Previous - next
detail of the sublime and the admirable they contain, it is a
thousand to one whether we should ever have discovered one grain of
either. For my own particular, I cannot deny that whatever I have
said upon this occasion had been more proper in a preface, and more
agreeable to the mode which usually directs it there. But I here
think fit to lay hold on that great and honourable privilege of
being the last writer. I claim an absolute authority in right as
the freshest modern, which gives me a despotic power over all
authors before me. In the strength of which title I do utterly
disapprove and declare against that pernicious custom of making the
preface a bill of fare to the book. For I have always looked upon
it as a high point of indiscretion in monstermongers and other
retailers of strange sights to hang out a fair large picture over
the door, drawn after the life, with a most eloquent description
underneath. This has saved me many a threepence, for my curiosity
was fully satisfied, and I never offered to go in, though often
invited by the urging and attending orator with his last moving and
standing piece of rhetoric, "Sir, upon my word, we are just going to
begin." Such is exactly the fate at this time of Prefaces,
Epistles, Advertisements, Introductions, Prolegomenas, Apparatuses,
To the Readers's. This expedient was admirable at first; our great
Dryden has long carried it as far as it would go, and with
incredible success. He has often said to me in confidence that the
world would never have suspected him to be so great a poet if he had
not assured them so frequently in his prefaces, that it was
impossible they could either doubt or forget it. Perhaps it may be
so. However, I much fear his instructions have edified out of their
place, and taught men to grow wiser in certain points where he never
intended they should; for it is lamentable to behold with what a
lazy scorn many of the yawning readers in our age do now-a-days
twirl over forty or fifty pages of preface and dedication (which is
the usual modern stint), as if it were so much Latin. Though it
must be also allowed, on the other hand, that a very considerable
number is known to proceed critics and wits by reading nothing else.
Into which two factions I think all present readers may justly be
divided. Now, for myself, I profess to be of the former sort, and
therefore having the modern inclination to expatiate upon the beauty
of my own productions, and display the bright parts of my discourse,
I thought best to do it in the body of the work, where as it now
lies it makes a very considerable addition to the bulk of the
volume, a circumstance by no means to be neglected by a skilful
writer.
Having thus paid my due deference and acknowledgment to an
Previous - next
