Or my chapter of _Knots_, in case their reverences have done with
them——they might lead me into mischief: the safest way is to follow the
track of the learned, and raise objections against what I have been
writing, tho’ I declare before-hand, I know no more than my heels how
to answer them.
And first, it may be said, there is a pelting kind of _thersitical_
satire, as black as the very ink ’tis wrote with——(and by the bye,
whoever says so, is indebted to the muster-master general of the
_Grecian_ army, for suffering the name of so ugly and foul-mouth’d a
man as _Thersites_ to continue upon his roll——for it has furnish’d him
with an epithet)——in these productions he will urge, all the personal
washings and scrubbings upon earth do a sinking genius no sort of
good——but just the contrary, inasmuch as the dirtier the fellow is, the
better generally he succeeds in it.
To this, I have no other answer——at least ready——but that the
Archbishop of _Benevento_ wrote his _nasty_ Romance of the _Galatea_,
as all the world knows, in a purple coat, waistcoat, and purple pair of
breeches; and that the penance set him of writing a commentary upon the
book of the _Revelations_, as severe as it was look’d upon by one part
of the world, was far from being deem’d so, by the other, upon the
single account of that _Investment._
Another objection, to all this remedy, is its want of universality;
forasmuch as the shaving part of it, upon which so much stress is laid,
by an unalterable law of nature excludes one half of the species
entirely from its use: all I can say is, that female writers, whether
of _England_, or of _France_, must e’en go without it——