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glass, blunted his scythe, and drawn the hobnails out of his shoes.
It is under this class I have presumed to list my present treatise,
being just come from having the honour conferred upon me to be
adopted a member of that illustrious fraternity.
Now, I am not unaware how the productions of the Grub Street
brotherhood have of late years fallen under many prejudices, nor how
it has been the perpetual employment of two junior start-up
societies to ridicule them and their authors as unworthy their
established post in the commonwealth of wit and learning. Their own
consciences will easily inform them whom I mean; nor has the world
been so negligent a looker-on as not to observe the continual
efforts made by the societies of Gresham and of Will's {64}, to
edify a name and reputation upon the ruin of ours. And this is yet
a more feeling grief to us, upon the regards of tenderness as well
as of justice, when we reflect on their proceedings not only as
unjust, but as ungrateful, undutiful, and unnatural. For how can it
be forgot by the world or themselves, to say nothing of our own
records, which are full and clear in the point, that they both are
seminaries, not only of our planting, but our watering too. I am
informed our two rivals have lately made an offer to enter into the
lists with united forces and challenge us to a comparison of books,
both as to weight and number. In return to which, with license from
our president, I humbly offer two answers. First, we say the
proposal is like that which Archimedes made upon a smaller affair
{65a}, including an impossibility in the practice; for where can
they find scales of capacity enough for the first, or an
arithmetician of capacity enough for the second. Secondly, we are
ready to accept the challenge, but with this condition, that a third
indifferent person be assigned, to whose impartial judgment it shall
be left to decide which society each book, treatise, or pamphlet do
most properly belong to. This point, God knows, is very far from
being fixed at present, for we are ready to produce a catalogue of
some thousands which in all common justice ought to be entitled to
our fraternity, but by the revolted and newfangled writers most
perfidiously ascribed to the others. Upon all which we think it
very unbecoming our prudence that the determination should be
remitted to the authors themselves, when our adversaries by briguing
and caballing have caused so universal a defection from us, that the
greatest part of our society has already deserted to them, and our
nearest friends begin to stand aloof, as if they were half ashamed
to own us.
This is the utmost I am authorised to say upon so ungrateful and
melancholy a subject, because we are extremely unwilling to inflame
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