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.