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.