_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 Mariæ_, 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 quædams, 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 _sphæra 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.