_A TALE OF A TUB_.
AFTER so wide a compass as I have wandered, I do now gladly overtake and
close in with my subject, and shall henceforth hold on with it an even
pace to the end of my journey, except some beautiful prospect appears
within sight of my way, whereof, though at present I have neither warning
nor expectation, yet upon such an accident, come when it will, I shall
beg my reader’s favour and company, allowing me to conduct him through it
along with myself. For in writing it is as in travelling. If a man is
in haste to be at home (which I acknowledge to be none of my case, having
never so little business as when I am there), if his horse be tired with
long riding and ill ways, or be naturally a jade, I advise him clearly to
make the straightest and the commonest road, be it ever so dirty; but
then surely we must own such a man to be a scurvy companion at best. He
spatters himself and his fellow-travellers at every step. All their
thoughts, and wishes, and conversation turn entirely upon the subject of
their journey’s end, and at every splash, and plunge, and stumble they
heartily wish one another at the devil.
On the other side, when a traveller and his horse are in heart and
plight, when his purse is full and the day before him, he takes the road
only where it is clean or convenient, entertains his company there as
agreeably as he can, but upon the first occasion carries them along with
him to every delightful scene in view, whether of art, of Nature, or of
both; and if they chance to refuse out of stupidity or weariness, let
them jog on by themselves, and be d—n’d. He’ll overtake them at the next
town, at which arriving, he rides furiously through, the men, women, and
children run out to gaze, a hundred noisy curs run barking after him, of
which, if he honours the boldest with a lash of his whip, it is rather
out of sport than revenge. But should some sourer mongrel dare too near
an approach, he receives a salute on the chaps by an accidental stroke
from the courser’s heels, nor is any ground lost by the blow, which sends
him yelping and limping home.
I now proceed to sum up the singular adventures of my renowned Jack, the
state of whose dispositions and fortunes the careful reader does, no
doubt, most exactly remember, as I last parted with them in the
conclusion of a former section. Therefore, his next care must be from
two of the foregoing to extract a scheme of notions that may best fit his
understanding for a true relish of what is to ensue.
Jack had not only calculated the first revolution of his brain so
prudently as to give rise to that epidemic sect of Æolists, but
succeeding also into a new and strange variety of conceptions, the
fruitfulness of his imagination led him into certain notions which,
although in appearance very unaccountable, were not without their
mysteries and their meanings, nor wanted followers to countenance and
improve them. I shall therefore be extremely careful and exact in
recounting such material passages of this nature as I have been able to
collect either from undoubted tradition or indefatigable reading, and
shall describe them as graphically as it is possible, and as far as
notions of that height and latitude can be brought within the compass of
a pen. Nor do I at all question but they will furnish plenty of noble
matter for such whose converting imaginations dispose them to reduce all
things into types, who can make shadows—no thanks to the sun—and then
mould them into substances—no thanks to philosophy—whose peculiar talent
lies in fixing tropes and allegories to the letter, and refining what is
literal into figure and mystery.
Jack had provided a fair copy of his father’s will, engrossed in form
upon a large skin of parchment, and resolving to act the part of a most
dutiful son, he became the fondest creature of it imaginable. For
although, as I have often told the reader, it consisted wholly in certain
plain, easy directions about the management and wearing of their coats,
with legacies and penalties in case of obedience or neglect, yet he began
to entertain a fancy that the matter was deeper and darker, and therefore
must needs have a great deal more of mystery at the bottom. “Gentlemen,”
said he, “I will prove this very skin of parchment to be meat, drink, and
cloth, to be the philosopher’s stone and the universal medicine.” In
consequence of which raptures he resolved to make use of it in the most
necessary as well as the most paltry occasions of life. He had a way of
working it into any shape he pleased, so that it served him for a
nightcap when he went to bed, and for an umbrella in rainy weather. He
would lap a piece of it about a sore toe; or, when he had fits, burn two
inches under his nose; or, if anything lay heavy on his stomach, scrape
off and swallow as much of the powder as would lie on a silver penny—they
were all infallible remedies. With analogy to these refinements, his
common talk and conversation ran wholly in the praise of his Will, and he
circumscribed the utmost of his eloquence within that compass, not daring
to let slip a syllable without authority from thence. Once at a strange
house he was suddenly taken short upon an urgent juncture, whereon it may
not be allowed too particularly to dilate, and being not able to call to
mind, with that suddenness the occasion required, an authentic phrase for
demanding the way to the back, he chose rather, as the more prudent
course, to incur the penalty in such cases usually annexed; neither was
it possible for the united rhetoric of mankind to prevail with him to
make himself clean again, because, having consulted the will upon this
emergency, he met with a passage near the bottom (whether foisted in by
the transcriber is not known) which seemed to forbid it {145a}.
He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his meat, nor
could all the world persuade him, as the common phrase is, to eat his
victuals like a Christian {145b}.
He bore a strange kind of appetite to snap-dragon and to the livid snuffs
of a burning candle {146a}, which he would catch and swallow with an
agility wonderful to conceive; and by this procedure maintained a
perpetual flame in his belly, which issuing in a glowing steam from both
his eyes, as well as his nostrils and his mouth, made his head appear in
a dark night like the skull of an ass wherein a roguish boy hath conveyed
a farthing-candle, to the terror of his Majesty’s liege subjects.
Therefore he made use of no other expedient to light himself home, but
was wont to say that a wise man was his own lanthorn.
He would shut his eyes as he walked along the streets, and if he happened
to bounce his head against a post or fall into the kennel (as he seldom
missed either to do one or both), he would tell the gibing apprentices
who looked on that he submitted with entire resignation, as to a trip or
a blow of fate, with whom he found by long experience how vain it was
either to wrestle or to cuff, and whoever durst undertake to do either
would be sure to come off with a swingeing fall or a bloody nose. “It
was ordained,” said he {146b}, “some few days before the creation, that
my nose and this very post should have a rencounter, and therefore
Providence thought fit to send us both into the world in the same age,
and to make us countrymen and fellow-citizens. Now, had my eyes been
open, it is very likely the business might have been a great deal worse,
for how many a confounded slip is daily got by man with all his foresight
about him. Besides, the eyes of the understanding see best when those of
the senses are out of the way, and therefore blind men are observed to
tread their steps with much more caution, and conduct, and judgment than
those who rely with too much confidence upon the virtue of the visual
nerve, which every little accident shakes out of order, and a drop or a
film can wholly disconcert; like a lanthorn among a pack of roaring
bullies when they scour the streets, exposing its owner and itself to
outward kicks and buffets, which both might have escaped if the vanity of
appearing would have suffered them to walk in the dark. But further, if
we examine the conduct of these boasted lights, it will prove yet a great
deal worse than their fortune. It is true I have broke my nose against
this post, because Providence either forgot, or did not think it
convenient, to twitch me by the elbow and give me notice to avoid it.
But let not this encourage either the present age of posterity to trust
their noses unto the keeping of their eyes, which may prove the fairest
way of losing them for good and all. For, O ye eyes, ye blind guides,
miserable guardians are ye of our frail noses; ye, I say, who fasten upon
the first precipice in view, and then tow our wretched willing bodies
after you to the very brink of destruction. But alas! that brink is
rotten, our feet slip, and we tumble down prone into a gulf, without one
hospitable shrub in the way to break the fall—a fall to which not any
nose of mortal make is equal, except that of the giant Laurcalco {147a},
who was Lord of the Silver Bridge. Most properly, therefore, O eyes, and
with great justice, may you be compared to those foolish lights which
conduct men through dirt and darkness till they fall into a deep pit or a
noisome bog.”
This I have produced as a scantling of Jack’s great eloquence and the
force of his reasoning upon such abstruse matters.
He was, besides, a person of great design and improvement in affairs of
devotion, having introduced a new deity, who has since met with a vast
number of worshippers, by some called Babel, by others Chaos, who had an
ancient temple of Gothic structure upon Salisbury plain, famous for its
shrine and celebration by pilgrims.
When he had some roguish trick to play, he would down with his knees, up
with his eyes, and fall to prayers though in the midst of the kennel.
Then it was that those who understood his pranks would be sure to get far
enough out of his way; and whenever curiosity attracted strangers to
laugh or to listen, he would of a sudden bespatter them with mud.
In winter he went always loose and unbuttoned, and clad as thin as
possible to let in the ambient heat, and in summer lapped himself close
and thick to keep it out {147b}.
In all revolutions of government, he would make his court for the office
of hangman-general, and in the exercise of that dignity, wherein he was
very dexterous, would make use of no other vizard than a long prayer.
He had a tongue so musculous and subtile, that he could twist it up into
his nose and deliver a strange kind of speech from thence. He was also
the first in these kingdoms who began to improve the Spanish
accomplishment of braying; and having large ears perpetually exposed and
erected, he carried his art to such a perfection, that it was a point of
great difficulty to distinguish either by the view or the sound between
the original and the copy.
He was troubled with a disease the reverse to that called the stinging of
the tarantula, and would run dog-mad at the noise of music, especially a
pair of bagpipes {148a}. But he would cure himself again by taking two
or three turns in Westminster Hall, or Billingsgate, or in a
boarding-school, or the Royal Exchange, or a state coffee-house.
He was a person that feared no colours, but mortally hated all, and upon
that account bore a cruel aversion to painters, insomuch that in his
paroxysms as he walked the streets, he would have his pockets loaded with
stones to pelt at the signs {148b}.
Having from his manner of living frequent occasions to wash himself, he
would often leap over head and ears into the water, though it were in the
midst of the winter, but was always observed to come out again much
dirtier, if possible, than he went in {148c}.
He was the first that ever found out the secret of contriving a
soporiferous medicine to be conveyed in at the ears {148d}. It was a
compound of sulphur and balm of Gilead, with a little pilgrim’s salve.
He wore a large plaister of artificial caustics on his stomach, with the
fervour of which he could set himself a groaning like the famous board
upon application of a red-hot iron.
He would stand in the turning of a street, and calling to those who
passed by, would cry to one, “Worthy sir, do me the honour of a good slap
in the chaps;” to another, “Honest friend, pray favour me with a handsome
kick in the rear;” “Madam, shall I entreat a small box in the ear from
your ladyship’s fair hands?” “Noble captain, lend a reasonable thwack,
for the love of God, with that cane of yours over these poor shoulders.”
And when he had by such earnest solicitations made a shift to procure a
basting sufficient to swell up his fancy and his sides, he would return
home extremely comforted, and full of terrible accounts of what he had
undergone for the public good. “Observe this stroke,” said he, showing
his bare shoulders; “a plaguy janissary gave it me this very morning at
seven o’clock, as, with much ado, I was driving off the Great Turk.
Neighbours mine, this broken head deserves a plaister; had poor Jack been
tender of his noddle, you would have seen the Pope and the French King
long before this time of day among your wives and your warehouses. Dear
Christians, the Great Moghul was come as far as Whitechapel, and you may
thank these poor sides that he hath not—God bless us—already swallowed up
man, woman, and child.”
It was highly worth observing the singular effects of that aversion or
antipathy which Jack and his brother Peter seemed, even to affectation,
to bear towards each other. Peter had lately done some rogueries that
forced him to abscond, and he seldom ventured to stir out before night
for fear of bailiffs. Their lodgings were at the two most distant parts
of the town from each other, and whenever their occasions or humours
called them abroad, they would make choice of the oddest, unlikely times,
and most uncouth rounds that they could invent, that they might be sure
to avoid one another. Yet, after all this, it was their perpetual
fortune to meet, the reason of which is easy enough to apprehend, for the
frenzy and the spleen of both having the same foundation, we may look
upon them as two pair of compasses equally extended, and the fixed foot
of each remaining in the same centre, which, though moving contrary ways
at first, will be sure to encounter somewhere or other in the
circumference. Besides, it was among the great misfortunes of Jack to
bear a huge personal resemblance with his brother Peter. Their humour
and dispositions were not only the same, but there was a close analogy in
their shape, their size, and their mien; insomuch as nothing was more
frequent than for a bailiff to seize Jack by the shoulders and cry, “Mr.
Peter, you are the king’s prisoner;” or, at other times, for one of
Peter’s nearest friends to accost Jack with open arms: “Dear Peter, I am
glad to see thee; pray send me one of your best medicines for the worms.”
This, we may suppose, was a mortifying return of those pains and
proceedings Jack had laboured in so long, and finding how directly
opposite all his endeavours had answered to the sole end and intention
which he had proposed to himself, how could it avoid having terrible
effects upon a head and heart so furnished as his? However, the poor
remainders of his coat bore all the punishment. The orient sun never
entered upon his diurnal progress without missing a piece of it. He
hired a tailor to stitch up the collar so close that it was ready to
choke him, and squeezed out his eyes at such a rate as one could see
nothing but the white. What little was left of the main substance of the
coat he rubbed every day for two hours against a rough-cast wall, in
order to grind away the remnants of lace and embroidery, but at the same
time went on with so much violence that he proceeded a heathen
philosopher. Yet after all he could do of this kind, the success
continued still to disappoint his expectation, for as it is the nature of
rags to bear a kind of mock resemblance to finery, there being a sort of
fluttering appearance in both, which is not to be distinguished at a
distance in the dark or by short-sighted eyes, so in those junctures it
fared with Jack and his tatters, that they offered to the first view a
ridiculous flaunting, which, assisting the resemblance in person and air,
thwarted all his projects of separation, and left so near a similitude
between them as frequently deceived the very disciples and followers of
both . . . _Desunt nonnulla_, . . .
The old Sclavonian proverb said well that it is with men as with asses;
whoever would keep them fast must find a very good hold at their ears.
Yet I think we may affirm, and it hath been verified by repeated
experience, that—
“Effugiet tamen hæc sceleratus vincula Proteus.” {151a}
It is good, therefore, to read the maxims of our ancestors with great
allowances to times and persons; for if we look into primitive records we
shall find that no revolutions have been so great or so frequent as those
of human ears. In former days there was a curious invention to catch and
keep them, which I think we may justly reckon among the _artes perditæ_;
and how can it be otherwise, when in these latter centuries the very
species is not only diminished to a very lamentable degree, but the poor
remainder is also degenerated so far as to mock our skilfullest tenure?
For if only the slitting of one ear in a stag hath been found sufficient
to propagate the defect through a whole forest, why should we wonder at
the greatest consequences, from so many loppings and mutilations to which
the ears of our fathers and our own have been of late so much exposed?
It is true, indeed, that while this island of ours was under the dominion
of grace, many endeavours were made to improve the growth of ears once
more among us. The proportion of largeness was not only looked upon as
an ornament of the outward man, but as a type of grace in the inward.
Besides, it is held by naturalists that if there be a protuberancy of
parts in the superior region of the body, as in the ears and nose, there
must be a parity also in the inferior; and therefore in that truly pious
age the males in every assembly, according as they were gifted, appeared
very forward in exposing their ears to view, and the regions about them;
because Hippocrates {151b} tells us that when the vein behind the ear
happens to be cut, a man becomes a eunuch, and the females were nothing
backwarder in beholding and edifying by them; whereof those who had
already used the means looked about them with great concern, in hopes of
conceiving a suitable offspring by such a prospect; others, who stood
candidates for benevolence, found there a plentiful choice, and were sure
to fix upon such as discovered the largest ears, that the breed might not
dwindle between them. Lastly, the devouter sisters, who looked upon all
extraordinary dilatations of that member as protrusions of zeal, or
spiritual excrescences, were sure to honour every head they sat upon as
if they had been cloven tongues, but especially that of the preacher,
whose ears were usually of the prime magnitude, which upon that account
he was very frequent and exact in exposing with all advantages to the
people in his rhetorical paroxysms, turning sometimes to hold forth the
one, and sometimes to hold forth the other; from which custom the whole
operation of preaching is to this very day among their professors styled
by the phrase of holding forth.
Such was the progress of the saints for advancing the size of that
member, and it is thought the success would have been every way
answerable, if in process of time a cruel king had not arose, who raised
a bloody persecution against all ears above a certain standard {152a};
upon which some were glad to hide their flourishing sprouts in a black
border, others crept wholly under a periwig; some were slit, others
cropped, and a great number sliced off to the stumps. But of this more
hereafter in my general “History of Ears,” which I design very speedily
to bestow upon the public.
From this brief survey of the falling state of ears in the last age, and
the small care had to advance their ancient growth in the present, it is
manifest how little reason we can have to rely upon a hold so short, so
weak, and so slippery; and that whoever desires to catch mankind fast
must have recourse to some other methods. Now he that will examine human
nature with circumspection enough may discover several handles, whereof
the six {152b} senses afford one apiece, beside a great number that are
screwed to the passions, and some few riveted to the intellect. Among
these last, curiosity is one, and of all others affords the firmest
grasp; curiosity, that spur in the side, that bridle in the mouth, that
ring in the nose of a lazy, an impatient, and a grunting reader. By this
handle it is that an author should seize upon his readers; which as soon
as he hath once compassed, all resistance and struggling are in vain, and
they become his prisoners as close as he pleases, till weariness or
dulness force him to let go his grip.
And therefore I, the author of this miraculous treatise, having hitherto,
beyond expectation, maintained by the aforesaid handle a firm hold upon
my gentle readers, it is with great reluctance that I am at length
compelled to remit my grasp, leaving them in the perusal of what remains
to that natural oscitancy inherent in the tribe. I can only assure thee,
courteous reader, for both our comforts, that my concern is altogether
equal to thine, for my unhappiness in losing or mislaying among my papers
the remaining part of these memoirs, which consisted of accidents, turns,
and adventures, both new, agreeable, and surprising, and therefore
calculated in all due points to the delicate taste of this our noble age.
But alas! with my utmost endeavours I have been able only to retain a few
of the heads. Under which there was a full account how Peter got a
protection out of the King’s Bench, and of a reconcilement between Jack
and him, upon a design they had in a certain rainy night to trepan
brother Martin into a spunging-house, and there strip him to the skin.
How Martin, with much ado, showed them both a fair pair of heels. How a
new warrant came out against Peter, upon which Jack left him in the
lurch, stole his protection, and made use of it himself. How Jack’s
tatters came into fashion in court and city; how he got upon a great
horse and ate custard {153}. But the particulars of all these, with
several others which have now slid out of my memory, are lost beyond all
hopes of recovery. For which misfortune, leaving my readers to condole
with each other as far as they shall find it to agree with their several
constitutions, but conjuring them by all the friendship that has passed
between us, from the title-page to this, not to proceed so far as to
injure their healths for an accident past remedy, I now go on to the
ceremonial part of an accomplished writer, and therefore by a courtly
modern least of all others to be omitted.
THE CONCLUSION.
GOING too long is a cause of abortion as effectual, though not so
frequent, as going too short, and holds true especially in the labours of
the brain. Well fare the heart of that noble Jesuit {155} who first
adventured to confess in print that books must be suited to their several
seasons, like dress, and diet, and diversions; and better fare our noble
notion for refining upon this among other French modes. I am living fast
to see the time when a book that misses its tide shall be neglected as
the moon by day, or like mackerel a week after the season. No man has
more nicely observed our climate than the bookseller who bought the copy
of this work. He knows to a tittle what subjects will best go off in a
dry year, and which it is proper to expose foremost when the
weather-glass is fallen to much rain. When he had seen this treatise and
consulted his almanac upon it, he gave me to understand that he had
manifestly considered the two principal things, which were the bulk and
the subject, and found it would never take but after a long vacation, and
then only in case it should happen to be a hard year for turnips. Upon
which I desired to know, considering my urgent necessities, what he
thought might be acceptable this month. He looked westward and said, “I
doubt we shall have a bit of bad weather. However, if you could prepare
some pretty little banter (but not in verse), or a small treatise upon
the it would run like wildfire. But if it hold up, I have already hired
an author to write something against Dr. Bentley, which I am sure will
turn to account.”
At length we agreed upon this expedient, that when a customer comes for
one of these, and desires in confidence to know the author, he will tell
him very privately as a friend, naming whichever of the wits shall happen
to be that week in the vogue, and if Durfey’s last play should be in
course, I had as lieve he may be the person as Congreve. This I mention,
because I am wonderfully well acquainted with the present relish of
courteous readers, and have often observed, with singular pleasure, that
a fly driven from a honey-pot will immediately, with very good appetite,
alight and finish his meal on an excrement.
I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are
grown very numerous of late, and I know very well the judicious world is
resolved to list me in that number. I conceive, therefore, as to the
business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells. A
person with good eyes can see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any
water be there; and that often when there is nothing in the world at the
bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and half under
ground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason
than because it is wondrous dark.
I am now trying an experiment very frequent among modern authors, which
is to write upon nothing, when the subject is utterly exhausted to let
the pen still move on; by some called the ghost of wit, delighting to
walk after the death of its body. And to say the truth, there seems to
be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to
have done. By the time that an author has written out a book, he and his
readers are become old acquaintance, and grow very loathe to part; so
that I have sometimes known it to be in writing as in visiting, where the
ceremony of taking leave has employed more time than the whole
conversation before. The conclusion of a treatise resembles the
conclusion of human life, which has sometimes been compared to the end of
a feast, where few are satisfied to depart _ut plenus vitæ conviva_. For
men will sit down after the fullest meal, though it be only to dose or to
sleep out the rest of the day. But in this latter I differ extremely
from other writers, and shall be too proud if, by all my labours, I can
have any ways contributed to the repose of mankind in times so turbulent
and unquiet as these. Neither do I think such an employment so very
alien from the office of a wit as some would suppose; for among a very
polite nation in Greece {157} there were the same temples built and
consecrated to Sleep and the Muses, between which two deities they
believed the strictest friendship was established.
I have one concluding favour to request of my reader, that he will not
expect to be equally diverted and informed by every line or every page of
this discourse, but give some allowance to the author’s spleen and short
fits or intervals of dulness, as well as his own, and lay it seriously to
his conscience whether, if he were walking the streets in dirty weather
or a rainy day, he would allow it fair dealing in folks at their ease
from a window, to criticise his gate and ridicule his dress at such a
juncture.
In my disposure of employments of the brain, I have thought fit to make
invention the master, and to give method and reason the office of its
lackeys. The cause of this distribution was from observing it my
peculiar case to be often under a temptation of being witty upon occasion
where I could be neither wise nor sound, nor anything to the matter in
hand. And I am too much a servant of the modern way to neglect any such
opportunities, whatever pains or improprieties I may be at to introduce
them. For I have observed that from a laborious collection of seven
hundred and thirty-eight flowers and shining hints of the best modern
authors, digested with great reading into my book of common places, I
have not been able after five years to draw, hook, or force into common
conversation any more than a dozen. Of which dozen the one moiety failed
of success by being dropped among unsuitable company, and the other cost
me so many strains, and traps, and ambages to introduce, that I at length
resolved to give it over. Now this disappointment (to discover a
secret), I must own, gave me the first hint of setting up for an author,
and I have since found among some particular friends that it is become a
very general complaint, and has produced the same effects upon many
others. For I have remarked many a towardly word to be wholly neglected
or despised in discourse, which hath passed very smoothly with some
consideration and esteem after its preferment and sanction in print. But
now, since, by the liberty and encouragement of the press, I am grown
absolute master of the occasions and opportunities to expose the talents
I have acquired, I already discover that the issues of my observanda
begin to grow too large for the receipts. Therefore I shall here pause
awhile, till I find, by feeling the world’s pulse and my own, that it
will be of absolute necessity for us both to resume my pen.
* * * * *
[In some early editions of “The Tale of a Tub,” Swift added, under the
title of “What Follows after Section IX.,” the following sketch for a
“History of Martin.”]
THE HISTORY OF MARTIN.
_Giving an account of his departure from Jack_, _and their setting up for
themselves_, _on which account they were obliged to travel_, _and meet
many disasters_; _finding no shelter near Peter’s habitation_, _Martin
succeeds in the North_; _Peter thunders against Martin for the loss of
the large revenue he used to receive from thence_; _Harry Huff sent
Marlin a challenge in fight_, _which he received_; _Peter rewards Harry
for the pretended victory_, _which encouraged Harry to huff Peter also_;
_with many other extraordinary adventures of the said Martin in several
places with many considerable persons_.
_With a digression concerning the nature_, _usefulness_, _and necessity
of wars and quarrels_.
HOW Jack and Martin, being parted, set up each for himself. How they
travelled over hills and dales, met many disasters, suffered much from
the good cause, and struggled with difficulties and wants, not having
where to lay their head; by all which they afterwards proved themselves
to be right father’s sons, and Peter to be spurious. Finding no shelter
near Peter’s habitation, Martin travelled northwards, and finding the
Thuringians, a neighbouring people, disposed to change, he set up his
stage first among them, where, making it his business to cry down Peter’s
powders, plasters, salves, and drugs, which he had sold a long time at a
dear rate, allowing Martin none of the profit, though he had been often
employed in recommending and putting them off, the good people, willing
to save their pence, began to hearken to Martin’s speeches. How several
great lords took the hint, and on the same account declared for Martin;
particularly one who, not having had enough of one wife, wanted to marry
a second, and knowing Peter used not to grant such licenses but at a
swingeing price, he struck up a bargain with Martin, whom he found more
tractable, and who assured him he had the same power to allow such
things. How most of the other Northern lords, for their own private
ends, withdrew themselves and their dependants from Peter’s authority,
and closed in with Martin. How Peter, enraged at the loss of such large
territories, and consequently of so much revenue, thundered against
Martin, and sent out the strongest and most terrible of his bulls to
devour him; but this having no effect, and Martin defending himself
boldly and dexterously, Peter at last put forth proclamations declaring
Martin and all his adherents rebels and traitors, ordaining and requiring
all his loving subjects to take up arms, and to kill, burn, and destroy
all and every one of them, promising large rewards, &c., upon which
ensued bloody wars and desolation.
How Harry Huff {160a}, lord of Albion, one of the greatest bullies of
those days, sent a cartel to Martin to fight him on a stage at Cudgels,
quarter-staff, backsword, &c. Hence the origin of that genteel custom of
prize-fighting so well known and practised to this day among those polite
islanders, though unknown everywhere else. How Martin, being a bold,
blustering fellow, accepted the challenge; how they met and fought, to
the great diversion of the spectators; and, after giving one another
broken heads and many bloody wounds and bruises, how they both drew off
victorious, in which their example has been frequently imitated by great
clerks and others since that time. How Martin’s friends applauded his
victory, and how Lord Harry’s friends complimented him on the same score,
and particularly Lord Peter, who sent him a fine feather for his cap
{160b}, to be worn by him and his successors as a perpetual mark for his
bold defence of Lord Peter’s cause. How Harry, flushed with his
pretended victory over Martin, began to huff Peter also, and at last
downright quarrelled with him about a wench. How some of Lord Harry’s
tenants, ever fond of changes, began to talk kindly of Martin, for which
he mauled them soundly, as he did also those that adhered to Peter. How
he turned some out of house and hold, others he hanged or burnt, &c.
How Harry Huff, after a deal of blustering, wenching, and bullying, died,
and was succeeded by a good-natured boy {161a}, who, giving way to the
general bent of his tenants, allowed Martin’s notions to spread
everywhere, and take deep root in Ambition. How, after his death, the
farm fell into the hands of a lady {161b}, who was violently in love with
Lord Peter. How she purged the whole country with fire and sword,
resolved not to leave the name or remembrance of Martin. How Peter
triumphed, and set up shops again for selling his own powders, plasters,
and salves, which were now declared the only true ones, Martin’s being
all declared counterfeit. How great numbers of Martin’s friends left the
country, and, travelling up and down in foreign parts, grew acquainted
with many of Jack’s followers, and took a liking to many of their notions
and ways, which they afterwards brought back into ambition, now under
another landlady {161c}, more moderate and more cunning than the former.
How she endeavoured to keep friendship both with Peter and Martin, and
trimmed for some time between the two, not without countenancing and
assisting at the same time many of Jack’s followers; but finding, no
possibility of reconciling all the three brothers, because each would be
master, and allow no other salves, powders, or plasters to be used but
his own, she discarded all three, and set up a shop for those of her own
farm, well furnished with powders, plasters, salves, and all other drugs
necessary, all right and true, composed according to receipts made by
physicians and apothecaries of her own creating, which they extracted out
of Peter’s, and Martin’s, and Jack’s receipt-books, and of this medley or
hodge-podge made up a dispensatory of their own, strictly forbidding any
other to be used, and particularly Peter’s, from which the greatest part
of this new dispensatory was stolen. How the lady, farther to confirm
this change, wisely imitating her father, degraded Peter from the rank he
pretended as eldest brother, and set up herself in his place as head of
the family, and ever after wore her father’s old cap with the fine
feather he had got from Peter for standing his friend, which has likewise
been worn with no small ostentation to this day by all her successors,
though declared enemies to Peter. How Lady Bess and her physicians,
being told of many defects and imperfections in their new medley
dispensatory, resolve on a further alteration, to purge it from a great
deal of Peter’s trash that still remained in it, but were prevented by
her death. How she was succeeded by a North-Country farmer {162a}, who
pretended great skill in the managing of farms, though he could never
govern his own poor little farm, nor yet this large new one after he got
it. How this new landlord, to show his valour and dexterity, fought
against enchanters, weeds, giants, and windmills, and claimed great
honour for his victories. How his successor, no wiser than he,
occasioned great disorders by the new methods he took to manage his
farms. How he attempted to establish in his Northern farm the same
dispensatory {162b} used in the Southern, but miscarried, because Jack’s
powders, pills, salves, and plasters were there in great vogue.
How the author finds himself embarrassed for having introduced into his
history a new sect different from the three he had undertaken to treat
of; and how his inviolable respect to the sacred number three obliges him
to reduce these four, as he intends to do all other things, to that
number; and for that end to drop the former Martin and to substitute in
his place Lady Bess’s institution, which is to pass under the name of
Martin in the sequel of this true history. This weighty point being
cleared, the author goes on and describes mighty quarrels and squabbles
between Jack and Martin; how sometimes the one had the better and
sometimes the other, to the great desolation of both farms, till at last
both sides concur to hang up the landlord {162c}, who pretended to die a
martyr for Martin, though he had been true to neither side, and was
suspected by many to have a great affection for Peter.
A DIGRESSION ON THE NATURE, USEFULNESS, AND NECESSITY OF WARS AND
QUARRELS.
This being a matter of great consequence, the author intends to treat it
methodically and at large in a treatise apart, and here to give only some
hints of what his large treatise contains. The state of war, natural to
all creatures. War is an attempt to take by violence from others a part
of what they have and we want. Every man, fully sensible of his own
merit, and finding it not duly regarded by others, has a natural right to
take from them all that he thinks due to himself; and every creature,
finding its own wants more than those of others, has the same right to
take everything its nature requires. Brutes, much more modest in their
pretensions this way than men, and mean men more than great ones. The
higher one raises his pretensions this way, the more bustle he makes
about them, and the more success he has, the greater hero. Thus greater
souls, in proportion to their superior merit, claim a greater right to
take everything from meaner folks. This the true foundation of grandeur
and heroism, and of the distinction of degrees among men. War,
therefore, necessary to establish subordination, and to found cities,
kingdoms, &c., as also to purge bodies politic of gross humours. Wise
princes find it necessary to have wars abroad to keep peace at home.
War, famine, and pestilence, the usual cures for corruption in bodies
politic. A comparison of these three—the author is to write a panegyric
on each of them. The greatest part of mankind loves war more than peace.
They are but few and mean-spirited that live in peace with all men. The
modest and meek of all kinds always a prey to those of more noble or
stronger appetites. The inclination to war universal; those that cannot
or dare not make war in person employ others to do it for them. This
maintains bullies, bravoes, cut-throats, lawyers, soldiers, &c. Most
professions would be useless if all were peaceable. Hence brutes want
neither smiths nor lawyers, magistrates nor joiners, soldiers or
surgeons. Brutes having but narrow appetites, are incapable of carrying
on or perpetuating war against their own species, or of being led out in
troops and multitudes to destroy one another. These prerogatives proper
to man alone. The excellency of human nature demonstrated by the vast
train of appetites, passions, wants, &c., that attend it. This matter to
be more fully treated in the author’s panegyric on mankind.
THE HISTORY OF MARTIN—_Continued_.
How Jack, having got rid of the old landlord, set up another to his mind,
quarrelled with Martin, and turned him out of doors. How he pillaged all
his shops, and abolished his whole dispensatory. How the new landlord
{164a} laid about him, mauled Peter, worried Martin, and made the whole
neighbourhood tremble. How Jack’s friends fell out among themselves,
split into a thousand parties, turned all things topsy-turvy, till
everybody grew weary of them; and at last, the blustering landlord dying,
Jack was kicked out of doors, a new landlord {164b} brought in, and
Martin re-established. How this new landlord let Martin do what he
pleased, and Martin agreed to everything his pious landlord desired,
provided Jack might be kept low. Of several efforts Jack made to raise
up his head, but all in vain; till at last the landlord died, and was
succeeded by one {164c} who was a great friend to Peter, who, to humble
Martin, gave Jack some liberty. How Martin grew enraged at this, called
in a foreigner {164d} and turned out the landlord; in which Jack
concurred with Martin, because this landlord was entirely devoted to
Peter, into whose arms he threw himself, and left his country. How the
new landlord secured Martin in the full possession of his former rights,
but would not allow him to destroy Jack, who had always been his friend.
How Jack got up his head in the North, and put himself in possession of a
whole canton, to the great discontent of Martin, who finding also that
some of Jack’s friends were allowed to live and get their bread in the
south parts of the country, grew highly discontented with the new
landlord he had called in to his assistance. How this landlord kept
Martin in order, upon which he fell into a raging fever, and swore he
would hang himself or join in with Peter, unless Jack’s children were all
turned out to starve. Of several attempts to cure Martin, and make peace
between him and Jack, that they might unite against Peter; but all made
ineffectual by the great address of a number of Peter’s friends, that
herded among Martin’s, and appeared the most zealous for his interest.
How Martin, getting abroad in this mad fit, looked so like Peter in his
air and dress, and talked so like him, that many of the neighbours could
not distinguish the one from the other; especially when Martin went up
and down strutting in Peter’s armour, which he had borrowed to fight Jack
{165a}. What remedies were used to cure Martin’s distemper . . .
Here the author being seized with a fit of dulness, to which he is very
subject, after having read a poetical epistle addressed to . . . it
entirely composed his senses, so that he has not writ a line since.
_N.B._—Some things that follow after this are not in the MS., but seem to
have been written since, to fill up the place of what was not thought
convenient then to print.
A PROJECT FOR THE UNIVERSAL BENEFIT OF MANKIND.
The author, having laboured so long and done so much to serve and
instruct the public, without any advantage to himself, has at last
thought of a project which will tend to the great benefit of all mankind,
and produce a handsome revenue to the author. He intends to print by
subscription, in ninety-six large volumes in folio, an exact description
of _Terra Australis incognita_, collected with great care, and prints
from 999 learned and pious authors of undoubted veracity. The whole
work, illustrated with maps and cuts agreeable to the subject, and done
by the best masters, will cost but one guinea each volume to subscribers,
one guinea to be paid in advance, and afterwards a guinea on receiving
each volume, except the last. This work will be of great use for all
men, and necessary for all families, because it contains exact accounts
of all the provinces, colonies, and mansions of that spacious country,
where, by a general doom, all transgressors of the law are to be
transported; and every one having this work may choose out the fittest
and best place for himself, there being enough for all, so as every one
shall be fully satisfied.
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 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. Æolists
pretenders to inspiration.
{116} Herodotus, l. 4.—S.
{119a} Bombast von Hohenheim—Paracelsus.
{119b} Fanatical preachers of rebellion.
{120} Pausanias, l. 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-à-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 Aëre, 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} Père 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.