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[Footnote 180: The bad critics.]

[Footnote 181: A name under which Thomas Vaughan wrote.]



XXX. THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE POSTERITY.

The following is the famous dedication of _The Tale of a Tub_. The
description of "the tyranny of Time" was regarded by Goethe as one
of the finest passages in Swift's works.


SIR,

I here present your Highness with the fruits of a very few leisure
hours, stolen from the short intervals of a world of business, and of
an employment quite alien from such amusements as this; the poor
production of that refuse of time which has lain heavy upon my hands
during a long prorogation of Parliament, a great dearth of foreign
news, and a tedious fit of rainy weather. For which, and other reasons,
it cannot choose extremely to deserve such a patronage as that of your
Highness, whose numberless virtues in so few years, make the world look
upon you as the future example to all princes. For although your
Highness is hardly got clear of infancy, yet has the universal learned
world already resolved upon appealing to your future dictates with the
lowest and most resigned submission, fate having decreed you sole
arbiter of the productions of human wit in this polite and most
accomplished age. Methinks the number of appellants were enough to
shock and startle any judge of a genius less unlimited than yours; but
in order to prevent such glorious trials, the person, it seems, to
whose care the education of your Highness is committed, has resolved,
as I am told, to keep you in almost an universal ignorance of our
studies, which it is your inherent birthright to inspect.

It is amazing to me that this person should have assurance, in the face
of the sun, to go about persuading your Highness that our age is almost
wholly illiterate and has hardly produced one writer upon any subject.
I know very well that when your Highness shall come to riper years, and
have gone through the learning of antiquity, you will be too curious to
neglect inquiring into the authors of the very age before you; and to
think that this insolent, in the account he is preparing for your view,
designs to reduce them to a number so insignificant as I am ashamed to
mention; it moves my zeal and my spleen for the honour and interest of
our vast flourishing body, as well as of myself, for whom I know by
long experience he has professed, and still continues, a peculiar
malice.

It is not unlikely that, when your Highness will one day peruse what I
am now writing, you may be ready to expostulate with your governor upon
the credit of what I here affirm, and command him to show you some of
our productions. To which he will answer--for I am well informed of
his designs--by asking your Highness where they are, and what is become
of them? and pretend it a demonstration that there never were any,
because they are not then to be found. Not to be found! Who has mislaid
them? Are they sunk in the abyss of things? It is certain that in their
own nature they were light enough to swim upon the surface for all
eternity; therefore, the fault is in him who tied weights so heavy to
their heels as to depress them to the centre. Is their very essence
destroyed? Who has annihilated them? Were they drowned by purges or
martyred by pipes? Who administered them to the posteriors of ----. But
that it may no longer be a doubt with your Highness who is to be the
author of this universal ruin, I beseech you to observe that large and
terrible scythe which your governor affects to bear continually about
him. Be pleased to remark the length and strength, the sharpness and
hardness, of his nails and teeth; consider his baneful, abominable
breath, enemy to life and matter, infectious and corrupting, and then
reflect whether it be possible for any mortal ink and paper of this
generation to make a suitable resistance. Oh, that your Highness would
one day resolve to disarm this usurping _maitre de palais_ of his
furious engines, and bring your empire _hors du page_!

It were endless to recount the several methods of tyranny and
destruction which your governor is pleased to practise upon this
occasion. His inveterate malice is such to the writings of our age,
that, of several thousands produced yearly from this renowned city,
before the next revolution of the sun there is not one to be heard of.
Unhappy infants! many of them barbarously destroyed before they have so
much as learnt their mother-tongue to beg for pity. Some he stifles in
their cradles, others he frights into convulsions, whereof they
suddenly die, some he flays alive, others he tears limb from limb,
great numbers are offered to Moloch, and the rest, tainted by his
breath, die of a languishing consumption.

But the concern I have most at heart is for our Corporation of Poets,
from whom I am preparing a petition to your Highness, to be subscribed
with the names of one hundred and thirty-six of the first race, but
whose immortal productions are never likely to reach your eyes, though
each of them is now an humble and an earnest appellant for the laurel,
and has large comely volumes ready to show for a support to his
pretensions. The never-dying works of these illustrious persons your
governor, sir, has devoted to unavoidable death, and your Highness is
to be made believe that our age has never arrived at the honour to
produce one single poet.

We confess immortality to be a great and powerful goddess, but in vain
we offer up to her our devotions and our sacrifices if your Highness's
governor, who has usurped the priesthood, must, by an unparalled
ambition and avarice, wholly intercept and devour them.

To affirm that our age is altogether unlearned and devoid of writers in
any kind, seems to be an assertion so bold and so false, that I have
been sometimes thinking the contrary may almost be proved by
uncontrollable demonstration. It is true, indeed, that although their
numbers be vast and their productions numerous in proportion, yet are
they hurried so hastily off the scene that they escape our memory and
delude our sight. When I first thought of this address, I had prepared
a copious list of titles to present your Highness as an undisputed
argument for what I affirm. The originals were posted fresh upon all
gates and corners of streets; but returning in a very few hours to take
a review, they were all torn down and fresh ones in their places. I
inquired after them among readers and booksellers, but I inquired in
vain; the memorial of them was lost among men, their place was no more
to be found; and I was laughed to scorn for a clown and a pedant,
devoid of all taste and refinement, little versed in the course of
present affairs, and that knew nothing of what had passed in the best
companies of court and town. So that I can only avow in general to your
Highness that we do abound in learning and wit, but to fix upon
particulars is a task too slippery for my slender abilities. If I
should venture, in a windy day, to affirm to your Highness that there
is a large cloud near the horizon in the form of a bear, another in the
zenith with the head of an ass, a third to the westward with claws like
a dragon; and your Highness should in a few minutes think fit to
examine the truth, it is certain they would be all changed in figure
and position, new ones would arise, and all we could agree upon would
be, that clouds there were, but that I was grossly mistaken in the
zoography and topography of them.

But your governor, perhaps, may still insist, and put the question,
What is then become of those immense bales of paper which must needs
have been employed in such numbers of books? Can these also be wholly
annihilated, and so of a sudden, as I pretend? What shall I say in
return of so invidious an objection? It ill befits the distance between
your Highness and me to send you for ocular conviction to a jakes or an
oven, to the windows of a bawdyhouse, or to a sordid lantern. Books,
like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the
world, but there are ten thousand to go out of it and return no more.

I profess to your Highness, in the integrity of my heart, that what I
am going to say is literally true this minute I am writing; what
revolutions may happen before it shall be ready for your perusal I can
by no means warrant; however, I beg you to accept it as a specimen of
our learning, our politeness, and our wit. I do therefore affirm, upon
the word of a sincere man, that there is now actually in being a
certain poet called John Dryden, whose translation of Virgil was lately
printed in large folio, well bound, and if diligent search were made,
for aught I know, is yet to be seen. There is another called Nahum
Tate, who is ready to make oath that he has caused many reams of verse
to be published, whereof both himself and his bookseller, if lawfully
required, can still produce authentic copies, and therefore wonders why
the world is pleased to make such a secret of it. There is a third,
known by the name of Tom Durfey, a poet of a vast comprehension, an
universal genius, and most profound learning. There are also one Mr.
Rymer and one Mr. Dennis, most profound critics. There is a person
styled Dr. Bentley, who has wrote near a thousand pages of immense
erudition, giving a full and true account of a certain squabble of
wonderful importance between himself and a bookseller; he is a writer
of infinite wit and humour, no man rallies with a better grace and in
more sprightly turns. Further, I avow to your Highness that with these
eyes I have beheld the person of William Wotton, B.D., who has written
a good-sized volume against a friend of your governor, from whom, alas!
he must therefore look for little favour, in a most gentlemanly style,
adorned with utmost politeness and civility, replete with discoveries
equally valuable for their novelty and use, and embellished with traits
of wit so poignant and so apposite, that he is a worthy yoke-mate to
his fore-mentioned friend.

Why should I go upon farther particulars, which might fill a volume
with the just eulogies of my contemporary brethren? I shall bequeath
this piece of justice to a larger work, wherein I intend to write a
character of the present set of wits in our nation; their persons I
shall describe particularly and at length, their genius and
understandings in miniature.

In the meantime, I do here make bold to present your Highness with a
faithful abstract drawn from the universal body of all arts and
sciences, intended wholly for your service and instruction. Nor do I
doubt in the least, but your Highness will peruse it as carefully and
make as considerable improvements as other young princes have already
done by the many volumes of late years written for a help to their
studies.

That your Highness may advance in wisdom and virtue, as well as years,
and at last outshine all your royal ancestors, shall be the daily
prayer of,

Sir,
Your Highness's most devoted, &c.
_Decem_. 1697.




SIR RICHARD STEELE.

(1672-1729.)


XXXI. THE COMMONWEALTH OF LUNATICS.

This paper forms No. 125 of _The Tatler_, January 26th, 1709.


From my own apartment, _January_ 25.

There is a sect of ancient philosophers, who, I think, have left more
volumes behind them, and those better written, than any other of the
fraternities in philosophy. It was a maxim of this sect, that all those
who do not live up to the principles of reason and virtue are madmen.
Everyone who governs himself by these rules is allowed the title of
wise, and reputed to be in his senses: and everyone, in proportion as
he deviates from them, is pronounced frantic and distracted. Cicero,
having chosen this maxim for his theme, takes occasion to argue from
it very agreeably with Clodius, his implacable adversary, who had
procured his banishment. A city, says he, is an assembly distinguished
into bodies of men, who are in possession of their respective rights
and privileges, cast under proper subordinations, and in all its parts
obedient to the rules of law and equity. He then represents the
government from whence he was banished, at a time when the consul,
senate, and laws had lost their authority, as a commonwealth of
lunatics. For this reason he regards his expulsion from Rome as a man
would being turned out of Bedlam, if the inhabitants of it should drive
him out of their walls as a person unfit for their community. We are
therefore to look upon every man's brain to be touched, however he may
appear in the general conduct of his life, if he has an unjustifiable
singularity in any part of his conversation or behaviour; or if he
swerves from right reason, however common his kind of madness may be,
we shall not excuse him for its being epidemical; it being our present
design to clap up all such as have the marks of madness upon them, who
are now permitted to go about the streets for no other reason but
because they do no mischief in their fits. Abundance of imaginary great
men are put in straw to bring them to a right sense of themselves. And
is it not altogether as reasonable, that an insignificant man, who has
an immoderate opinion of his merits, and a quite different notion of
his own abilities from what the rest of the world entertain, should
have the same care taken of him as a beggar who fancies himself a duke
or a prince? Or why should a man who starves in the midst of plenty be
trusted with himself more than he who fancies he is an emperor in the
midst of poverty? I have several women of quality in my thoughts who
set so exorbitant a value upon themselves that I have often most
heartily pitied them, and wished them for their recovery under the same
discipline with the pewterer's wife. I find by several hints in ancient
authors that when the Romans were in the height of power and luxury
they assigned out of their vast dominions an island called Anticyra as
an habitation for madmen. This was the Bedlam of the Roman empire,
whither all persons who had lost their wits used to resort from all
parts of the world in quest of them. Several of the Roman emperors were
advised to repair to this island: but most of them, instead of
listening to such sober counsels, gave way to their distraction, until
the people knocked them on the head as despairing of their cure. In
short, it was as usual for men of distempered brains to take a voyage
to Anticyra in those days as it is in ours for persons who have a
disorder in their lungs to go to Montpellier.

The prodigious crops of hellebore with which this whole island abounded
did not only furnish them with incomparable tea, snuff, and Hungary
water, but impregnated the air of the country with such sober and
salutiferous steams as very much comforted the heads and refreshed the
senses of all that breathed in it. A discarded statesman that, at his
first landing, appeared stark, staring mad, would become calm in a
week's time, and upon his return home live easy and satisfied in his
retirement. A moping lover would grow a pleasant fellow by that time he
had rid thrice about the island: and a hair-brained rake, after a short
stay in the country, go home again a composed, grave, worthy gentleman.

I have premised these particulars before I enter on the main design of
this paper, because I would not be thought altogether notional in what
I have to say, and pass only for a projector in morality. I could quote
Horace and Seneca and some other ancient writers of good repute upon
the same occasion, and make out by their testimony that our streets are
filled with distracted persons; that our shops and taverns, private and
public houses, swarm with them; and that it is very hard to make up a
tolerable assembly without a majority of them. But what I have already
said is, I hope, sufficient to justify the ensuing project, which I
shall therefore give some account of without any further preface.

1. It is humbly proposed, That a proper receptacle or habitation be
forthwith erected for all such persons as, upon due trial and
examination, shall appear to be out of their wits.

2. That, to serve the present exigency, the college in Moorfields be
very much extended at both ends; and that it be converted into a
square, by adding three other sides to it.

3. That nobody be admitted into these three additional sides but such
whose frenzy can lay no claim to any apartment in that row of building
which is already erected.

4. That the architect, physician, apothecary, surgeon, keepers, nurses,
and porters be all and each of them cracked, provided that their frenzy
does not lie in the profession or employment to which they shall
severally and respectively be assigned.

_N.B._ It is thought fit to give the foregoing notice, that none may
present himself here for any post of honour or profit who is not duly
qualified.

5. That over all the gates of the additional buildings there be figures
placed in the same manner as over the entrance of the edifice already
erected, provided they represent such distractions only as are proper
for those additional buildings; as of an envious man gnawing his own
flesh; a gamester pulling himself by the ears and knocking his head
against a marble pillar; a covetous man warming himself over a heap of
gold; a coward flying from his own shadow, and the like.

Having laid down this general scheme of my design, I do hereby invite
all persons who are willing to encourage so public-spirited a project
to bring in their contributions as soon as possible; and to apprehend
forthwith any politician whom they shall catch raving in a
coffee-house, or any free-thinker whom they shall find publishing his
deliriums, or any other person who shall give the like manifest signs
of a crazed imagination. And I do at the same time give this public
notice to all the madmen about this great city, that they may return to
their senses with all imaginable expedition, lest, if they should come
into my hands, I should put them into a regimen which they would not
like; for if I find any one of them persist in his frantic behaviour I
will make him in a month's time as famous as ever Oliver's porter was.




JOSEPH ADDISON.

(1672-1719.)


XXXII. SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY'S SUNDAY.

This piece represents the complete paper, No. 112 of _The
Spectator_, July 9th, 1711.


I am always very well pleased with a country Sunday, and think, if
keeping holy the seventh day were only a human institution, it would be
the best method that could have been thought of for the polishing and
civilizing of mankind. It is certain the country people would soon
degenerate into a kind of savages and barbarians, were there not such
frequent returns of a stated time in which the whole village meet
together with their best faces and in their cleanliest habits to
converse with one another upon indifferent subjects, hear their duties
explained to them, and join together in adoration of the supreme Being.
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week, not only as it refreshes
in their minds the notions of religion, but as it puts both the sexes
upon appearing in their most agreeable forms and exerting all such
qualities as are apt to give them a figure in the eye of the village. A
country fellow distinguishes himself as much in the churchyard as a
citizen does upon the Change, the whole parish politics being generally
discussed in that place either after sermon or before the bell rings.

My friend Sir Roger, being a good churchman, has beautified the inside
of his church with several texts of his own choosing; he has likewise
given a handsome pulpit-cloth, and railed in the communion table at his
own expense. He has often told me that at his coming to his estate he
found his parishioners very irregular; and that in order to make them
kneel and join in the responses he gave every one of them a hassock and
a common-prayer book: and at the same time employed an itinerant
singing-master, who goes about the country for that purpose, to
instruct them rightly in the tunes of the psalms, upon which they now
very much value themselves, and indeed out-do most of the country
churches that I have ever heard.

As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congregation, he keeps them in
very good order, and will suffer nobody to sleep in it besides himself;
for if by chance he has been surprised into a short nap at sermon, upon
recovering out of it he stands up and looks about him, and if he sees
anybody else nodding either wakes them himself or sends his servants to
them. Several other of the old knight's particularities break out upon
these occasions: sometimes he will be lengthening out a verse in the
singing-psalms half a minute after the rest of the congregation have
done with it: sometimes, when he is pleased with the matter of his
devotion, he pronounces Amen three or four times to the same prayer;
and sometimes stands up when everybody else is upon their knees, to
count the congregation or see if any of his tenants are missing.

I was yesterday very much surprised to hear my old friend, in the midst
of the service, calling out to one John Matthews to mind what he was
about and not disturb the congregation. This John Matthews it seems is
remarkable for being an idle fellow, and at that time was kicking his
heels for his diversion. This authority of the knight, though exerted
in that odd manner which accompanies him in all circumstances of life,
has a very good effect upon the parish, who are not polite enough to
see anything ridiculous in his behaviour; besides that the general good
sense and worthiness of his character makes his friends observe these
little singularities as foils that rather set off than blemish his good
qualities.

As soon as the sermon is finished nobody presumes to stir till Sir
Roger is gone out of the church. The knight walks down from his seat in
the chancel between a double row of his tenants, that stand bowing to
him on each side; and every now and then inquires how such an one's
wife, or mother, or son, or father do, whom he does not see at church,
which is understood as a secret reprimand to the person that is absent.

The chaplain has often told me that upon a catechizing day, when Sir
Roger has been pleased with a boy that answers well, he has ordered a
Bible to be given him next day for his encouragement; and sometimes
accompanies it with a flitch of bacon to his mother. Sir Roger has
likewise added five pounds a year to the clerk's place; and that he may
encourage the young fellows to make themselves perfect in the church
service, has promised upon the death of the present incumbent, who is
very old, to bestow it according to merit.

The fair understanding between Sir Roger and his chaplain, and their
mutual concurrence in doing good, is the more remarkable because the
very next village is famous for the differences and contentions that
rise between the parson and the squire, who live in a perpetual state
of war. The parson is always preaching at the squire, and the squire to
be revenged on the parson never comes to church. The squire has made
all his tenants atheists and tithe-stealers; while the parson instructs
them every Sunday in the dignity of his order, and insinuates to them
in almost every sermon that he is a better man than his patron. In
short, matters are come to such an extremity that the squire has not
said his prayers either in public or private this half year; and that
the parson threatens him, if he does not mend his manners, to pray for
him in the face of the whole congregation.

Feuds of this nature, though too frequent in the country, are very
fatal to the ordinary people, who are so used to be dazzled with riches
that they pay as much deference to the understanding of a man of an
estate as of a man of learning, and are very hardly brought to regard
any truth, how important soever it may be, that is preached to them
when they know there are several men of five hundred a year who do not
believe it.




EDWARD YOUNG.

(1681-1765.)


XXXIII. TO THE RIGHT HON. MR. DODINGTON.

This is justly regarded as one of the finest satires in the English
language. It is taken from Dr. Young's _Series of Satires_
published in collected form in 1750. Dodington was the famous "Bubb
Dodington", satirized as Bubo by Pope in the "Prologue to the
Satires".


Long, Dodington, in debt, I long have sought
To ease the burden of my graceful thought:
And now a poet's gratitude you see:
Grant him two favours, and he'll ask for three:
For whose the present glory, or the gain?
You give protection, I a worthless strain.
You love and feel the poet's sacred flame,
And know the basis of a solid fame;
Though prone to like, yet cautious to commend,
You read with all the malice of a friend;
Nor favour my attempts that way alone,
But, more to raise my verse, conceal your own.
An ill-tim'd modesty! turn ages o'er,
When wanted Britain bright examples more?
Her learning, and her genius too, decays;
And dark and cold are her declining days;
As if men now were of another cast,
They meanly live on alms of ages past,
Men still are men; and they who boldly dare,
Shall triumph o'er the sons of cold despair;
Or, if they fail, they justly still take place
Of such who run in debt for their disgrace;
Who borrow much, then fairly make it known,
And damn it with improvements of their own.
We bring some new materials, and what's old
New cast with care, and in no borrow'd mould;
Late times the verse may read, if these refuse;
And from sour critics vindicate the Muse.
"Your work is long", the critics cry. 'Tis true,
And lengthens still, to take in fools like you:
Shorten my labour, if its length you blame:
For, grow but wise, you rob me of my game;
As haunted hags, who, while the dogs pursue,
Renounce their four legs, and start up on two.

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