_A FARTHER DIGRESSION_.
IT is an unanswerable argument of a very refined age the wonderful
civilities that have passed of late years between the nation of authors
and that of readers. There can hardly pop out a play, a pamphlet, or a
poem without a preface full of acknowledgments to the world for the
general reception and applause they have given it, which the Lord knows
where, or when, or how, or from whom it received. In due deference to so
laudable a custom, I do here return my humble thanks to His Majesty and
both Houses of Parliament, to the Lords of the King’s most honourable
Privy Council, to the reverend the Judges, to the Clergy, and Gentry, and
Yeomanry of this land; but in a more especial manner to my worthy
brethren and friends at Will’s Coffee-house, and Gresham College, and
Warwick Lane, and Moorfields, and Scotland Yard, and Westminster Hall,
and Guildhall; in short, to all inhabitants and retainers whatsoever,
either in court, or church, or camp, or city, or country, for their
generosity and universal acceptance of this divine treatise. I accept
their approbation and good opinion with extreme gratitude, and to the
utmost of my poor capacity shall take hold of all opportunities to return
the obligation.
I am also happy that fate has flung me into so blessed an age for the
mutual felicity of booksellers and authors, whom I may safely affirm to
be at this day the two only satisfied parties in England. Ask an author
how his last piece has succeeded, “Why, truly he thanks his stars the
world has been very favourable, and he has not the least reason to
complain.” And yet he wrote it in a week at bits and starts, when he
could steal an hour from his urgent affairs, as it is a hundred to one
you may see further in the preface, to which he refers you, and for the
rest to the bookseller. There you go as a customer, and make the same
question, “He blesses his God the thing takes wonderful; he is just
printing a second edition, and has but three left in his shop.” “You
beat down the price; sir, we shall not differ,” and in hopes of your
custom another time, lets you have it as reasonable as you please; “And
pray send as many of your acquaintance as you will; I shall upon your
account furnish them all at the same rate.”
Now it is not well enough considered to what accidents and occasions the
world is indebted for the greatest part of those noble writings which
hourly start up to entertain it. If it were not for a rainy day, a
drunken vigil, a fit of the spleen, a course of physic, a sleepy Sunday,
an ill run at dice, a long tailor’s bill, a beggar’s purse, a factious
head, a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, and a just contempt of
learning,—but for these events, I say, and some others too long to recite
(especially a prudent neglect of taking brimstone inwardly), I doubt the
number of authors and of writings would dwindle away to a degree most
woeful to behold. To confirm this opinion, hear the words of the famous
troglodyte philosopher. “It is certain,” said he, “some grains of folly
are of course annexed as part in the composition of human nature; only
the choice is left us whether we please to wear them inlaid or embossed,
and we need not go very far to seek how that is usually determined, when
we remember it is with human faculties as with liquors, the lightest will
be ever at the top.”
There is in this famous island of Britain a certain paltry scribbler,
very voluminous, whose character the reader cannot wholly be a stranger
to. He deals in a pernicious kind of writings called “Second Parts,” and
usually passes under the name of “The Author of the First.” I easily
foresee that as soon as I lay down my pen this nimble operator will have
stole it, and treat me as inhumanly as he has already done Dr. Blackmore,
Lestrange, and many others who shall here be nameless. I therefore fly
for justice and relief into the hands of that great rectifier of saddles
and lover of mankind, Dr. Bentley, begging he will take this enormous
grievance into his most modern consideration; and if it should so happen
that the furniture of an ass in the shape of a second part must for my
sins be clapped, by mistake, upon my back, that he will immediately
please, in the presence of the world, to lighten me of the burthen, and
take it home to his own house till the true beast thinks fit to call for
it.
In the meantime, I do here give this public notice that my resolutions
are to circumscribe within this discourse the whole stock of matter I
have been so many years providing. Since my vein is once opened, I am
content to exhaust it all at a running, for the peculiar advantage of my
dear country, and for the universal benefit of mankind. Therefore,
hospitably considering the number of my guests, they shall have my whole
entertainment at a meal, and I scorn to set up the leavings in the
cupboard. What the guests cannot eat may be given to the poor, and the
dogs under the table may gnaw the bones {140}. This I understand for a
more generous proceeding than to turn the company’s stomachs by inviting
them again to-morrow to a scurvy meal of scraps.
If the reader fairly considers the strength of what I have advanced in
the foregoing section, I am convinced it will produce a wonderful
revolution in his notions and opinions, and he will be abundantly better
prepared to receive and to relish the concluding part of this miraculous
treatise. Readers may be divided into three classes—the superficial, the
ignorant, and the learned, and I have with much felicity fitted my pen to
the genius and advantage of each. The superficial reader will be
strangely provoked to laughter, which clears the breast and the lungs, is
sovereign against the spleen, and the most innocent of all diuretics.
The ignorant reader (between whom and the former the distinction is
extremely nice) will find himself disposed to stare, which is an
admirable remedy for ill eyes, serves to raise and enliven the spirits,
and wonderfully helps perspiration. But the reader truly learned,
chiefly for whose benefit I wake when others sleep, and sleep when others
wake, will here find sufficient matter to employ his speculations for the
rest of his life. It were much to be wished, and I do here humbly
propose for an experiment, that every prince in Christendom will take
seven of the deepest scholars in his dominions and shut them up close for
seven years in seven chambers, with a command to write seven ample
commentaries on this comprehensive discourse. I shall venture to affirm
that, whatever difference may be found in their several conjectures, they
will be all, without the least distortion, manifestly deducible from the
text. Meantime it is my earnest request that so useful an undertaking
may be entered upon (if their Majesties please) with all convenient
speed, because I have a strong inclination before I leave the world to
taste a blessing which we mysterious writers can seldom reach till we
have got into our graves, whether it is that fame being a fruit grafted
on the body, can hardly grow and much less ripen till the stock is in the
earth, or whether she be a bird of prey, and is lured among the rest to
pursue after the scent of a carcass, or whether she conceives her trumpet
sounds best and farthest when she stands on a tomb, by the advantage of a
rising ground and the echo of a hollow vault.
It is true, indeed, the republic of dark authors, after they once found
out this excellent expedient of dying, have been peculiarly happy in the
variety as well as extent of their reputation. For night being the
universal mother of things, wise philosophers hold all writings to be
fruitful in the proportion they are dark, and therefore the true
illuminated (that is to say, the darkest of all) have met with such
numberless commentators, whose scholiastic midwifery hath delivered them
of meanings that the authors themselves perhaps never conceived, and yet
may very justly be allowed the lawful parents of them, the words of such
writers being like seed, which, however scattered at random, when they
light upon a fruitful ground, will multiply far beyond either the hopes
or imagination of the sower.
And therefore, in order to promote so useful a work, I will here take
leave to glance a few innuendos that may be of great assistance to those
sublime spirits who shall be appointed to labour in a universal comment
upon this wonderful discourse. And first, I have couched a very profound
mystery in the number of 0’s multiplied by seven and divided by nine.
Also, if a devout brother of the Rosy Cross will pray fervently for
sixty-three mornings with a lively faith, and then transpose certain
letters and syllables according to prescription, in the second and fifth
section they will certainly reveal into a full receipt of the _opus
magnum_. Lastly, whoever will be at the pains to calculate the whole
number of each letter in this treatise, and sum up the difference exactly
between the several numbers, assigning the true natural cause for every
such difference, the discoveries in the product will plentifully reward
his labour. But then he must beware of Bythus and Sigè, and be sure not
to forget the qualities of Acamoth; _a cujus lacrymis humecta prodit
substantia_, _à risu lucida_, _à tristitiâ solida_, _et à timore
mobilis_, wherein Eugenius Philalethes {142} hath committed an
unpardonable mistake.