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Tantissimi classici della letteratura e della cultura politica,
economica e scientifica in lingua inglese con audio di ReadSpeaker e traduttore
automatico interattivo FGA Translate
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Abbe Prevost - MANON LESCAUT
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Alcott, Louisa M. - AN OLDFASHIONED GIRL
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Alcott, Louisa M. - LITTLE MEN
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Alcott, Louisa M. - LITTLE WOMEN
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Alcott, Louisa May - JACK AND JILL
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Alcott, Louisa May - LIFE LETTERS AND JOURNALS
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Andersen, Hans Christian - FAIRY TALES
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Anonimo - BEOWULF
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Ariosto, Ludovico - ORLANDO ENRAGED
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Aurelius, Marcus - MEDITATIONS
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Austen, Jane - EMMA
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Austen, Jane - MANSFIELD PARK
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Austen, Jane - NORTHANGER ABBEY
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Austen, Jane - PERSUASION
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Austen, Jane - PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
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Austen, Jane - SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
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Authors, Various - LETTERS OF ABELARD AND HELOISE
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Authors, Various - SELECTED ENGLISH LETTERS
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Autori Vari - THE WORLD ENGLISH BIBLE
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Bacon, Francis - THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING
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Balzac, Honore de - EUGENIE GRANDET
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Balzac, Honore de - FATHER GORIOT
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Baroness Orczy - THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL
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Barrie, J. M. - PETER AND WENDY
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Barrie, James M. - PETER PAN
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Bierce, Ambrose - THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY
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Blake, William - SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE
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Boccaccio, Giovanni - DECAMERONE
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Brent, Linda - INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL
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Bronte, Charlotte - JANE EYRE
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Bronte, Charlotte - VILLETTE
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Buchan, John - GREENMANTLE
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Buchan, John - MR STANDFAST
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Buchan, John - THE 39 STEPS
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Bunyan, John - THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
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Burckhardt, Jacob - THE CIVILIZATION OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
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Burnett, Frances H. - A LITTLE PRINCESS
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Burnett, Frances H. - LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY
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Burnett, Frances H. - THE SECRET GARDEN
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Butler, Samuel - EREWHON
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Carlyle, Thomas - PAST AND PRESENT
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Carlyle, Thomas - THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
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Cellini, Benvenuto - AUTOBIOGRAPHY
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Cervantes - DON QUIXOTE
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Chaucer, Geoffrey - THE CANTERBURY TALES
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Chesterton, G. K. - A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND
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Chesterton, G. K. - THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE
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Chesterton, G. K. - THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN
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Chesterton, G. K. - THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
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Chesterton, G. K. - THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY
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Chesterton, G. K. - THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN
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Chesterton, G. K. - TWELVE TYPES
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Chesterton, G. K. - WHAT I SAW IN AMERICA
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Chesterton, Gilbert K. - HERETICS
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Chopin, Kate - AT FAULT
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Chopin, Kate - BAYOU FOLK
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Chopin, Kate - THE AWAKENING AND SELECTED SHORT STORIES
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Clark Hall, John R. - A CONCISE ANGLOSAXON DICTIONARY
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Clarkson, Thomas - AN ESSAY ON THE SLAVERY AND COMMERCE OF THE HUMAN SPECIES
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Clausewitz, Carl von - ON WAR
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Coleridge, Herbert - A DICTIONARY OF THE FIRST OR OLDEST WORDS IN THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE
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Coleridge, S. T. - COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS
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Coleridge, S. T. - HINTS TOWARDS THE FORMATION OF A MORE COMPREHENSIVE THEORY
OF LIFE
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Coleridge, S. T. - THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
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Collins, Wilkie - THE MOONSTONE
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Collodi - PINOCCHIO
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Conan Doyle, Arthur - A STUDY IN SCARLET
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Conan Doyle, Arthur - MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
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Conan Doyle, Arthur - THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES
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Conan Doyle, Arthur - THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
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Conan Doyle, Arthur - THE SIGN OF THE FOUR
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Conrad, Joseph - HEART OF DARKNESS
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Conrad, Joseph - LORD JIM
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Conrad, Joseph - NOSTROMO
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Conrad, Joseph - THE NIGGER OF THE NARCISSUS
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Conrad, Joseph - TYPHOON
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Crane, Stephen - LAST WORDS
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Crane, Stephen - MAGGIE
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Crane, Stephen - THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE
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Crane, Stephen - WOUNDS IN THE RAIN
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Dante - THE DIVINE COMEDY: HELL
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Dante - THE DIVINE COMEDY: PARADISE
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Dante - THE DIVINE COMEDY: PURGATORY
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Darwin, Charles - THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHARLES DARWIN
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Darwin, Charles - THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
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Defoe, Daniel - A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE PYRATES
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Defoe, Daniel - A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR
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Defoe, Daniel - CAPTAIN SINGLETON
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Defoe, Daniel - MOLL FLANDERS
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Defoe, Daniel - ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Defoe, Daniel - THE COMPLETE ENGLISH TRADESMAN
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Defoe, Daniel - THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE
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Deledda, Grazia - AFTER THE DIVORCE
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Dickens, Charles - A CHRISTMAS CAROL
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Dickens, Charles - A TALE OF TWO CITIES
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Dickens, Charles - BLEAK HOUSE
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Dickens, Charles - DAVID COPPERFIELD
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Dickens, Charles - DONBEY AND SON
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Dickens, Charles - GREAT EXPECTATIONS
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Dickens, Charles - HARD TIMES
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Dickens, Charles - LETTERS VOLUME 1
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Dickens, Charles - LITTLE DORRIT
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Dickens, Charles - MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT
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Dickens, Charles - NICHOLAS NICKLEBY
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Dickens, Charles - OLIVER TWIST
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Dickens, Charles - OUR MUTUAL FRIEND
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Dickens, Charles - PICTURES FROM ITALY
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Dickens, Charles - THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD
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Dickens, Charles - THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP
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Dickens, Charles - THE PICKWICK PAPERS
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Dickinson, Emily - POEMS
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Dostoevsky, Fyodor - CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
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Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV
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Du Maurier, George - TRILBY
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Dumas, Alexandre - THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
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Dumas, Alexandre - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK
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Dumas, Alexandre - THE THREE MUSKETEERS
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Eliot, George - DANIEL DERONDA
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Eliot, George - MIDDLEMARCH
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Eliot, George - SILAS MARNER
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Eliot, George - THE MILL ON THE FLOSS
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Engels, Frederick - THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING-CLASS IN ENGLAND IN 1844
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Equiano - AUTOBIOGRAPHY
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Esopo - FABLES
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Fenimore Cooper, James - THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
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Fielding, Henry - TOM JONES
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France, Anatole - THAIS
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France, Anatole - THE GODS ARE ATHIRST
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France, Anatole - THE LIFE OF JOAN OF ARC
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France, Anatole - THE SEVEN WIVES OF BLUEBEARD
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Frank Baum, L. - THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ
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Frank Baum, L. - THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ
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Franklin, Benjamin - AUTOBIOGRAPHY
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Frazer, James George - THE GOLDEN BOUGH
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Freud, Sigmund - DREAM PSYCHOLOGY
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Galsworthy, John - COMPLETE PLAYS
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Galsworthy, John - STRIFE
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Galsworthy, John - STUDIES AND ESSAYS
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Galsworthy, John - THE FIRST AND THE LAST
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Galsworthy, John - THE FORSYTE SAGA
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Galsworthy, John - THE LITTLE MAN
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Galsworthy, John - THE SILVER BOX
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Galsworthy, John - THE SKIN GAME
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Gaskell, Elizabeth - CRANFORD
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Gaskell, Elizabeth - MARY BARTON
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Gaskell, Elizabeth - NORTH AND SOUTH
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Gaskell, Elizabeth - THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE
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Gay, John - THE BEGGAR'S OPERA
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Gentile, Maria - THE ITALIAN COOK BOOK
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Gilbert and Sullivan - PLAYS
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Goethe - FAUST
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Gogol - DEAD SOULS
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Goldsmith, Oliver - SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER
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Goldsmith, Oliver - THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD
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Grahame, Kenneth - THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
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Grimm, Brothers - FAIRY TALES
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Harding, A. R. - GINSENG AND OTHER MEDICINAL PLANTS
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Hardy, Thomas - A CHANGED MAN AND OTHER TALES
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Hardy, Thomas - FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
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Hardy, Thomas - JUDE THE OBSCURE
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Hardy, Thomas - TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES
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Hardy, Thomas - THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE
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Hartley, Cecil B. - THE GENTLEMEN'S BOOK OF ETIQUETTE
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Hawthorne, Nathaniel - LITTLE MASTERPIECES
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Hawthorne, Nathaniel - THE SCARLET LETTER
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Henry VIII - LOVE LETTERS TO ANNE BOLEYN
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Henry, O. - CABBAGES AND KINGS
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Henry, O. - SIXES AND SEVENS
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Henry, O. - THE FOUR MILLION
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Henry, O. - THE TRIMMED LAMP
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Henry, O. - WHIRLIGIGS
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Hindman Miller, Gustavus - TEN THOUSAND DREAMS INTERPRETED
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Hobbes, Thomas - LEVIATHAN
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Homer - THE ILIAD
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Homer - THE ODYSSEY
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Hornaday, William T. - THE EXTERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN BISON
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Hume, David - A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE
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Hume, David - AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
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Hume, David - DIALOGUES CONCERNING NATURAL RELIGION
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Ibsen, Henrik - A DOLL'S HOUSE
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Ibsen, Henrik - AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE
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Ibsen, Henrik - GHOSTS
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Ibsen, Henrik - HEDDA GABLER
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Ibsen, Henrik - JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN
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Ibsen, Henrik - ROSMERHOLM
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Ibsen, Henrik - THE LADY FROM THE SEA
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Ibsen, Henrik - THE MASTER BUILDER
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Ibsen, Henrik - WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN
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Irving, Washington - THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW
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James, Henry - ITALIAN HOURS
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James, Henry - THE ASPERN PAPERS
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James, Henry - THE BOSTONIANS
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James, Henry - THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
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James, Henry - THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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James, Henry - WASHINGTON SQUARE
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Jerome, Jerome K. - THREE MEN IN A BOAT
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Jerome, Jerome K. - THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL
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Jevons, Stanley - POLITICAL ECONOMY
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Johnson, Samuel - A GRAMMAR OF THE ENGLISH TONGUE
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Jonson, Ben - THE ALCHEMIST
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Jonson, Ben - VOLPONE
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Joyce, James - A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN
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Joyce, James - CHAMBER MUSIC
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Joyce, James - DUBLINERS
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Joyce, James - ULYSSES
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Keats, John - ENDYMION
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Keats, John - POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1817
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Keats, John - POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1820
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King James - THE BIBLE
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Kipling, Rudyard - CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS
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Kipling, Rudyard - INDIAN TALES
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Kipling, Rudyard - JUST SO STORIES
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Kipling, Rudyard - KIM
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Kipling, Rudyard - THE JUNGLE BOOK
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Kipling, Rudyard - THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
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Kipling, Rudyard - THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK
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Lawrence, D. H - THE RAINBOW
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Lawrence, D. H - THE WHITE PEACOCK
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Lawrence, D. H - TWILIGHT IN ITALY
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Lawrence, D. H. - AARON'S ROD
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Lawrence, D. H. - SONS AND LOVERS
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Lawrence, D. H. - THE LOST GIRL
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Lawrence, D. H. - WOMEN IN LOVE
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Lear, Edward - BOOK OF NONSENSE
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Lear, Edward - LAUGHABLE LYRICS
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Lear, Edward - MORE NONSENSE
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Lear, Edward - NONSENSE SONG
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Leblanc, Maurice - ARSENE LUPIN VS SHERLOCK HOLMES
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Leblanc, Maurice - THE ADVENTURES OF ARSENE LUPIN
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Leblanc, Maurice - THE CONFESSIONS OF ARSENE LUPIN
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Leblanc, Maurice - THE HOLLOW NEEDLE
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Leblanc, Maurice - THE RETURN OF ARSENE LUPIN
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Lehmann, Lilli - HOW TO SING
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Leroux, Gaston - THE MAN WITH THE BLACK FEATHER
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Leroux, Gaston - THE MYSTERY OF THE YELLOW ROOM
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Leroux, Gaston - THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
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London, Jack - MARTIN EDEN
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London, Jack - THE CALL OF THE WILD
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London, Jack - WHITE FANG
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Machiavelli, Nicolo' - THE PRINCE
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Malthus, Thomas - PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION
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Mansfield, Katherine - THE GARDEN PARTY AND OTHER STORIES
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Marlowe, Christopher - THE JEW OF MALTA
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Marryat, Captain - THE CHILDREN OF THE NEW FOREST
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Maupassant, Guy De - BEL AMI
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Melville, Hermann - MOBY DICK
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Melville, Hermann - TYPEE
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Mill, John Stuart - PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
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Milton, John - PARADISE LOST
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Mitra, S. M. - HINDU TALES FROM THE SANSKRIT
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Montaigne, Michel de - ESSAYS
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Montgomery, Lucy Maud - ANNE OF GREEN GABLES
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More, Thomas - UTOPIA
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Nesbit, E. - FIVE CHILDREN AND IT
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Nesbit, E. - THE PHOENIX AND THE CARPET
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Nesbit, E. - THE RAILWAY CHILDREN
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Nesbit, E. - THE STORY OF THE AMULET
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Newton, Isaac - OPTICKS
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Nietsche, Friedrich - BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
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Nietsche, Friedrich - THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA
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Nightingale, Florence - NOTES ON NURSING
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Owen, Wilfred - POEMS
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Ozaki, Yei Theodora - JAPANESE FAIRY TALES
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Pascal, Blaise - PENSEES
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Pellico, Silvio - MY TEN YEARS IMPRISONMENT
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Perrault, Charles - FAIRY TALES
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Pirandello, Luigi - THREE PLAYS
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Plato - THE REPUBLIC
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Poe, Edgar Allan - THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 1
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Poe, Edgar Allan - THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 2
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Poe, Edgar Allan - THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 3
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Poe, Edgar Allan - THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 4
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Poe, Edgar Allan - THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 5
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Poe, Edgar Allan - THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
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Potter, Beatrix - THE TALE OF PETER RABBIT
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Proust, Marcel - SWANN'S WAY
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Radcliffe, Ann - A SICILIAN ROMANCE
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Ricardo, David - ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AND TAXATION
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Richardson, Samuel - PAMELA
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Rider Haggard, H. - ALLAN QUATERMAIN
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Rider Haggard, H. - KING SOLOMON'S MINES
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Rousseau, J. J. - THE ORIGIN AND FOUNDATION OF INEQUALITY AMONG MANKIND
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Ruskin, John - THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE
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Schiller, Friedrich - THE DEATH OF WALLENSTEIN
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Schiller, Friedrich - THE PICCOLOMINI
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Schopenhauer, Arthur - THE ART OF CONTROVERSY
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Schopenhauer, Arthur - THE WISDOM OF LIFE
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Scott Fitzgerald, F. - FLAPPERS AND PHILOSOPHERS
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Scott Fitzgerald, F. - TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE
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Scott Fitzgerald, F. - THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED
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Scott Fitzgerald, F. - THIS SIDE OF PARADISE
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Scott, Walter - IVANHOE
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Scott, Walter - QUENTIN DURWARD
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Scott, Walter - ROB ROY
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Scott, Walter - THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR
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Scott, Walter - WAVERLEY
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Sedgwick, Anne Douglas - THE THIRD WINDOW
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Sewell, Anna - BLACK BEAUTY
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Shakespeare, William - COMPLETE WORKS
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Shakespeare, William - HAMLET
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Shakespeare, William - OTHELLO
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Shakespeare, William - ROMEO AND JULIET
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Shelley, Mary - FRANKENSTEIN
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Shelley, Percy Bysshe - A DEFENCE OF POETRY AND OTHER ESSAYS
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Shelley, Percy Bysshe - COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS
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Sheridan, Richard B. - THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL
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Sienkiewicz, Henryk - QUO VADIS
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Smith, Adam - THE WEALTH OF NATIONS
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Smollett, Tobias - TRAVELS THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY
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Spencer, Herbert - ESSAYS ON EDUCATION AND KINDRED SUBJECTS
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Spyri, Johanna - HEIDI
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Sterne, Laurence - A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
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Sterne, Laurence - TRISTRAM SHANDY
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Stevenson, Robert Louis - A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES
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Stevenson, Robert Louis - ESSAYS IN THE ART OF WRITING
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Stevenson, Robert Louis - KIDNAPPED
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Stevenson, Robert Louis - NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS
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Stevenson, Robert Louis - THE BLACK ARROW
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Stevenson, Robert Louis - THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
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Stevenson, Robert Louis - TREASURE ISLAND
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Stoker, Bram - DRACULA
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Strindberg, August - LUCKY PEHR
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Strindberg, August - MASTER OLOF
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Strindberg, August - THE RED ROOM
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Strindberg, August - THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS
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Strindberg, August - THERE ARE CRIMES AND CRIMES
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Swift, Jonathan - A MODEST PROPOSAL
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Swift, Jonathan - A TALE OF A TUB
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Swift, Jonathan - GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
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Swift, Jonathan - THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS AND OTHER SHORT PIECES
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Tagore, Rabindranath - FRUIT GATHERING
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Tagore, Rabindranath - THE GARDENER
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Tagore, Rabindranath - THE HUNGRY STONES AND OTHER STORIES
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Thackeray, William - BARRY LYNDON
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Thackeray, William - VANITY FAIR
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Thackeray, William Makepeace - THE BOOK OF SNOBS
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Thackeray, William Makepeace - THE ROSE AND THE RING
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Thackeray, William Makepeace - THE VIRGINIANS
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Thoreau, Henry David - WALDEN
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Tolstoi, Leo - A LETTER TO A HINDU
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Tolstoy, Lev - ANNA KARENINA
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Tolstoy, Lev - WAR AND PEACE
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Trollope, Anthony - AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
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Trollope, Anthony - BARCHESTER TOWERS
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Trollope, Anthony - FRAMLEY PARSONAGE
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Trollope, Anthony - THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS
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Trollope, Anthony - THE MAN WHO KEPT HIS MONEY IN A BOX
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Trollope, Anthony - THE WARDEN
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Trollope, Anthony - THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
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Twain, Mark - LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI
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Twain, Mark - SPEECHES
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Twain, Mark - THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
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Twain, Mark - THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
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Twain, Mark - THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER
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Vari, Autori - THE MAGNA CARTA
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Verga, Giovanni - SICILIAN STORIES
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Verne, Jules - 20000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEAS
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Verne, Jules - A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH
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Verne, Jules - ALL AROUND THE MOON
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Verne, Jules - AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
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Verne, Jules - FIVE WEEKS IN A BALLOON
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Verne, Jules - FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON
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Verne, Jules - MICHAEL STROGOFF
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Verne, Jules - THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
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Voltaire - PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY
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Vyasa - MAHABHARATA
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Wallace, Edgar - SANDERS OF THE RIVER
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Wallace, Edgar - THE DAFFODIL MYSTERY
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Wallace, Lew - BEN HUR
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Webster, Jean - DADDY LONG LEGS
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Wedekind, Franz - THE AWAKENING OF SPRING
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Wells, H. G. - KIPPS
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Wells, H. G. - THE INVISIBLE MAN
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Wells, H. G. - THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU
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Wells, H. G. - THE STOLEN BACILLUS AND OTHER INCIDENTS
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Wells, H. G. - THE TIME MACHINE
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Wells, H. G. - THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
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Wells, H. G. - WHAT IS COMING
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Wharton, Edith - THE AGE OF INNOCENCE
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White, Andrew Dickson - FIAT MONEY INFLATION IN FRANCE
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Wilde, Oscar - A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE
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Wilde, Oscar - AN IDEAL HUSBAND
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Wilde, Oscar - DE PROFUNDIS
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Wilde, Oscar - LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN
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Wilde, Oscar - SALOME
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Wilde, Oscar - SELECTED POEMS
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Wilde, Oscar - THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL
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Wilde, Oscar - THE CANTERVILLE GHOST
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Wilde, Oscar - THE HAPPY PRINCE AND OTHER TALES
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Wilde, Oscar - THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
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Wilde, Oscar - THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GREY
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Wilde, Oscar - THE SOUL OF MAN
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Wilson, Epiphanius - SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST
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Wollstonecraft, Mary - A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN
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Woolf, Virgina - NIGHT AND DAY
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Woolf, Virgina - THE VOYAGE OUT
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Woolf, Virginia - JACOB'S ROOM
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Woolf, Virginia - MONDAY OR TUESDAY
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Wordsworth, William - POEMS
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Wordsworth, William - PROSE WORKS
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Zola, Emile - THERESE RAQUIN
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A TALE OF A TUB.
By Jonathan Swift.
THE PREFACE.
The wits of the present age being so very numerous and penetrating,
it seems the grandees of Church and State begin to fall under
horrible apprehensions lest these gentlemen, during the intervals of
a long peace, should find leisure to pick holes in the weak sides of
religion and government. To prevent which, there has been much
thought employed of late upon certain projects for taking off the
force and edge of those formidable inquirers from canvassing and
reasoning upon such delicate points. They have at length fixed upon
one, which will require some time as well as cost to perfect.
Meanwhile, the danger hourly increasing, by new levies of wits, all
appointed (as there is reason to fear) with pen, ink, and paper,
which may at an hour's warning be drawn out into pamphlets and other
offensive weapons ready for immediate execution, it was judged of
absolute necessity that some present expedient be thought on till
the main design can be brought to maturity. To this end, at a grand
committee, some days ago, this important discovery was made by a
certain curious and refined observer, that seamen have a custom when
they meet a Whale to fling him out an empty Tub, by way of
amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the Ship.
This parable was immediately mythologised; the Whale was interpreted
to be Hobbes's "Leviathan," which tosses and plays with all other
schemes of religion and government, whereof a great many are hollow,
and dry, and empty, and noisy, and wooden, and given to rotation.
This is the Leviathan from whence the terrible wits of our age are
said to borrow their weapons. The Ship in danger is easily
understood to be its old antitype the commonwealth. But how to
analyse the Tub was a matter of difficulty, when, after long inquiry
and debate, the literal meaning was preserved, and it was decreed
that, in order to prevent these Leviathans from tossing and sporting
with the commonwealth, which of itself is too apt to fluctuate, they
should be diverted from that game by "A Tale of a Tub." And my
genius being conceived to lie not unhappily that way, I had the
honour done me to be engaged in the performance.
This is the sole design in publishing the following treatise, which
I hope will serve for an interim of some months to employ those
unquiet spirits till the perfecting of that great work, into the
secret of which it is reasonable the courteous reader should have
some little light.
It is intended that a large Academy be erected, capable of
containing nine thousand seven hundred forty and three persons,
which, by modest computation, is reckoned to be pretty near the
current number of wits in this island {50}. These are to be
disposed into the several schools of this Academy, and there pursue
those studies to which their genius most inclines them. The
undertaker himself will publish his proposals with all convenient
speed, to which I shall refer the curious reader for a more
particular account, mentioning at present only a few of the
principal schools. There is, first, a large pederastic school, with
French and Italian masters; there is also the spelling school, a
very spacious building; the school of looking-glasses; the school of
swearing; the school of critics; the school of salivation; the
school of hobby-horses; the school of poetry; the school of tops;
the school of spleen; the school of gaming; with many others too
tedious to recount. No person to be admitted member into any of
these schools without an attestation under two sufficient persons'
hands certifying him to be a wit.
But to return. I am sufficiently instructed in the principal duty
of a preface if my genius, were capable of arriving at it. Thrice
have I forced my imagination to take the tour of my invention, and
thrice it has returned empty, the latter having been wholly drained
by the following treatise. Not so my more successful brethren the
moderns, who will by no means let slip a preface or dedication
without some notable distinguishing stroke to surprise the reader at
the entry, and kindle a wonderful expectation of what is to ensue.
Such was that of a most ingenious poet, who, soliciting his brain
for something new, compared himself to the hangman and his patron to
the patient. This was insigne, recens, indictum ore alio {51a}.
When I went through that necessary and noble course of study, {51b}
I had the happiness to observe many such egregious touches, which I
shall not injure the authors by transplanting, because I have
remarked that nothing is so very tender as a modern piece of wit,
and which is apt to suffer so much in the carriage. Some things are
extremely witty to-day, or fasting, or in this place, or at eight
o'clock, or over a bottle, or spoke by Mr. Whatdyecall'm, or in a
summer's morning, any of which, by the smallest transposal or
misapplication, is utterly annihilate. Thus wit has its walks and
purlieus, out of which it may not stray the breadth of a hair, upon
peril of being lost. The moderns have artfully fixed this Mercury,
and reduced it to the circumstances of time, place, and person.
Such a jest there is that will not pass out of Covent Garden, and
such a one that is nowhere intelligible but at Hyde Park Corner.
Now, though it sometimes tenderly affects me to consider that all
the towardly passages I shall deliver in the following treatise will
grow quite out of date and relish with the first shifting of the
present scene, yet I must need subscribe to the justice of this
proceeding, because I cannot imagine why we should be at expense to
furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort
of provision for ours; wherein I speak the sentiment of the very
newest, and consequently the most orthodox refiners, as well as my
own. However, being extremely solicitous that every accomplished
person who has got into the taste of wit calculated for this present
month of August 1697 should descend to the very bottom of all the
sublime throughout this treatise, I hold it fit to lay down this
general maxim. Whatever reader desires to have a thorough
comprehension of an author's thoughts, cannot take a better method
than by putting himself into the circumstances and posture of life
that the writer was in upon every important passage as it flowed
from his pen, for this will introduce a parity and strict
correspondence of ideas between the reader and the author. Now, to
assist the diligent reader in so delicate an affair--as far as
brevity will permit--I have recollected that the shrewdest pieces of
this treatise were conceived in bed in a garret. At other times
(for a reason best known to myself) I thought fit to sharpen my
invention with hunger, and in general the whole work was begun,
continued, and ended under a long course of physic and a great want
of money. Now, I do affirm it will be absolutely impossible for the
candid peruser to go along with me in a great many bright passages,
unless upon the several difficulties emergent he will please to
capacitate and prepare himself by these directions. And this I lay
down as my principal postulatum.
Because I have professed to be a most devoted servant of all modern
forms, I apprehend some curious wit may object against me for
proceeding thus far in a preface without declaiming, according to
custom, against the multitude of writers whereof the whole multitude
of writers most reasonably complain. I am just come from perusing
some hundreds of prefaces, wherein the authors do at the very
beginning address the gentle reader concerning this enormous
grievance. Of these I have preserved a few examples, and shall set
them down as near as my memory has been able to retain them.
One begins thus: "For a man to set up for a writer when the press
swarms with," &c.
Another: "The tax upon paper does not lessen the number of
scribblers who daily pester," &c.
Another: "When every little would-be wit takes pen in hand, 'tis in
vain to enter the lists," &c.
Another: "To observe what trash the press swarms with," &c.
Another: "Sir, it is merely in obedience to your commands that I
venture into the public, for who upon a less consideration would be
of a party with such a rabble of scribblers," &c.
Now, I have two words in my own defence against this objection.
First, I am far from granting the number of writers a nuisance to
our nation, having strenuously maintained the contrary in several
parts of the following discourse; secondly, I do not well understand
the justice of this proceeding, because I observe many of these
polite prefaces to be not only from the same hand, but from those
who are most voluminous in their several productions; upon which I
shall tell the reader a short tale.
A mountebank in Leicester Fields had drawn a huge assembly about
him. Among the rest, a fat unwieldy fellow, half stifled in the
press, would be every fit crying out, "Lord! what a filthy crowd is
here. Pray, good people, give way a little. Bless need what a
devil has raked this rabble together. Z----ds, what squeezing is
this? Honest friend, remove your elbow." At last a weaver that
stood next him could hold no longer. "A plague confound you," said
he, "for an overgrown sloven; and who in the devil's name, I wonder,
helps to make up the crowd half so much as yourself? Don't you
consider that you take up more room with that carcass than any five
here? Is not the place as free for us as for you? Bring your own
guts to a reasonable compass, and then I'll engage we shall have
room enough for us all."
There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof
I hope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I
am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful
and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or
sentence is printed in a different character shall be judged to
contain something extraordinary either of wit or sublime.
As for the liberty I have thought fit to take of praising myself,
upon some occasions or none, I am sure it will need no excuse if a
multitude of great examples be allowed sufficient authority; for it
is here to be noted that praise was originally a pension paid by the
world, but the moderns, finding the trouble and charge too great in
collecting it, have lately bought out the fee-simple, since which
time the right of presentation is wholly in ourselves. For this
reason it is that when an author makes his own eulogy, he uses a
certain form to declare and insist upon his title, which is commonly
in these or the like words, "I speak without vanity," which I think
plainly shows it to be a matter of right and justice. Now, I do
here once for all declare, that in every encounter of this nature
through the following treatise the form aforesaid is implied, which
I mention to save the trouble of repeating it on so many occasions.
It is a great ease to my conscience that I have written so elaborate
and useful a discourse without one grain of satire intermixed, which
is the sole point wherein I have taken leave to dissent from the
famous originals of our age and country. I have observed some
satirists to use the public much at the rate that pedants do a
naughty boy ready horsed for discipline. First expostulate the
case, then plead the necessity of the rod from great provocations,
and conclude every period with a lash. Now, if I know anything of
mankind, these gentlemen might very well spare their reproof and
correction, for there is not through all Nature another so callous
and insensible a member as the world's posteriors, whether you apply
to it the toe or the birch. Besides, most of our late satirists
seem to lie under a sort of mistake, that because nettles have the
prerogative to sting, therefore all other weeds must do so too. I
make not this comparison out of the least design to detract from
these worthy writers, for it is well known among mythologists that
weeds have the pre-eminence over all other vegetables; and therefore
the first monarch of this island whose taste and judgment were so
acute and refined, did very wisely root out the roses from the
collar of the order and plant the thistles in their stead, as the
nobler flower of the two. For which reason it is conjectured by
profounder antiquaries that the satirical itch, so prevalent in this
part of our island, was first brought among us from beyond the
Tweed. Here may it long flourish and abound; may it survive and
neglect the scorn of the world with as much ease and contempt as the
world is insensible to the lashes of it. May their own dulness, or
that of their party, be no discouragement for the authors to
proceed; but let them remember it is with wits as with razors, which
are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have
lost their edge. Besides, those whose teeth are too rotten to bite
are best of all others qualified to revenge that defect with their
breath.
I am not, like other men, to envy or undervalue the talents I cannot
reach, for which reason I must needs bear a true honour to this
large eminent sect of our British writers. And I hope this little
panegyric will not be offensive to their ears, since it has the
advantage of being only designed for themselves. Indeed, Nature
herself has taken order that fame and honour should be purchased at
a better pennyworth by satire than by any other productions of the
brain, the world being soonest provoked to praise by lashes, as men
are to love. There is a problem in an ancient author why
dedications and other bundles of flattery run all upon stale musty
topics, without the smallest tincture of anything new, not only to
the torment and nauseating of the Christian reader, but, if not
suddenly prevented, to the universal spreading of that pestilent
disease the lethargy in this island, whereas there is very little
satire which has not something in it untouched before. The defects
of the former are usually imputed to the want of invention among
those who are dealers in that kind; but I think with a great deal of
injustice, the solution being easy and natural, for the materials of
panegyric, being very few in number, have been long since exhausted;
for as health is but one thing, and has been always the same,
whereas diseases are by thousands, besides new and daily additions,
so all the virtues that have been ever in mankind are to be counted
upon a few fingers, but his follies and vices are innumerable, and
time adds hourly to the heap. Now the utmost a poor poet can do is
to get by heart a list of the cardinal virtues and deal them with
his utmost liberality to his hero or his patron. He may ring the
changes as far as it will go, and vary his phrase till he has talked
round, but the reader quickly finds it is all pork, {56a} with a
little variety of sauce, for there is no inventing terms of art
beyond our ideas, and when ideas are exhausted, terms of art must be
so too.
But though the matter for panegyric were as fruitful as the topics
of satire, yet would it not be hard to find out a sufficient reason
why the latter will be always better received than the first; for
this being bestowed only upon one or a few persons at a time, is
sure to raise envy, and consequently ill words, from the rest who
have no share in the blessing. But satire, being levelled at all,
is never resented for an offence by any, since every individual
person makes bold to understand it of others, and very wisely
removes his particular part of the burden upon the shoulders of the
World, which are broad enough and able to bear it. To this purpose
I have sometimes reflected upon the difference between Athens and
England with respect to the point before us. In the Attic {56b}
commonwealth it was the privilege and birthright of every citizen
and poet to rail aloud and in public, or to expose upon the stage by
name any person they pleased, though of the greatest figure, whether
a Creon, an Hyperbolus, an Alcibiades, or a Demosthenes. But, on
the other side, the least reflecting word let fall against the
people in general was immediately caught up and revenged upon the
authors, however considerable for their quality or their merits;
whereas in England it is just the reverse of all this. Here you may
securely display your utmost rhetoric against mankind in the face of
the world; tell them that all are gone astray; that there is none
that doeth good, no, not one; that we live in the very dregs of
time; that knavery and atheism are epidemic as the pox; that honesty
is fled with Astraea; with any other common-places equally new and
eloquent, which are furnished by the splendida bills {56c}; and when
you have done, the whole audience, far from being offended, shall
return you thanks as a deliverer of precious and useful truths.
Nay, further, it is but to venture your lungs, and you may preach in
Covent Garden against foppery and fornication, and something else;
against pride, and dissimulation, and bribery at Whitehall. You may
expose rapine and injustice in the Inns-of-Court chapel, and in a
City pulpit be as fierce as you please against avarice, hypocrisy,
and extortion. It is but a ball bandied to and fro, and every man
carries a racket about him to strike it from himself among the rest
of the company. But, on the other side, whoever should mistake the
nature of things so far as to drop but a single hint in public how
such a one starved half the fleet, and half poisoned the rest; how
such a one, from a true principle of love and honour, pays no debts
but for wenches and play; how such a one runs out of his estate; how
Paris, bribed by Juno and Venus, loath to offend either party, slept
out the whole cause on the bench; or how such an orator makes long
speeches in the Senate, with much thought, little sense, and to no
purpose;--whoever, I say, should venture to be thus particular, must
expect to be imprisoned for scandalum magnatum, to have challenges
sent him, to be sued for defamation, and to be brought before the
bar of the House.
But I forget that I am expatiating on a subject wherein I have no
concern, having neither a talent nor an inclination for satire. On
the other side, I am so entirely satisfied with the whole present
procedure of human things, that I have been for some years preparing
material towards "A Panegyric upon the World;" to which I intended
to add a second part, entitled "A Modest Defence of the Proceedings
of the Rabble in all Ages." Both these I had thoughts to publish by
way of appendix to the following treatise; but finding my common-
place book fill much slower than I had reason to expect, I have
chosen to defer them to another occasion. Besides, I have been
unhappily prevented in that design by a certain domestic misfortune,
in the particulars whereof, though it would be very seasonable, and
much in the modern way, to inform the gentle reader, and would also
be of great assistance towards extending this preface into the size
now in vogue--which by rule ought to be large in proportion as the
subsequent volume is small--yet I shall now dismiss our impatient
reader from any further attendance at the porch; and having duly
prepared his mind by a preliminary discourse, shall gladly introduce
him to the sublime mysteries that ensue.
SECTION I.--THE INTRODUCTION.
Whoever has an ambition to be heard in a crowd must press, and
squeeze, and thrust, and climb with indefatigable pains, till he has
exalted himself to a certain degree of altitude above them. Now, in
all assemblies, though you wedge them ever so close, we may observe
this peculiar property, that over their heads there is room enough;
but how to reach it is the difficult point, it being as hard to get
quit of number as of hell.
"--Evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est." {59}
To this end the philosopher's way in all ages has been by erecting
certain edifices in the air; but whatever practice and reputation
these kind of structures have formerly possessed, or may still
continue in, not excepting even that of Socrates when he was
suspended in a basket to help contemplation, I think, with due
submission, they seem to labour under two inconveniences. First,
that the foundations being laid too high, they have been often out
of sight and ever out of hearing. Secondly, that the materials
being very transitory, have suffered much from inclemencies of air,
especially in these north-west regions.
Therefore, towards the just performance of this great work there
remain but three methods that I can think on; whereof the wisdom of
our ancestors being highly sensible, has, to encourage all aspiring
adventures, thought fit to erect three wooden machines for the use
of those orators who desire to talk much without interruption.
These are the Pulpit, the Ladder, and the Stage-itinerant. For as
to the Bar, though it be compounded of the same matter and designed
for the same use, it cannot, however, be well allowed the honour of
a fourth, by reason of its level or inferior situation exposing it
to perpetual interruption from collaterals. Neither can the Bench
itself, though raised to a proper eminency, put in a better claim,
whatever its advocates insist on. For if they please to look into
the original design of its erection, and the circumstances or
adjuncts subservient to that design, they will soon acknowledge the
present practice exactly correspondent to the primitive institution,
and both to answer the etymology of the name, which in the
Phoenician tongue is a word of great signification, importing, if
literally interpreted, "The place of sleep," but in common
acceptation, "A seat well bolstered and cushioned, for the repose of
old and gouty limbs;" senes ut in otia tuta recedant {60}. Fortune
being indebted to them this part of retaliation, that as formerly
they have long talked whilst others slept, so now they may sleep as
long whilst others talk.
But if no other argument could occur to exclude the Bench and the
Bar from the list of oratorical machines, it were sufficient that
the admission of them would overthrow a number which I was resolved
to establish, whatever argument it might cost me; in imitation of
that prudent method observed by many other philosophers and great
clerks, whose chief art in division has been to grow fond of some
proper mystical number, which their imaginations have rendered
sacred to a degree that they force common reason to find room for it
in every part of Nature, reducing, including, and adjusting, every
genus and species within that compass by coupling some against their
wills and banishing others at any rate. Now, among all the rest,
the profound number THREE {61} is that which has most employed my
sublimest speculations, nor ever without wonderful delight. There
is now in the press, and will be published next term, a panegyrical
essay of mine upon this number, wherein I have, by most convincing
proofs, not only reduced the senses and the elements under its
banner, but brought over several deserters from its two great
rivals, SEVEN and NINE.
Now, the first of these oratorical machines, in place as well as
dignity, is the Pulpit. Of pulpits there are in this island several
sorts, but I esteem only that made of timber from the Sylva
Caledonia, which agrees very well with our climate. If it be upon
its decay, it is the better, both for conveyance of sound and for
other reasons to be mentioned by and by. The degree of perfection
in shape and size I take to consist in being extremely narrow, with
little ornament, and, best of all, without a cover; for, by ancient
rule, it ought to be the only uncovered vessel in every assembly
where it is rightfully used, by which means, from its near
resemblance to a pillory, it will ever have a mighty influence on
human ears.
Of Ladders I need say nothing. It is observed by foreigners
themselves, to the honour of our country, that we excel all nations
in our practice and understanding of this machine. The ascending
orators do not only oblige their audience in the agreeable delivery,
but the whole world in their early publication of their speeches,
which I look upon as the choicest treasury of our British eloquence,
and whereof I am informed that worthy citizen and bookseller, Mr.
John Dunton, has made a faithful and a painful collection, which he
shortly designs to publish in twelve volumes in folio, illustrated
with copper-plates,--a work highly useful and curious, and
altogether worthy of such a hand.
The last engine of orators is the Stage-itinerant, erected with much
sagacity, sub Jove pluvio, in triviis et quadriviis. {62a} It is
the great seminary of the two former, and its orators are sometimes
preferred to the one and sometimes to the other, in proportion to
their deservings, there being a strict and perpetual intercourse
between all three.
From this accurate deduction it is manifest that for obtaining
attention in public there is of necessity required a superior
position of place. But although this point be generally granted,
yet the cause is little agreed in; and it seems to me that very few
philosophers have fallen into a true natural solution of this
phenomenon. The deepest account, and the most fairly digested of
any I have yet met with is this, that air being a heavy body, and
therefore, according to the system of Epicurus {62b}, continually
descending, must needs be more so when laden and pressed down by
words, which are also bodies of much weight and gravity, as is
manifest from those deep impressions they make and leave upon us,
and therefore must be delivered from a due altitude, or else they
will neither carry a good aim nor fall down with a sufficient force.
"Corpoream quoque enim vocem constare fatendum est,
Et sonitum, quoniam possunt impellere sensus."
- Lucr. lib. 4. {62c}
And I am the readier to favour this conjecture from a common
observation, that in the several assemblies of these orators Nature
itself has instructed the hearers to stand with their mouths open
and erected parallel to the horizon, so as they may be intersected
by a perpendicular line from the zenith to the centre of the earth.
In which position, if the audience be well compact, every one
carries home a share, and little or nothing is lost.
I confess there is something yet more refined in the contrivance and
structure of our modern theatres. For, first, the pit is sunk below
the stage with due regard to the institution above deduced, that
whatever weighty matter shall be delivered thence, whether it be
lead or gold, may fall plump into the jaws of certain critics, as I
think they are called, which stand ready open to devour them. Then
the boxes are built round and raised to a level with the scene, in
deference to the ladies, because that large portion of wit laid out
in raising pruriences and protuberances is observed to run much upon
a line, and ever in a circle. The whining passions and little
starved conceits are gently wafted up by their own extreme levity to
the middle region, and there fix and are frozen by the frigid
understandings of the inhabitants. Bombast and buffoonery, by
nature lofty and light, soar highest of all, and would be lost in
the roof if the prudent architect had not, with much foresight,
contrived for them a fourth place, called the twelve-penny gallery,
and there planted a suitable colony, who greedily intercept them in
their passage.
Now this physico-logical scheme of oratorical receptacles or
machines contains a great mystery, being a type, a sign, an emblem,
a shadow, a symbol, bearing analogy to the spacious commonwealth of
writers and to those methods by which they must exalt themselves to
a certain eminency above the inferior world. By the Pulpit are
adumbrated the writings of our modern saints in Great Britain, as
they have spiritualised and refined them from the dross and
grossness of sense and human reason. The matter, as we have said,
is of rotten wood, and that upon two considerations: because it is
the quality of rotten wood to light in the dark; and secondly,
because its cavities are full of worms--which is a type with a pair
of handles, having a respect to the two principal qualifications of
the orator and the two different fates attending upon his works.
{63}
The Ladder is an adequate symbol of faction and of poetry, to both
of which so noble a number of authors are indebted for their fame.
Of faction, because .(Hiatus in MS.). Of poetry, because its
orators do perorare with a song; and because, climbing up by slow
degrees, fate is sure to turn them off before they can reach within
many steps of the top; and because it is a preferment attained by
transferring of propriety and a confounding of meum and tuum.
Under the Stage-itinerant are couched those productions designed for
the pleasure and delight of mortal man, such as "Six Pennyworth of
Wit," "Westminster Drolleries," "Delightful Tales," "Complete
Jesters," and the like, by which the writers of and for Grub Street
have in these later ages so nobly triumphed over time, have clipped
his wings, pared his nails, filed his teeth, turned back his hour-
glass, blunted his scythe, and drawn the hobnails out of his shoes.
It is under this class I have presumed to list my present treatise,
being just come from having the honour conferred upon me to be
adopted a member of that illustrious fraternity.
Now, I am not unaware how the productions of the Grub Street
brotherhood have of late years fallen under many prejudices, nor how
it has been the perpetual employment of two junior start-up
societies to ridicule them and their authors as unworthy their
established post in the commonwealth of wit and learning. Their own
consciences will easily inform them whom I mean; nor has the world
been so negligent a looker-on as not to observe the continual
efforts made by the societies of Gresham and of Will's {64}, to
edify a name and reputation upon the ruin of ours. And this is yet
a more feeling grief to us, upon the regards of tenderness as well
as of justice, when we reflect on their proceedings not only as
unjust, but as ungrateful, undutiful, and unnatural. For how can it
be forgot by the world or themselves, to say nothing of our own
records, which are full and clear in the point, that they both are
seminaries, not only of our planting, but our watering too. I am
informed our two rivals have lately made an offer to enter into the
lists with united forces and challenge us to a comparison of books,
both as to weight and number. In return to which, with license from
our president, I humbly offer two answers. First, we say the
proposal is like that which Archimedes made upon a smaller affair
{65a}, including an impossibility in the practice; for where can
they find scales of capacity enough for the first, or an
arithmetician of capacity enough for the second. Secondly, we are
ready to accept the challenge, but with this condition, that a third
indifferent person be assigned, to whose impartial judgment it shall
be left to decide which society each book, treatise, or pamphlet do
most properly belong to. This point, God knows, is very far from
being fixed at present, for we are ready to produce a catalogue of
some thousands which in all common justice ought to be entitled to
our fraternity, but by the revolted and newfangled writers most
perfidiously ascribed to the others. Upon all which we think it
very unbecoming our prudence that the determination should be
remitted to the authors themselves, when our adversaries by briguing
and caballing have caused so universal a defection from us, that the
greatest part of our society has already deserted to them, and our
nearest friends begin to stand aloof, as if they were half ashamed
to own us.
This is the utmost I am authorised to say upon so ungrateful and
melancholy a subject, because we are extremely unwilling to inflame
a controversy whose continuance may be so fatal to the interests of
us all, desiring much rather that things be amicably composed; and
we shall so far advance on our side as to be ready to receive the
two prodigals with open arms whenever they shall think fit to return
from their husks and their harlots, which I think, from the present
course of their studies {65b}, they most properly may be said to be
engaged in, and, like an indulgent parent, continue to them our
affection and our blessing.
But the greatest maim given to that general reception which the
writings of our society have formerly received, next to the
transitory state of all sublunary things, has been a superficial
vein among many readers of the present age, who will by no means be
persuaded to inspect beyond the surface and the rind of things;
whereas wisdom is a fox, who, after long hunting, will at last cost
you the pains to dig out. It is a cheese which, by how much the
richer, has the thicker, the homelier, and the coarser coat, and
whereof to a judicious palate the maggots are the best. It is a
sack-posset, wherein the deeper you go you will find it the sweeter.
Wisdom is a hen whose cackling we must value and consider, because
it is attended with an egg. But then, lastly, it is a nut, which,
unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you
with nothing but a worm. In consequence of these momentous truths,
the Grubaean sages have always chosen to convey their precepts and
their arts shut up within the vehicles of types and fables; which
having been perhaps more careful and curious in adorning than was
altogether necessary, it has fared with these vehicles after the
usual fate of coaches over-finely painted and gilt, that the
transitory gazers have so dazzled their eyes and filled their
imaginations with the outward lustre, as neither to regard nor
consider the person or the parts of the owner within. A misfortune
we undergo with somewhat less reluctancy, because it has been common
to us with Pythagoras, AEsop, Socrates, and other of our
predecessors.
However, that neither the world nor ourselves may any longer suffer
by such misunderstandings, I have been prevailed on, after much
importunity from my friends, to travail in a complete and laborious
dissertation upon the prime productions of our society, which,
besides their beautiful externals for the gratification of
superficial readers, have darkly and deeply couched under them the
most finished and refined systems of all sciences and arts, as I do
not doubt to lay open by untwisting or unwinding, and either to draw
up by exantlation or display by incision.
This great work was entered upon some years ago by one of our most
eminent members. He began with the "History of Reynard the Fox,"
but neither lived to publish his essay nor to proceed farther in so
useful an attempt, which is very much to be lamented, because the
discovery he made and communicated to his friends is now universally
received; nor do I think any of the learned will dispute that famous
treatise to be a complete body of civil knowledge, and the
revelation, or rather the apocalypse, of all state arcana. But the
progress I have made is much greater, having already finished my
annotations upon several dozens from some of which I shall impart a
few hints to the candid reader, as far as will be necessary to the
conclusion at which I aim.
The first piece I have handled is that of "Tom Thumb," whose author
was a Pythagorean philosopher. This dark treatise contains the
whole scheme of the metempsychosis, deducing the progress of the
soul through all her stages.
The next is "Dr. Faustus," penned by Artephius, an author bonae
notae and an adeptus; he published it in the nine hundred and
eighty-fourth year {67a} of his age; this writer proceeds wholly by
reincrudation, or in the via humida; and the marriage between
Faustus and Helen does most conspicuously dilucidate the fermenting
of the male and female dragon.
"Whittington and his Cat" is the work of that mysterious Rabbi,
Jehuda Hannasi, containing a defence of the Gemara of the Jerusalem
Misna, and its just preference to that of Babylon, contrary to the
vulgar opinion.
"The Hind and Panther." This is the masterpiece of a famous writer
now living {67b}, intended for a complete abstract of sixteen
thousand schoolmen from Scotus to Bellarmine.
"Tommy Potts." Another piece, supposed by the same hand, by way of
supplement to the former.
The "Wise Men of Gotham," cum Appendice. This is a treatise of
immense erudition, being the great original and fountain of those
arguments bandied about both in France and England, for a just
defence of modern learning and wit, against the presumption, the
pride, and the ignorance of the ancients. This unknown author hath
so exhausted the subject, that a penetrating reader will easily
discover whatever has been written since upon that dispute to be
little more than repetition. An abstract of this treatise has been
lately published by a worthy member of our society.
These notices may serve to give the learned reader an idea as well
as a taste of what the whole work is likely to produce, wherein I
have now altogether circumscribed my thoughts and my studies; and if
I can bring it to a perfection before I die, shall reckon I have
well employed the poor remains of an unfortunate life. This indeed
is more than I can justly expect from a quill worn to the pith in
the service of the State, in pros and cons upon Popish Plots, and
Meal Tubs, and Exclusion Bills, and Passive Obedience, and Addresses
of Lives and Fortunes; and Prerogative, and Property, and Liberty of
Conscience, and Letters to a Friend: from an understanding and a
conscience, threadbare and ragged with perpetual turning; from a
head broken in a hundred places by the malignants of the opposite
factions, and from a body spent with poxes ill cured, by trusting to
bawds and surgeons, who (as it afterwards appeared) were professed
enemies to me and the Government, and revenged their party's quarrel
upon my nose and shins. Fourscore and eleven pamphlets have I
written under three reigns, and for the service of six-and-thirty
factions. But finding the State has no farther occasion for me and
my ink, I retire willingly to draw it out into speculations more
becoming a philosopher, having, to my unspeakable comfort, passed a
long life with a conscience void of offence towards God and towards
men.
But to return. I am assured from the reader's candour that the
brief specimen I have given will easily clear all the rest of our
society's productions from an aspersion grown, as it is manifest,
out of envy and ignorance, that they are of little farther use or
value to mankind beyond the common entertainments of their wit and
their style; for these I am sure have never yet been disputed by our
keenest adversaries; in both which, as well as the more profound and
most mystical part, I have throughout this treatise closely followed
the most applauded originals. And to render all complete I have
with much thought and application of mind so ordered that the chief
title prefixed to it (I mean that under which I design it shall pass
in the common conversation of court and town) is modelled exactly
after the manner peculiar to our society.
I confess to have been somewhat liberal in the business of titles
{69a}, having observed the humour of multiplying them, to bear great
vogue among certain writers, whom I exceedingly reverence. And
indeed it seems not unreasonable that books, the children of the
brain, should have the honour to be christened with variety of
names, as well as other infants of quality. Our famous Dryden has
ventured to proceed a point farther, endeavouring to introduce also
a multiplicity of godfathers {69b}, which is an improvement of much
more advantage, upon a very obvious account. It is a pity this
admirable invention has not been better cultivated, so as to grow by
this time into general imitation, when such an authority serves it
for a precedent. Nor have my endeavours been wanting to second so
useful an example, but it seems there is an unhappy expense usually
annexed to the calling of a godfather, which was clearly out of my
head, as it is very reasonable to believe. Where the pinch lay, I
cannot certainly affirm; but having employed a world of thoughts and
pains to split my treatise into forty sections, and having entreated
forty Lords of my acquaintance that they would do me the honour to
stand, they all made it matter of conscience, and sent me their
excuses.
SECTION II.
Once upon a time there was a man who had three sons by one wife {70}
and all at a birth, neither could the midwife tell certainly which
was the eldest. Their father died while they were young, and upon
his death-bed, calling the lads to him, spoke thus:-
"Sons, because I have purchased no estate, nor was born to any, I
have long considered of some good legacies to bequeath you, and at
last, with much care as well as expense, have provided each of you
(here they are) a new coat. Now, you are to understand that these
coats have two virtues contained in them; one is, that with good
wearing they will last you fresh and sound as long as you live; the
other is, that they will grow in the same proportion with your
bodies, lengthening and widening of themselves, so as to be always
fit. Here, let me see them on you before I die. So, very well!
Pray, children, wear them clean and brush them often. You will find
in my will (here it is) full instructions in every particular
concerning the wearing and management of your coats, wherein you
must be very exact to avoid the penalties I have appointed for every
transgression or neglect, upon which your future fortunes will
entirely depend. I have also commanded in my will that you should
live together in one house like brethren and friends, for then you
will be sure to thrive and not otherwise."
Here the story says this good father died, and the three sons went
all together to seek their fortunes.
I shall not trouble you with recounting what adventures they met for
the first seven years, any farther than by taking notice that they
carefully observed their father's will and kept their coats in very
good order; that they travelled through several countries,
encountered a reasonable quantity of giants, and slew certain
dragons.
Being now arrived at the proper age for producing themselves, they
came up to town and fell in love with the ladies, but especially
three, who about that time were in chief reputation, the Duchess
d'Argent, Madame de Grands-Titres, and the Countess d'Orgueil {71}.
On their first appearance, our three adventurers met with a very bad
reception, and soon with great sagacity guessing out the reason,
they quickly began to improve in the good qualities of the town.
They wrote, and rallied, and rhymed, and sung, and said, and said
nothing; they drank, and fought, and slept, and swore, and took
snuff; they went to new plays on the first night, haunted the
chocolate-houses, beat the watch; they bilked hackney-coachmen, ran
in debt with shopkeepers, and lay with their wives; they killed
bailiffs, kicked fiddlers down-stairs, ate at Locket's, loitered at
Will's; they talked of the drawing-room and never came there; dined
with lords they never saw; whispered a duchess and spoke never a
word; exposed the scrawls of their laundress for billet-doux of
quality; came ever just from court and were never seen in it;
attended the levee sub dio; got a list of peers by heart in one
company, and with great familiarity retailed them in another. Above
all, they constantly attended those committees of Senators who are
silent in the House and loud in the coffeehouse, where they nightly
adjourn to chew the cud of politics, and are encompassed with a ring
of disciples who lie in wait to catch up their droppings. The three
brothers had acquired forty other qualifications of the like stamp
too tedious to recount, and by consequence were justly reckoned the
most accomplished persons in town. But all would not suffice, and
the ladies aforesaid continued still inflexible. To clear up which
difficulty, I must, with the reader's good leave and patience, have
recourse to some points of weight which the authors of that age have
not sufficiently illustrated.
For about this time it happened a sect arose whose tenets obtained
and spread very far, especially in the grand monde, and among
everybody of good fashion. They worshipped a sort of idol {72a},
who, as their doctrine delivered, did daily create men by a kind of
manufactory operation. This idol they placed in the highest parts
of the house on an altar erected about three feet. He was shown in
the posture of a Persian emperor sitting on a superficies with his
legs interwoven under him. This god had a goose for his ensign,
whence it is that some learned men pretend to deduce his original
from Jupiter Capitolinus. At his left hand, beneath the altar, Hell
seemed to open and catch at the animals the idol was creating, to
prevent which, certain of his priests hourly flung in pieces of the
uninformed mass or substance, and sometimes whole limbs already
enlivened, which that horrid gulph insatiably swallowed, terrible to
behold. The goose was also held a subaltern divinity or Deus
minorum gentium, before whose shrine was sacrificed that creature
whose hourly food is human gore, and who is in so great renown
abroad for being the delight and favourite of the Egyptian
Cercopithecus {72b}. Millions of these animals were cruelly
slaughtered every day to appease the hunger of that consuming deity.
The chief idol was also worshipped as the inventor of the yard and
the needle, whether as the god of seamen, or on account of certain
other mystical attributes, hath not been sufficiently cleared.
The worshippers of this deity had also a system of their belief
which seemed to turn upon the following fundamental. They held the
universe to be a large suit of clothes which invests everything;
that the earth is invested by the air; the air is invested by the
stars; and the stars are invested by the Primum Mobile. Look on
this globe of earth, you will find it to be a very complete and
fashionable dress. What is that which some call land but a fine
coat faced with green, or the sea but a waistcoat of water-tabby?
Proceed to the particular works of the creation, you will find how
curious journeyman Nature hath been to trim up the vegetable beaux;
observe how sparkish a periwig adorns the head of a beech, and what
a fine doublet of white satin is worn by the birch. To conclude
from all, what is man himself but a microcoat, or rather a complete
suit of clothes with all its trimmings? As to his body there can be
no dispute, but examine even the acquirements of his mind, you will
find them all contribute in their order towards furnishing out an
exact dress. To instance no more, is not religion a cloak, honesty
a pair of shoes worn out in the dirt, self-love a surtout, vanity a
shirt, and conscience a pair of breeches, which, though a cover for
lewdness as well as nastiness, is easily slipped down for the
service of both.
These postulata being admitted, it will follow in due course of
reasoning that those beings which the world calls improperly suits
of clothes are in reality the most refined species of animals, or to
proceed higher, that they are rational creatures or men. For is it
not manifest that they live, and move, and talk, and perform all
other offices of human life? Are not beauty, and wit, and mien, and
breeding their inseparable proprieties? In short, we see nothing
but them, hear nothing but them. Is it not they who walk the
streets, fill up Parliament-, coffee-, play-, bawdy-houses. It is
true, indeed, that these animals, which are vulgarly called suits of
clothes or dresses, do according to certain compositions receive
different appellations. If one of them be trimmed up with a gold
chain, and a red gown, and a white rod, and a great horse, it is
called a Lord Mayor; if certain ermines and furs be placed in a
certain position, we style them a judge, and so an apt conjunction
of lawn and black satin we entitle a Bishop.
Others of these professors, though agreeing in the main system, were
yet more refined upon certain branches of it; and held that man was
an animal compounded of two dresses, the natural and the celestial
suit, which were the body and the soul; that the soul was the
outward, and the body the inward clothing; that the latter was ex
traduce, but the former of daily creation and circumfusion. This
last they proved by Scripture, because in them we live, and move,
and have our being: as likewise by philosophy, because they are all
in all, and all in every part. Besides, said they, separate these
two, and you will find the body to be only a senseless unsavoury
carcass. By all which it is manifest that the outward dress must
needs be the soul.
To this system of religion were tagged several subaltern doctrines,
which were entertained with great vogue; as particularly the
faculties of the mind were deduced by the learned among them in this
manner: embroidery was sheer wit, gold fringe was agreeable
conversation, gold lace was repartee, a huge long periwig was
humour, and a coat full of powder was very good raillery. All which
required abundance of finesse and delicatesse to manage with
advantage, as well as a strict observance after times and fashions.
I have with much pains and reading collected out of ancient authors
this short summary of a body of philosophy and divinity which seems
to have been composed by a vein and race of thinking very different
from any other systems, either ancient or modern. And it was not
merely to entertain or satisfy the reader's curiosity, but rather to
give him light into several circumstances of the following story,
that, knowing the state of dispositions and opinions in an age so
remote, he may better comprehend those great events which were the
issue of them. I advise, therefore, the courteous reader to peruse
with a world of application, again and again, whatever I have
written upon this matter. And so leaving these broken ends, I
carefully gather up the chief thread of my story, and proceed.
These opinions, therefore, were so universal, as well as the
practices of them, among the refined part of court and town, that
our three brother adventurers, as their circumstances then stood,
were strangely at a loss. For, on the one side, the three ladies
they addressed themselves to (whom we have named already) were ever
at the very top of the fashion, and abhorred all that were below it
but the breadth of a hair. On the other side, their father's will
was very precise, and it was the main precept in it, with the
greatest penalties annexed, not to add to or diminish from their
coats one thread without a positive command in the will. Now the
coats their father had left them were, it is true, of very good
cloth, and besides, so neatly sewn you would swear they were all of
a piece, but, at the same time, very plain, with little or no
ornament; and it happened that before they were a month in town
great shoulder-knots came up. Straight all the world was shoulder-
knots; no approaching the ladies' ruelles without the quota of
shoulder-knots. "That fellow," cries one, "has no soul: where is
his shoulder-knot?" {75} Our three brethren soon discovered their
want by sad experience, meeting in their walks with forty
mortifications and indignities. If they went to the playhouse, the
doorkeeper showed them into the twelve-penny gallery. If they
called a boat, says a waterman, "I am first sculler." If they
stepped into the "Rose" to take a bottle, the drawer would cry,
"Friend, we sell no ale." If they went to visit a lady, a footman
met them at the door with "Pray, send up your message." In this
unhappy case they went immediately to consult their father's will,
read it over and over, but not a word of the shoulder-knot. What
should they do? What temper should they find? Obedience was
absolutely necessary, and yet shoulder-knots appeared extremely
requisite. After much thought, one of the brothers, who happened to
be more book-learned than the other two, said he had found an
expedient. "It is true," said he, "there is nothing here in this
will, totidem verbis, making mention of shoulder-knots, but I dare
conjecture we may find them inclusive, or totidem syllabis." This
distinction was immediately approved by all; and so they fell again
to examine the will. But their evil star had so directed the matter
that the first syllable was not to be found in the whole writing;
upon which disappointment, he who found the former evasion took
heart, and said, "Brothers, there is yet hopes; for though we cannot
find them totidem verbis nor totidem syllabis, I dare engage we
shall make them out tertio modo or totidem literis." This discovery
was also highly commended, upon which they fell once more to the
scrutiny, and soon picked out S, H, O, U, L, D, E, R, when the same
planet, enemy to their repose, had wonderfully contrived that a K
was not to be found. Here was a weighty difficulty! But the
distinguishing brother (for whom we shall hereafter find a name),
now his hand was in, proved by a very good argument that K was a
modern illegitimate letter, unknown to the learned ages, nor
anywhere to be found in ancient manuscripts. "It is true," said he,
"the word Calendae, had in Q. V. C. {76} been sometimes writ with a
K, but erroneously, for in the best copies it is ever spelt with a
C; and by consequence it was a gross mistake in our language to
spell 'knot' with a K," but that from henceforward he would take
care it should be writ with a C. Upon this all further difficulty
vanished; shoulder-knots were made clearly out to be jure paterno,
and our three gentlemen swaggered with as large and as flaunting
ones as the best.
But as human happiness is of a very short duration, so in those days
were human fashions, upon which it entirely depends. Shoulder-knots
had their time, and we must now imagine them in their decline, for a
certain lord came just from Paris with fifty yards of gold lace upon
his coat, exactly trimmed after the court fashion of that month. In
two days all mankind appeared closed up in bars of gold lace.
Whoever durst peep abroad without his complement of gold lace was as
scandalous as a ----, and as ill received among the women. What
should our three knights do in this momentous affair? They had
sufficiently strained a point already in the affair of shoulder-
knots. Upon recourse to the will, nothing appeared there but altum
silentium. That of the shoulder-knots was a loose, flying,
circumstantial point, but this of gold lace seemed too considerable
an alteration without better warrant. It did aliquo modo essentiae
adhaerere, and therefore required a positive precept. But about
this time it fell out that the learned brother aforesaid had read
"Aristotelis Dialectica," and especially that wonderful piece de
Interpretatione, which has the faculty of teaching its readers to
find out a meaning in everything but itself, like commentators on
the Revelations, who proceed prophets without understanding a
syllable of the text. "Brothers," said he, "you are to be informed
that of wills, duo sunt genera, nuncupatory and scriptory, {77a}
that in the scriptory will here before us there is no precept or
mention about gold lace, conceditur, but si idem affirmetur de
nuncupatorio negatur. For, brothers, if you remember, we heard a
fellow say when we were boys that he heard my father's man say that
he heard my father say that he would advise his sons to get gold
lace on their coats as soon as ever they could procure money to buy
it." "That is very true," cries the other. "I remember it
perfectly well," said the third. And so, without more ado, they got
the largest gold lace in the parish, and walked about as fine as
lords.
A while after, there came up all in fashion a pretty sort of flame-
coloured satin {77b} for linings, and the mercer brought a pattern
of it immediately to our three gentlemen. "An please your
worships," said he, "my Lord C--- and Sir J. W. had linings out of
this very piece last night; it takes wonderfully, and I shall not
have a remnant left enough to make my wife a pin-cushion by to-
morrow morning at ten o'clock." Upon this they fell again to
rummage the will, because the present case also required a positive
precept, the lining being held by orthodox writers to be of the
essence of the coat. After long search they could fix upon nothing
to the matter in hand, except a short advice in their father's will
to take care of fire and put out their candles before they went to
sleep {78a}. This, though a good deal for the purpose, and helping
very far towards self-conviction, yet not seeming wholly of force to
establish a command, and being resolved to avoid farther scruple, as
well as future occasion for scandal, says he that was the scholar,
"I remember to have read in wills of a codicil annexed, which is
indeed a part of the will, and what it contains hath equal authority
with the rest. Now I have been considering of this same will here
before us, and I cannot reckon it to be complete for want of such a
codicil. I will therefore fasten one in its proper place very
dexterously. I have had it by me some time; it was written by a
dog-keeper of my grandfather's, and talks a great deal, as good luck
would have it, of this very flame-coloured satin." The project was
immediately approved by the other two; an old parchment scroll was
tagged on according to art, in the form of a codicil annexed, and
the satin bought and worn.
Next winter a player, hired for the purpose by the Corporation of
Fringemakers, acted his part in a new comedy, all covered with
silver fringe {78b}, and according to the laudable custom gave rise
to that fashion. Upon which the brothers, consulting their father's
will, to their great astonishment found these words: "Item, I
charge and command my said three sons to wear no sort of silver
fringe upon or about their said coats," &c., with a penalty in case
of disobedience too long here to insert. However, after some pause,
the brother so often mentioned for his erudition, who was well
skilled in criticisms, had found in a certain author, which he said
should be nameless, that the same word which in the will is called
fringe does also signify a broom-stick, and doubtless ought to have
the same interpretation in this paragraph. This another of the
brothers disliked, because of that epithet silver, which could not,
he humbly conceived, in propriety of speech be reasonably applied to
a broom-stick; but it was replied upon him that this epithet was
understood in a mythological and allegorical sense. However, he
objected again why their father should forbid them to wear a broom-
stick on their coats, a caution that seemed unnatural and
impertinent; upon which he was taken up short, as one that spoke
irreverently of a mystery which doubtless was very useful and
significant, but ought not to be over-curiously pried into or nicely
reasoned upon. And in short, their father's authority being now
considerably sunk, this expedient was allowed to serve as a lawful
dispensation for wearing their full proportion of silver fringe.
A while after was revived an old fashion, long antiquated, of
embroidery with Indian figures of men, women, and children {79a}.
Here they had no occasion to examine the will. They remembered but
too well how their father had always abhorred this fashion; that he
made several paragraphs on purpose, importing his utter detestation
of it, and bestowing his everlasting curse to his sons whenever they
should wear it. For all this, in a few days they appeared higher in
the fashion than anybody else in the town. But they solved the
matter by saying that these figures were not at all the same with
those that were formerly worn and were meant in the will; besides,
they did not wear them in that sense, as forbidden by their father,
but as they were a commendable custom, and of great use to the
public. That these rigorous clauses in the will did therefore
require some allowance and a favourable interpretation, and ought to
be understood cum grano salis.
But fashions perpetually altering in that age, the scholastic
brother grew weary of searching further evasions and solving
everlasting contradictions. Resolved, therefore, at all hazards to
comply with the modes of the world, they concerted matters together,
and agreed unanimously to lock up their father's will in a strong-
box, brought out of Greece or Italy {79b} (I have forgot which), and
trouble themselves no farther to examine it, but only refer to its
authority whenever they thought fit. In consequence whereof, a
while after it grew a general mode to wear an infinite number of
points, most of them tagged with silver; upon which the scholar
pronounced ex cathedra {80a} that points were absolutely jure
paterno as they might very well remember. It is true, indeed, the
fashion prescribed somewhat more than were directly named in the
will; however, that they, as heirs-general of their father, had
power to make and add certain clauses for public emolument, though
not deducible todidem verbis from the letter of the will, or else
multa absurda sequerentur. This was understood for canonical, and
therefore on the following Sunday they came to church all covered
with points.
The learned brother so often mentioned was reckoned the best scholar
in all that or the next street to it; insomuch, as having run
something behindhand with the world, he obtained the favour from a
certain lord {80b} to receive him into his house and to teach his
children. A while after the lord died, and he, by long practice
upon his father's will, found the way of contriving a deed of
conveyance of that house to himself and his heirs; upon which he
took possession, turned the young squires out, and received his
brothers in their stead.
SECTION III.--A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS.
Though I have been hitherto as cautious as I could, upon all
occasions, most nicely to follow the rules and methods of writing
laid down by the example of our illustrious moderns, yet has the
unhappy shortness of my memory led me into an error, from which I
must immediately extricate myself, before I can decently pursue my
principal subject. I confess with shame it was an unpardonable
omission to proceed so far as I have already done before I had
performed the due discourses, expostulatory, supplicatory, or
deprecatory, with my good lords the critics. Towards some atonement
for this grievous neglect, I do here make humbly bold to present
them with a short account of themselves and their art, by looking
into the original and pedigree of the word, as it is generally
understood among us, and very briefly considering the ancient and
present state thereof.
By the word critic, at this day so frequent in all conversations,
there have sometimes been distinguished three very different species
of mortal men, according as I have read in ancient books and
pamphlets. For first, by this term were understood such persons as
invented or drew up rules for themselves and the world, by observing
which a careful reader might be able to pronounce upon the
productions of the learned, form his taste to a true relish of the
sublime and the admirable, and divide every beauty of matter or of
style from the corruption that apes it. In their common perusal of
books, singling out the errors and defects, the nauseous, the
fulsome, the dull, and the impertinent, with the caution of a man
that walks through Edinburgh streets in a morning, who is indeed as
careful as he can to watch diligently and spy out the filth in his
way; not that he is curious to observe the colour and complexion of
the ordure or take its dimensions, much less to be paddling in or
tasting it, but only with a design to come out as cleanly as he may.
These men seem, though very erroneously, to have understood the
appellation of critic in a literal sense; that one principal part of
his office was to praise and acquit, and that a critic who sets up
to read only for an occasion of censure and reproof is a creature as
barbarous as a judge who should take up a resolution to hang all men
that came before him upon a trial.
Again, by the word critic have been meant the restorers of ancient
learning from the worms, and graves, and dust of manuscripts.
Now the races of these two have been for some ages utterly extinct,
and besides to discourse any further of them would not be at all to
my purpose.
The third and noblest sort is that of the true critic, whose
original is the most ancient of all. Every true critic is a hero
born, descending in a direct line from a celestial stem, by Momus
and Hybris, who begat Zoilus, who begat Tigellius, who begat
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 concluded with the same justice upon
themselves, as Hercules most generously did, and hath upon that
score procured for himself more temples and votaries than the best
of his fellows. For these reasons I suppose it is why some have
conceived it would be very expedient for the public good of learning
that every true critic, as soon as he had finished his task
assigned, should immediately deliver himself up to ratsbane or hemp,
or from some convenient altitude, and that no man's pretensions to
so illustrious a character should by any means be received before
that operation was performed.
Now, from this heavenly descent of criticism, and the close analogy
it bears to heroic virtue, it is easy to assign the proper
employment of a true, ancient, genuine critic: which is, to travel
through this vast world of writings; to peruse and hunt those
monstrous faults bred within them; to drag out the lurking errors,
like Cacus from his den; to multiply them like Hydra's heads; and
rake them together like Augeas's dung; or else to drive away a sort
of dangerous fowl who have a perverse inclination to plunder the
best branches of the tree of knowledge, like those Stymphalian birds
that ate up the fruit.
These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a
true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers'
faults; which may be further put beyond dispute by the following
demonstration:- That whoever will examine the writings in all kinds
wherewith this ancient sect hath honoured the world, shall
immediately find from the whole thread and tenor of them that the
ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken up
with the faults, and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of
other writers, and let the subject treated on be whatever it will,
their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the
defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad
does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole
appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms
themselves have made.
Having thus briefly considered the original and office of a critic,
as the word is understood in its most noble and universal
acceptation, I proceed to refute the objections of those who argue
from the silence and pretermission of authors, by which they pretend
to prove that the very art of criticism, as now exercised, and by me
explained, is wholly modern, and consequently that the critics of
Great Britain and France have no title to an original so ancient and
illustrious as I have deduced. Now, if I can clearly make out, on
the contrary, that the most ancient writers have particularly
described both the person and the office of a true critic agreeable
to the definition laid down by me, their grand objection--from the
silence of authors--will fall to the ground.
I confess to have for a long time borne a part in this general
error, from which I should never have acquitted myself but through
the assistance of our noble moderns, whose most edifying volumes I
turn indefatigably over night and day, for the improvement of my
mind and the good of my country. These have with unwearied pains
made many useful searches into the weak sides of the ancients, and
given us a comprehensive list of them {84a}. Besides, they have
proved beyond contradiction that the very finest things delivered of
old have been long since invented and brought to light by much later
pens, and that the noblest discoveries those ancients ever made in
art or nature have all been produced by the transcending genius of
the present age, which clearly shows how little merit those ancients
can justly pretend to, and takes off that blind admiration paid them
by men in a corner, who have the unhappiness of conversing too
little with present things. Reflecting maturely upon all this, and
taking in the whole compass of human nature, I easily concluded that
these ancients, highly sensible of their many imperfections, must
needs have endeavoured, from some passages in their works, to
obviate, soften, or divert the censorious reader, by satire or
panegyric upon the true critics, in imitation of their masters, the
moderns. Now, in the commonplaces {84b} of both these I was
plentifully instructed by a long course of useful study in prefaces
and prologues, and therefore immediately resolved to try what I
could discover of either, by a diligent perusal of the most ancient
writers, and especially those who treated of the earliest times.
Here I found, to my great surprise, that although they all entered
upon occasion into particular descriptions of the true critic,
according as they were governed by their fears or their hopes, yet
whatever they touched of that kind was with abundance of caution,
adventuring no further than mythology and hieroglyphic. This, I
suppose, gave ground to superficial readers for urging the silence
of authors against the antiquity of the true critic, though the
types are so apposite, and the applications so necessary and
natural, that it is not easy to conceive how any reader of modern
eye and taste could overlook them. I shall venture from a great
number to produce a few which I am very confident will put this
question beyond doubt.
It well deserves considering that these ancient writers, in treating
enigmatically upon this subject, have generally fixed upon the very
same hieroglyph, varying only the story according to their
affections or their wit. For first, Pausanias is of opinion that
the perfection of writing correct was entirely owing to the
institution of critics, and that he can possibly mean no other than
the true critic is, I think, manifest enough from the following
description. He says they were a race of men who delighted to
nibble at the superfluities and excrescences of books, which the
learned at length observing, took warning of their own accord to lop
the luxuriant, the rotten, the dead, the sapless, and the overgrown
branches from their works. But now all this he cunningly shades
under the following allegory: That the Nauplians in Argia learned
the art of pruning their vines by observing that when an ass had
browsed upon one of them, it thrived the better and bore fairer
fruit. But Herodotus holding the very same hieroglyph, speaks much
plainer and almost in terminis. He hath been so bold as to tax the
true critics of ignorance and malice, telling us openly, for I think
nothing can be plainer, that in the western part of Libya there were
asses with horns, upon which relation Ctesias {85} yet refines,
mentioning the very same animal about India; adding, that whereas
all other asses wanted a gall, these horned ones were so redundant
in that part that their flesh was not to be eaten because of its
extreme bitterness.
Now, the reason why those ancient writers treated this subject only
by types and figures was because they durst not make open attacks
against a party so potent and so terrible as the critics of those
ages were, whose very voice was so dreadful that a legion of authors
would tremble and drop their pens at the sound. For so Herodotus
tells us expressly in another place how a vast army of Scythians was
put to flight in a panic terror by the braying of an ass. From
hence it is conjectured by certain profound philologers, that the
great awe and reverence paid to a true critic by the writers of
Britain have been derived to us from those our Scythian ancestors.
In short, this dread was so universal, that in process of time those
authors who had a mind to publish their sentiments more freely in
describing the true critics of their several ages, were forced to
leave off the use of the former hieroglyph as too nearly approaching
the prototype, and invented other terms instead thereof that were
more cautious and mystical. So Diodorus, speaking to the same
purpose, ventures no farther than to say that in the mountains of
Helicon there grows a certain weed which bears a flower of so damned
a scent as to poison those who offer to smell it. Lucretius gives
exactly the same relation.
"Est etiam in magnis Heliconis montibus arbos,
Floris odore hominem retro consueta necare."--Lib. 6. {86}
But Ctesias, whom we lately quoted, has been a great deal bolder; he
had been used with much severity by the true critics of his own age,
and therefore could not forbear to leave behind him at least one
deep mark of his vengeance against the whole tribe. His meaning is
so near the surface that I wonder how it possibly came to be
overlooked by those who deny the antiquity of the true critics. For
pretending to make a description of many strange animals about
India, he has set down these remarkable words. "Among the rest,"
says he, "there is a serpent that wants teeth, and consequently
cannot bite, but if its vomit (to which it is much addicted) happens
to fall upon anything, a certain rottenness or corruption ensues.
These serpents are generally found among the mountains where jewels
grow, and they frequently emit a poisonous juice, whereof whoever
drinks, that person's brain flies out of his nostrils."
There was also among the ancients a sort of critic, not
distinguished in specie from the former but in growth or degree, who
seem to have been only the tyros or junior scholars, yet because of
their differing employments they are frequently mentioned as a sect
by themselves. The usual exercise of these young students was to
attend constantly at theatres, and learn to spy out the worst parts
of the play, whereof they were obliged carefully to take note, and
render a rational account to their tutors. Fleshed at these smaller
sports, like young wolves, they grew up in time to be nimble and
strong enough for hunting down large game. For it has been
observed, both among ancients and moderns, that a true critic has
one quality in common with a whore and an alderman, never to change
his title or his nature; that a grey critic has been certainly a
green one, the perfections and acquirements of his age being only
the improved talents of his youth, like hemp, which some naturalists
inform us is bad for suffocations, though taken but in the seed. I
esteem the invention, or at least the refinement of prologues, to
have been owing to these younger proficients, of whom Terence makes
frequent and honourable mention, under the name of Malevoli.
Now it is certain the institution of the true critics was of
absolute necessity to the commonwealth of learning. For all human
actions seem to be divided like Themistocles and his company. One
man can fiddle, and another can make a small town a great city; and
he that cannot do either one or the other deserves to be kicked out
of the creation. The avoiding of which penalty has doubtless given
the first birth to the nation of critics, and withal an occasion for
their secret detractors to report that a true critic is a sort of
mechanic set up with a stock and tools for his trade, at as little
expense as a tailor; and that there is much analogy between the
utensils and abilities of both. That the "Tailor's Hell" is the
type of a critic's commonplace-book, and his wit and learning held
forth by the goose. That it requires at least as many of these to
the making up of one scholar as of the others to the composition of
a man. That the valour of both is equal, and their weapons near of
a size. Much may be said in answer to these invidious reflections;
and I can positively affirm the first to be a falsehood: for, on
the contrary, nothing is more certain than that it requires greater
layings out to be free of the critic's company than of any other you
can name. For as to be a true beggar, it will cost the richest
candidate every groat he is worth, so before one can commence a true
critic, it will cost a man all the good qualities of his mind, which
perhaps for a less purchase would be thought but an indifferent
bargain.
Having thus amply proved the antiquity of criticism and described
the primitive state of it, I shall now examine the present condition
of this Empire, and show how well it agrees with its ancient self
{88}. A certain author, whose works have many ages since been
entirely lost, does in his fifth book and eighth chapter say of
critics that "their writings are the mirrors of learning." This I
understand in a literal sense, and suppose our author must mean that
whoever designs to be a perfect writer must inspect into the books
of critics, and correct his inventions there as in a mirror. Now,
whoever considers that the mirrors of the ancients were made of
brass and fine mercurio, may presently apply the two principal
qualifications of a true modern critic, and consequently must needs
conclude that these have always been and must be for ever the same.
For brass is an emblem of duration, and when it is skilfully
burnished will cast reflections from its own superficies without any
assistance of mercury from behind. All the other talents of a
critic will not require a particular mention, being included or
easily deducible to these. However, I shall conclude with three
maxims, which may serve both as characteristics to distinguish a
true modern critic from a pretender, and will be also of admirable
use to those worthy spirits who engage in so useful and honourable
an art.
The first is, that criticism, contrary to all other faculties of the
intellect, is ever held the truest and best when it is the very
first result of the critic's mind; as fowlers reckon the first aim
for the surest, and seldom fail of missing the mark if they stay not
for a second.
Secondly, the true critics are known by their talent of swarming
about the noblest writers, to which they are carried merely by
instinct, as a rat to the best cheese, or a wasp to the fairest
fruit. So when the king is a horseback he is sure to be the
dirtiest person of the company, and they that make their court best
are such as bespatter him most.
Lastly, a true critic in the perusal of a book is like a dog at a
feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the
guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there
are the fewest bones {89}.
Thus much I think is sufficient to serve by way of address to my
patrons, the true modern critics, and may very well atone for my
past silence, as well as that which I am like to observe for the
future. I hope I have deserved so well of their whole body as to
meet with generous and tender usage at their hands. Supported by
which expectation I go on boldly to pursue those adventures already
so happily begun.
SECTION IV.--A TALE OF A TUB.
I have now with much pains and study conducted the reader to a
period where he must expect to hear of great revolutions. For no
sooner had our learned brother, so often mentioned, got a warm house
of his own over his head, than he began to look big and to take
mightily upon him, insomuch that unless the gentle reader out of his
great candour will please a little to exalt his idea, I am afraid he
will henceforth hardly know the hero of the play when he happens to
meet him, his part, his dress, and his mien being so much altered.
He told his brothers he would have them to know that he was their
elder, and consequently his father's sole heir; nay, a while after,
he would not allow them to call him brother, but Mr. Peter; and then
he must be styled Father Peter, and sometimes My Lord Peter. To
support this grandeur, which he soon began to consider could not be
maintained without a better fonde than what he was born to, after
much thought he cast about at last to turn projector and virtuoso,
wherein he so well succeeded, that many famous discoveries,
projects, and machines which bear great vogue and practice at
present in the world, are owing entirely to Lord Peter's invention.
I will deduce the best account I have been able to collect of the
chief amongst them, without considering much the order they came out
in, because I think authors are not well agreed as to that point.
I hope when this treatise of mine shall be translated into foreign
languages (as I may without vanity affirm that the labour of
collecting, the faithfulness in recounting, and the great usefulness
of the matter to the public, will amply deserve that justice), that
of the several Academies abroad, especially those of France and
Italy, will favourably accept these humble offers for the
advancement of universal knowledge. I do also advertise the most
reverend fathers the Eastern missionaries that I have purely for
their sakes made use of such words and phrases as will best admit an
easy turn into any of the Oriental languages, especially the
Chinese. And so I proceed with great content of mind upon
reflecting how much emolument this whole globe of earth is like to
reap by my labours.
The first undertaking of Lord Peter was to purchase a large
continent, lately said to have been discovered in Terra Australis
incognita. This tract of land he bought at a very great pennyworth
from the discoverers themselves (though some pretended to doubt
whether they had ever been there), and then retailed it into several
cantons to certain dealers, who carried over colonies, but were all
shipwrecked in the voyage; upon which Lord Peter sold the said
continent to other customers again and again, and again and again,
with the same success.
The second project I shall mention was his sovereign remedy for the
worms, especially those in the spleen. The patient was to eat
nothing after supper for three nights; as soon as he went to bed, he
was carefully to lie on one side, and when he grew weary, to turn
upon the other. He must also duly confine his two eyes to the same
object, and by no means break wind at both ends together without
manifest occasion. These prescriptions diligently observed, the
worms would void insensibly by perspiration ascending through the
brain.
A third invention was the erecting of a whispering-office for the
public good and ease of all such as are hypochondriacal or troubled
with the cholic, as likewise of all eavesdroppers, physicians,
midwives, small politicians, friends fallen out, repeating poets,
lovers happy or in despair, bawds, privy-counsellors, pages,
parasites and buffoons, in short, of all such as are in danger of
bursting with too much wind. An ass's head was placed so
conveniently, that the party affected might easily with his mouth
accost either of the animal's ears, which he was to apply close for
a certain space, and by a fugitive faculty peculiar to the ears of
that animal, receive immediate benefit, either by eructation, or
expiration, or evomition.
Another very beneficial project of Lord Peter's was an office of
insurance for tobacco-pipes, martyrs of the modern zeal, volumes of
poetry, shadows . . . . and rivers, that these, nor any of these,
shall receive damage by fire. From whence our friendly societies
may plainly find themselves to be only transcribers from this
original, though the one and the other have been of great benefit to
the undertakers as well as of equal to the public.
Lord Peter was also held the original author of puppets and raree-
shows, the great usefulness whereof being so generally known, I
shall not enlarge farther upon this particular.
But another discovery for which he was much renowned was his famous
universal pickle. For having remarked how your common pickle in use
among housewives was of no farther benefit than to preserve dead
flesh and certain kinds of vegetables, Peter with great cost as well
as art had contrived a pickle proper for houses, gardens, towns,
men, women, children, and cattle, wherein he could preserve them as
sound as insects in amber. Now this pickle to the taste, the smell,
and the sight, appeared exactly the same with what is in common
service for beef, and butter, and herrings (and has been often that
way applied with great success), but for its may sovereign virtues
was quite a different thing. For Peter would put in a certain
quantity of his powder pimperlim-pimp, after which it never failed
of success. The operation was performed by spargefaction in a
proper time of the moon. The patient who was to be pickled, if it
were a house, would infallibly be preserved from all spiders, rats,
and weasels; if the party affected were a dog, he should be exempt
from mange, and madness, and hunger. It also infallibly took away
all scabs and lice, and scalled heads from children, never hindering
the patient from any duty, either at bed or board.
But of all Peter's rarities, he most valued a certain set of bulls,
whose race was by great fortune preserved in a lineal descent from
those that guarded the golden-fleece. Though some who pretended to
observe them curiously doubted the breed had not been kept entirely
chaste, because they had degenerated from their ancestors in some
qualities, and had acquired others very extraordinary, but a foreign
mixture. The bulls of Colchis are recorded to have brazen feet; but
whether it happened by ill pasture and running, by an alloy from
intervention of other parents from stolen intrigues; whether a
weakness in their progenitors had impaired the seminal virtue, or by
a decline necessary through a long course of time, the originals of
nature being depraved in these latter sinful ages of the world--
whatever was the cause, it is certain that Lord Peter's bulls were
extremely vitiated by the rust of time in the metal of their feet,
which was now sunk into common lead. However, the terrible roaring
peculiar to their lineage was preserved, as likewise that faculty of
breathing out fire from their nostrils; which notwithstanding many
of their detractors took to be a feat of art, and to be nothing so
terrible as it appeared, proceeding only from their usual course of
diet, which was of squibs and crackers. However, they had two
peculiar marks which extremely distinguished them from the bulls of
Jason, and which I have not met together in the description of any
other monster beside that in. Horace, "Varias inducere plumas," and
"Atrum definit in piscem." For these had fishes tails, yet upon
occasion could outfly any bird in the air. Peter put these bulls
upon several employs. Sometimes he would set them a roaring to
fright naughty boys and make them quiet. Sometimes he would send
them out upon errands of great importance, where it is wonderful to
recount, and perhaps the cautious reader may think much to believe
it; an appetitus sensibilis deriving itself through the whole family
from their noble ancestors, guardians of the Golden Fleece, they
continued so extremely fond of gold, that if Peter sent them abroad,
though it were only upon a compliment, they would roar, and spit,
and belch, and snivel out fire, and keep a perpetual coil till you
flung them a bit of gold; but then pulveris exigui jactu, they would
grow calm and quiet as lambs. In short, whether by secret
connivance or encouragement from their master, or out of their own
liquorish affection to gold, or both, it is certain they were no
better than a sort of sturdy, swaggering beggars; and where they
could not prevail to get an alms, would make women miscarry and
children fall into fits; who to this very day usually call sprites
and hobgoblins by the name of bull-beggars. They grew at last so
very troublesome to the neighbourhood, that some gentlemen of the
North-West got a parcel of right English bull-dogs, and baited them
so terribly, that they felt it ever after.
I must needs mention one more of Lord Peter's projects, which was
very extraordinary, and discovered him to be master of a high reach
and profound invention. Whenever it happened that any rogue of
Newgate was condemned to be hanged, Peter would offer him a pardon
for a certain sum of money, which when the poor caitiff had made all
shifts to scrape up and send, his lordship would return a piece of
paper in this form:-
"To all mayors, sheriffs, jailors, constables, bailiffs, hangmen,
&c. Whereas we are informed that A. B. remains in the hands of you,
or any of you, under the sentence of death. We will and command
you, upon sight hereof, to let the said prisoner depart to his own
habitation, whether he stands condemned for murder, sodomy, rape,
sacrilege, incest, treason, blasphemy, &c., for which this shall be
your sufficient warrant. And it you fail hereof, G--d--mn you and
yours to all eternity. And so we bid you heartily farewell. Your
most humble man's man,
"EMPEROR PETER."
The wretches trusting to this lost their lives and money too.
I desire of those whom the learned among posterity will appoint for
commentators upon this elaborate treatise, that they will proceed
with great caution upon certain dark points, wherein all who are not
vere adepti may be in danger to form rash and hasty conclusions,
especially in some mysterious paragraphs, where certain arcana are
joined for brevity sake, which in the operation must be divided.
And I am certain that future sons of art will return large thanks to
my memory for so grateful, so useful an inmuendo.
It will be no difficult part to persuade the reader that so many
worthy discoveries met with great success in the world; though I may
justly assure him that I have related much the smallest number; my
design having been only to single out such as will be of most
benefit for public imitation, or which best served to give some idea
of the reach and wit of the inventor. And therefore it need not be
wondered if by this time Lord Peter was become exceeding rich. But
alas! he had kept his brain so long and so violently upon the rack,
that at last it shook itself, and began to turn round for a little
ease. In short, what with pride, projects, and knavery, poor Peter
was grown distracted, and conceived the strangest imaginations in
the world. In the height of his fits (as it is usual with those who
run mad out of pride) he would call himself God Almighty, and
sometimes monarch of the universe. I have seen him (says my author)
take three old high-crowned hats, and clap them all on his head,
three storey high, with a huge bunch of keys at his girdle, and an
angling rod in his hand. In which guise, whoever went to take him
by the hand in the way of salutation, Peter with much grace, like a
well-educated spaniel, would present them with his foot, and if they
refused his civility, then he would raise it as high as their chops,
and give them a damned kick on the mouth, which hath ever since been
called a salute. Whoever walked by without paying him their
compliments, having a wonderful strong breath, he would blow their
hats off into the dirt. Meantime his affairs at home went upside
down, and his two brothers had a wretched time, where his first
boutade was to kick both their wives one morning out of doors, and
his own too, and in their stead gave orders to pick up the first
three strollers could be met with in the streets. A while after he
nailed up the cellar door, and would not allow his brothers a drop
of drink to their victuals {95}. Dining one day at an alderman's in
the city, Peter observed him expatiating, after the manner of his
brethren in the praises of his sirloin of beef. "Beef," said the
sage magistrate, "is the king of meat; beef comprehends in it the
quintessence of partridge, and quail, and venison, and pheasant, and
plum-pudding, and custard." When Peter came home, he would needs
take the fancy of cooking up this doctrine into use, and apply the
precept in default of a sirloin to his brown loaf. "Bread," says
he, "dear brothers, is the staff of life, in which bread is
contained inclusive the quintessence of beef, mutton, veal, venison,
partridge, plum-pudding, and custard, and to render all complete,
there is intermingled a due quantity of water, whose crudities are
also corrected by yeast or barm, through which means it becomes a
wholesome fermented liquor, diffused through the mass of the bread."
Upon the strength of these conclusions, next day at dinner was the
brown loaf served up in all the formality of a City feast. "Come,
brothers," said Peter, "fall to, and spare not; here is excellent
good mutton {96}; or hold, now my hand is in, I'll help you." At
which word, in much ceremony, with fork and knife, he carves out two
good slices of a loaf, and presents each on a plate to his brothers.
The elder of the two, not suddenly entering into Lord Peter's
conceit, began with very civil language to examine the mystery. "My
lord," said he, "I doubt, with great submission, there may be some
mistake." "What!" says Peter, "you are pleasant; come then, let us
hear this jest your head is so big with." "None in the world, my
Lord; but unless I am very much deceived, your Lordship was pleased
a while ago to let fall a word about mutton, and I would be glad to
see it with all my heart." "How," said Peter, appearing in great
surprise, "I do not comprehend this at all;" upon which the younger,
interposing to set the business right, "My Lord," said he, "my
brother, I suppose, is hungry, and longs for the mutton your
Lordship hath promised us to dinner." "Pray," said Peter, "take me
along with you, either you are both mad, or disposed to be merrier
than I approve of; if you there do not like your piece, I will carve
you another, though I should take that to be the choice bit of the
whole shoulder." "What then, my Lord?" replied the first; "it seems
this is a shoulder of mutton all this while." "Pray, sir," says
Peter, "eat your victuals and leave off your impertinence, if you
please, for I am not disposed to relish it at present;" but the
other could not forbear, being over-provoked at the affected
seriousness of Peter's countenance. "My Lord," said he, "I can only
say, that to my eyes and fingers, and teeth and nose, it seems to be
nothing but a crust of bread." Upon which the second put in his
word. "I never saw a piece of mutton in my life so nearly
resembling a slice from a twelve-penny loaf." "Look ye, gentlemen,"
cries Peter in a rage, "to convince you what a couple of blind,
positive, ignorant, wilful puppies you are, I will use but this
plain argument; by G---, it is true, good, natural mutton as any in
Leadenhall Market; and G--- confound you both eternally if you offer
to believe otherwise." Such a thundering proof as this left no
further room for objection; the two unbelievers began to gather and
pocket up their mistake as hastily as they could. "Why, truly,"
said the first, "upon more mature consideration"--"Ay," says the
other, interrupting him, "now I have thought better on the thing,
your Lordship seems to have a great deal of reason." "Very well,"
said Peter. "Here, boy, fill me a beer-glass of claret. Here's to
you both with all my heart." The two brethren, much delighted to
see him so readily appeased, returned their most humble thanks, and
said they would be glad to pledge his Lordship. "That you shall,"
said Peter, "I am not a person to refuse you anything that is
reasonable; wine moderately taken is a cordial. Here is a glass
apiece for you; it is true natural juice from the grape; none of
your damned vintner's brewings." Having spoke thus, he presented to
each of them another large dry crust, bidding them drink it off, and
not be bashful, for it would do them no hurt. The two brothers,
after having performed the usual office in such delicate
conjunctures, of staring a sufficient period at Lord Peter and each
other, and finding how matters were like to go, resolved not to
enter on a new dispute, but let him carry the point as he pleased;
for he was now got into one of his mad fits, and to argue or
expostulate further would only serve to render him a hundred times
more untractable.
I have chosen to relate this worthy matter in all its circumstances,
because it gave a principal occasion to that great and famous
rupture {98a} which happened about the same time among these
brethren, and was never afterwards made up. But of that I shall
treat at large in another section.
However, it is certain that Lord Peter, even in his lucid intervals,
was very lewdly given in his common conversation, extreme wilful and
positive, and would at any time rather argue to the death than allow
himself to be once in an error. Besides, he had an abominable
faculty of telling huge palpable lies upon all occasions, and
swearing not only to the truth, but cursing the whole company to
hell if they pretended to make the least scruple of believing him.
One time he swore he had a cow at home which gave as much milk at a
meal as would fill three thousand churches, and what was yet more
extraordinary, would never turn sour. Another time he was telling
of an old sign-post {98b} that belonged to his father, with nails
and timber enough on it to build sixteen large men-of-war. Talking
one day of Chinese waggons, which were made so light as to sail over
mountains, "Z---nds," said Peter, "where's the wonder of that? By
G---, I saw a large house of lime and stone travel over sea and land
(granting that it stopped sometimes to bait) above two thousand
German leagues." {98c} And that which was the good of it, he would
swear desperately all the while that he never told a lie in his
life, and at every word: "By G---- gentlemen, I tell you nothing
but the truth, and the d---l broil them eternally that will not
believe me."
In short, Peter grew so scandalous that all the neighbourhood began
in plain words to say he was no better than a knave; and his two
brothers, long weary of his ill-usage, resolved at last to 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
{99a}, 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 comfort their
hearts {99b}. In copying the will, they had met another precept
against whoring, divorce, and separate maintenance; upon which,
their next work was to discard their concubines and send for their
wives {99c}. Whilst all this was in agitation, there enters a
solicitor from Newgate, desiring Lord Peter would please to procure
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 platter 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.
SECTION V.--A DIGRESSION IN THE MODERN KIND.
We 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 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 accordingly 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 balneo Mariae,
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 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
quaedams, 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 {102a}, it is manifest he
hath wholly neglected some, and been very imperfect 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 {102b}. He
is also quite mistaken about the sphaera 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 prominent 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; I mean his gross ignorance in the
common 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
incomparable 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 perfect in modern
discoveries as his advocates pretend. We freely acknowledge him to
be the inventor of the compass, of gunpowder, 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 unsatisfactory 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 prevailed
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 confident to
have included and exhausted all that human imagination 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 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 published, 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 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
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.
SECTION VI.--A TALE OF A TUB.
We 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 circumstances 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, returning, 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 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 employment 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 themselves, 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 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 without 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 it remain, resolving in no case whatsoever that
the substance of the stuff should suffer injury, which he thought
the 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 hatred
and spite which had a much greater share of inciting him than any
regards 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 zeal, 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 analytical
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, containing three large volumes in
folio, I design very shortly to publish by the modern way of
subscription, not doubting but the nobility and gentry of the land
will give me all possible encouragement, 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 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 {110}; 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 packthread 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 brother 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.
Martin had still proceeded as gravely as he began, and doubtless
would have delivered an admirable lecture of morality, which might
have exceedingly contributed to my reader's repose both of body and
mind (the true ultimate end of ethics), but Jack was already gone a
flight-shot beyond his patience. And as in scholastic 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 it to fly
up and kick the beam; so it happened here that the weight of
Martin's arguments exalted Jack's levity, and made him fly out and
spurn against his brother's moderation. In short, Martin's patience
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 looked like a drunken beau half rifled by bullies, or
like a fresh tenant of Newgate when he has refused the payment of
garnish, or like a discovered shoplifter left to the mercy of
Exchange-women {111a}, or like a bawd in her old velvet petticoat
resigned into the secular hands of the mobile {111b}. Like any or
like all of these, a medley of rags, and lace, and fringes,
unfortunate Jack did now appear; he would have 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 pass, 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 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, sometimes
French Hugh, sometimes Tom the Beggar, and sometimes Knocking Jack
of the North {112}. 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
AEolists, 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."
SECTION VII.--A DIGRESSION IN PRAISE OF DIGRESSIONS.
I 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 refinements 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 constitution,
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.
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 occasions without further
expatiating from the subject than by moderate 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 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 modern 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 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 talos 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 Scythians {116}, 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 commentators, and
lexicons carefully must. But above all, those judicious 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 commonplace 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 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 darkness 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.
SECTION VIII.--A TALE OF A TUB.
The learned AEolists 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 Adepti understand by their anima mundi, 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 inflatus, 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 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 perfection of all created things, as having, by the great
bounty of philosophers, been endued with three distinct animas or
winds, to which the sage AEolists, 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
{119a} 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 wonderfully
refined as well as enlarged by certain methods in education. This,
when blown up to its perfection, ought not to be covetously boarded
up, stifled, or hid under a bushel, but freely communicated to
mankind. Upon these reasons, and others of equal weight, the wise
AEolists 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 {119b}. 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 acquirements into their disciples' chaps.
For we must here observe that all learning was esteemed among them
to be compounded from the same principle. Because, first, it is
generally affirmed or confessed 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
eructation, 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 adoration 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." {120} This god, though endued with
ubiquity, was yet supposed by the profounder AEolists to possess one
peculiar habitation, or (to speak in form) a caelum empyraeum,
wherein he was more intimately present. This was situated in a
certain region well known to the ancient Greeks, by them called
[Greek text which cannot be reproduced], the Land of Darkness. And
although many controversies have arisen upon that matter, yet so
much is undisputed, that from a region of the like denomination the
most refined AEolists 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 Pancirollus. It was
an invention ascribed to AEolus 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 griping. 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 AEolist 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 AEolists to have been very ancient in the world, because 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 conjecture, it is further
insisted that this custom of female priests is kept up still in
certain refined colleges of our modern AEolists {122}, 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 darkness, 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 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 precipice 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 AEolists 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. {123}
Thus furnished, and set out with gods as well as devils, was the
renowned sect of AEolists, 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 AEolists 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 original at
Delphos, with certain additions and emendations suited to times and
circumstances, I shall not absolutely determine. 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.
SECTION IX.--A DIGRESSION CONCERNING THE ORIGINAL, THE USE, AND
IMPROVEMENT OF MADNESS IN A COMMONWEALTH.
Nor 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 establishment 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 appearance, 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 effect. Mists arise from the earth, steams from
dunghills, exhalations 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 {126a} 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
ministers 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 {126b}, gathering 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 put into motion so wonderful an
engine? It was afterwards discovered 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 quaeque, 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 collected
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 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 {127a}, 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 occidentalis {127b}, 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. 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 on
all hands impossible to be known; from what seeds this disposition
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, Paracelsus, 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 conceive 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 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 therefore 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 conduct 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 {129}.
For, to speak a bold truth, it is a fatal miscarriage so ill to
order affairs as to pass 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 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
individuation between Alexander the Great, Jack of Leyden, and
Monsieur 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 . . . Hic multa . . . desiderantur. .
. and 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
conclusion that, if the moderns mean by madness only a disturbance
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 bringing 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 entertainments 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 happiness, 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 conceived, 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 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 enjoyments
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 employment, in my opinion,
neither better nor worse than that of unmasking, 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
themselves 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 outward 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 conclusions 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 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; from all which I justly formed
this conclusion to myself, 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
sublime and refined point of felicity called the possession of being
well-deceived, the serene peaceful state of being a fool among
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 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 opportunity 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 instruments 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 affair, 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
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 threepence in
his pocket {135}, 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 facies. 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 idolator 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 occasions 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). What 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
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 withdraws to his former
occupations. Now is it not amazing to think the society of Warwick
Lane {136} 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 mistaken 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 number 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 misapplied. 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 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.
SECTION X.--A FARTHER DIGRESSION.
It is an unanswerable argument of a very refined age the wonderful
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 acknowledgments 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 approbation 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 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 neglect 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 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
perspiration. But the reader truly learned, chiefly for whose
benefit I wake when others sleep, 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 commentaries on this comprehensive discourse. I shall
venture to affirm that, whatever difference may be found in their
several conjectures, 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
themselves 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
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 0's multiplied by
seven and divided by nine. Also, if a devout brother of the Rosy
Cross will pray fervently for sixty-three mornings 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 plentifully 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 lucida, a tristitia solida, et a timore mobilis,
wherein Eugenius Philalethes {142} hath committed an unpardonable
mistake.
SECTION XI.--A TALE OF A TUB.
After 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 expectation, 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 occasion 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 arriving, he
rides furiously through, the men, women, and children 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 limping 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. Therefore, 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 AEolists, 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 philosophy--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
imaginable. For although, as I have often told the reader, it
consisted wholly in certain plain, easy directions about the
management 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 particularly to dilate, and being not able to
call to mind, with that suddenness 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 possible 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 {145a}.
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 {145b}.
He bore a strange kind of appetite to snap-dragon and to the livid
snuffs of a burning candle {146a}, which he would catch and swallow
with an agility wonderful to conceive; and by this procedure
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
{146b}, "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 understanding 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 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 {147a}, 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 {147b}.
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 distinguish 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 {148a}. But he would cure
himself again by taking two or three turns in Westminster Hall, or
Billingsgate, 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 {148b}.
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 {148c}.
He was the first that ever found out the secret of contriving a
soporiferous medicine to be conveyed in at the ears {148d}. 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, 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 aversion
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 ventured 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 fortune to meet, 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, 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 mien; 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
mortifying return of those pains and proceedings Jack had laboured
in so long, and finding 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 proceeded a heathen
philosopher. Yet after all he could 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, . . .
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." {151a}
It is good, therefore, to read the maxims of our ancestors with
great allowances to times and persons; for if we look into primitive
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 perditae; 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 remainder is also degenerated so far
as to mock our skilfullest 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 our 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 the 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 {151b} 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; 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 protrusions 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 {152a}; 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 circumspection enough may
discover several handles, whereof the six {152b} 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 struggling 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 remaining
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 {153}.
But the particulars of all these, with 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 accident 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.
THE CONCLUSION.
Going 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
{155} 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 understand 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 author, he
will tell him very privately as a friend, naming whichever 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 vitae 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. 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 {157} there were
the same temples built and consecrated 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 hundred 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, 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 absolute 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 thunders against Martin for the
loss of the large revenue he used to receive from thence; Harry Huff
sent Marlin a challenge in 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.
How 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 Thuringians, 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 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
consequently 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, ordaining 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 {160a}, 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 victorious, 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
{160b}, to be worn by him and 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 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 {161a}, 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 {161b}, 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 ways,
which they afterwards brought back into ambition, now under another
landlady {161c}, 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
finding, 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
of 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 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 {162a}, 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 landlord, 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
{162b} 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 undertaken 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 institution, 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 {162c}, 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.
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 finding 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, kingdoms, &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
corruption 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 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 dispensatory. How
the new landlord {164a} 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 {164b} brought in, and Martin re-established.
How this new landlord let Martin do what he pleased, and Martin
agreed to everything his pious landlord 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 {164c} 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 {164d} 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 himself
in possession of a whole canton, to the great discontent of Martin,
who finding also that some of Jack's friends were allowed 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 {165a}. 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 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 10 pounds 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 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.
THE END.
♥ FINE AREA VOCALIZZATA CON READSPEAKER
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