO STELLA. When all the while you might remark She strove in vain to ape Wood Park. Two bottles called for (half her store, The cupboard could contain but four), A supper worthy of herself, Five nothings in five plates of delf. Thus for a week the farce went on ; When, all her country savings gone, She fell into her former scene, Small beer, a herring, and the Dean. Thus far in jest ; though now, I fear, You think my jesting too severe ; But poets, when a hint is new, Regard not whether false or true ; Yet raillery gives no offence Where truth has not the least pretence ; Nor can be more securely placed Than on a nymph of Stella's taste. I must confess, your wine and vittle I was too hard upon a little ; Your table neat, your linen fine ; And though in miniature you shine, Yet, when you sigh to leave Wood Park, The scene, the welcome, and the spark, To languish in this odious town, And pull your haughty stomach down, We think you quite mistake the case, The virtue lies not in the place ; For, though my raillery were true, A cottage is Wood Park with you. POEMS TO STELLA. 365 TO STELLA. WRITTEN ON THE DAY OF HER BIRTH, MARCH 13, 1723-24, BUT NOT ON THE SUBJECT, WHEN I WAS SICK IN BED. H^ORMENTED with incessant pains, * Can I devise poetic strains ? Time was when I could yearly pay My verse on Stella's native day ; But now, unable grown to write, I grieve she ever saw the light. . Ungrateful ! since to her I owe That I these pains can undergo. She tends me like a humble slave ; And, when indecently I rave, When out my brutish passions break, With gall in every word I speak, She, with soft speech, my anguish cheers, Or melts my passions down with tears ; Although 'tis easy to descry She wants assistance more than I ; Yet seems to feel my pains alone, And is a stoic in her own. When, among scholars, can we find So soft, and yet so firm a mind ? All accidents of life conspire To raise up Stella's virtue higher ; Or else to introduce the rest Which had been latent in her breast. Her firmness who could e'er have known, Had she not evils of her own ? Her kindness who could ever guess, Had not her friends been in distress ? 3 66 POEMS TO STELLA. Whatever base returns you find From me, dear Stella, still be kind. In your own heart you'll reap the fruit, Though I continue still a brute. But, when I once am out of pain, I promise to be good again ; Meantime, your other juster friends Shall for my follies make amends ; So may we long continue thus, Admiring you, you pitying us. T A RECEIPT. TO RESTORE STELLA'S YOUTH. (1724-25.) HE Scottish hinds, too poor to house In frosty nights their starving cows, While not a blade of grass or hay Appears from Michaelmas to May, Must let their cattle range in vain For food along the barren plain ; Meagre and lank with fasting grown, And nothing left but skin and bone, Exposed to want and wind and weather, They just keep life and soul together, Till summer showers and evening's dew Again the verdant glebe renew, And as the vegetables rise The famished cow her want supplies : Without an ounce of last year's flesh, Whate'er she gains is young and fresh, Grows plump and round, and full of mettle, As rising from Medea's kettle, POEMS TO STELLA. 367 With youth and beauty to enchant Europa's counterfeit gallant. Why, Stella, should you knit your brow If I compare you to a cow ? Tis just the case ; for you have fasted So long, till all your flesh is wasted, And must against the warmer days Be sent to Quilca down to graze, Where mirth, and exercise, and air, Will soon your appetite repair The nutriment will from within Round all your body, plump your skin, Will agitate the lazy flood, And fill your veins with sprightly blood ; Not flesh nor blood will be the same, Nor aught of Stella but the name ; For what was ever understood By humankind but flesh and blood ? And if your flesh and blood be new You'll be no more the former you, But for a blooming nymph will pass, Just fifteen, coming summer's grass, Your jetty locks with garlands crowned, While all the squires for nine miles round, Attended by a brace of curs, With jockey-boots and silver spurs, No less than justices o' quorum, Their cow-boys bearing cloaks before 7 em, Shall leave deciding broken pates To kiss your steps at Quilca gates. But lest you should my skill disgrace, Come back before you're out of case, For if to Michaelmas you stay, The new-born flesh will melt away ; The squire in scorn will fly the house For better game, and look for grouse, 3 6g POEMS TO STELLA. But here, before the frost can mar it, We'll make it firm with beef and claret. STELLA'S BIRTHDAY. (1724-25.) A S, when a beauteous nyrnph decays, *^" We say she's past her dancing days, So poets lose their feet by time, And can no longer dance in rhyme. Your annual bard had rather chose To celebrate your birth in prose ; Yet merry folks, who want by chance A pair to make a country-dance, Call the old housekeeper, and get her To fill a place for want of better ; While Sheridan is off the hooks, And friend Delany at his books, That Stella may avoid disgrace, Once more the Dean supplies their place. Beauty and wit, too sad a truth ! Have always been confined to youth ; The god of wit and beauty's queen, He twenty-one and she fifteen. No poet ever sweetly sung Unless he were, like Phoebus, young ; Nor ever nymph inspired to rhyme, Unless, like Venus, in her prime. At fifty-six, if this be true, Am I a poet fit for you ? Or, at the age of forty-three, Are you a subject fit for me? Adieu ! bright wit and radiant eyes ! You must be grave and I be wise. POEMS TO STELLA. 369 Our fate in vain \ve would oppose, But I'll be still your friend in prose ; Esteem and friendship to express Will not require poetic dress, And if the Muse deny her aid To have them sung, they may be said. But, Stella, say what evil tongue Reports you are no longer young, That Time sits with his scythe to mow Where erst sat Cupid with his bow, That half your locks are turned to grey ? I'll ne'er believe a word they say. 'Tis true, but let it not be known, My eyes are somewhat dimmish grown ; For Nature, always in the right, To your decays adapts my sight, And wrinkles undistinguished pass, For I'm ashamed to use a glass ; And till I see them with these eyes, Whoever says you have them lies. No length of time can make you quit Honour and virtue, sense and wit ; Thus you may still be young to me, While I can better hear than see. Oh, ne'er may Fortune show her spite To make me deaf and mend my sight I T STELLA'S BIRTHDAY. MARCH 13, 1726-27. HIS day, whate'er the Fates decree, Shall still be kept with joy by me : This day, then, let us not be told That you are sick and I grown old, 2 A 37 o POEMS TO STELLA. Nor think of our approaching ills And talk of spectacles and pills ; To-morrow will be time enough To hear such mortifying stuff. Yet, since from reason may be brought A better and more pleasing thought, Which can, in spite of all decays, Support a few remaining days, From not the gravest of divines Accept for once some serious lines. Although we now can form no more Long schemes of life as heretofore, Yet you, while time is running fast, Can look with joy on what is past. Were future happiness and pain A mere contrivance of the brain, As atheists argue to entice And fit their proselytes for vice (The only comfort they propose, To have companions in their woes), Grant this the case ; yet sure 'tis hard That virtue, styled its own reward, And by all sages understood To be the chief of human good, Should acting die. nor leave behind Some lasting pleasure in the mind, Which, by remembrance, will assuage Grief, sickness, poverty, and age, And strongly shoot a radiant dart To shine through life's declining part. Say, Stella, feel you no content Reflecting on a life well spent ? Your skilful hand employed to save Despairing wretches from the grave, And then supporting with your store Those whom you dragged from death before ? POEMS TO STELLA. 371 So Providence on mortals waits, Preserving what it first creates. Your generous boldness to defend An innocent and absent friend ; That courage which can make you just To merit humbled in the dust ; The detestation you express For vice in all its glittering dress ; That patience under torturing pain Where stubborn stoics would complain : Must these like empty shadows pass, Or forms reflected from a glass, Or mere chimeras in the mind, That fly, and leave no marks behind ? Does not the body thrive and grow By food of twenty years ago ? And, had it not been still supplied, It must a thousand times have died. Then who with reason can maintain That no effects of food remain ? And is not virtue in mankind The nutriment that feeds the mind, Upheld by each good action past, And still continued by the last ? Then who with reason can pretend That all effects of virtue end ? Believe me, Stella, when you show That true contempt for things below, Nor prize your life for other ends Than merely to oblige your friends, Your former actions claim their part And join to fortify your heart. For Virtue in her daily race, Like Janus, bears a double face ; Looks back with joy where she has gone, And therefore goes with courage on : 37 2 POEMS TO STELLA. She at your sickly couch will wait And guide you to a better state. Oh, then, whatever Heaven intends, Take pity on your pitying friends ! Nor let your ills affect your mind To fancy they can be unkind. Me, surely me, you ought to spare, Who gladly would your suffering share, Or give my scrap of life to you, And think it far beneath your due ; You, to whose care so oft I owe That I'm alive to tell you so. THREE PRAYERS USED BY THE DEAN FOR STELLA IN HER LAST SICKNESS, 1727. I. A LMIGHTY and most gracious Lord God, extend, we beseech " Thee, Thy pity and compassion toward this Thy languishing servant ; teach her to place her hope and confidence entirely in Thee ; give her a true sense of the emptiness and vanity of all earthly things ; make her truly sensible of all the infirmities of her life past, and grant to her such a true sincere repentance as is not to be repented of. Preserve her, O Lord, in a sound mind and understanding during this Thy visitation ; keep her from both the sad extremes of presumption and despair. If Thou shalt please to restore her to her former health, give her grace to be ever mindful of that mercy, and to keep those good resolutions she now makes in her sickness, so that no length of time nor pro- sperity may entice her to forget them. Let no thought of her misfortunes distract her mind, and prevent the means toward her recovery, or disturb her in her preparations for a better life. We beseech thee also, O Lord, of Thy infinite goodness, to remember the good actions of this Thy servant ; that the naked she hath clothed, the hungry she hath fed, the sick and the fatherless whom she hath relieved, may be reckoned according to Thy gracious pro- mise, as if they had been done unto Thee. Hearken, O Lord, to the prayers offered up by the friends of this Thy servant in her behalf, and especially those now made by us unto thee. Give Thy blessing 374 THREE PRAYERS. to those endeavours used for her recovery ; but take from her all violent desire either of life or death, further than with resignation to Thy holy will. And now, O Lord, we implore Thy gracious favour toward us here met together. Grant that the sense of this Thy servant's weakness may add strength to our faith ; that we, considering the infirmities of our nature and the uncertainty of life, may by this example be drawn to repentance before it shall please Thee to visit us in like manner. Accept these prayers, we beseech Thee, for the sake of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, who, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth, ever one God, world without end. Amen. II. WRITTEN OCTOBER Ij, IJ2J. MOST merciful Father, accept our humblest prayers in behalf of this Thy languishing servant ; forgive the sins, the frailties, and infirmities of her life past. Accept the good deeds she hath done in such a manner that, at whatever time Thou shalt please to call her, she may be received into everlasting habitations. Give her grace to continue sincerely thankful to Thee for the many favours Thou hast bestowed upon her, the ability and inclination and practice to do good, and those virtues which have procured the esteem and love of her friends and a most unspotted name in the world. O God, Thou dispensest Thy blessings and Thy punish- ments as it becometh infinite justice and mercy ; and since it was Thy pleasure to afHict her with a long, constant, weakly state of health, make her truly sensible that it was for very wise ends, and was largely made up to her in other blessings more valuable and less common. Continue to her, O Lord, that firmness and con- stancy of mind wherewith Thou hast most graciously endowed her, together with that contempt of worldly things and vanities that she has shown in the whole conduct of her life. O All- powerful Being, the least motion of whose will can create or THREE PRAYERS. 375 destroy a world, pity us, the mournful friends of Thy distressed servant, who sink under the weight of her present condition, and the fear of losing the most valuable of our friends. Restore her to us, O Lord, if it be Thy gracious will, or inspire us with constancy and resignation to support ourgelves under so heavy an affliction. Restore her, O Lord, for the sake of those poor who, by losing her, will be desolate, and those sick who will not only want her bounty, but her care and tending ; or else, in Thy mercy, raise up some other in her place with equal disposition and better abilities. Lessen, O Lord, we beseech Thee, her bodily pains, or give her a double strength of mind to support them. And if Thou wilt soon take her to Thyself, turn our thoughts rather upon that felicity which we hope she shall enjoy, than upon that unspeakable loss we shall endure. Let her memory be ever dear unto us, and the example of her many virtues, as far as human infirmity will admit, our constant imitation. Accept, O Lord, these prayers, poured from the very bottom of our hearts, in Thy mercy, and for the merits of our blessed Saviour. Amen. III. WRITTEN NOVEMBER 6, 1727. O MERCIFUL Father, who never afflictest Thy children but for their own good, and with justice, over which Thy mercy always prevaileth, either to turn them to repentance, or to punish them in the present life in order to reward them in a better ; take pity, we beseech Thee, upon this Thy poor afflicted servant, languish- ing so long and so grievously under the weight of Thy hand. Give her strength, O Lord, to support her weakness, and patience to endure her pains without repining at Thy correction. Forgive every rash and inconsiderate expression which her anguish may at any time force from her tongue, while her heart continueth in an entire submission to Thy will. Suppress in her, O Lord, all eager desires of life, and lessen her fears of death by inspiring into her 37 6 THREE PRAYERS. an humble yet assured hope of Thy mercy. Give her a sincere repentance for all her transgressions and omissions, and a firm resolution to pass the remainder of her life in endeavouring to her utmost to observe all Thy precepts. We beseech Thee likewise to compose her thoughts, and preserve to her the use of her memory and reason during the course of her sickness. Give her a true conception of the vanity, folly, and insignificance of all human things, and strengthen her so as to beget in her a sincere love of Thee in the midst of her sufferings. Accept and impute all her good deeds, and forgive her all those offences against Thee which she hath sincerely repented of or through the frailty of memory hath forgot. And now, O Lord, we turn to Thee in behalf of ourselves and the rest of her sorrowful friends. Let not our grief afflict her mind, and thereby have an ill effect on her present distemper. Forgive the sorrow and weakness of those among us who sink under the grief and terror of losing so dear and useful a friend. Accept and pardon our most earnest prayers and wishes for her longer continuance in this evil world, to do what Thou art pleased to call Thy service, and is only her bounden duty, that she may be still a comfort to us and to all others who will want the benefit of her conversation, her advice, her good offices, or her charity. And since Thou hast promised that where two or three are gathered together in Thy name Thou wilt be in the midst of them to grant their request, O gracious Lord, grant to us who are here met in Thy name that those requests, which in the utmost sincerity and earnestness of our hearts we have now made in behalf of this Thy distressed ser- vant and of ourselves, may effectually be answered, through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. T THREE SERMONS. ON MUTUAL SUBJECTION. 1 (FIRST PRINTED IN 1744.) " Yea, all of you be subject one to another." i Peter v. 5. HE Apostle having, in many parts of this Epistle, given direc- tions to Christians concerning the duty of subjection or obedience to superiors, in the several instances of the subject to the prince, the child to his parent, the servant to his master, the wife to her husband, and the younger to the elder, doth here, in the words of my text, sum up the whole by advancing a point of doctrine, which at first may appear a little extraordinary. " Yea, all of you," saith he, " be subject one to another." For it should seem that two persons cannot properly be said to be subject to each other, and that subjection is only due from inferiors to those above them ; yet St. Paul hath several passages to the same purpose. For he exhorts the Romans "in honour to prefer one another;" and the Philippians, "that in lowliness of mind they should each esteem other better than themselves ; " and the Ephesians, " that they should submit themselves one to another in the fear of the Lord." Here we find these two great Apostles recommending to air Christians this duty of mutual sub- jection. For we may observe, by St. Peter, that having mentioned the several relations which men bear to each other, as governor and subject, master and servant, and the rest which I have already 1 A clearer style, or a discourse more properly adapted to a public audience, can scarce be framed. Every paragraph is simple, nervous, and intelligible. The threads of each argument are closely connected and logically pursued. Orrery. 37 8 THREE SERMONS. repeated, he makes no exception, but sums up the whole with commanding "all to be subject one to another." Whence we may conclude that this subjection due from all men to all men is something more than the compliment of course, when our betters are pleased to tell us they are our humble servants, but under- stand us to be their slaves. I know very well that some of those who explain this text apply it to humility, to the duties of charity, to private exhorta- tions, and to bearing with each other's infirmities ; and it is probable the Apostle may have had a regard to all these. But, however, many learned men agree that there is something more understood, and so the words in their plain natural meaning must import, as you will observe yourselves if you read them with the beginning of the verse, which is thus : " Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder ; yea, all of you be subject one to another." So that, upon the whole, there must be some kind of subjection due from every man to every man, which cannot be made void by any power, pre-eminence, or authority whatsoever. Now what sort of subjection this is, and how it ought to be paid, shall be the subject of my present discourse. As God hath contrived all the works of Nature to be useful, and in some manner a support to each other, by which the whole frame of the world, under His providence, is preserved and kept up, so among mankind our particular stations are appointed to each of us by God Almighty, wherein we are obliged to act as far as our power reacheth toward the good of the whole community. And he who doth not perform that part assigned him towards advancing the benefit of the whole, in proportion to his oppor- tunities and abilities, is not only a useless, but a very mischievous member of the public; because he takes his share of the profit, and yet leaves his share of the burden to be borne by others, which is the true principal cause of most miseries and misfortunes in life. For a wise man who does not assist with his counsels, a great man with his protection, a rich man with his bounty and charity, and a poor man with his labour, are perfect nuisances in a commonwealth. Neither is any condition of life more honourable MUTUAL SUBJECTION. 379 in the sight of God than another ; otherwise He would be a re- specter of persons, which He assures us He is not ; for He hath proposed the same salvation to all men, and hath only placed them in different ways or stations to work it out. Princes are born with no more advantages of strength or wisdom than other men, and, by an unhappy education, are usually more defective in both than thousands of their subjects. They depend for every necessary of life upon the meanest of their people; besides, obedience and subjection were never enjoined by God to humour the passions, lusts, and vanities of those who demand them from us ; but we are commanded to obey our governors, because dis- obedience would breed seditions in the state. Thus servants are directed to obey their masters, children their parents, and wives their husbands, not from any respect of persons in God, but because otherwise there would be nothing but confusion in private families. This matter will be clearly explained by considering the comparison which St. Paul makes between the Church of Christ and the body of man ; for the same resemblance will hold not only to families and kingdoms, but to the whole corporation of mankind " The eye," saith he, " cannot say unto the hand, ' I have no need of thee ; ' nor again the hand to the foot, ' I have no need of thee.' Nay, much more those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary ; and whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it ; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it." The case is directly the same among mankind. The prince cannot say to the mer- chant, "I have no need of thee," nor the merchant to the labourer, "I have no need of thee." Nay, much more those members which seem to be more feeble are necessary ; for the poor are generally more necessary members of the commonwealth than the rich ; which clearly shows that God never intended such possessions for the sake and service of those to whom He lends them, but because he hath assigned every man his particular station to be useful in life, and this for the reason given by the Apostle, "that there may be no schism in the body." From hence may partly be gathered the nature of that subjec- 3 8o THREE SERMONS. tion which we all owe to one another. God Almighty hath been pleased to put us into an imperfect state, where we have perpetual occasion of each other's assistance. There is none so low as not to be in a capacity of assisting the highest, nor so high as not to want the assistance of the lowest. It plainly appears, from what hath been said, that no one human creature is more worthy than another in the sight of God, further than according to the goodness or holiness of their lives ; and that power, wealth, and the like outward advantages, are so far from being the marks of God's approving or preferring those on whom they are bestowed, that, on the contrary, He is pleased to suffer them to be almost engrossed by those who have least title to His favour. Now, according to this equality wherein God hath placed all mankind with relation to Himself, you will observe that in all the relations between man and man there is a mutual dependence, whereby the one cannot subsist without the other. Thus no man can be a prince without subjects, nor a master with- out servants, nor a father without children. And this both explains and confirms the doctrine of the text ; for where there is a mutual dependence there must be a mutual duty, and consequently a mutual subjection. For instance, the subject must obey his prince, because God commands it, human laws require it, and the safety of the public makes it necessary ; for the same reasons we must obey all that are in authority, and submit ourselves not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward, whether they rule according to our liking or not. On the other side, in those countries that pretend to freedom, princes are subject to those laws which their people have chosen ; they are bound to protect their subjects in liberty, property, and religion, to receive their petitions and redress their grievances, so that the best prince is, in the opinion of wise men, only the greatest servant of the nation not only a servant to the public in general, but in some sort to every man in it. In the like manner a servant owes obedience, and diligence, and faithfulness to his master, from whom, at the same time, he hath a just demand for protection, and maintenance, and gentle treatment. Nay, even the poor MUTUAL SUBJECTION. 381 beggar hath a just demand of an alms from the rich man, who is guilty of fraud, injustice, and oppression if he does not afford relief according to his abilities. But this subjection we all owe one another is nowhere more necessary than in the common conversations of life, for without it there could be no society among men. If the learned would not sometimes submit to the ignorant, the wise to the simple, the gentle to the froward, the old to the weaknesses of the young, there would be nothing but everlasting variance in the world. This our Saviour Himself confirmed by His own example ; for He appeared in the form of a servant and washed His disciples' feet, adding those memorable words, "Ye call me Lord and Master, and ye say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, wash your feet, how much more ought ye to wash one another's feet ? " Under which expression of washing the feet is included all that subjection, assistance, love, and duty, which every good Christian ought to pay his brother, in whatever station God hath placed him. For the greatest prince and the meanest slave are not, by infinite degrees, so distant as our Saviour and those dis- ciples, whose feet He vouchsafed to wash. And although this doctrine of subjecting ourselves to one another may seem to grate upon the pride and vanity of mankind, and may therefore be hard to be digested by those who value themselves upon their greatness or their wealth, yet it is really no more than what most men practise upon other occasions. For if our neighbour, who is our inferior, comes to see us, we rise to receive him ; we place him above us, and respect him as if he were better than ourselves ; and this is thought both decent and necessary, and is usually called good manners. Now the duty required by the Apostle is only that we should enlarge our minds, and that what we thus practise in the common course of life we should imitate in all our actions and proceedings whatsoever ; since our Saviour tells us that every man is our neighbour, and since we are so ready, in point of civility, to yield to others in our own houses, where only we have any title to govern. Having thus shown you what sort of subjection it is which all 3 8 2 THREE SERMONS. men owe one another, and in what manner it ought to be paid, I shall now draw some observations from what hath been said. And first, a thorough practice of this duty of subjecting our- selves to the wants and infirmities of each other would utterly extinguish in us the vice of pride. For if God has pleased to intrust me with a talent, not for my own sake, but for the service of others, and at the same time hath left rne full of wants and necessities which others must supply, I can then have no cause to set any extraordinary value upon myself, or to despise my brother because he hath not the same talents which were lent to me. His being may probably be as useful to the public as mine ; and therefore, by the rules of right reason, I am in no sort preferable to him. Secondly, It is very manifest, from what has been said, that no man ought to look upon the advantages of life, such as riches, honour, power, and the like, as his property, but merely as a trust which God hath deposited with him to be employed for the use of his brethren, and God will certainly punish the breach of that trust, though the laws of man will not, or rather indeed cannot ; because the trust was conferred only by God, who has not left it to any power on earth to decide infallibly whether a man makes a good use of his talents or not, or to p'unish him where he fails. And therefore God seems to have more particularly taken this matter into His own hands, and will most certainly reward or punish us in proportion to our good or ill performance in it. Now, although the advantages which one possesseth more than another may, in some sense, be called his property with respect to other men, yet with respect to God they are, as I said, only a trust, which will plainly appear from hence : if a man does not use those ad- vantages to the good of the public or the benefit of his neighbour, it is certain he doth not deserve them, and consequently that God never intended them for a blessing to him ; and on the other side, whoever does employ his talents as he ought will find, by his own experience, that they were chiefly lent him for the service of others, for to the service of others he will certainly employ them. Thirdly, If we could all be brought to practise this duty of sub- MUTUAL SUBJECTION. 383 jecting ourselves to each other, it would very much contribute to the general happiness of mankind, for this would root out envy and malice from the heart of man ; because you cannot envy your neighbour's strength if he make use of it to defend your life or carry your burden ; you cannot envy his wisdom if he gives you good counsel; nor his riches if he supplies your wants; nor his greatness if he employs it to your protection. The miseries of life are not properly owing to the unequal distribution of things, but God Almighty, the great King of heaven, is treated like the kings of the earth, who, although perhaps intending well them- selves, have often most abominable ministers and stewards, and those generally the vilest to whom they intrust the most talents. But here is the difference, that the princes of this world see by other men's eyes, but God sees all things ; and therefore, when- ever He permits His blessings to be dealt among those who are unworthy, we may certainly conclude that He intends them only as a punishment to an evil world, as well as to the owners. It were well if those would consider this, whose riches serve them only as a spur to avarice or as an instrument of their lusts ; whose wisdom is only of this world, to put false colours upon things, to call good evil and evil good against the conviction of their own consciences ; and lastly, who employ their power and favour in acts of oppres- sion or injustice, in misrepresenting persons and things, or in countenancing the wicked to the ruin of the innocent. Fourthly, The practice of this duty of being subject to one another would make us rest contented in the several stations of life wherein God hath thought fit to place us, because it would, in the best* and easiest manner, bring us back, as it were, to that early state of the Gospel when Christians had all things in common. For if the poor found the rich disposed to supply their want, if the ignorant found the wise ready to instruct and direct them, or if the weak might always find protection from the mighty, they could none of them, with the least pretence of justice, lament their own condition. From all that hath been hitherto said it appears that great abilities of any sort, when they are employed as God directs, do 3 8 4 THREE SERMONS. but make the owners of them greater and more painful servants to their neighbour and the public. However, we are by no means to conclude from hence that they are not really blessings, when they are in the hands of good men. For, first, what can be a greater honour than to be chosen one of the stewards and dis- pensers of God's bounty to mankind ? What is there that can give a generous spirit more pleasure and complacency of mind than to consider that he is an instrument of doing much good ; that great numbers owe to him, under God, their subsistence, their safety, their health, and the good conduct of their lives? The wickedest man upon earth takes a pleasure in doing good to those he loves ; and therefore surely a good Christian, who obeys our Saviour's commands of loving all men, cannot but take delight in doing good even to his enemies. God, who gives all things to all men, can receive nothing from any; and those among men who do the most good and receive the fewest returns do most resemble the Creator ; for which reason St. Paul delivers it as a saying of our Saviour, that "it is more blessed to give than receive." By this rule, what must become of those things which the world values as the greatest blessings riches, power, and the like when our Saviour plainly determines that the best way to make them blessings is to part with them ? Therefore, although the advantages which one man hath over another may be called blessings, yet they are by no means so in the sense the world usually understands. Thus, for example, great riches are no blessings in themselves, because the poor man, with the common necessaries of life, enjoys more health and has fewer cares with- out them. How then do they become blessings ? No otherwise than by being employed in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, rewarding worthy men, and, in short, doing acts of charity and generosity. Thus, likewise, power is no blessing in itself, because private men bear less envy, and trouble, and anguish without it. But when it is employed to protect the innocent, to relieve the oppressed, and to punish the oppressor, then it becomes a great blessing. And so, lastly, even great wisdom i?, in the opinion of Solomon, SLEEPING IN CHURCH. 385 not a blessing in itself; for "in much wisdom is much sorrow;" and men of common understanding, if they serve God and mind their callings, make fewer mistakes in the conduct of life than those who have better heads. And yet wisdom is a mighty bless- ing when it is applied to good purposes, to instruct the ignorant, to be a faithful counsellor either in public or private, to be a director to youth, and to many other ends needless here to mention. To conclude : God sent us into the world to obey His com- mands, by doing as much good as our abilities will reach, and as little evil as our many infirmities will permit. Some He hath only trusted with one talent, some with five, and some with ten. No man is without his talent ; and he that is faithful or negligent in a little shall be rewarded or punished, as well as he that hath been so in a great deal. Consider what hath been said, &c. ON SLEEPING IN CHURCH. " And there sat in the window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep ; and while Paul was long preach- ing, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead." Acts xx. 9. T HAVE chosen these words with design, if possible, to disturb some part in this audience of half an hour's sleep, for the convenience and exercise whereof this place, at this season of the day, is very much celebrated. There is indeed one mortal disadvantage to which all preach- ing is subject, that those who, by the wickedness of their lives, stand in greatest need, have usually the smallest share ; for either they are absent upon the account of idleness, or spleen, or hatred to religion, or in order to doze away the intemperance of the week ; or, if they do come, they are sure to employ their minds 2 B 3 86 THREE SERMONS. rather any other way than regarding or attending to the business of the place. The accident which happened to this young man in the text hath not been sufficient to discourage his successors ; but because the preachers now in the world, however they may exceed St. Paul in the art of setting men to sleep, do extremely fall short of him in the working of miracles, therefore men are become so cautious as to choose more safe and convenient stations and postures for taking their repose without hazard of their persons, and upon the whole matter choose rather to trust their destruction to a miracle than their safety. However, this being not the only way by which the lukewarm Christians and scorners of the age discover their neglect and contempt of preaching, I shall enter expressly into consideration of this matter, and order my dis- course in the following method : I shall produce several instances to show the great neglect of preaching now among us. Secondly, I shall reckon up some of the usual quarrels men have against preaching. Thirdly, I shall set forth the great evil of this neglect and contempt of preaching, and discover the real causes whence it proceedeth. Lastly, I shall offer some remedies against this great and spreading evil. First, I shall produce certain instances to show the great neglect of preaching now among us. These may be reduced under two heads. First, men's absence from the service of the church ; and secondly, their misbehaviour when they are here. The first instance of men's neglect is in their frequent absence from the church. There is no excuse so trivial that will not pass upon some men's consciences to excuse their attendance at the public worship pf God. Some are SQ unfortunate as to be always indisposed on, SLEEPING IN CHURCH. 387 the Lord's day, and think nothing so unwholesome as the air of a church. Others have their affairs so oddly contrived as to be always unluckily prevented by business. With some it is a great mark of wit and deep understanding to stay at home on Sundays. Others again discover strange fits of laziness, that seize them particularly on that day, and confine them to their beds. Others are absent out of mere contempt of religion. And lastly, there are not a few who look upon it as a day of rest, and therefore claim the privilege of their cattle, to keep the Sabbath by eating, drinking, and sleeping, after the toil and labour of the week. Now in all this, the worst circumstance is that these persons are such whose company is most required, and who stand most in need of a physician. Secondly, Men's great neglect and contempt of preaching appear by their misbehaviour when at church. If the audience were to be ranked under several heads, accord- ing to their behaviour when the Word of God is delivered, how small a number would appear of those who receive it as they ought ! How much of the seed then sown would be found to fall by the wayside, upon stony ground, or among thorns ! and how little good ground would there be to take it ! A preacher cannot look round from the pulpit without observing that some are in a perpetual whisper, and by their air and gesture give occasion to suspect that they are in those very minutes defaming their neighbour. Others have their eyes and imagination con- stantly engaged in such a circle of objects, perhaps to gratify the most unwarrantable desires, that they never once attend to the business of the place ; the sound of the preacher's words do not so much as once interrupt them. Some have their minds wander- ing among idle, worldly, or vicious thoughts ; some lie at catch to ridicule whatever they hear, and with much wit and humour pro- vide a stock of laughter by furnishing themselves from the pulpit. But of all misbehaviour, none is comparable to that of those who come here to sleep. Opium is not so stupefying to many persons as an afternoon sermon. Perpetual custom hath so brought it about that the words of whatever preacher become only a sort of 3 88 THREE SERMONS. uniform sound at a distance, than which nothing is more effectual to lull the senses. For that it is the very sound of the sermon which bindeth up their faculties is manifest from hence, because they all awake so very regularly as soon as it ceaseth, and with much devotion receive the blessing, dozed and besotted with indecencies I am ashamed to repeat. I proceed, secondly^ to reckon up some of the usual quarrels men have against preaching, and to show the unreasonableness of them. Such unwarrantable behaviour as I have described among Christians in the house of God in a solemn assembly, while their faith and duty are explained and delivered, have put those who are guilty upon inventing some excuses to extenuate their fault ; this they do by turning the blame either upon the particular preacher or upon preaching in general. First, they object against the particular preacher : his manner, his delivery, his voice, are disagreeable; his style and expression are flat and slow, sometimes improper and absurd ; the matter is heavy, tri- vial, and insipid, sometimes despicable and perfectly ridiculous ; or else, on the other side, he runs up into unintelligible specula- tion, empty notions, and abstracted flights, all clad in words above usual understandings. Secondly, They object against preaching in general. It is a perfect road of talk ; they know already whatever can be said ; they have heard the same a hundred times over. They quarrel that preachers do not relieve an old beaten subject with wit and invention, and that now the art is lost of moving men's passions, so common among the ancient orators of Greece and Rome. These and the like objections are frequently in the mouths of men who despise the foolishness of preaching. But let us exa- mine the reasonableness of them. The doctrine delivered by all preachers is the same : " So we preach, and so ye believe." : But the manner of delivering is suited to the skill and abilities of each, which differ in preachers just as in the rest of mankind. However, in personal dislikes SLEEPING IN CHURCH. 389 of a particular preacher, are these men sure they are always in the right ? Do they consider how mixed a thing is every audience, whose taste and judgment differ, perhaps, every day, not only from each other, but themselves ? And how to calculate a dis- course that shall exactly suit them all, is beyond the force and reach of human reason, knowledge, or invention. Wit and eloquence are shining qualities that God hath imparted in great degrees to very few, nor any more to be expected in the gene- rality of any rank among men than riches and honour. But further, if preaching in general be all old and beaten, and that they are already so well acquainted with it, more shame and guilt to them who so little edify by it ! But these men, whose ears are so delicate as not to endure a plain discourse of religion, who expect a constant supply of wit and eloquence on a subject handled so many thousand times, what will they say when we turn the objection upon themselves, who, with all the rude and profane liberty of discourse they take upon so many thousand subjects, are so dull as to furnish nothing but tedious repetitions, and little paltry, nauseous commonplaces, so vulgar, so worn, or so obvious, as, upon any other occasion but that of advancing vice, would be hooted off the stage? Nor, lastly, are preachers justly blamed for neglecting human oratory to move the passions, which is not the business of a Christian orator, whose office it is only to work upon faith and reason. All other eloquence hath been a perfect cheat, to stir up men's passions against truth and justice for the service of a faction, to put false colours upon things, and, by an amusement of agreeable words, make the worst reason appear to be the better. This is certainly not to be allowed in Christian eloquence, and therefore St. Paul took quite the other course. He ''came not with the excellency of words, or enticing speech of men's wisdom, but in plain evidence of the Spirit and power." And perhaps it was for that reason the young man Eutychus, used to the Grecian eloquence, grew tired and fell so fast asleep. I go on, thirdly, to set forth the great evil of this neglect and 39 o THREE SERMONS. scorn of preaching, and to discover the real causes whence it proceedeth. I think it is obvious that this neglect of preaching hath very much occasioned the great decay of religion among us. To this may be imputed no small part of that contempt some men bestow on the clergy, for whoever talketh without being regarded is sure to be despised. To this we owe in a great measure the spread- ing of atheism and infidelity among us, for religion, like all other things, is soonest put out of countenance by being ridiculed. The scorn of preaching might perhaps have been at first intro- duced by men of nice ears and refined taste, but it is now become a spreading evil through all degrees and both sexes; for, since sleeping, talking, and laughing are qualities sufficient to furnish out a critic, the meanest and most ignorant have set up a title, and succeeded in it as well as their betters. Thus are the last efforts of reforming mankind rendered wholly useless. "How shall they hear," saith the Apostle, " without a preacher ? " But if they have a preacher, and make it a point of wit or breed- ing not to hear him, what remedy is left? To this neglect of preaching we may also entirely impute that gross ignorance among us in the very principles of religion, which it is amazing to find in persons who very much value their own knowledge and under- standing in other things ; yet it is a visible, inexcusable ignorance, even in the meanest among us, considering the many advantages they have of learning their duty. And it hath been the great encouragement to all manner of vice ; for in vain we preach down sin to a people " whose hearts are waxed gross, whose ears are dull of hearing, and whose eyes are closed." Therefore Christ Himself in His discourses frequently rouseth up the attention of the multitude, and of His disciples themselves, with this expres- sion, " He that hath ears to hear let him hear." But among all neglects of preaching, none is so fatal as that of sleeping in the house of God. A scorner may listen to truth and reason, and in time grow serious ; an unbeliever may feel the pangs of a guilty conscience; one whose thoughts or eyes wander among other objects may. by a lucky word, be called back to attention ; but the SLEEPING IN CHURCH. 391 sleeper shuts up all avenues to his soul; he is "like the deaf adder, that hearkeneth not to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely ; " and we may preach with as good success to the grave that is under his feet. But the great evil of this neglect will further yet appear from considering the real causes whence it proceedeth, whereof the first I take to be an evil conscience. Many men come to church to save or gain a reputation, or because they will not be singular, but comply with an established custom; yet all the while they are loaded with the guilt of old rooted sins. These men can expect to hear of nothing but terrors and threatenings, their sins laid open in true colours, and eternal misery the reward of them ; therefore, no wonder they stop their ears and divert their thoughts, and seek any amusement rather than stir the hell within them. Another cause of this neglect is a heart set upon worldly things. Men whose minds are much enslaved to earthly affairs all the week cannot disengage or break the chain of their thoughts so suddenly as to apply to a discourse that is wholly foreign to what they have most at heart. Tell a usurer of charity, and mercy, and restitution you talk to the deaf; his heart and soul, with all his senses, are got among his bags, or he is gravely asleep and dreaming of a mortgage. Tell a man of business, that the cares of the world choke the good seed ; that we must not encumber ourselves with much serving ; that the salvation of his soul is the one thing necessary ; you see, indeed, the shape of a man before you, but his faculties are all gone off among clients and papers, thinking how to defend a bad cause or find flaws in a good one ; or he weareth out the time in drowsy nods. A third cause of the great neglect and scorn of preaching ariseth from the practice of men who set up to decry and dis- parage religion ; these, being zealous to promote infidelity and vice, learn a rote of buffoonery that serveth all occasions, and refutes the strongest arguments for piety and good manners. These have a set of ridicule calculated for all sermons and all preachers, and can be extremely witty as often as they please upon the same fund. 392 THREE SERMONS. Let me now, in the last place, offer some remedies against this great evil. It will be one remedy against the contempt of preaching rightly to consider the end for which it was designed. There are many who place abundance of merit in going to church, although it be with no other prospect but that of being well entertained, wherein if they happen to fail, they return wholly disappointed. Hence it is become an impertinent vein among people of all sorts to hunt after what they call a good sermon, as if it were a matter of pastime and diversion. Our business, alas ! is quite another thing; either to learn, or at least be reminded of, our duty ; to apply the doctrines delivered, compare the rules we hear with our lives and actions, and find wherein we have transgressed. These are the dispositions men should bring into the house of God, and then they will be little concerned about the preacher's wit or eloquence, nor be curious to inquire out his faults and infirmities, but consider how to correct their own. Another remedy against the contempt of preaching is that men would consider whether it be not reasonable to give more allowance for the different abilities of preachers than they usually do. Refinements of style and flights of wit, as they are not properly the business of any preacher, so they cannot possibly be the talents of all. In most other discourses, men are satisfied with sober sense and plain reason ; and, as understandings usually go, even that is not over-frequent. Then why they should be so over-nice in expectation of eloquence, where it is neither necessary nor convenient, is hard to imagine. Lastly, The scorners of preaching would do well to consider that this talent of ridicule they value so much is a perfection very easily acquired, and applied to all things whatsoever ; neither is anything at all the worse because it is capable of being per- verted to burlesque perhaps it may be the more perfect upon that score, since we know the most celebrated pieces have been thus treated with greatest success. It is in any man's power to suppose a fool's-cap on the wisest head, and then laugh at his own supposition. I think there are not many things cheaper than THE WISDOM OF THIS WORLD. 393 supposing and laughing ; and if the uniting these two talents can bring a thing into contempt, it is hard to know where it may end. To conclude : These considerations may perhaps have some effect while men are awake ; but what arguments shall we use to the sleeper ? What methods shall we take to hold open his eyes ? Will he be moved by considerations of common civility ? We know it is reckoned a point of very bad manners to sleep in private company, when, perhaps, the tedious impertinence of many talkers would render it at least as excusable as the dullest sermon. Do they think it a small thing to watch four hours at a play, where all virtue and religion are openly reviled ; and can they not watch one half hour to hear them defended ? Is this to deal like a judge (I mean like a good judge), to listen on one side of the cause and sleep on the other ? I shall add but one word more. That this indecent sloth is very much owing to that luxury and excess men usually practise upon this day, by which half the service thereof is turned to sin ; men dividing their time between God and their bellies, when, after a gluttonous meal, their senses dozed and stupefied, they retire to God's house to sleep out the afternoon. Surely, brethren, these things ought not so to be. "He that hath ears to hear let him hear." And God give us all grace to hear and receive His Holy Word to the salvation of our own souls. ON THE WISDOM OF THIS WORLD. "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." I Cor. iii. 19. T T is remarkable that about the time of our Saviour's coming into the world all kinds of learning flourished to a very great degree, insomuch that nothing is more frequent in the mouths of many men, even such who pretend to read and to know, than an 394 THRE$ SERMONS. extravagant praise and opinion of the wisdom and virtue of the Gentile sages of those days, and likewise of those ancient philo- sophers who went before them, whose doctrines are left upon record, either by themselves or other writers. As far as this may be taken for granted, it may be said that the providence of God brought this about for several very wise ends and purposes ; for it is certain that these philosophers had been a long time before searching out where to fix the true happiness of man ; and not being able to agree upon any certainty about it, they could not possibly but conclude, if they judged impartially, that all their inquiries were in the end but vain and fruitless, the consequence of which must be not only an acknowledgment of the weakness of all human wisdom, but likewise an open passage hereby made for letting in those beams of light which the glorious sunshine of the Gospel then brought into the world, by revealing those hidden truths which they had so long before been labouring to discover, and fixing the general happiness of mankind beyond all contro- versy and dispute. And therefore the providence of God wisely suffered men of deep genius and learning then to arise, who should search into the truth of the Gospel now made known, and canvass its doctrines with all the subtilty and knowledge they were masters of, and in the end freely acknowledge that to be the true wisdom only " which cometh from above." However, to make a further inquiry into the truth of this observation, I doubt not but there is reason to think that a great many of those encomiums given to ancient philosophers are taken upon trust, and by a sort of men who are not very likely to be at the pains of an inquiry that would employ so much time and thinking. For the usual ends why men affect this kind of dis- course appear generally to be either out of ostentation, that they may pass upon the world for persons of geat knowledge and observa- tion, or, what is worse, there are some who highly exalt the wisdom of those Gentile sages, thereby obliquely to glance at and traduce Divine revelation, and more especially that of the Gospel ; for the consequence they would have us draw is this : that since those ancient philosophers rose to a greater pitch of wisdom and virtue THE WISDOM OF THIS WORLD. 395 than was ever known among Christians, and all this purely upon the strength of their own reason and liberty of thinking, therefore it must follow that either all revelation is false, or, what is worse, that it has depraved the nature of man, and left him worse than it found him. But this high opinion of heathen wisdom is not very ancient in the world, nor at all countenanced from primitive times. Our Saviour had but a low esteem of it, as appears by His treatment of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who followed the doctrines of Plato and Epicurus. St. Paul likewise, who was well versed in all the Grecian literature, seems very much to despise their philosophy, as we find in his writings, cautioning the Colossians to " beware lest any man spoil them through philosophy and vain deceit ; " and in another place he advises Timothy to " avoid profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called ; " that is, not to introduce into the Christian doctrine the janglings of those vain philosophers, which they would pass upon the world for science. And the reasons he gives are, first, that those who professed them did err concerning the faith ; secondly, because the knowledge of them did increase ungodliness, vain babblings being otherwise expounded vanities or empty sounds; that is, tedious disputes about words, which the philosophers were always so full of, and which were the natural Droduct of disputes and dissensions between several sects. Neither had the primitive fathers any great or good opinion of the heathen philosophy, as is manifest from several passages in their writings ; so that this vein of affecting to raise the reputation of those sages so high is a mode and a vice but of yesterday, assumed chiefly, as I have said, to disparage revealed knowledge and the consequences of it among us. Now, because this is a prejudice which may prevail with some persons so far as to lessen the influence of the Gospel, and whereas, therefore, this is an opinion which men of education are likely to be encountered with when they have produced them- selves into the world, I shall endeavour to show that their prefer- ence of heathen wisdom and virtue before that of the Christian is 39 6 THREE SERMONS. every way unjust, and grounded upon ignorance or mistake ; in order to which I shall consider four things : First, I shall produce certain points wherein the wisdom and virtue of all unrevealed philosophy in general fell short and was very imperfect. Secondly, I shall show, in several instances, where some of the most renowned philosophers have been grossly defective in their lessons of morality. Thirdly -, I shall prove the perfection of Christian wisdom from the proper characters and marks of it. Lastly, I shall show that the great examples of wisdom and virtue among the heathen wise men were produced by personal merit, and not influenced by the doctrine of any sect } whereas, in Christianity, it is quite the contrary. First, I shall produce certain points wherein the wisdom and virtue of all unrevealed philosophy in general fell short and was very imperfect. My design is to persuade men that Christian philosophy is in all things preferable to heathen wisdom ; from which, or its pro- fessors, I shall, however, have no occasion to detract. They were as wise and as good as it was possible for them to be under such disadvantages, and would have probably been infinitely more so with such aids as we enjoy ; but our lessons are certainly much better, however our practices may fall short. The first point I shall mention is that universal defect which was in all their schemes, that they could not agree about their chief good, or wherein to place the happiness of mankind ; nor had any of them a tolerable answer upon this difficulty to satisfy a reasonable person. For to say, as the most plausible of them did, " That happiness consisted in virtue," was but vain babbling, and a mere sound of words to amuse others and themselves ; because they were not agreed what this virtue was or wherein it did consist ; and likewise, because several among the best of them taught quite different things, placing happiness in health or THE WISDOM OF THIS WORLD. 397 good fortune, in riches or in honour, where all were agreed that virtue was not, as I shall have occasion to show when I speak of their particular tenets. The second great defect in the Gentile philosophy was that it wanted some suitable reward proportioned to the better part of man his mind, as an encouragement for his progress in virtue. The difficulties they met with upon the score of this default were great, and not to be accounted for ; bodily goods, being only suit- able to bodily wants, are no rest at all for the mind ; and if they were, yet ar? they not the proper fruits of wisdom and virtue, being equally attainable by the ignorant and wicked. Now human nature is so constituted that we can never pursue any- thing heartily but upon hopes of a reward. If we run a race, it is in expectation of a prize ; and the greater the prize the faster we run; for an incorruptible crown, if we understand it and believe it to be such, more than a corruptible one. But some of the philosophers gave all this quite another turn, and pretended to refine so far as to call virtue its own reward, and worthy to be followed only for itself; whereas, if there be anything in this more than the sound of the words, it is at least too abstracted to become a universal influencing principle in the world, and there- fore could not be of general use. It was the want of assigning some happiness proportioned to the soul of man that caused many of them, either, on the one hand, to be sour and morose, supercilious and untreatable, or, on the other, to fall into the vulgar pursuits of common men, to hunt after greatness and riches, to make their court and to serve occa- sions, as Plato did to the younger Dionysius, and Aristotle to Alexander the Great. So impossible it is for a man who looks no further than the present world to fix himself long in a contem- plation where the present world has no part ; he has no sure hold, no firm footing; he can never expect to remove the earth he rests upon while he has no support besides for his feet, but wants, like Archimedes, some other place whereon to stand. To talk of bearing pain and grief without any sort of present or future hope cannot be purely greatness of spirit ; there must be a mixture in 39 8 THREE SERMONS. it of affectation and an alloy of pride, or perhaps is wholly coun- terfeit. It is true there has been all along in the world a notion of rewards and punishments in another life, but it seems to have rather served as an entertainment to poets or as a terror of chil- dren than a settled principle by which men pretended to govern any of their actions. The last celebrated words of Socrates, a little before his death, do not seem to reckon or build much upon any such opinion ; and Csesar made no scruple to disown it and ridicule it in open senate. Thirdly, the greatest and wisest of all their philosophers were never able to give any satisfaction to others and themselves in their notions of a deity. They were often extremely gross and absurd in their conceptions, and those who made the fairest con- jectures are such as were generally allowed by the learned to have seen the system of Moses, if I may so call it, who was in great reputation at that time in the heathen world, as we find by Diodorus, Justin, Longinus, and other authors ; for the rest, the wisest among them laid aside all notions after a deity as a disqui- sition vain and fruitless, which indeed it was upon unrevealed principles ; and those who ventured to engage too far fell into incoherence and confusion. Fourthly, Those among them who had the justest conceptions of a Divine power, and did also admit a providence, had no notion at all of entirely relying and depending upon either ; they trusted in themselves for all things, but as for a trust or depend- ence upon God, they would not have understood the phrase ; it made no part of the profane style. Therefore it was that, in all issues and events which they could not reconcile to their own sentiments of reason and justice, they were quite disconcerted; they had no retreat, but upon every blow of adverse fortune, either affected to be indifferent, or grew sullen and severe, or else yielded and sunk like other men. Having now produced certain points wherein the wisdom and virtue pf all unrevealed philosophy fell short and was very THE WISDOM OF THIS WORLD. 399 imperfect, I go on, in the second place, to show, in several instances, where some of the most renowned philosophers have been grossly defective in their lessons of morality. Thales, the founder of the Ionic sect, so celebrated for morality, being asked how a man might bear ill-fortune with greatest ease, answered, "By seeing his enemies in a worse condition." An answer truly barbarous, unworthy of human nature, and which included such consequences as must destroy all society from the world. Solon lamenting the death of a son, one told him, " You lament in vain." " Therefore," said he, " I lament, because it is in vain." This was a plain confession how imperfect all his philosophy was, and that something was still wanting. He owned that all his wisdom and morals were useless, and this upon one of the most frequent accidents in life. How much better could he have learned to support himself even from David, by his entire depend- ence upon God, and that before our Saviour had advanced the notions of religion to the height and perfection wherewith He hath instructed His disciples ! Plato himself, with all his refinements, placed happiness in wisdom, health, good fortune, honour, and riches, and held that they who enjoyed all these were perfectly happy ; which opinion was indeed unworthy its owner, leaving the wise and good man wholly at the mercy of uncertain chance, and to be miserable without resource. His scholar Aristotle fell more grossly into the same notion, and plainly affirmed, "That virtue, without the goods of fortune, was not sufficient for happiness, but that a wise man must be miserable in poverty and sickness." Nay, Diogenes himself, from whose pride and singularity one would have looked for other notions, delivered it as his opinion, " That a poor old man was the most miserable thing in life." Zeno also and his followers fell into many absurdities, among which nothing could be greater than that of maintaining all crimes to be equal ; which, instead of making vice hateful, rendered it as a thing indifferent and familiar to all men. 4CO THREE SERMONS. Lastly, Epicurus had no notion of justice but as it was profit- able ; and his placing happiness in pleasure, with all the advan- tages he could expound it by, was liable to very great exception ; for although he taught that pleasure did consist in virtue, yet he did not any way fix or ascertain the boundaries of virtue, as he ought to have done; by which means he misled his followers into the greatest vices, making their names to become odious and scandalous even in the heathen world. I have produced these few instances from a great many others to show the imperfection of heathen philosophy, wherein I have confined myself wholly to their morality. And surely we may pronounce upon it, in the words of St. James, that " This wisdom descended not from above, but was earthly and sensual." What if I had produced their absurd notions about God and the soul ? It would then have completed the character given it by that Apostle, and appeared to have been devilish too. But it is easy to observe from the nature of these few particulars that their defects in morals were purely the flagging and fainting of the mind for want of a support by revelation from God. I proceed, therefore, in the third place, to show the perfection of Christian wisdom from above ; and I shall endeavour to make it appear from those proper characters and marks of it by the Apostle before mentioned, in the third chapter, and i5th, i6th, and i ;th verses. The words run thus "This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. " For wh Ar e envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. "But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peace- able, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy." "The wisdom from above is first pure." This purity of the mind and spirit is peculiar to the Gospel. Our Saviour says, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." A mind THE WISDOM OF THIS WORLD. 401 free from all pollution of lusts shall have a daily vision of God, whereof unrevealed religion can form no notion. This is it that keeps us unspotted from the world, and hereby many have been prevailed upon to live in the practice of all purity, holiness, and righteousness, far beyond the examples of the most celebrated philosophers. It is " peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated." The Christian doctrine teacheth us all those dispositions that make us affable and courteous, gentle and kind, without any morose leaven of pride or vanity, which entered into the composition of most heathen schemes : so we are taught to be meek and lowly. Our Saviour's last legacy was peace, and He commands us to forgive our offending brother unto seventy times seven. Christian wisdom is full of mercy and good works, teaching the height of all moral virtues, of which the heathens fell infinitely short. Plato indeed (and it is worth observing) has somewhere a dialogue, or part of one, about forgiving our enemies, which was perhaps the highest strain ever reached by man without Divine assistance ; yet how little is that to what our Saviour commands us, " To love them that hate us, to bless them that curse us, and to do good to them that despitefully use us." Christian wisdom is " without partiality ; " it is not calculated for this or that nation of people, but the whole race of mankind. Not so the philosophical schemes, which were narrow and con- fined, adapted to their peculiar towns, governments, or sects ; but "in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him." Lastly, It is "without hypocrisy;" it appears to be what it really is; it is all of a piece. By the doctrines of the Gospel we are so far from being allowed to publish to the world those virtues we have not, that we are commanded to hide even from ourselves those we really have, and not to let our right hand know what our left hand does, unlike several branches of the heathen wisdom, which pretended to teach insensibility and in- difference, magnanimity and contempt of life, while at the same time, in other parts, it belied its own doctrines. 2 c 402 THREE SERMONS. I come now, in the last place, to show that the great examples of wisdom and virtue among the Grecian sages were produced by personal merit, and not influenced by the doctrine of any particular sect, whereas in Christianity it is quite the contrary. The two virtues most celebrated by ancient moralists were fortitude and temperance, as relating to the government of man in his private capacity, to which their schemes were gene- rally addressed and confined, and the two instances wherein those virtues arrived at the greatest height were Socrates and Cato. But neither these, nor any other virtues possessed by these two, were at all owing to any lessons or doctrines of a sect. For Socrates himself was of none at all; and although Cato was called a Stoic, it was more from a resemblance of manners in his worst qualities, than that he avowed himself one of their disciples. The same may be affirmed of many other great men of antiquity. Whence I infer that those who were renowned for virtue among them were more obliged to the good natural dispositions of their own minds than to the doctrines of any sect they pretended to follow. On the other side, as the examples of fortitude and patience among the primitive Christians have been infinitely greater and more numerous, so they were altogether the product of their principles and doctrine, and were such as the same persons, without those aids, would never have arrived to. Of this truth most of the Apostles, with many thousand martyrs, are a cloud of witnesses beyond exception. Having, therefore, spoken so largely upon the former heads, I shall dwell no longer upon this. And if it should here be objected, Why does not Christianity still produce the same effects ? it is easy to answer, first, that although the number of pretended Christians be great, yet that of true be- lievers, in proportion to the other, was never so small ; and it is a true lively faith alone that, by the assistance of God's grace, can influence our practice. Secondly, We may answer that Christianity itself has very much suffered by being blended up with Gentile philosophy. THE WISDOM OF THIS WORLD. 403 The Platonic system, first taken into religion, was thought to have given matter for some early heresies in the Church. When disputes began to arise, the Peripatetic forms were introduced by Scotus as best fitted for controversy. And however this may now have become necessary, it was surely the author of a litigious vein, which has since occasioned very pernicious consequences, stopped the progress of Christianity, and been a great promoter of vice; verifying that sentence given by St. James, and men- tioned before, "Where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work." This was the fatal stop to the Grecians in their progress both of arts and arms; their wise men were divided under several sects, and their governments under several commonwealths, all in opposition to each other, which engaged them in eternal quarrels among themselves, while they should have been armed against the common enemy. And I wish we had no other examples, from the like causes, less foreign or ancient than that. Diogenes said Socrates was a madman ; the disciples of Zeno and Epicurus, nay, of Plato and Aristotle, were engaged in fierce disputes about the most insignificant trifles. And if this be the present language and practice among us Chris- tians, no wonder that Christianity does not still produce the same effects which it did at first, when it was received and embraced in its utmost purity and perfection; for such wisdom as this cannot "descend from above," but must be "earthly, sensual, devilish, full of confusion and every evil work ; " whereas, " the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy." This is the true heavenly wisdom, which Christianity only can boast of, and which the greatest of the heathen wise men could never arrive at Now to God the Father, &c. THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 1 (CONTINUED 1726.) J T AWS penned with the utmost care and exactness, and in the " vulgar language, are often perverted to wrong meanings ; then why should we wonder that the Bible is so ? Although men are accused for not knowing their weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength. A man seeing a wasp creeping into a vial filled with honey that was hung on a fruit tree, said thus, " Why, thou sottish animal, art thou mad to go into the vial, where you see many hundred of your kind dying before you ? " " The reproach is just," answered the wasp, " but not from you men, who are so far from taking example by other people's follies, that you will not take warning by your own. If, after falling several times into this vial, and escaping by chance, I should fall in again, I should then but resemble you." An old miser kept a tame jackdaw that used to steal pieces of money and hide them in a hole, which the cat observing, asked, " Why he would hoard up those round shining things that he could make no use of?" "Why," said the jackdaw, 1 Mr. Pope and Dean Swift, being in the country together, had occasion to observe, that if men of contemplative turns were to take notice of the thoughts which suddenly present themselves to their minds as they were walking in the fields, &c., they might find many, perhaps, as well worth preserving as some of their more deliberate reflections. They accordingly agreed to write down such involuntary thoughts as occurred during their stay there, and these are such as belong to the Dean. NICHOLS. THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 405 " my master has a whole chest full, and makes no more use of them than I." Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly. If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any. After all the maxims and systems of trade and commerce, a stander-by would think the affairs of the world were most ridicu- lously contrived. There are few countries which, if well cultivated, would not support double the number of their inhabitants, and yet fewer where one-third part of the people are not extremely stinted even in the necessaries of life. I send out twenty barrels of corn, which would maintain a family in bread for a year, and I bring back in return a vessel of wine, which half-a-dozen good fellows would drink in less than a month, at the expense of their health and reason. A motto for the Jesuits : " Quas regio in terris nostri non plena laboris f f A man would have but few spectators if he offered to show for threepence how he could thrust a red-hot iron into a barrel of gunpowder and it should not take fire. Query. Whether churches are not dormitories of the living as well as of the dead ? Harry Killigrew said to Lord Wharton, "You would not swear at that rate if you thought you were doing God honour." Louis XIV. of France spent his life in turning a good name into a great. / Since the union of divinity and humanity is the great article of our religion, it is odd to see some clergymen in their writings of divinity wholly devoid of humanity. The Epicureans began to spread at Rome in the empire of Augustus, as the Socinians, and even the Epicureans too, did in England toward the end of King Charles the Second's reign, 406 THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. ^ which is reckoned, though very absurdly, our Augustan age. They both seem to be corruptions occasioned by luxury and yL A peace, and by politeness beginning to decline. .Sometimes I read a book with pleasure and detest the author. One Dennis, commonly called "the critic," who had written a threepenny pamphlet against the power of France, being in the country and hearing of a French privateer hovering about the coast, although he were twenty miles from the sea, fled to town and told his friends "they need not wonder at his haste, for the King of France, having got intelligence where he was, had sent a privateer on purpose to catch him." Dr. Gee, Prebendary of Westminster, who had written a small paper against Popery, being obliged to travel for his health, affected to disguise his person and change his name as he passed through Portugal, Spain, and Italy, telling all the English he met "that he was afraid of being murdered or put into the Inquisition." He was acting the same farce at Paris, till Mr. Prior (who was then Secretary to the Embassy) quite discon- certed the Doctor by maliciously discovering the secret, and offer- ing to engage, body for body, that not a creature would hurt him, or had ever heard of him or his pamphlet. A chambermaid to a lady of my acquaintance, thirty miles from London, had the very same turn of thought, when, talking with one of her fellow-servants, she said, "I hear it is all over London already that I am going to leave my lady ; " and so had a footman, who, being newly married, desired his comrade to tell him freely what the town said of it. When somebody was telling a certain great Minister that people were discontented, "Pho !" said he, "half a dozen fools are prat- ing in a coffee-house, and presently think their own noise about their ears is made by the world." The death of a private man is generally of so little importance to the world that it cannot be a thing of great importance in itself, and yet I do not observe from the practice of mankind that either philosophy or nature have sufficiently armed us against the fears which attend it. Neither do I find anything able to reconcile us THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 407 to it, but extreme pain, shame, or despair, for poverty, imprison- ment, ill fortune, grief, sickness, and old age do generally fail. I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed. Do not we see how easily we pardon our own actions and pas- sions, and the very infirmities of our bodies ; why should it be wonderful to find us pardon our own dulness ? There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity ; nor any which, by ill management, makes so contemptible a figure. Observation is an old man's memory. Eloquence, smooth and cutting, is like a razor whetted with oil. Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflec- tions on them ; as he who, in a melancholy fancy, sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot, can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied. Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. This I once said to my Lord Bolingbroke, and desired he would observe that the clerks in his office used a sort of ivory knife with a blunt edge to divide a sheet of paper, which never failed to cut it even, requir- ing only a steady hand ; whereas if they should make use of a sharp penknife, the sharpness would make it go often out of the crease and disfigure the paper. " He who does not provide for his own house," St. Paul says, " is worse than an infidel ; " and I think he who provides only for his own house is just equal with an infidel. A footman's hat should fly off to everybody; and therefore Mercury, who was Jupiter's footman, had wings fastened to his cap. When a man pretends love but courts for money, he is like a juggler who conjures away your shilling, and conveys something very indecent under the hat. All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy. 4 o8 THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. I have known men happy enough at ridicule who upon grave subjects were perfectly stupid ; of which Dr. Echard of Cam- bridge, who wrote "The Contempt of the Clergy," was a great instance. One top of Parnassus was sacred to Bacchus, the other to Apollo. Matrimony has many children ; Repentance, Discord, Poverty, Jealousy, Sickness, Spleen, Loathing, &c. Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his word. I asked a poor man how he did ? He said he was like a wash- ball, always in decay. Hippocrates, Aph. 32, Sect. 6, observes that stuttering people are always subject to a looseness. I wish physicians had power to remove the profusion of words in many people to the inferior parts. Love is a flame, and therefore we say beauty is attractive, because physicians observe that fire is a great drawer. Civis, the most honourable name among the Romans ; a citizen, a word of contempt among us. We read that an ass's head was sold for eighty pieces of silver ; they have lately been sold ten thousand times dearer, and yet they were never more plentiful. I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand. When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me. Whoever live at a different end of the town from me I look upon as persons out of the world, and only myself and the scene about me to be in it. When I was young I thought all the world, as well as myself, was wholly taken up in discoursing upon the last new play. My Lord Cromarty, after fourscore, went to his country-house in Scotland with a resolution to stay six years there and live thriftily, in order to save up money that he might spend in London. THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 409 Elephants are always drawn smaller than life, but a flea always larger. When old folks tell us of many passages in their youth between them and their company, we are apt to think how much happier those times were than the present. Why does the elder sister dance barefoot when the younger is married before her? Is it not that she may appear shorter, and consequently be thought younger than the bride ? No man will take counsel, but every man will take money ; therefore money is better than counsel. I never yet knew a wag (as the term is) who was not a dunce. A person reading to me a dull poem of his own making, I prevailed on him to scratch out six lines together. In turning over the leaf, the ink being wet, it marked as many lines on the other side, whereof the poet complaining, I bid him be easy, for it would be better if those were out too. SUPPLEMENT. THE FIRST SEVEN LETTERS OF SWIFT'S JOURNAL TO STELLA, SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER 1710. LETTER I. CHESTER, September 2, 1710. TOE l will give you an account of me till I got into the boat, J after which the rogues made a new bargain, and forced me to give them two crowns, and talked as if we should not be able to overtake any ship ; but in half an hour we got to the yacht, for the ships lay by to wait for my Lord-Lieutenant's steward. We made our voyage in fifteen hours just. Last night I came to this town, and shall leave it, I believe, on Monday. The first man I met in Chester was Dr. Raymond. 2 He and Mrs. Raymond were 1 Mr. Joseph Beaumont, merchant, of Trim, whose name frequently occurs in these papers. He was a venerable, handsome, greyheaded man, of quick and various natural abilities, but not improved by learning ; his forte was mathematics, which he applied to some useful purposes in the linen trade, but chiefly to the investigation of the longitude, which was supposed to have occasioned a lunacy with which he was seized in Dublin about the year 1718 ; whence he was brought home to Trim, and recovered his understanding. But some years after, having relapsed into his former malady, he cut his throat in a fit of distraction. D. S. 2 Vicar of Trim, and formerly one of the Fellows of the University of Dublin. D. S. 4 i2 SWIFT'S JOURNAL TO STELLA. here about levying a fine, in order to have power to sell their estate. I got a fall off my horse, riding here from Parkgate, but no hurt ; the horse understanding falls very well, and lying quietly till I got up. My duty to the Bishop of Clogher. 1 I saw him returning from Dunlary ; 2 but he saw not me. I take it ill he was not at Convocation, and that I have not his name to my powers. I beg you will hold your resolution of going to Trim, and riding there as much as you can. Let the Bishop of Clogher remind the Bishop of Killala to send me a letter, with one enclosed to the Bishop of Lichfield. 3 Let all who write to me enclose to Richard Steele, Esq., at his office at the Cockpit near Whitehall. My Lord Mountjoy is now in the humour that we should begin our journey this afternoon, so that I have stolen here again to finish this letter, which must be short or long accordingly. I write this post to Mrs. Wellesley, 4 and will tell her that I have taken care she may have her bill of one hundred and fifty pounds whenever she pleases to send for it : and in that case I desire you will send it her enclosed and sealed. God Almighty bless you, and for God's sake, be merry, and get your health. I am perfectly re- solved to return as soon as I have done my commission, 5 whether it succeeds or not. I never went to England with so little desire in my life. If Mrs. Curry makes any difficulty about the lodgings, I will quit them, and pay her from July 9, and Mrs. Brent must write to Parvisol with orders accordingly. The post is just come from London, and just going out, so I have only time to pray God to bless poor little MD, MD, MD, MD, MD, MD, MD, MD. 1 Dr. St. George Ashe, who in 1716 was made Bishop of Deny. N 2 This must have been while Swift was sailing in the Bay of Dublin, and the Bishop riding upon the North Strand. D. S. 3 Dr. John Hough, Bishop of Oxford, 1690; of Lichfield and Coventry, 1699; of Worcester, 1717. He died March 8, 1743, having been a bishop almost fifty- three years. N. 4 Elizabeth, lady of Garret Wellesley, Esq., one of the daughters of Sir Dudley Colley. D. S. 5 To solicit the Queen to remit the first-fruits and twentieth parts, payable to the Crown by the clergy of Ireland. D. S. SWIFTS JOURNAL TO STELLA. 413 LETTER II. LONDON, Saturday, September 9, 1710. I got here last Thursday after five days' travelling, weary the first, almost dead the second, tolerable the third, and well enough the rest ; and am now glad of the fatigue, which has served for exercise ; and I am at present well enough. The Whigs were ravished to see me, and would lay hold on me as a twig while they are drowning, and the great men making me their clumsy apologies, &c. But my Lord Treasurer 1 received me with a great deal of coldness, which has enraged me so I am almost vowing revenge. I have not yet gone half my circle, but I find all my acquaintance just as I left them. I hear my Lady Giffard- is much at court, and Lady Wharton was ridiculing it the other day ; so I have lost a friend there. I have not yet seen her, nor intend it; but I will contrive to see Ppt's mother 3 some other way. I writ to the Bishop of Clogher from Chester, and I now write to the Archbishop of Dublin. Everything is turning upside down ; every Whig in great office will, to a man, be infallibly put out ; and we shall have such a winter as has not been seen in England. Everybody asks me how I came to be so long in Ireland, as naturally as if here were my being ; but no soul offers to make it so, and I protest I shall return to Dublin and the canal at Laracor, 4 with more satisfaction than I ever did in my life. The Tatler 5 expects every day to be turned out of his em- ployment, and the Duke of Ormond, they say, will be Lieutenant of Ireland. I hope you are now peaceable in Pdfr's lodgings; 1 The Earl of Godolphin. D. S. 2 Sister to Sir William Temple. D. S. 3 She was at that time in Lady Giffard's family. D. S. 4 The Doctor's benefice in the diocese of Meath. D. S. 5 Mr. Steele. D. S. 6 In these letters Pdfr. stand for Dr. Swift ; Ppt. for Stella ; D. for Dinglcy ; D. D. generally for Dingley ; but sometimes for both Stella and Dingley ; and MD. generally stands for both these ladies ; yet sometimes only for Stella. But, to avoid perplexing the reader, it was thought more advisable to use the word Presto for Swift, which is borrowed from the Duchess of Shrewsbury, who whim- sically called him Dr. Presto, which is the Italian for Swift. D. S. 4 i 4 SWIFTS JOURNAL TO STELLA. but I resolve to turn you out by Christmas, in which time I shall either do my business or find it not to be done. Pray be at Trim by the time this letter comes to you, and ride little Johnson, who must needs be now in good case. I have begun this letter unusually on the post-night, and have already written to the Arch- bishop, and cannot lengthen this. Henceforth I will write some- thing every day to MD and make it a sort of journal ; and when it is full, I will send it, whether MD writes or not, and so that will be pretty, and I shall always be in conversation with MD and MD with Pdfr. Pray make Parvisol 1 pay you the ten pounds immediately ; so I ordered him. They tell me I grow fatter and look better, and on Monday Jervis is to retouch my picture. I thought I saw Jack Temple 2 and his wife pass by me to-day in their coach, but I took no notice of them. I am glad I have wholly shaken off that family. 3 Tell the Provost 4 I have obeyed his commands to the Duke of Ormond, or let it alone if you please. I saw Jemmy Leigh 5 just now at the coffee-house, who asked after you with great kindness ; he talks of going in a fort- night to Ireland. My service to the Dean, 6 and Mrs. Walls and her Archdeacon. Will Frankland's wife is near bringing to bed, and I have promised to christen the child. I fancy you had my Chester letter the Tuesday after I wrote. I presented Dr. Raymond to Lord Wharton at Chester. Pray let me know when Joe gets his money. 7 It is near ten, and I hate to send by the bellman. MD shall have a longer letter in a week, but I send this only to tell I am safe in London, and so farewell, &c. 1 The Doctor's agent at Laracor. D. S. 2 Nephew to Sir William. N. 3 This coldness between the Temple family and Dr. Swift has been Variously accounted for, but never satisfactorily cleared up. D. S. 4 Dr. Pratt, afterwards Dean of Downe. D. S. 5 A gentleman of fortune in the county of Westmeath, in Ireland, whose name often occurs in these letters. He was well acquainted with Stella, and seems to have had a great esteem for her merit and accomplishments, D. S. 6 Dr. Sterne, Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin. D. S. 7 This money was a premium of two hundred pounds the Government had promised him for his mathematical sleaing tables, calculated for the improvement of the linen manufacture, which were afterwards printed, and are still highly regarded. D. S. SWIFTS JOURNAL TO STELLA. 415 LETTER III. LONDON, September 9, 1710. After seeing the Duke of Ormond, dining with Dr. Cockburn, passing some part of the afternoon with Sir Matthew Dudley and Will Frankland, the rest at St. James's coffee-house, I came home and wrote to the Archbishop of Dublin and MD, and am going to bed. I forgot to tell you that I begged Will Frankland to stand Manley's 1 friend with his father in this shaking season for places. He told me his father 2 was in danger to be out, that several were now soliciting for Manley's place, that he was accused of opening letters, that Sir Thomas Frankland would sacrifice everything to save himself; and in that I fear Manley is undone, &c. 10. To-day I dined with Lord Mountjoy at Kensington; saw my mistress, Ophy Butler's wife, who is grown a little charmless. I sat till ten in the evening with Addison and Steele. Steele will certainly loose his Gazetteer's place, all the world detesting his engaging in parties. 3 At ten I went to the coffee-house, hoping to find Lord Radnor, whom I had not seen. He was there ; for an hour and a half we talked treason heartily against the Whigs, their baseness and ingratitude. And I am come home rolling resentiments in my mind and framing schemes of revenge ; full of which (having written down some hints) I go to bed. I am afraid MD dined at home, because it is Sunday, and there was a little half-pint of wine. For God's sake be good girls, and all will be well. Ben Took 4 was with me this morning. 1 ii. Seven morning. I am rising to go to Jervis to finish my picture, and it is shaving-day, so good morrow MD ; but do not keep me now, for I cannot stay ; and pray dine with the Dean, but do not lose your money. I long to hear from you, c. Ten at night. I sat four hours this morning to Jervis, who has given my picture quite another turn, and now approves it entirely ; but i Postmaster-General of Ireland. D. S. 3 Sir Thomas Frankland, Postmaster-General in England. N. 3 See Tatler, No. 193. N. * The Doctor's bookseller. D S. 4 i6 SWIFT'S JOURNAL TO STELLA. we must have the approbation of the town. If I were rich enough, I would get a copy of it and bring it over. Mr. Addison and I dined together at his lodgings, and I sat with him part of this evening ; and I am now come home to write an hour. Patrick observes that the fabble here are much more inquisitive in politics than in Ireland. Every day we expect changes, and the Parlia- ment to be dissolved. Lord Wharton expects every day to be out ; he is working like a horse for elections ; and in short, I never saw so great a ferment among all sorts of people. I had a miserable letter from Joe last Saturday, telling me Mr. Pratt l refuses pay- ment of his money. I have told it Mr. Addison, and will to Lord Wharton, but I fear with no success. However, I will do all I can. 12. To-day I presented Mr. Ford to the Duke of Ormond, and paid my first visit to Lord President, 2 with whom I had much discourse, but put him always off when he began of Lord Wharton in relation to me, till he urged it ; then I said he knew I never expect anything from Lord Wharton, and that Lord Wharton knew that I understood it so. He said that he had written twice to Lord Wharton about me, who both times said nothing at all to that part of his letter. I am advised not to meddle in the affair of the first-fruits till this hurry is a little over, which still depends, and we are all in the dark. Lord President told me he expects every day to be out, and has done so these two months. I protest upon my life I am heartily weary of this town, and wish I had never stirred. 13. I went this morning to the city to see Mr. Stratford, the Hamburgh merchant, my old schoolfellow; but called at Bull's, on Ludgate Hill ; he forced me to his house at Hampstead to dinner, among a great deal of ill company ; among the rest, Mr. Hoadly, 3 the Whig clergyman, so famous for acting the contrary part to Sacheverell : but to-morrow I design again to see Strat- ford. I was glad, however, to be at Hampstead, where I saw 1 Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. D. S. - Lord Somers. D. S. a Dr. Benjamin Hoadly, afterwards Bishop of Winchester. D. S. SWIFTS JOURNAL TO STELLA. 417 Lady Lucy and Moll Stanhope. I hear very unfortunate news of Mrs. Long ; she and her comrade have broke up house, and she is broke for good and all, and is gone to the country: I should be extremely sorry if this be true. 14. To-day I saw Patty Rolt, who heard I was in town ; and I dined with Stratford at a merchant's in the city, where I drank the first Tokay wine I ever saw ; and it is admirable, yet not to a degree I expected. Stratford is worth a plum, and is now lending the Government forty thousand pounds; yet we were educated together l at the same school and university. We hear the Chan- cellor is to be suddenly out, and Sir Simon Harcourt to succeed him. I am come early home, not caring for the coffee-house. 15. To-day Mr. Addison, Colonel Freind, and I went to see the million lottery drawn at Guildhall. The jackanapes of blue- coat boys gave themselves such airs in pulling out the tickets, and showed white hands open to the company to let us see there was no cheat. We dined at a country-house near Chelsea, where Mr. Addison often retires ; and to-night at the coffee-house. We hear Sir Simon Harcourt is made Lord Keeper: so that now we expect every moment that Parliament will be dissolved; but I forgot that this letter will not go in three or four days, and that my news will be stale, which I should therefore put in the last paragraph. Shall I send this letter before I hear from MD, or shall I keep it to lengthen ? I have not yet seen Ppt's mother because I will not see Lady Giffard ; but will contrive to get there when Lady Giffard is abroad. I forgot to mark my two former letters ; but I remember this is Number 3, and I have not yet had Number i from MD ; but I shall by Monday, which I reckon will be just a fortnight after you had my first. I am 1 Budgell, in Spectator, No. 353, thus describes these schoolfellows : " One of them was not only thought an impenetrable blockhead at school, but still main- tained his reputation at the university ; the other was the pride of his master, and the most celebrated person in the college of which he was a member. The man of genius is at present buried in a country parsonage of eighty-five pounds a year ; whilst the other, with the bare abilities of a common scrivener, has got an estate of above an hundred thousand pounds." "These inequalities," observes the inge- nious writer to whom I am indebted for pointing out this quotation, " are too nume- rous and too well sanctioned to be removed either by complaint or envy." N. 2 D 4 i8 SWIFTS JOURNAL TO STELLA. resolved to bring over a great deal of china. I loved it mightily to-day. What shall I bring ? 1 6. Morning. Sir John Holland, Comptroller of the House- hold, 1 has sent to desire my acquaintance. I have a mind to re- fuse him, because he is a Whig, and will, I suppose, be out among the rest ; but he is a man of worth and learning. Tell me, do you like this journal way of writing? Is it not tedious and dull? Night. I dined to-day with a cousin, a printer, where Patty Rolt lodges, and then came home, after a visit or two ; and it has been a very insipid day. Mrs. Long's misfortune is confirmed to me ; bailiffs were in her house ; she retired to private lodgings ; thence to the country, nobody knows where ; her friends leave letters at some inn, and they are carried to her ; and she writes answers without dating them from any place. I swear it grieves me to the soul. 17. To-day I dined six miles out of town, with Will Pate, the learned woollen draper ; 2 Mr. Stratford went with me : six miles here is nothing : we left Pate after sunset, and were here before it was dark. This letter shall go on Thursday, whether I hear from MD or no. My health continues pretty well ; pray God, Ppt may give me a good account of hers ; and I hope you are now at Trim, or soon designing it. I was disappointed to-night : the fellow gave me a letter, and I hoped to see little MD's hand ; and it was only to invite me to a venison pasty to-day : so I lost my pasty into the bargain. Pox on these declining courtiers ! Here is Mr. Brydges, the Paymaster-General, desiring my acquaintance ; but I hear the Queen sent Lord Shrewsbury to assure him he may keep his place ; and he promises me great assistance in the affair of the first-fruits. Well, I must turn over this leaf to-night, though the side would hold another line ; but pray consider this 1 He succeeded Sir Thomas Felton, March 23, 1709-10. N. 2 Mr. Pate was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he regularly took his degree of LL.B. He afterwards became a most eminent woollen draper, lived over against the Royal Exchange, and was commonly called "the learned tradesman." In the picture gallery at Oxford, under the portrait of John Cornelius Digby, is written, "the gift of William Pate, of London, woollen draper, 1692." Mr. Pope, in a letter to Mr. Hughes, April 13, 1714, speaking of his proposals for Homer, says, " I have enclosed another for Mr. Pate, if he thinks fit to oblige me so far, as you seemed inclined to believe he might." In 1734 he was one of the Sheriffs of London, and he died in 1746. N. SWIFTS JOURNAL TO STELLA. 419 is a whole sheet ; it holds a plaguy deal, and you must be con- tent to be weary ; but I will do so no more. Sir Simon Harcourt is made Attorney-General, and not Lord Keeper. 1 8. To-day I dined with Mr. Stratford, at Mr. Addison's retire- ment, near Chelsea; they came to town; got home early and began a letter to the Tatler about the corruptions of style and writing, c, and having not heard from you, am resolved this letter shall go to-night. Lord Wharton was sent for to town in mighty haste by the Duke of Devonshire: they have some project in hand; but it will not do, for every hour we expect a thorough revolution, and that the Parliament will be dissolved. When you see Joe, tell him Lord Wharton is too busy to mind any of his affairs : but I will get what good offices I can from Mr. Addison, and will write to-day to Mr. Pratt; and bid Joe not to be discouraged, for I am confident he will get the money under any Government ; but he must have patience. 19. I have been scribbling this morning, and I believe shall hardly fill this side to-day, but send it as it is , and it is good enough for naughty girls that will not write to a body, and to a good boy like Pdfr. I thought to have sent this to-night, but was kept by company, and could not ; and to say the truth, I had a little mind to expect one post more for a letter from MD. Yesterday at noon died the Earl of Anglesey, 1 the great support of the Tories ; so that employment of Vice-Treasurer of Ireland is again vacant. We were to have been great friends, and I could hardly have a loss that could grieve me more. The Bishop of Durham 2 died the same day. The Duke of Ormond's daughter was to visit me to-day at a third place by way of advance, and I am to return it to-morrow. I have had a letter from Lady Berkeley, begging me for charity to come to Berkeley Castle, for company to my lord, who has been ill of a dropsy ; but I cannot go, and must send my excuse to-morrow. I am told that in a few hours there will be more removals. 1 John Earl of Anglesey succeeded his brother James, September 19, 1701. He was joint Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. N. 2 It was not the Bishop of Durham, but of St. David's, Dr. George Pull, who died that day. He had been Archdeacon of Llandaff, and was raised to the prelacy, April 29, 1705. N. 4'.o SWIFTS JOURNAL TO STELLA. 20. To-day I returned my visit to the Duke's daughters ; the insolent drabs came up to my very mouth to salute me ; then I heard the report confirmed of removals ; my Lord President Somers ; the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Steward ; and Mr. Boyle, Secretary of State, are all turned out to-day. I never remember such bold steps taken by a court : I am almost shocked at it, though I did not care if they were all hanged. We are astonished why the Parliament is not yet dissolved, and why they keep a matter of that importance to the last. We shall have a strange winter here between the struggles of a cunning, provoked, dis- carded party, and the triumphs of one in power ; of both which I shall be an indifferent spectator, and return very peaceably to Ireland, when I have done my part in the affair I am intrusted with, whether it succeeds or not. To-morrow I change my lodgings in Pall Mall for one in Bury Street, where I suppose I shall continue while I stay in London. If anything happens to-morrow, I will add it. Robin's Coffee-house. We have great news just now from Spain; Madrid taken and Pampeluna. I am here ever interrupted. 21. I have just received your letter, which I will not answer now. God be thanked all things are so well. I find you have not yet had my second : I had a letter from Parvisol, who tells me he gave Mrs. Walls a bill of twenty pounds for me, to be given to you ; but you have not sent it. This night the Parlia- ment is dissolved : great news from Spain ; King Charles and Stanhope are at Madrid, and Count Staremberg has taken Pam- peluna. Farewell. This is from St. James's Coffee-house. I will begin my answer to your letter to-night, but not send it this week. Pray tell me whether you like this journal way of writing. I do not like your reasons for not going to Trim. Parvisol tells me he can sell your horse. Sell it with a pox ! Pray let him know that he shall sell his soul as soon. What ! sell any- thing that Ppt loves, and may sometimes ride ? It is hers, and let her do as she pleases : pray let him know this by the first that you know goes to Trim. Let him sell my grey, and be hanged. SWIFTS JOURNAL TO STELLA. 421 LETTER IV. i Lo x DO x, September 21, 1710. Here must I begin another letter on a whole sheet, for fear saucy little MD should be angry, and think much that the paper is too little. I had your letter this night, as I told you just and no more in my last; for this must be taken up in answering yours, saucebox. I believe I told you where I dined to-day; and to-morrow I go out of town for two days to dine with the same company on Sunday; Molesworth, the Florence envoy, 1 Stratford, and some others. I heard to-day that a gentle- woman from Lady Giffard's house had been at the coffee-house to inquire for me. It was Ppt's mother. I suppose I shall send her a penny-post letter to-morrow, and contrive to see her without hazarding seeing Lady Giffard, which I will not do until she begs my pardon. 22. I dined to-day at Hampstead with Lady Lucy,