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need not go very far to seek how that is usually determined, when we
remember it is with human faculties as with liquors, the lightest
will be ever at the top."

There is in this famous island of Britain a certain paltry
scribbler, very voluminous, whose character the reader cannot wholly
be a stranger to. He deals in a pernicious kind of writings called
"Second Parts," and usually passes under the name of "The Author of
the First." I easily foresee that as soon as I lay down my pen this
nimble operator will have stole it, and treat me as inhumanly as he
has already done Dr. Blackmore, Lestrange, and many others who
shall here be nameless. I therefore fly for justice and relief into
the hands of that great rectifier of saddles and lover of mankind,
Dr. Bentley, begging he will take this enormous grievance into his
most modern consideration; and if it should so happen that the
furniture of an ass in the shape of a second part must for my sins
be clapped, by mistake, upon my back, that he will immediately
please, in the presence of the world, to lighten me of the burthen,
and take it home to his own house till the true beast thinks fit to
call for it.

In the meantime, I do here give this public notice that my
resolutions are to circumscribe within this discourse the whole
stock of matter I have been so many years providing. Since my vein
is once opened, I am content to exhaust it all at a running, for the
peculiar advantage of my dear country, and for the universal benefit
of mankind. Therefore, hospitably considering the number of my
guests, they shall have my whole entertainment at a meal, and I
scorn to set up the leavings in the cupboard. What the guests
cannot eat may be given to the poor, and the dogs under the table
may gnaw the bones {140}. This I understand for a more generous
proceeding than to turn the company's stomachs by inviting them
again to-morrow to a scurvy meal of scraps.

If the reader fairly considers the strength of what I have advanced
in the foregoing section, I am convinced it will produce a wonderful
revolution in his notions and opinions, and he will be abundantly
better prepared to receive and to relish the concluding part of this
miraculous treatise. Readers may be divided into three classes--the
superficial, the ignorant, and the learned, and I have with much
felicity fitted my pen to the genius and advantage of each. The
superficial reader will be strangely provoked to laughter, which
clears the breast and the lungs, is sovereign against the spleen,
and the most innocent of all diuretics. The ignorant reader
(between whom and the former the distinction is extremely nice) will
find himself disposed to stare, which is an admirable remedy for ill
eyes, serves to raise and enliven the spirits, and wonderfully helps

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