A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift - 2 of 3 - Audiobook
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SECTION III of A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
—A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CRITICS. Though I have been hitherto as cautious as
I could, upon all occasions, most nicely to follow the rules and methods of writing laid
down by the example of our illustrious moderns, yet has the unhappy shortness of my memory
led me into an error, from which I must immediately extricate myself, before I can decently pursue
my principal subject. I confess with shame it was an unpardonable omission to proceed
so far as I have already done before I had performed the due discourses, expostulatory,
supplicatory, or deprecatory, with my good lords the critics. Towards some atonement
for this grievous neglect, I do here make humbly bold to present them with a short account
of themselves and their art, by looking into the original and pedigree of the word, as
it is generally understood among us, and very briefly considering the ancient and present
state thereof. By the word critic, at this day so frequent
in all conversations, there have sometimes been distinguished three very different species
of mortal men, according as I have read in ancient books and pamphlets. For first, by
this term were understood such persons as invented or drew up rules for themselves and
the world, by observing which a careful reader might be able to pronounce upon the productions
of the learned, form his taste to a true relish of the sublime and the admirable, and divide
every beauty of matter or of style from the corruption that apes it. In their common perusal
of books, singling out the errors and defects, the nauseous, the fulsome, the dull, and the
impertinent, with the caution of a man that walks through Edinburgh streets in a morning,
who is indeed as careful as he can to watch diligently and spy out the filth in his way;
not that he is curious to observe the colour and complexion of the ordure or take its dimensions,
much less to be paddling in or tasting it, but only with a design to come out as cleanly
as he may. These men seem, though very erroneously, to have understood the appellation of critic
in a literal sense; that one principal part of his office was to praise and acquit, and
that a critic who sets up to read only for an occasion of censure and reproof is a creature
as barbarous as a judge who should take up a resolution to hang all men that came before
him upon a trial. Again, by the word critic have been meant
the restorers of ancient learning from the worms, and graves, and dust of manuscripts.
Now the races of these two have been for some ages utterly extinct, and besides to discourse
any further of them would not be at all to my purpose.
The third and noblest sort is that of the true critic, whose original is the most ancient
of all. Every true critic is a hero born, descending in a direct line from a celestial
stem, by Momus and Hybris, who begat Zoilus, who begat Tigellius, who begat Etcaetera the
elder, who begat Bentley, and Rymer, and Wotton, and Perrault, and Dennis, who begat Etcaetera
the younger. And these are the critics from whom the commonwealth
of learning has in all ages received such immense benefits, that the gratitude of their
admirers placed their origin in heaven, among those of Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, and other
great deservers of mankind. But heroic virtue itself hath not been exempt from the obloquy
of evil tongues. For it hath been objected that those ancient heroes, famous for their
combating so many giants, and dragons, and robbers, were in their own persons a greater
nuisance to mankind than any of those monsters they subdued; and therefore, to render their
obligations more complete, when all other vermin were destroyed, should in conscience
have concluded with the same justice upon themselves, as Hercules most generously did,
and hath upon that score procured for himself more temples and votaries than the best of
his fellows. For these reasons I suppose it is why some have conceived it would be very
expedient for the public good of learning that every true critic, as soon as he had
finished his task assigned, should immediately deliver himself up to ratsbane or hemp, or
from some convenient altitude, and that no man's pretensions to so illustrious a character
should by any means be received before that operation was performed.
Now, from this heavenly descent of criticism, and the close analogy it bears to heroic virtue,
it is easy to assign the proper employment of a true, ancient, genuine critic: which
is, to travel through this vast world of writings; to peruse and hunt those monstrous faults
bred within them; to drag out the lurking errors, like Cacus from his den; to multiply
them like Hydra's heads; and rake them together like Augeas's dung; or else to drive away
a sort of dangerous fowl who have a perverse inclination to plunder the best branches of
the tree of knowledge, like those Stymphalian birds that ate up the fruit.
These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a
discoverer and collector of writers' faults; which may be further put beyond dispute by
the following demonstration:- That whoever will examine the writings in all kinds wherewith
this ancient sect hath honoured the world, shall immediately find from the whole thread
and tenor of them that the ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken
up with the faults, and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers, and let the
subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and
replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad does
of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole appears to be nothing else
but an abstract of the criticisms themselves have made.
Having thus briefly considered the original and office of a critic, as the word is understood
in its most noble and universal acceptation, I proceed to refute the objections of those
who argue from the silence and pretermission of authors, by which they pretend to prove
that the very art of criticism, as now exercised, and by me explained, is wholly modern, and
consequently that the critics of Great Britain and France have no title to an original so
ancient and illustrious as I have deduced. Now, if I can clearly make out, on the contrary,
that the most ancient writers have particularly described both the person and the office of
a true critic agreeable to the definition laid down by me, their grand objection—from
the silence of authors—will fall to the ground.
I confess to have for a long time borne a part in this general error, from which I should
never have acquitted myself but through the assistance of our noble moderns, whose most
edifying volumes I turn indefatigably over night and day, for the improvement of my mind
and the good of my country. These have with unwearied pains made many useful searches
into the weak sides of the ancients, and given us a comprehensive list of them. Besides,
they have proved beyond contradiction that the very finest things delivered of old have
been long since invented and brought to light by much later pens, and that the noblest discoveries
those ancients ever made in art or nature have all been produced by the transcending
genius of the present age, which clearly shows how little merit those ancients can justly
pretend to, and takes off that blind admiration paid them by men in a corner, who have the
unhappiness of conversing too little with present things. Reflecting maturely upon all
this, and taking in the whole compass of human nature, I easily concluded that these ancients,
highly sensible of their many imperfections, must needs have endeavoured, from some passages
in their works, to obviate, soften, or divert the censorious reader, by satire or panegyric
upon the true critics, in imitation of their masters, the moderns. Now, in the commonplaces
of both these I was plentifully instructed by a long course of useful study in prefaces
and prologues, and therefore immediately resolved to try what I could discover of either, by
a diligent perusal of the most ancient writers, and especially those who treated of the earliest
times. Here I found, to my great surprise, that although
they all entered upon occasion into particular descriptions of the true critic, according
as they were governed by their fears or their hopes, yet whatever they touched of that kind
was with abundance of caution, adventuring no further than mythology and hieroglyphic.
This, I suppose, gave ground to superficial readers for urging the silence of authors
against the antiquity of the true critic, though the types are so apposite, and the
applications so necessary and natural, that it is not easy to conceive how any reader
of modern eye and taste could overlook them. I shall venture from a great number to produce
a few which I am very confident will put this question beyond doubt.
It well deserves considering that these ancient writers, in treating enigmatically upon this
subject, have generally fixed upon the very same hieroglyph, varying only the story according
to their affections or their wit. For first, Pausanias is of opinion that the perfection
of writing correct was entirely owing to the institution of critics, and that he can possibly
mean no other than the true critic is, I think, manifest enough from the following description.
He says they were a race of men who delighted to nibble at the superfluities and excrescences
of books, which the learned at length observing, took warning of their own accord to lop the
luxuriant, the rotten, the dead, the sapless, and the overgrown branches from their works.
But now all this he cunningly shades under the following allegory: That the Nauplians
in Argia learned the art of pruning their vines by observing that when an *** had browsed
upon one of them, it thrived the better and bore fairer fruit. But Herodotus holding the
very same hieroglyph, speaks much plainer and almost in terminis. He hath been so bold
as to tax the true critics of ignorance and malice, telling us openly, for I think nothing
can be plainer, that in the western part of Libya there were *** with horns, upon which
relation Ctesias yet refines, mentioning the very same animal about India; adding, that
whereas all other *** wanted a gall, these horned ones were so redundant in that part
that their flesh was not to be eaten because of its extreme bitterness.
Now, the reason why those ancient writers treated this subject only by types and figures
was because they durst not make open attacks against a party so potent and so terrible
as the critics of those ages were, whose very voice was so dreadful that a legion of authors
would tremble and drop their pens at the sound. For so Herodotus tells us expressly in another
place how a vast army of Scythians was put to flight in a panic terror by the braying
of an ***. From hence it is conjectured by certain profound philologers, that the great
awe and reverence paid to a true critic by the writers of Britain have been derived to
us from those our Scythian ancestors. In short, this dread was so universal, that in process
of time those authors who had a mind to publish their sentiments more freely in describing
the true critics of their several ages, were forced to leave off the use of the former
hieroglyph as too nearly approaching the prototype, and invented other terms instead thereof that
were more cautious and mystical. So Diodorus, speaking to the same purpose, ventures no
farther than to say that in the mountains of Helicon there grows a certain weed which
bears a flower of so damned a scent as to poison those who offer to smell it. Lucretius
gives exactly the same relation. "Est etiam in magnis Heliconis montibus arbos, Floris
odore hominem retro consueta necare."—Lib. 6. But Ctesias, whom we lately quoted, has
been a great deal bolder; he had been used with much severity by the true critics of
his own age, and therefore could not forbear to leave behind him at least one deep mark
of his vengeance against the whole tribe. His meaning is so near the surface that I
wonder how it possibly came to be overlooked by those who deny the antiquity of the true
critics. For pretending to make a description of many strange animals about India, he has
set down these remarkable words. "Among the rest," says he, "there is a serpent that wants
teeth, and consequently cannot bite, but if its vomit (to which it is much addicted) happens
to fall upon anything, a certain rottenness or corruption ensues. These serpents are generally
found among the mountains where jewels grow, and they frequently emit a poisonous juice,
whereof whoever drinks, that person's brain flies out of his nostrils."
There was also among the ancients a sort of critic, not distinguished in specie from the
former but in growth or degree, who seem to have been only the tyros or junior scholars,
yet because of their differing employments they are frequently mentioned as a sect by
themselves. The usual exercise of these young students was to attend constantly at theatres,
and learn to spy out the worst parts of the play, whereof they were obliged carefully
to take note, and render a rational account to their tutors. Fleshed at these smaller
sports, like young wolves, they grew up in time to be nimble and strong enough for hunting
down large game. For it has been observed, both among ancients and moderns, that a true
critic has one quality in common with a *** and an alderman, never to change his title
or his nature; that a grey critic has been certainly a green one, the perfections and
acquirements of his age being only the improved talents of his youth, like hemp, which some
naturalists inform us is bad for suffocations, though taken but in the seed. I esteem the
invention, or at least the refinement of prologues, to have been owing to these younger proficients,
of whom Terence makes frequent and honourable mention, under the name of Malevoli.
Now it is certain the institution of the true critics was of absolute necessity to the commonwealth
of learning. For all human actions seem to be divided like Themistocles and his company.
One man can fiddle, and another can make a small town a great city; and he that cannot
do either one or the other deserves to be kicked out of the creation. The avoiding of
which penalty has doubtless given the first birth to the nation of critics, and withal
an occasion for their secret detractors to report that a true critic is a sort of mechanic
set up with a stock and tools for his trade, at as little expense as a tailor; and that
there is much analogy between the utensils and abilities of both. That the "Tailor's
Hell" is the type of a critic's commonplace-book, and his wit and learning held forth by the
goose. That it requires at least as many of these to the making up of one scholar as of
the others to the composition of a man. That the valour of both is equal, and their weapons
near of a size. Much may be said in answer to these invidious reflections; and I can
positively affirm the first to be a falsehood: for, on the contrary, nothing is more certain
than that it requires greater layings out to be free of the critic's company than of
any other you can name. For as to be a true beggar, it will cost the richest candidate
every groat he is worth, so before one can commence a true critic, it will cost a man
all the good qualities of his mind, which perhaps for a less purchase would be thought
but an indifferent bargain. Having thus amply proved the antiquity of
criticism and described the primitive state of it, I shall now examine the present condition
of this Empire, and show how well it agrees with its ancient self. A certain author, whose
works have many ages since been entirely lost, does in his fifth book and eighth chapter
say of critics that "their writings are the mirrors of learning." This I understand in
a literal sense, and suppose our author must mean that whoever designs to be a perfect
writer must inspect into the books of critics, and correct his inventions there as in a mirror.
Now, whoever considers that the mirrors of the ancients were made of brass and fine mercurio,
may presently apply the two principal qualifications of a true modern critic, and consequently
must needs conclude that these have always been and must be for ever the same. For brass
is an emblem of duration, and when it is skilfully burnished will cast reflections from its own
superficies without any assistance of mercury from behind. All the other talents of a critic
will not require a particular mention, being included or easily deducible to these. However,
I shall conclude with three maxims, which may serve both as characteristics to distinguish
a true modern critic from a pretender, and will be also of admirable use to those worthy
spirits who engage in so useful and honourable an art.
The first is, that criticism, contrary to all other faculties of the intellect, is ever
held the truest and best when it is the very first result of the critic's mind; as fowlers
reckon the first aim for the surest, and seldom fail of missing the mark if they stay not
for a second. Secondly, the true critics are known by their
talent of swarming about the noblest writers, to which they are carried merely by instinct,
as a rat to the best cheese, or a wasp to the fairest fruit. So when the king is a horseback
he is sure to be the dirtiest person of the company, and they that make their court best
are such as bespatter him most. Lastly, a true critic in the perusal of a
book is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests
fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones.
Thus much I think is sufficient to serve by way of address to my patrons, the true modern
critics, and may very well atone for my past silence, as well as that which I am like to
observe for the future. I hope I have deserved so well of their whole body as to meet with
generous and tender usage at their hands. Supported by which expectation I go on boldly
to pursue those adventures already so happily begun.
End of Section III
SECTION IV of A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
I have now with much pains and study conducted the reader to a period where he must expect
to hear of great revolutions. For no sooner had our learned brother, so often mentioned,
got a warm house of his own over his head, than he began to look big and to take mightily
upon him, insomuch that unless the gentle reader out of his great candour will please
a little to exalt his idea, I am afraid he will henceforth hardly know the hero of the
play when he happens to meet him, his part, his dress, and his mien being so much altered.
He told his brothers he would have them to know that he was their elder, and consequently
his father's sole heir; nay, a while after, he would not allow them to call him brother,
but Mr. Peter; and then he must be styled Father Peter, and sometimes My Lord Peter.
To support this grandeur, which he soon began to consider could not be maintained without
a better fonde than what he was born to, after much thought he cast about at last to turn
projector and virtuoso, wherein he so well succeeded, that many famous discoveries, projects,
and machines which bear great vogue and practice at present in the world, are owing entirely
to Lord Peter's invention. I will deduce the best account I have been able to collect of
the chief amongst them, without considering much the order they came out in, because I
think authors are not well agreed as to that point.
I hope when this treatise of mine shall be translated into foreign languages (as I may
without vanity affirm that the labour of collecting, the faithfulness in recounting, and the great
usefulness of the matter to the public, will amply deserve that justice), that of the several
Academies abroad, especially those of France and Italy, will favourably accept these humble
offers for the advancement of universal knowledge. I do also advertise the most reverend fathers
the Eastern missionaries that I have purely for their sakes made use of such words and
phrases as will best admit an easy turn into any of the Oriental languages, especially
the Chinese. And so I proceed with great content of mind upon reflecting how much emolument
this whole globe of earth is like to reap by my labours.
The first undertaking of Lord Peter was to purchase a large continent, lately said to
have been discovered in Terra Australis incognita. This tract of land he bought at a very great
pennyworth from the discoverers themselves (though some pretended to doubt whether they
had ever been there), and then retailed it into several cantons to certain dealers, who
carried over colonies, but were all shipwrecked in the voyage; upon which Lord Peter sold
the said continent to other customers again and again, and again and again, with the same
success. The second project I shall mention was his
sovereign remedy for the worms, especially those in the spleen. The patient was to eat
nothing after supper for three nights; as soon as he went to bed, he was carefully to
lie on one side, and when he grew weary, to turn upon the other. He must also duly confine
his two eyes to the same object, and by no means break wind at both ends together without
manifest occasion. These prescriptions diligently observed, the worms would void insensibly
by perspiration ascending through the brain. A third invention was the erecting of a whispering-office
for the public good and ease of all such as are hypochondriacal or troubled with the cholic,
as likewise of all eavesdroppers, physicians, midwives, small politicians, friends fallen
out, repeating poets, lovers happy or in despair, bawds, privy-counsellors, pages, parasites
and buffoons, in short, of all such as are in danger of bursting with too much wind.
An ***'s head was placed so conveniently, that the party affected might easily with
his mouth accost either of the animal's ears, which he was to apply close for a certain
space, and by a fugitive faculty peculiar to the ears of that animal, receive immediate
benefit, either by eructation, or expiration, or evomition.
Another very beneficial project of Lord Peter's was an office of insurance for tobacco-pipes,
martyrs of the modern zeal, volumes of poetry, shadows . . . . and rivers, that these, nor
any of these, shall receive damage by fire. From whence our friendly societies may plainly
find themselves to be only transcribers from this original, though the one and the other
have been of great benefit to the undertakers as well as of equal to the public.
Lord Peter was also held the original author of puppets and raree- shows, the great usefulness
whereof being so generally known, I shall not enlarge farther upon this particular.
But another discovery for which he was much renowned was his famous universal pickle.
For having remarked how your common pickle in use among housewives was of no farther
benefit than to preserve dead flesh and certain kinds of vegetables, Peter with great cost
as well as art had contrived a pickle proper for houses, gardens, towns, men, women, children,
and cattle, wherein he could preserve them as sound as insects in amber. Now this pickle
to the taste, the smell, and the sight, appeared exactly the same with what is in common service
for beef, and butter, and herrings (and has been often that way applied with great success),
but for its may sovereign virtues was quite a different thing. For Peter would put in
a certain quantity of his powder pimperlim-***, after which it never failed of success. The
operation was performed by spargefaction in a proper time of the moon. The patient who
was to be pickled, if it were a house, would infallibly be preserved from all spiders,
rats, and weasels; if the party affected were a dog, he should be exempt from mange, and
madness, and hunger. It also infallibly took away all scabs and lice, and scalled heads
from children, never hindering the patient from any duty, either at bed or board.
But of all Peter's rarities, he most valued a certain set of bulls, whose race was by
great fortune preserved in a lineal descent from those that guarded the golden-fleece.
Though some who pretended to observe them curiously doubted the breed had not been kept
entirely chaste, because they had degenerated from their ancestors in some qualities, and
had acquired others very extraordinary, but a foreign mixture. The bulls of Colchis are
recorded to have brazen feet; but whether it happened by ill pasture and running, by
an alloy from intervention of other parents from stolen intrigues; whether a weakness
in their progenitors had impaired the seminal virtue, or by a decline necessary through
a long course of time, the originals of nature being depraved in these latter sinful ages
of the world— whatever was the cause, it is certain that Lord Peter's bulls were extremely
vitiated by the rust of time in the metal of their feet, which was now sunk into common
lead. However, the terrible roaring peculiar to their lineage was preserved, as likewise
that faculty of breathing out fire from their nostrils; which notwithstanding many of their
detractors took to be a feat of art, and to be nothing so terrible as it appeared, proceeding
only from their usual course of diet, which was of squibs and crackers. However, they
had two peculiar marks which extremely distinguished them from the bulls of Jason, and which I
have not met together in the description of any other monster beside that in. Horace,
"Varias inducere plumas," and "Atrum definit in piscem." For these had fishes tails, yet
upon occasion could outfly any bird in the air. Peter put these bulls upon several employs.
Sometimes he would set them a roaring to fright naughty boys and make them quiet. Sometimes
he would send them out upon errands of great importance, where it is wonderful to recount,
and perhaps the cautious reader may think much to believe it; an appetitus sensibilis
deriving itself through the whole family from their noble ancestors, guardians of the Golden
Fleece, they continued so extremely fond of gold, that if Peter sent them abroad, though
it were only upon a compliment, they would roar, and spit, and belch, and snivel out
fire, and keep a perpetual coil till you flung them a bit of gold; but then pulveris exigui
jactu, they would grow calm and quiet as lambs. In short, whether by secret connivance or
encouragement from their master, or out of their own liquorish affection to gold, or
both, it is certain they were no better than a sort of sturdy, swaggering beggars; and
where they could not prevail to get an alms, would make women miscarry and children fall
into fits; who to this very day usually call sprites and hobgoblins by the name of bull-beggars.
They grew at last so very troublesome to the neighbourhood, that some gentlemen of the
North-West got a parcel of right English bull-dogs, and baited them so terribly, that they felt
it ever after. I must needs mention one more of Lord Peter's
projects, which was very extraordinary, and discovered him to be master of a high reach
and profound invention. Whenever it happened that any rogue of Newgate was condemned to
be hanged, Peter would offer him a pardon for a certain sum of money, which when the
poor caitiff had made all shifts to scrape up and send, his lordship would return a piece
of paper in this form:- "To all mayors, sheriffs, jailors, constables, bailiffs, hangmen, &c.
Whereas we are informed that A. B. remains in the hands of you, or any of you, under
the sentence of death. We will and command you, upon sight hereof, to let the said prisoner
depart to his own habitation, whether he stands condemned for ***, sodomy, ***, sacrilege,
***, treason, blasphemy, &c., for which this shall be your sufficient warrant. And
it you fail hereof, G—d—mn you and yours to all eternity. And so we bid you heartily
farewell. Your most humble man's man, "EMPEROR PETER." The wretches trusting to
this lost their lives and money too. I desire of those whom the learned among posterity
will appoint for commentators upon this elaborate treatise, that they will proceed with great
caution upon certain dark points, wherein all who are not vere adepti may be in danger
to form rash and hasty conclusions, especially in some mysterious paragraphs, where certain
arcana are joined for brevity sake, which in the operation must be divided. And I am
certain that future sons of art will return large thanks to my memory for so grateful,
so useful an inmuendo. It will be no difficult part to persuade the
reader that so many worthy discoveries met with great success in the world; though I
may justly assure him that I have related much the smallest number; my design having
been only to single out such as will be of most benefit for public imitation, or which
best served to give some idea of the reach and wit of the inventor. And therefore it
need not be wondered if by this time Lord Peter was become exceeding rich. But alas!
he had kept his brain so long and so violently upon the rack, that at last it shook itself,
and began to turn round for a little ease. In short, what with pride, projects, and knavery,
poor Peter was grown distracted, and conceived the strangest imaginations in the world. In
the height of his fits (as it is usual with those who run mad out of pride) he would call
himself God Almighty, and sometimes monarch of the universe. I have seen him (says my
author) take three old high-crowned hats, and clap them all on his head, three storey
high, with a huge bunch of keys at his girdle, and an angling rod in his hand. In which guise,
whoever went to take him by the hand in the way of salutation, Peter with much grace,
like a well-educated spaniel, would present them with his foot, and if they refused his
civility, then he would raise it as high as their chops, and give them a damned kick on
the mouth, which hath ever since been called a salute. Whoever walked by without paying
him their compliments, having a wonderful strong breath, he would blow their hats off
into the dirt. Meantime his affairs at home went upside down, and his two brothers had
a wretched time, where his first boutade was to kick both their wives one morning out of
doors, and his own too, and in their stead gave orders to pick up the first three strollers
could be met with in the streets. A while after he nailed up the cellar door, and would
not allow his brothers a drop of drink to their victuals. Dining one day at an alderman's
in the city, Peter observed him expatiating, after the manner of his brethren in the praises
of his sirloin of beef. "Beef," said the sage magistrate, "is the king of meat; beef comprehends
in it the quintessence of partridge, and quail, and venison, and pheasant, and plum-pudding,
and custard." When Peter came home, he would needs take the fancy of cooking up this doctrine
into use, and apply the precept in default of a sirloin to his brown loaf. "Bread," says
he, "dear brothers, is the staff of life, in which bread is contained inclusive the
quintessence of beef, mutton, veal, venison, partridge, plum-pudding, and custard, and
to render all complete, there is intermingled a due quantity of water, whose crudities are
also corrected by yeast or barm, through which means it becomes a wholesome fermented liquor,
diffused through the mass of the bread." Upon the strength of these conclusions, next day
at dinner was the brown loaf served up in all the formality of a City feast. "Come,
brothers," said Peter, "fall to, and spare not; here is excellent good mutton; or hold,
now my hand is in, I'll help you." At which word, in much ceremony, with fork and knife,
he carves out two good slices of a loaf, and presents each on a plate to his brothers.
The elder of the two, not suddenly entering into Lord Peter's conceit, began with very
civil language to examine the mystery. "My lord," said he, "I doubt, with great submission,
there may be some mistake." "What!" says Peter, "you are pleasant; come then, let us hear
this jest your head is so big with." "None in the world, my Lord; but unless I am very
much deceived, your Lordship was pleased a while ago to let fall a word about mutton,
and I would be glad to see it with all my heart." "How," said Peter, appearing in great
surprise, "I do not comprehend this at all;" upon which the younger, interposing to set
the business right, "My Lord," said he, "my brother, I suppose, is hungry, and longs for
the mutton your Lordship hath promised us to dinner." "Pray," said Peter, "take me along
with you, either you are both mad, or disposed to be merrier than I approve of; if you there
do not like your piece, I will carve you another, though I should take that to be the choice
bit of the whole shoulder." "What then, my Lord?" replied the first; "it seems this is
a shoulder of mutton all this while." "Pray, sir," says Peter, "eat your victuals and leave
off your impertinence, if you please, for I am not disposed to relish it at present;"
but the other could not forbear, being over-provoked at the affected seriousness of Peter's countenance.
"My Lord," said he, "I can only say, that to my eyes and fingers, and teeth and nose,
it seems to be nothing but a crust of bread." Upon which the second put in his word. "I
never saw a piece of mutton in my life so nearly resembling a slice from a twelve-penny
loaf." "Look ye, gentlemen," cries Peter in a rage, "to convince you what a couple of
blind, positive, ignorant, wilful puppies you are, I will use but this plain argument;
by G—-, it is true, good, natural mutton as any in Leadenhall Market; and G—- confound
you both eternally if you offer to believe otherwise." Such a thundering proof as this
left no further room for objection; the two unbelievers began to gather and pocket up
their mistake as hastily as they could. "Why, truly," said the first, "upon more mature
consideration"—"Ay," says the other, interrupting him, "now I have thought better on the thing,
your Lordship seems to have a great deal of reason." "Very well," said Peter. "Here, boy,
fill me a beer-glass of claret. Here's to you both with all my heart." The two brethren,
much delighted to see him so readily appeased, returned their most humble thanks, and said
they would be glad to pledge his Lordship. "That you shall," said Peter, "I am not a
person to refuse you anything that is reasonable; wine moderately taken is a cordial. Here is
a glass apiece for you; it is true natural juice from the grape; none of your damned
vintner's brewings." Having spoke thus, he presented to each of them another large dry
crust, bidding them drink it off, and not be bashful, for it would do them no hurt.
The two brothers, after having performed the usual office in such delicate conjunctures,
of staring a sufficient period at Lord Peter and each other, and finding how matters were
like to go, resolved not to enter on a new dispute, but let him carry the point as he
pleased; for he was now got into one of his mad fits, and to argue or expostulate further
would only serve to render him a hundred times more untractable.
I have chosen to relate this worthy matter in all its circumstances, because it gave
a principal occasion to that great and famous rupture which happened about the same time
among these brethren, and was never afterwards made up. But of that I shall treat at large
in another section. However, it is certain that Lord Peter, even
in his lucid intervals, was very lewdly given in his common conversation, extreme wilful
and positive, and would at any time rather argue to the death than allow himself to be
once in an error. Besides, he had an abominable faculty of telling huge palpable lies upon
all occasions, and swearing not only to the truth, but cursing the whole company to hell
if they pretended to make the least scruple of believing him. One time he swore he had
a cow at home which gave as much milk at a meal as would fill three thousand churches,
and what was yet more extraordinary, would never turn sour. Another time he was telling
of an old sign-post that belonged to his father, with nails and timber enough on it to build
sixteen large men-of-war. Talking one day of Chinese waggons, which were made so light
as to sail over mountains, "Z—-nds," said Peter, "where's the wonder of that? By G—-,
I saw a large house of lime and stone travel over sea and land (granting that it stopped
sometimes to bait) above two thousand German leagues." And that which was the good of it,
he would swear desperately all the while that he never told a lie in his life, and at every
word: "By G—— gentlemen, I tell you nothing but the truth, and the d—-l broil them eternally
that will not believe me." In short, Peter grew so scandalous that all
the neighbourhood began in plain words to say he was no better than a knave; and his
two brothers, long weary of his ill-usage, resolved at last to leave him; but first they
humbly desired a copy of their father's will, which had now lain by neglected time out of
mind. Instead of granting this request, he called them rogues, traitors, and the rest
of the vile names he could muster up. However, while he was abroad one day upon his projects,
the two youngsters watched their opportunity, made a shift to come at the will, and took
a copia vera, by which they presently saw how grossly they had been abused, their father
having left them equal heirs, and strictly commanded that whatever they got should lie
in common among them all. Pursuant to which, their next enterprise was to break open the
cellar-door and get a little good drink to spirit and comfort their hearts. In copying
the will, they had met another precept against ***, divorce, and separate maintenance;
upon which, their next work was to discard their concubines and send for their wives.
Whilst all this was in agitation, there enters a solicitor from Newgate, desiring Lord Peter
would please to procure a pardon for a thief that was to be hanged to-morrow. But the two
brothers told him he was a coxcomb to seek pardons from a fellow who deserved to be hanged
much better than his client, and discovered all the method of that imposture in the same
form I delivered it a while ago, advising the solicitor to put his friend upon obtaining
a pardon from the king. In the midst of all this platter and revolution in comes Peter
with a file of dragoons at his heels, and gathering from all hands what was in the wind,
he and his gang, after several millions of scurrilities and curses not very important
here to repeat, by main force very fairly kicks them both out of doors, and would never
let them come under his roof from that day to this.
End of Section IV
SECTION V of A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
—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 Mariae, 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 quaedams, 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, 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. He is also quite mistaken about
the sphaera 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.
End of Section V
SECTION VI of A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
We left Lord Peter in open rupture with his two brethren, both for ever discarded from
his house, and resigned to the wide world with little or nothing to trust to. Which
are circumstances that render them proper subjects for the charity of a writer's pen
to work on, scenes of misery ever affording the fairest harvest for great adventures.
And in this the world may perceive the difference between the integrity of a generous Author
and that of a common friend. The latter is observed to adhere close in prosperity, but
on the decline of fortune to drop suddenly off; whereas the generous author, just on
the contrary, finds his hero on the dunghill, from thence, by gradual steps, raises him
to a throne, and then immediately withdraws, expecting not so much as thanks for his pains;
in imitation of which example I have placed Lord Peter in a noble house, given him a title
to wear and money to spend. There I shall leave him for some time, returning, where
common charity directs me, to the assistance of his two brothers at their lowest ebb. However,
I shall by no means forget my character of a historian, to follow the truth step by step
whatever happens, or wherever it may lead me.
The two exiles so nearly united in fortune and interest took a lodging together, where
at their first leisure they began to reflect on the numberless misfortunes and vexations
of their life past, and could not tell of the sudden to what failure in their conduct
they ought to impute them, when, after some recollection, they called to mind the copy
of their father's will which they had so happily recovered. This was immediately produced,
and a firm resolution taken between them to alter whatever was already amiss, and reduce
all their future measures to the strictest obedience prescribed therein. The main body
of the will (as the reader cannot easily have forgot) consisted in certain admirable rules,
about the wearing of their coats, in the perusal whereof the two brothers at every period duly
comparing the doctrine with the practice, there was never seen a wider difference between
two things, horrible downright transgressions of every point. Upon which they both resolved
without further delay to fall immediately upon reducing the whole exactly after their
father's model. But here it is good to stop the hasty reader,
ever impatient to see the end of an adventure before we writers can duly prepare him for
it. I am to record that these two brothers began to be distinguished at this time by
certain names. One of them desired to be called Martin, and the other took the appellation
of Jack. These two had lived in much friendship and agreement under the tyranny of their brother
Peter, as it is the talent of fellow-sufferers to do, men in misfortune being like men in
the dark, to whom all colours are the same. But when they came forward into the world,
and began to display themselves to each other and to the light, their complexions appeared
extremely different, which the present posture of their affairs gave them sudden opportunity
to discover. But here the severe reader may justly tax
me as a writer of short memory, a deficiency to which a true modern cannot but of necessity
be a little subject. Because, memory being an employment of the mind upon things past,
is a faculty for which the learned in our illustrious age have no manner of occasion,
who deal entirely with invention and strike all things out of themselves, or at least
by collision from each other; upon which account, we think it highly reasonable to produce our
great forgetfulness as an argument unanswerable for our great wit. I ought in method to have
informed the reader about fifty pages ago of a fancy Lord Peter took, and infused into
his brothers, to wear on their coats whatever trimmings came up in fashion, never pulling
off any as they went out of the mode, but keeping on all together, which amounted in
time to a medley the most antic you can possibly conceive, and this to a degree that, upon
the time of their falling out, there was hardly a thread of the original coat to be seen,
but an infinite quantity of lace, and ribbands, and fringe, and embroidery, and points (I
mean only those tagged with silver, for the rest fell off). Now this material circumstance
having been forgot in due place, as good fortune hath ordered, comes in very properly here,
when the two brothers are just going to reform their vestures into the primitive state prescribed
by their father's will. They both unanimously entered upon this great
work, looking sometimes on their coats and sometimes on the will. Martin laid the first
hand; at one twitch brought off a large handful of points, and with a second pull stripped
away ten dozen yards of fringe. But when he had gone thus far he demurred a while. He
knew very well there yet remained a great deal more to be done; however, the first heat
being over, his violence began to cool, and he resolved to proceed more moderately in
the rest of the work, having already very narrowly escaped a swinging rent in pulling
off the points, which being tagged with silver (as we have observed before), the judicious
workman had with much sagacity double sewn to preserve them from falling. Resolving therefore
to rid his coat of a huge quantity of gold lace, he picked up the stitches with much
caution and diligently gleaned out all the loose threads as he went, which proved to
be a work of time. Then he fell about the embroidered Indian figures of men, women,
and children, against which, as you have heard in its due place, their father's testament
was extremely exact and severe. These, with much dexterity and application, were after
a while quite eradicated or utterly defaced. For the rest, where he observed the embroidery
to be worked so close as not to be got away without damaging the cloth, or where it served
to hide or strengthened any flaw in the body of the coat, contracted by the perpetual tampering
of workmen upon it, he concluded the wisest course was to let it remain, resolving in
no case whatsoever that the substance of the stuff should suffer injury, which he thought
the best method for serving the true intent and meaning of his father's will. And this
is the nearest account I have been able to collect of Martin's proceedings upon this
great revolution. But his brother Jack, whose adventures will
be so extraordinary as to furnish a great part in the remainder of this discourse, entered
upon the matter with other thoughts and a quite different spirit. For the memory of
Lord Peter's injuries produced a degree of hatred and spite which had a much greater
share of inciting him than any regards after his father's commands, since these appeared
at best only secondary and subservient to the other. However, for this medley of humour
he made a shift to find a very plausible name, honouring it with the title of zeal, which
is, perhaps, the most significant word that has been ever yet produced in any language,
as, I think, I have fully proved in my excellent analytical discourse upon that subject, wherein
I have deduced a histori-theo- physiological account of zeal, showing how it first proceeded
from a notion into a word, and from thence in a hot summer ripened into a tangible substance.
This work, containing three large volumes in folio, I design very shortly to publish
by the modern way of subscription, not doubting but the nobility and gentry of the land will
give me all possible encouragement, having already had such a taste of what I am able
to perform. I record, therefore, that brother Jack, brimful
of this miraculous compound, reflecting with indignation upon Peter's tyranny, and further
provoked by the despondency of Martin, prefaced his resolutions to this purpose. "What!" said
he, "a rogue that locked up his drink, turned away our wives, cheated us of our fortunes,
palmed his crusts upon us for mutton, and at last kicked us out of doors; must we be
in his fashions? A rascal, besides, that all the street cries out against." Having thus
kindled and inflamed himself as high as possible, and by consequence in a delicate temper for
beginning a reformation, he set about the work immediately, and in three minutes made
more dispatch than Martin had done in as many hours. For, courteous reader, you are given
to understand that zeal is never so highly obliged as when you set it a-tearing; and
Jack, who doted on that quality in himself, allowed it at this time its full swing. Thus
it happened that, stripping down a parcel of gold lace a little too hastily, he rent
the main body of his coat from top to bottom; and whereas his talent was not of the happiest
in taking up a stitch, he knew no better way than to darn it again with packthread thread
and a skewer. But the matter was yet infinitely worse (I record it with tears) when he proceeded
to the embroidery; for being clumsy of nature, and of temper impatient withal, beholding
millions of stitches that required the nicest hand and sedatest constitution to extricate,
in a great rage he tore off the whole piece, cloth and all, and flung it into the kennel,
and furiously thus continuing his career, "Ah! good brother Martin," said he, "do as
I do, for the love of God; strip, tear, pull, rend, flay off all that we may appear as unlike
that rogue Peter as it is possible. I would not for a hundred pounds carry the least mark
about me that might give occasion to the neighbours of suspecting I was related to such a rascal."
But Martin, who at this time happened to be extremely phlegmatic and sedate, begged his
brother, of all love, not to damage his coat by any means, for he never would get such
another; desired him to consider that it was not their business to form their actions by
any reflection upon Peter's, but by observing the rules prescribed in their father's will.
That he should remember Peter was still their brother, whatever faults or injuries he had
committed, and therefore they should by all means avoid such a thought as that of taking
measures for good and evil from no other rule than of opposition to him. That it was true
the testament of their good father was very exact in what related to the wearing of their
coats; yet was it no less penal and strict in prescribing agreement, and friendship,
and affection between them. And therefore, if straining a point were at all defensible,
it would certainly be so rather to the advance of unity than increase of contradiction.
Martin had still proceeded as gravely as he began, and doubtless would have delivered
an admirable lecture of morality, which might have exceedingly contributed to my reader's
repose both of body and mind (the true ultimate end of ethics), but Jack was already gone
a flight-shot beyond his patience. And as in scholastic disputes nothing serves to rouse
the spleen of him that opposes so much as a kind of pedantic affected calmness in the
respondent, disputants being for the most part like unequal scales, where the gravity
of one side advances the lightness of the other, and causes it to fly up and kick the
beam; so it happened here that the weight of Martin's arguments exalted Jack's levity,
and made him fly out and spurn against his brother's moderation. In short, Martin's patience
put Jack in a rage; but that which most afflicted him was to observe his brother's coat so well
reduced into the state of innocence, while his own was either wholly rent to his shirt,
or those places which had escaped his cruel clutches were still in Peter's livery. So
that he looked like a drunken beau half rifled by bullies, or like a fresh tenant of Newgate
when he has refused the payment of garnish, or like a discovered shoplifter left to the
mercy of Exchange-women , or like a bawd in her old velvet petticoat resigned into the
secular hands of the mobile . Like any or like all of these, a medley of rags, and lace,
and fringes, unfortunate Jack did now appear; he would have been extremely glad to see his
coat in the condition of Martin's, but infinitely gladder to find that of Martin in the same
predicament with his. However, since neither of these was likely to come to pass, he thought
fit to lend the whole business another turn, and to dress up necessity into a virtue. Therefore,
after as many of the fox's arguments as he could muster up for bringing Martin to reason,
as he called it, or as he meant it, into his own ragged, bobtailed condition, and observing
he said all to little purpose, what alas! was left for the forlorn Jack to do, but,
after a million of scurrilities against his brother, to run mad with spleen, and spite,
and contradiction. To be short, here began a mortal breach between these two. Jack went
immediately to new lodgings, and in a few days it was for certain reported that he had
run out of his wits. In a short time after he appeared abroad, and confirmed the report
by falling into the oddest whimsies that ever a sick brain conceived.
And now the little boys in the streets began to salute him with several names. Sometimes
they would call him Jack the Bald, sometimes Jack with a Lanthorn, sometimes Dutch Jack,
sometimes French Hugh, sometimes Tom the Beggar, and sometimes Knocking Jack of the North . And
it was under one or some or all of these appellations (which I leave the learned reader to determine)
that he hath given rise to the most illustrious and epidemic sect of AEolists, who, with honourable
commemoration, do still acknowledge the renowned Jack for their author and founder. Of whose
originals as well as principles I am now advancing to gratify the world with a very particular
account. "Mellaeo contingens cuncta lepore."
End of Section VI
SECTION VII of A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift
—A DIGRESSION IN PRAISE OF DIGRESSIONS. I have sometimes heard of an Iliad in a nut-shell,
but it has been my fortune to have much oftener seen a nut-shell in an Iliad. There is no
doubt that human life has received most wonderful advantages from both; but to which of the
two the world is chiefly indebted, I shall leave among the curious as a problem worthy
of their utmost inquiry. For the invention of the latter, I think the commonwealth of
learning is chiefly obliged to the great modern improvement of digressions. The late refinements
in knowledge, running parallel to those of diet in our nation, which among men of a judicious
taste are dressed up in various compounds, consisting in soups and olios, fricassees
and ragouts. It is true there is a sort of morose, detracting,
ill-bred people who pretend utterly to disrelish these polite innovations. And as to the similitude
from diet, they allow the parallel, but are so bold as to pronounce the example itself
a corruption and degeneracy of taste. They tell us that the fashion of jumbling fifty
things together in a dish was at first introduced in compliance to a depraved and debauched
appetite, as well as to a crazy constitution, and to see a man hunting through an olio after
the head and brains of a goose, a widgeon, or a woodcock, is a sign he wants a stomach
and digestion for more substantial victuals. Further, they affirm that digressions in a
book are like foreign troops in a state, which argue the nation to want a heart and hands
of its own, and often either subdue the natives, or drive them into the most unfruitful corners.
But after all that can be objected by these supercilious censors, it is manifest the society
of writers would quickly be reduced to a very inconsiderable number if men were put upon
making books with the fatal confinement of delivering nothing beyond what is to the purpose.
It is acknowledged that were the case the same among us as with the Greeks and Romans,
when learning was in its cradle, to be reared and fed and clothed by invention, it would
be an easy task to fill up volumes upon particular occasions without further expatiating from
the subject than by moderate excursions, helping to advance or clear the main design. But with
knowledge it has fared as with a numerous army encamped in a fruitful country, which
for a few days maintains itself by the product of the soil it is on, till provisions being
spent, they send to forage many a mile among friends or enemies, it matters not. Meanwhile
the neighbouring fields, trampled and beaten down, become barren and dry, affording no
sustenance but clouds of dust. The whole course of things being thus entirely
changed between us and the ancients, and the moderns wisely sensible of it, we of this
age have discovered a shorter and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without
the fatigue of reading or of thinking. The most accomplished way of using books at present
is twofold: either first to serve them as some men do lords, learn their titles exactly,
and then brag of their acquaintance; or, secondly, which is indeed the choicer, the profounder,
and politer method, to get a thorough insight into the index by which the whole book is
governed and turned, like fishes by the tail. For to enter the palace of learning at the
great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little
ceremony are content to get in by the back-door. For the arts are all in a flying march, and
therefore more easily subdued by attacking them in the rear. Thus physicians discover
the state of the whole body by consulting only what comes from behind. Thus men catch
knowledge by throwing their wit on the posteriors of a book, as boys do sparrows with flinging
salt upon their tails. Thus human life is best understood by the wise man's rule of
regarding the end. Thus are the sciences found, like Hercules' oxen, by tracing them backwards.
Thus are old sciences unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.
Besides all this, the army of the sciences hath been of late with a world of martial
discipline drawn into its close order, so that a view or a muster may be taken of it
with abundance of expedition. For this great blessing we are wholly indebted to systems
and abstracts, in which the modern fathers of learning, like prudent usurers, spent their
sweat for the ease of us their children. For labour is the seed of idleness, and it is
the peculiar happiness of our noble age to gather the fruit.
Now the method of growing wise, learned, and sublime having become so regular an affair,
and so established in all its forms, the number of writers must needs have increased accordingly,
and to a pitch that has made it of absolute necessity for them to interfere continually
with each other. Besides, it is reckoned that there is not at this present a sufficient
quantity of new matter left in Nature to furnish and adorn any one particular subject to the
extent of a volume. This I am told by a very skilful computer, who hath given a full demonstration
of it from rules of arithmetic. This perhaps may be objected against by those
who maintain the infinity of matter, and therefore will not allow that any species of it can
be exhausted. For answer to which, let us examine the noblest branch of modern wit or
invention planted and cultivated by the present age, and which of all others hath borne the
most and the fairest fruit. For though some remains of it were left us by the ancients,
yet have not any of those, as I remember, been translated or compiled into systems for
modern use. Therefore we may affirm, to our own honour, that it has in some sort been
both invented and brought to a perfection by the same hands. What I mean is, that highly
celebrated talent among the modern wits of deducing similitudes, allusions, and applications,
very surprising, agreeable, and apposite, from the signs of either sex, together with
their proper uses. And truly, having observed how little invention bears any vogue besides
what is derived into these channels, I have sometimes had a thought that the happy genius
of our age and country was prophetically held forth by that ancient typical description
of the Indian pigmies whose stature did not exceed above two feet, sed quorum pudenda
crassa, et ad talos usque pertingentia. Now I have been very curious to inspect the late
productions, wherein the beauties of this kind have most prominently appeared. And although
this vein hath bled so freely, and all endeavours have been used in the power of human breath
to dilate, extend, and keep it open, like the Scythians , who had a custom and an instrument
to blow up those parts of their mares, that they might yield the more milk; yet I am under
an apprehension it is near growing dry and past all recovery, and that either some new
fonde of wit should, if possible, be provided, or else that we must e'en be content with
repetition here as well as upon all other occasions.
This will stand as an uncontestable argument that our modern wits are not to reckon upon
the infinity of matter for a constant supply. What remains, therefore, but that our last
recourse must be had to large indexes and little compendiums? Quotations must be plentifully
gathered and booked in alphabet. To this end, though authors need be little consulted, yet
critics, and commentators, and lexicons carefully must. But above all, those judicious collectors
of bright parts, and flowers, and observandas are to be nicely dwelt on by some called the
sieves and boulters of learning, though it is left undetermined whether they dealt in
pearls or meal, and consequently whether we are more to value that which passed through
or what stayed behind. By these methods, in a few weeks there starts
up many a writer capable of managing the profoundest and most universal subjects. For what though
his head be empty, provided his commonplace book be full? And if you will bate him but
the circumstances of method, and style, and grammar, and invention; allow him but the
common privileges of transcribing from others, and digressing from himself as often as he
shall see occasion, he will desire no more ingredients towards fitting up a treatise
that shall make a very comely figure on a bookseller's shelf, there to be preserved
neat and clean for a long eternity, adorned with the heraldry of its title fairly inscribed
on a label, never to be thumbed or greased by students, nor bound to everlasting chains
of darkness in a library, but when the fulness of time is come shall happily undergo the
trial of purgatory in order to ascend the sky.
Without these allowances how is it possible we modern wits should ever have an opportunity
to introduce our collections listed under so many thousand heads of a different nature,
for want of which the learned world would be deprived of infinite delight as well as
instruction, and we ourselves buried beyond redress in an inglorious and undistinguished
oblivion? From such elements as these I am alive to
behold the day wherein the corporation of authors can outvie all its brethren in the
field—a happiness derived to us, with a great many others, from our Scythian ancestors,
among whom the number of pens was so infinite that the Grecian eloquence had no other way
of expressing it than by saying that in the regions far to the north it was hardly possible
for a man to travel, the very air was so replete with feathers.
The necessity of this digression will easily excuse the length, and I have chosen for it
as proper a place as I could readily find. If the judicious reader can assign a fitter,
I do here empower him to remove it into any other corner he please. And so I return with
great alacrity to pursue a more important concern.
End of Section VII
