This piece constitutes Section X. of _The Tale of a Tub_.
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 burden, 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.[180] 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 o'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 timoré mobilis_, wherein Eugenius Philalethes[181] hath committed
an unpardonable mistake.
[Footnote 180: The bad critics.]
[Footnote 181: A name under which Thomas Vaughan wrote.]