The author supposes that one copy of this work will be bought at the
public charge, or out of the parish rates, for every parish church
in the three kingdoms, and in all the dominions thereunto belonging.
And that every family that can command 10 pounds per annum, even
though retrenched from less necessary expenses, will subscribe for
one. He does not think of giving out above nine volumes nearly; and
considering the number requisite, he intends to print at least
100,000 for the first edition. He is to print proposals against
next term, with a specimen, and a curious map of the capital city
with its twelve gates, from a known author, who took an exact survey
of it in a dream. Considering the great care and pains of the
author, and the usefulness of the work, he hopes every one will be
ready, for their own good as well as his, to contribute cheerfully
to it, and not grudge him the profit he may have by it, especially
if he comes to a third or fourth edition, as he expects it will very
soon.
He doubts not but it will be translated into foreign languages by
most nations of Europe, as well as Asia and Africa, being of as
great use to all those nations as to his own; for this reason he
designs to procure patents and privileges for securing the whole
benefit to himself from all those different princes and states, and
hopes to see many millions of this great work printed in those
different countries and languages before his death.
After this business is pretty well established, he has promised to
put a friend on another project almost as good as this, by
establishing insurance offices everywhere for securing people from
shipwreck and several other accidents in their voyage to this
country; and these officers shall furnish, at a certain rate, pilots
well versed in the route, and that know all the rocks, shelves,
quicksands, &c., that such pilgrims and travellers may be exposed
to. Of these he knows a great number ready instructed in most
countries; but the whole scheme of this matter he is to draw up at
large and communicate to his friend.
Footnotes:
{50} The number of livings in England.--Pate.
{51a} "Distinguished, new, told by no other tongue."--Horace.
{51b} "Reading prefaces, &c."--Swift's note in the margin.
{56a} Plutarch.--Swift's note in the margin.
{56b} Xenophon.--Swift's note in the margin, marked, in future, S.
{56c} Spleen.--Horace.
{59} "But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labour lies."
- Dryden's "Virgil"
{60} "That the old may withdraw into safe ease."
{61} In his subsequent apology for "The Tale of a Tub," Swift wrote
of these machines that, "In the original manuscript there was a
description of a fourth, which those who had the papers in their
power blotted out, as having something in it of satire that I
suppose they thought was too particular; and therefore they were
forced to change it to the number three, whence some have
endeavoured to squeeze out a dangerous meaning that was never
thought on. And indeed the conceit was half spoiled by changing the
numbers; that of four being much more cabalistic, and therefore
better exposing the pretended virtue of numbers, a superstition then
intended to be ridiculed."
{62a} "Under the rainy sky, in the meetings of three and of four
ways."
{62b} Lucretius, lib. 2.--S.
{62c} "'Tis certain, then, the voice that thus can wound;
Is all material body, every sound."
{63} To be burnt or worm-eaten.
{64} The Royal Society first met at Gresham College, the resort of
men of science. Will's Coffee-House was the resort of wits and men
of letters.
{65a} Viz., about moving the earth.--S.
{65b} "Virtuoso experiments and modern comedies."--S.
{67a} He lived a thousand.--S.
{67b} Viz., in the year 1697.--S. Dryden died in 1700, and the
publication of the "Tale of a Tub," written in 1697, was not until
1704.
{69a} The title-page in the original was so torn that it was not
possible to recover several titles which the author here speaks of.-
-S.
{69b} See Virgil translated, &c.--S.
{70} Peter, the Church of Rome; Martin, the Reformed Church as
established by authority in England; Jack, the dissenters from the
English Church Establishment. Martin, named probably from Martin
Luther; Jack, from John Calvin. The coats are the coats of
righteousness, in which all servants of God should be clothed; alike
in love and duty, however they may differ in opinion.
{71} Covetousness, ambition, and pride, which were the three great
vices that the ancient fathers inveighed against as the first
corruptions of Christianity.--W. Wotton.
{72a} The tailor.
{72b} A sacred monkey.
{75} The Roman Catholics were considered by the Reformers to have
added to the simple doctrines of Christianity inventions of their
own, and to have laid especial stress on the adoption of them. Upon
Swift's saying of the three brothers, "Now the coats their father
had left them were, it is true, of very good cloth, and besides so
neatly sewn that you would swear they were all of a piece, but, at
the same time, very plain, with little or no ornament," W. Wotton
observes: "This is the distinguishing character of the Christian
religion. Christiana religio absoluta et simplex, was Ammianus
Marcellinus's description of it, who was himself a heathen." But
the learned Peter argues that if a doctrine cannot be found, totidem
verbis, in so many words, it may be found in so many syllables, or,
if that way fail, we shall make them out in a third way, of so many
letters.
{76} Quibusdam veteribus codicibus [some ancient MSS.].--S.
{77a} There are two kinds--oral tradition and the written record,--
reference to the value attached to tradition in the Roman Church.
{77b} The flame-coloured lining figures the doctrine of Purgatory;
and the codicil annexed, the Apocryphal books annexed to the Bible.
The dog-keeper is said to be an allusion to the Apocryphal book of
Tobit.
{78a} Dread hell and subdue their lusts.
{78b} Strained glosses and interpretations of the simple text.
{79a} Images in churches.
{79b} The locking up of the Gospel in the original Greek or in the
Latin of the Vulgate, and forbidding its diffusion in the language
of the people.
{80a} The Pope's bulls and decretals, issued by his paternal
authority, that must determine questions of interpretation and
tradition, or else many absurd things would follow.
{80b} Constantine the Great, from whom the Church of Rome was said
to have received the donation of St. Peter's patrimony, and first
derived the wealth described by our old Reformers as "the fatal gift
of Constantine."
{84a} See Wotton "Of Ancient and Modern Learning."--S.
{84b} Satire and panegyric upon critics.--S.
{85} Vide excerpta ex eo apud Photium--S.
{86} "Near Helicon and round the learned hill
Grow trees whose blossoms with their odour kill."--Hawkesworth.
{88} A quotation after the manner of a great author. Vide
Bentley's "Dissertation," &c.--S.
{89} "And how they're disappointed when they're pleased."--
Congreve, quoted by Pate.
{95} Refusing the cup of sacrament to the laity. Thomas Warton
observes on the following passage its close resemblance to the
speech of Panurge in Rabelais, and says that Swift formed himself
upon Rabelais.
{96} Transubstantiation.
{98a} The Reformation.
{98b} The cross (in hoc signo vinces). Pieces of the wood said to
be part of it were many in the churches.
{98c} One miracle to be believed was that the Chapel of Loretto
travelled from the Holy Land to Italy.
{99a} Made a true copy of the Bible in the language of the people.
{99b} Gave the cup to the laity.
{99c} Allowed marriages of priests.
{102a} Homerus omnes res humanas poematis complexus est.--Xenophon
in Conviv.--S.
{102b} A treatise written about fifty years ago by a Welsh
gentleman of Cambridge. His name, as I remember, Vaughan, as
appears by the answer to it by the learned Dr. Henry More. It is a
piece of the most unintelligible fustian that perhaps was ever
published in any language.--S. This piece was by the brother of
Henry Vaughan, the poet.
{110} After the changes made by Martin that transformed the Church
of Rome into the Church of England, Jack's proceedings made a rent
from top to bottom by the separation of the Presbyterians from the
Church Establishment.
{111a} The galleries over the piazzas in the old Royal Exchange
were formerly filled with shops, kept chiefly by women.
Illustrations of this feature in London life are to be found in
Dekker's "Shoemaker's Holiday," and other plays.
{111b} The contraction of the word mobile to mob first appeared in
the time of Charles the Second.
{112} Jack the Bald, Calvin, from calvus, bald; Jack with a
Lanthorn, professing inward lights, Quakers; Dutch Jack, Jack of
Leyden, Anabaptists; French Hugh, the Huguenots; Tom the Beggar, the
Gueuses of Flanders; Knocking Jack of the North, John Knox of
Scotland. AEolists pretenders to inspiration.
{116} Herodotus, 1. 4.--S.
{119a} Bombast von Hohenheim--Paracelsus.
{119b} Fanatical preachers of rebellion.
{120} Pausanias, 1. 8.--S.
{122} The Quakers allowed women to preach.
{123} The worshippers of wind or air found their evil spirits in
the chameleon, by which it was eaten, and the windmill, Moulin-a-
vent, by whose four hands it was beaten.
{126a} Henry IV. of France.
{126b} Ravaillac, who stabbed Henry IV.
{127a} Swift's contemporary, Louis XIV. of France.
{127b} Western civet. Paracelsus was said to have endeavoured to
extract a perfume from human excrement that might become as
fashionable as civet from the cat. It was called zibeta
occidentalis, the back being, according to Paracelsus, the western
part of the body.
{129} Ep. Fam. vii. 10, to Trebatius, who, as the next sentence in
the letter shows, had not gone into England.
{135} A lawyer's coach-hire.--S.
{136} The College of Physicians.
{140} The bad critics.
{142} A name under which Thomas Vaughan wrote.
{145a} Revelations xxii. 11: "He which is filthy, let him be
filthy still;" "phrase of the will," being Scripture phrase, of
either Testament, applied to every occasion, and often in the most
unbecoming manner.
{145b} He did not kneel when he received the Sacrament.
{146a} His inward lights.
{146b} Predestination.
{147a} Vide Don Quixote.--S.
{147b} Swift borrowed this from the customs of Moronia--Fool's
Land--in Joseph Hall's Mundus Alter et Idem.
{148a} The Presbyterians objected to church-music, and had no
organs in their meeting-houses.
{148b} Opposed to the decoration of church walls.
{148c} Baptism by immersion.
{148d} Preaching.
{151a} "This wicked Proteus shall escape the chain."--Francis's
Horace.
{151b} Lib. de Aere, Locis, et Aquis.--S.
{152a} Charles II., by the Act of Uniformity, which drove two
thousand ministers of religion, including some of the most devout,
in one day out of the Church of England.
{152b} "Including Scaliger's," is Swift's note in the margin. The
sixth sense was the "common sense" which united and conveyed to the
mind as one whole the information brought in by the other five.
Common sense did not originally mean the kind of sense common among
the people generally. A person wanting in common sense was one
whose brain did not properly combine impressions brought into it by
the eye, the ear, &c.
{153} Reference here is to the exercise by James II. of a
dispensing power which illegally protected Roman Catholics, and
incidentally Dissenters also; to the consequent growth of feeling
against the Roman Catholics. "Jack on a great horse and eating
custard" represents what was termed the occasional conformity of men
who "blasphemed custard through the nose," but complied with the law
that required them to take Sacrament in the Church of England as
qualification for becoming a Lord Mayor or holding any office of
public authority.
{155} Pere d'Orleans.--S.
{157} Trazenii, Pausan. L. 2.--S.
{160a} Henry VIII.
{160b} "Fidei Defensor."
{161a} Edward VI.
{161b} Queen Mary.
{161c} Queen Elizabeth.
{162a} James I.
{162b} Episcopacy.
{162c} Charles I.
{164a} Cromwell.
{164b} Charles II.
{164c} James II.
{164d} William III.
{165a} High Church against Dissent.
