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+*****The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Battle of the Books*****
+And Other Short Pieces by Jonathan Swift
+#1 in our series by Jonathan Swift
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+The Battle of the Books
+And Other Short Pieces
+
+by Jonathan Swift
+
+
+August, 1996  [Etext #623]
+
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+The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces by Jonathan Swift
+Scanned and proofed by David Price
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+Preface
+I.    THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS
+II.   A MEDITATION UPON A BROOMSTICK.
+III.  PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708.
+IV.   THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE FIRST OF MR. BICKERSTAFF'S
+      PREDICTIONS.
+V.    BAUCIS AND PHILEMON.
+VI.   THE LOGICIANS REFUTED.
+VII.  THE PUPPET SHOW.
+VIII. CADENUS AND VANESSA.
+IX.   STELLA'S BIRTHDAYS
+X.    TO STELLA
+XI.   THE FIRST HE WROTE OCT. 17, 1727.
+XII.  THE SECOND PRAYER WAS WRITTEN NOV. 6, 1727.
+XIII. THE BEASTS' CONFESSION (1732).
+XIV.  ABOLISHING CHRISTIANITY
+XV.   HINTS TOWARDS AN ESSAY ON CONVERSATION.
+XVI.  THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS.
+
+
+
+THE PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+
+SATIRE is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover 
+everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that 
+kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are 
+offended with it.  But, if it should happen otherwise, the danger 
+is not great; and I have learned from long experience never to 
+apprehend mischief from those understandings I have been able to 
+provoke:  for anger and fury, though they add strength to the 
+sinews of the body, yet are found to relax those of the mind, and 
+to render all its efforts feeble and impotent.
+
+There is a brain that will endure but one scumming; let the owner 
+gather it with discretion, and manage his little stock with 
+husbandry; but, of all things, let him beware of bringing it under 
+the lash of his betters, because that will make it all bubble up 
+into impertinence, and he will find no new supply.  Wit without 
+knowledge being a sort of cream, which gathers in a night to the 
+top, and by a skilful hand may be soon whipped into froth; but once 
+scummed away, what appears underneath will be fit for nothing but 
+to be thrown to the hogs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I - A FULL AND TRUE ACCOUNT
+OF THE
+BATTLE FOUGHT LAST FRIDAY
+BETWEEN THE
+ANCIENT AND THE MODERN BOOKS
+IN SAINT JAMES'S LIBRARY.
+
+
+
+WHOEVER examines, with due circumspection, into the annual records 
+of time, will find it remarked that War is the child of Pride, and 
+Pride the daughter of Riches:- the former of which assertions may 
+be soon granted, but one cannot so easily subscribe to the latter; 
+for Pride is nearly related to Beggary and Want, either by father 
+or mother, and sometimes by both:  and, to speak naturally, it very 
+seldom happens among men to fall out when all have enough; 
+invasions usually travelling from north to south, that is to say, 
+from poverty to plenty.  The most ancient and natural grounds of 
+quarrels are lust and avarice; which, though we may allow to be 
+brethren, or collateral branches of pride, are certainly the issues 
+of want.  For, to speak in the phrase of writers upon politics, we 
+may observe in the republic of dogs, which in its original seems to 
+be an institution of the many, that the whole state is ever in the 
+profoundest peace after a full meal; and that civil broils arise 
+among them when it happens for one great bone to be seized on by 
+some leading dog, who either divides it among the few, and then it 
+falls to an oligarchy, or keeps it to himself, and then it runs up 
+to a tyranny.  The same reasoning also holds place among them in 
+those dissensions we behold upon a turgescency in any of their 
+females.  For the right of possession lying in common (it being 
+impossible to establish a property in so delicate a case), 
+jealousies and suspicions do so abound, that the whole commonwealth 
+of that street is reduced to a manifest state of war, of every 
+citizen against every citizen, till some one of more courage, 
+conduct, or fortune than the rest seizes and enjoys the prize:  
+upon which naturally arises plenty of heart-burning, and envy, and 
+snarling against the happy dog.  Again, if we look upon any of 
+these republics engaged in a foreign war, either of invasion or 
+defence, we shall find the same reasoning will serve as to the 
+grounds and occasions of each; and that poverty or want, in some 
+degree or other (whether real or in opinion, which makes no 
+alteration in the case), has a great share, as well as pride, on 
+the part of the aggressor.
+
+Now whoever will please to take this scheme, and either reduce or 
+adapt it to an intellectual state or commonwealth of learning, will 
+soon discover the first ground of disagreement between the two 
+great parties at this time in arms, and may form just conclusions 
+upon the merits of either cause.  But the issue or events of this 
+war are not so easy to conjecture at; for the present quarrel is so 
+inflamed by the warm heads of either faction, and the pretensions 
+somewhere or other so exorbitant, as not to admit the least 
+overtures of accommodation.  This quarrel first began, as I have 
+heard it affirmed by an old dweller in the neighbourhood, about a 
+small spot of ground, lying and being upon one of the two tops of 
+the hill Parnassus; the highest and largest of which had, it seems, 
+been time out of mind in quiet possession of certain tenants, 
+called the Ancients; and the other was held by the Moderns.  But 
+these disliking their present station, sent certain ambassadors to 
+the Ancients, complaining of a great nuisance; how the height of 
+that part of Parnassus quite spoiled the prospect of theirs, 
+especially towards the east; and therefore, to avoid a war, offered 
+them the choice of this alternative, either that the Ancients would 
+please to remove themselves and their effects down to the lower 
+summit, which the Moderns would graciously surrender to them, and 
+advance into their place; or else the said Ancients will give leave 
+to the Moderns to come with shovels and mattocks, and level the 
+said hill as low as they shall think it convenient.  To which the 
+Ancients made answer, how little they expected such a message as 
+this from a colony whom they had admitted, out of their own free 
+grace, to so near a neighbourhood.  That, as to their own seat, 
+they were aborigines of it, and therefore to talk with them of a 
+removal or surrender was a language they did not understand.  That 
+if the height of the hill on their side shortened the prospect of 
+the Moderns, it was a disadvantage they could not help; but desired 
+them to consider whether that injury (if it be any) were not 
+largely recompensed by the shade and shelter it afforded them.  
+That as to the levelling or digging down, it was either folly or 
+ignorance to propose it if they did or did not know how that side 
+of the hill was an entire rock, which would break their tools and 
+hearts, without any damage to itself.  That they would therefore 
+advise the Moderns rather to raise their own side of the hill than 
+dream of pulling down that of the Ancients; to the former of which 
+they would not only give licence, but also largely contribute.  All 
+this was rejected by the Moderns with much indignation, who still 
+insisted upon one of the two expedients; and so this difference 
+broke out into a long and obstinate war, maintained on the one part 
+by resolution, and by the courage of certain leaders and allies; 
+but, on the other, by the greatness of their number, upon all 
+defeats affording continual recruits.  In this quarrel whole 
+rivulets of ink have been exhausted, and the virulence of both 
+parties enormously augmented.  Now, it must be here understood, 
+that ink is the great missive weapon in all battles of the learned, 
+which, conveyed through a sort of engine called a quill, infinite 
+numbers of these are darted at the enemy by the valiant on each 
+side, with equal skill and violence, as if it were an engagement of 
+porcupines.  This malignant liquor was compounded, by the engineer 
+who invented it, of two ingredients, which are, gall and copperas; 
+by its bitterness and venom to suit, in some degree, as well as to 
+foment, the genius of the combatants.  And as the Grecians, after 
+an engagement, when they could not agree about the victory, were 
+wont to set up trophies on both sides, the beaten party being 
+content to be at the same expense, to keep itself in countenance (a 
+laudable and ancient custom, happily revived of late in the art of 
+war), so the learned, after a sharp and bloody dispute, do, on both 
+sides, hang out their trophies too, whichever comes by the worst.  
+These trophies have largely inscribed on them the merits of the 
+cause; a full impartial account of such a Battle, and how the 
+victory fell clearly to the party that set them up.  They are known 
+to the world under several names; as disputes, arguments, 
+rejoinders, brief considerations, answers, replies, remarks, 
+reflections, objections, confutations.  For a very few days they 
+are fixed up all in public places, either by themselves or their 
+representatives, for passengers to gaze at; whence the chiefest and 
+largest are removed to certain magazines they call libraries, there 
+to remain in a quarter purposely assigned them, and thenceforth 
+begin to be called books of controversy.
+
+In these books is wonderfully instilled and preserved the spirit of 
+each warrior while he is alive; and after his death his soul 
+transmigrates thither to inform them.  This, at least, is the more 
+common opinion; but I believe it is with libraries as with other 
+cemeteries, where some philosophers affirm that a certain spirit, 
+which they call BRUTUM HOMINIS, hovers over the monument, till the 
+body is corrupted and turns to dust or to worms, but then vanishes 
+or dissolves; so, we may say, a restless spirit haunts over every 
+book, till dust or worms have seized upon it - which to some may 
+happen in a few days, but to others later - and therefore, books of 
+controversy being, of all others, haunted by the most disorderly 
+spirits, have always been confined in a separate lodge from the 
+rest, and for fear of a mutual violence against each other, it was 
+thought prudent by our ancestors to bind them to the peace with 
+strong iron chains.  Of which invention the original occasion was 
+this:  When the works of Scotus first came out, they were carried 
+to a certain library, and had lodgings appointed them; but this 
+author was no sooner settled than he went to visit his master 
+Aristotle, and there both concerted together to seize Plato by main 
+force, and turn him out from his ancient station among the divines, 
+where he had peaceably dwelt near eight hundred years.  The attempt 
+succeeded, and the two usurpers have reigned ever since in his 
+stead; but, to maintain quiet for the future, it was decreed that 
+all polemics of the larger size should be hold fast with a chain.
+
+By this expedient, the public peace of libraries might certainly 
+have been preserved if a new species of controversial books had not 
+arisen of late years, instinct with a more malignant spirit, from 
+the war above mentioned between the learned about the higher summit 
+of Parnassus.
+
+When these books were first admitted into the public libraries, I 
+remember to have said, upon occasion, to several persons concerned, 
+how I was sure they would create broils wherever they came, unless 
+a world of care were taken; and therefore I advised that the 
+champions of each side should be coupled together, or otherwise 
+mixed, that, like the blending of contrary poisons, their malignity 
+might be employed among themselves.  And it seems I was neither an 
+ill prophet nor an ill counsellor; for it was nothing else but the 
+neglect of this caution which gave occasion to the terrible fight 
+that happened on Friday last between the Ancient and Modern Books 
+in the King's library.  Now, because the talk of this battle is so 
+fresh in everybody's mouth, and the expectation of the town so 
+great to be informed in the particulars, I, being possessed of all 
+qualifications requisite in an historian, and retained by neither 
+party, have resolved to comply with the urgent importunity of my 
+friends, by writing down a full impartial account thereof.
+
+The guardian of the regal library, a person of great valour, but 
+chiefly renowned for his humanity, had been a fierce champion for 
+the Moderns, and, in an engagement upon Parnassus, had vowed with 
+his own hands to knock down two of the ancient chiefs who guarded a 
+small pass on the superior rock, but, endeavouring to climb up, was 
+cruelly obstructed by his own unhappy weight and tendency towards 
+his centre, a quality to which those of the Modern party are 
+extremely subject; for, being light-headed, they have, in 
+speculation, a wonderful agility, and conceive nothing too high for 
+them to mount, but, in reducing to practice, discover a mighty 
+pressure about their posteriors and their heels.  Having thus 
+failed in his design, the disappointed champion bore a cruel 
+rancour to the Ancients, which he resolved to gratify by showing 
+all marks of his favour to the books of their adversaries, and 
+lodging them in the fairest apartments; when, at the same time, 
+whatever book had the boldness to own itself for an advocate of the 
+Ancients was buried alive in some obscure corner, and threatened, 
+upon the least displeasure, to be turned out of doors.  Besides, it 
+so happened that about this time there was a strange confusion of 
+place among all the books in the library, for which several reasons 
+were assigned.  Some imputed it to a great heap of learned dust, 
+which a perverse wind blew off from a shelf of Moderns into the 
+keeper's eyes.  Others affirmed he had a humour to pick the worms 
+out of the schoolmen, and swallow them fresh and fasting, whereof 
+some fell upon his spleen, and some climbed up into his head, to 
+the great perturbation of both.  And lastly, others maintained 
+that, by walking much in the dark about the library, he had quite 
+lost the situation of it out of his head; and therefore, in 
+replacing his books, he was apt to mistake and clap Descartes next 
+to Aristotle, poor Plato had got between Hobbes and the Seven Wise 
+Masters, and Virgil was hemmed in with Dryden on one side and 
+Wither on the other.
+
+Meanwhile, those books that were advocates for the Moderns, chose 
+out one from among them to make a progress through the whole 
+library, examine the number and strength of their party, and 
+concert their affairs.  This messenger performed all things very 
+industriously, and brought back with him a list of their forces, in 
+all, fifty thousand, consisting chiefly of light-horse, heavy-armed 
+foot, and mercenaries; whereof the foot were in general but sorrily 
+armed and worse clad; their horses large, but extremely out of case 
+and heart; however, some few, by trading among the Ancients, had 
+furnished themselves tolerably enough.
+
+While things were in this ferment, discord grew extremely high; hot 
+words passed on both sides, and ill blood was plentifully bred.  
+Here a solitary Ancient, squeezed up among a whole shelf of 
+Moderns, offered fairly to dispute the case, and to prove by 
+manifest reason that the priority was due to them from long 
+possession, and in regard of their prudence, antiquity, and, above 
+all, their great merits toward the Moderns.  But these denied the 
+premises, and seemed very much to wonder how the Ancients could 
+pretend to insist upon their antiquity, when it was so plain (if 
+they went to that) that the Moderns were much the more ancient of 
+the two.  As for any obligations they owed to the Ancients, they 
+renounced them all.  "It is true," said they, "we are informed some 
+few of our party have been so mean as to borrow their subsistence 
+from you, but the rest, infinitely the greater number (and 
+especially we French and English), were so far from stooping to so 
+base an example, that there never passed, till this very hour, six 
+words between us.  For our horses were of our own breeding, our 
+arms of our own forging, and our clothes of our own cutting out and 
+sewing."  Plato was by chance up on the next shelf, and observing 
+those that spoke to be in the ragged plight mentioned a while ago, 
+their jades lean and foundered, their weapons of rotten wood, their 
+armour rusty, and nothing but rags underneath, he laughed loud, and 
+in his pleasant way swore, by -, he believed them.
+
+Now, the Moderns had not proceeded in their late negotiation with 
+secrecy enough to escape the notice of the enemy.  For those 
+advocates who had begun the quarrel, by setting first on foot the 
+dispute of precedency, talked so loud of coming to a battle, that 
+Sir William Temple happened to overhear them, and gave immediate 
+intelligence to the Ancients, who thereupon drew up their scattered 
+troops together, resolving to act upon the defensive; upon which, 
+several of the Moderns fled over to their party, and among the rest 
+Temple himself.  This Temple, having been educated and long 
+conversed among the Ancients, was, of all the Moderns, their 
+greatest favourite, and became their greatest champion.
+
+Things were at this crisis when a material accident fell out.  For 
+upon the highest corner of a large window, there dwelt a certain 
+spider, swollen up to the first magnitude by the destruction of 
+infinite numbers of flies, whose spoils lay scattered before the 
+gates of his palace, like human bones before the cave of some 
+giant.  The avenues to his castle were guarded with turnpikes and 
+palisadoes, all after the modern way of fortification.  After you 
+had passed several courts you came to the centre, wherein you might 
+behold the constable himself in his own lodgings, which had windows 
+fronting to each avenue, and ports to sally out upon all occasions 
+of prey or defence.  In this mansion he had for some time dwelt in 
+peace and plenty, without danger to his person by swallows from 
+above, or to his palace by brooms from below; when it was the 
+pleasure of fortune to conduct thither a wandering bee, to whose 
+curiosity a broken pane in the glass had discovered itself, and in 
+he went, where, expatiating a while, he at last happened to alight 
+upon one of the outward walls of the spider's citadel; which, 
+yielding to the unequal weight, sunk down to the very foundation.  
+Thrice he endeavoured to force his passage, and thrice the centre 
+shook.  The spider within, feeling the terrible convulsion, 
+supposed at first that nature was approaching to her final 
+dissolution, or else that Beelzebub, with all his legions, was come 
+to revenge the death of many thousands of his subjects whom his 
+enemy had slain and devoured.  However, he at length valiantly 
+resolved to issue forth and meet his fate.  Meanwhile the bee had 
+acquitted himself of his toils, and, posted securely at some 
+distance, was employed in cleansing his wings, and disengaging them 
+from the ragged remnants of the cobweb.  By this time the spider 
+was adventured out, when, beholding the chasms, the ruins, and 
+dilapidations of his fortress, he was very near at his wit's end; 
+he stormed and swore like a madman, and swelled till he was ready 
+to burst.  At length, casting his eye upon the bee, and wisely 
+gathering causes from events (for they know each other by sight), 
+"A plague split you," said he; "is it you, with a vengeance, that 
+have made this litter here; could not you look before you, and be 
+d-d?  Do you think I have nothing else to do (in the devil's name) 
+but to mend and repair after you?"  "Good words, friend," said the 
+bee, having now pruned himself, and being disposed to droll; "I'll 
+give you my hand and word to come near your kennel no more; I was 
+never in such a confounded pickle since I was born."  "Sirrah," 
+replied the spider, "if it were not for breaking an old custom in 
+our family, never to stir abroad against an enemy, I should come 
+and teach you better manners."  "I pray have patience," said the 
+bee, "or you'll spend your substance, and, for aught I see, you may 
+stand in need of it all, towards the repair of your house."  
+"Rogue, rogue," replied the spider, "yet methinks you should have 
+more respect to a person whom all the world allows to be so much 
+your betters."  "By my troth," said the bee, "the comparison will 
+amount to a very good jest, and you will do me a favour to let me 
+know the reasons that all the world is pleased to use in so hopeful 
+a dispute."  At this the spider, having swelled himself into the 
+size and posture of a disputant, began his argument in the true 
+spirit of controversy, with resolution to be heartily scurrilous 
+and angry, to urge on his own reasons without the least regard to 
+the answers or objections of his opposite, and fully predetermined 
+in his mind against all conviction.
+
+"Not to disparage myself," said he, "by the comparison with such a 
+rascal, what art thou but a vagabond without house or home, without 
+stock or inheritance? born to no possession of your own, but a pair 
+of wings and a drone-pipe.  Your livelihood is a universal plunder 
+upon nature; a freebooter over fields and gardens; and, for the 
+sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as easily as a violet.  Whereas 
+I am a domestic animal, furnished with a native stock within 
+myself.  This large castle (to show my improvements in the 
+mathematics) is all built with my own hands, and the materials 
+extracted altogether out of my own person."
+
+"I am glad," answered the bee, "to hear you grant at least that I 
+am come honestly by my wings and my voice; for then, it seems, I am 
+obliged to Heaven alone for my flights and my music; and Providence 
+would never have bestowed on me two such gifts without designing 
+them for the noblest ends.  I visit, indeed, all the flowers and 
+blossoms of the field and garden, but whatever I collect thence 
+enriches myself without the least injury to their beauty, their 
+smell, or their taste.  Now, for you and your skill in architecture 
+and other mathematics, I have little to say:  in that building of 
+yours there might, for aught I know, have been labour and method 
+enough; but, by woeful experience for us both, it is too plain the 
+materials are naught; and I hope you will henceforth take warning, 
+and consider duration and matter, as well as method and art.  You 
+boast, indeed, of being obliged to no other creature, but of 
+drawing and spinning out all from yourself; that is to say, if we 
+may judge of the liquor in the vessel by what issues out, you 
+possess a good plentiful store of dirt and poison in your breast; 
+and, though I would by no means lesson or disparage your genuine 
+stock of either, yet I doubt you are somewhat obliged, for an 
+increase of both, to a little foreign assistance.  Your inherent 
+portion of dirt does not fall of acquisitions, by sweepings exhaled 
+from below; and one insect furnishes you with a share of poison to 
+destroy another.  So that, in short, the question comes all to 
+this:  whether is the nobler being of the two, that which, by a 
+lazy contemplation of four inches round, by an overweening pride, 
+feeding, and engendering on itself, turns all into excrement and 
+venom, producing nothing at all but flybane and a cobweb; or that 
+which, by a universal range, with long search, much study, true 
+judgment, and distinction of things, brings home honey and wax."
+
+This dispute was managed with such eagerness, clamour, and warmth, 
+that the two parties of books, in arms below, stood silent a while, 
+waiting in suspense what would be the issue; which was not long 
+undetermined:  for the bee, grown impatient at so much loss of 
+time, fled straight away to a bed of roses, without looking for a 
+reply, and left the spider, like an orator, collected in himself, 
+and just prepared to burst out.
+
+It happened upon this emergency that AEsop broke silence first.  He 
+had been of late most barbarously treated by a strange effect of 
+the regent's humanity, who had torn off his title-page, sorely 
+defaced one half of his leaves, and chained him fast among a shelf 
+of Moderns.  Where, soon discovering how high the quarrel was 
+likely to proceed, he tried all his arts, and turned himself to a 
+thousand forms.  At length, in the borrowed shape of an ass, the 
+regent mistook him for a Modern; by which means he had time and 
+opportunity to escape to the Ancients, just when the spider and the 
+bee were entering into their contest; to which he gave his 
+attention with a world of pleasure, and, when it was ended, swore 
+in the loudest key that in all his life he had never known two 
+cases, so parallel and adapt to each other as that in the window 
+and this upon the shelves.  "The disputants," said he, "have 
+admirably managed the dispute between them, have taken in the full 
+strength of all that is to be said on both sides, and exhausted the 
+substance of every argument PRO and CON.  It is but to adjust the 
+reasonings of both to the present quarrel, then to compare and 
+apply the labours and fruits of each, as the bee has learnedly 
+deduced them, and we shall find the conclusion fall plain and close 
+upon the Moderns and us.  For pray, gentlemen, was ever anything so 
+modern as the spider in his air, his turns, and his paradoxes? he 
+argues in the behalf of you, his brethren, and himself, with many 
+boastings of his native stock and great genius; that he spins and 
+spits wholly from himself, and scorns to own any obligation or 
+assistance from without.  Then he displays to you his great skill 
+in architecture and improvement in the mathematics.  To all this 
+the bee, as an advocate retained by us, the Ancients, thinks fit to 
+answer, that, if one may judge of the great genius or inventions of 
+the Moderns by what they have produced, you will hardly have 
+countenance to bear you out in boasting of either.  Erect your 
+schemes with as much method and skill as you please; yet, if the 
+materials be nothing but dirt, spun out of your own entrails (the 
+guts of modern brains), the edifice will conclude at last in a 
+cobweb; the duration of which, like that of other spiders' webs, 
+may be imputed to their being forgotten, or neglected, or hid in a 
+corner.  For anything else of genuine that the Moderns may pretend 
+to, I cannot recollect; unless it be a large vein of wrangling and 
+satire, much of a nature and substance with the spiders' poison; 
+which, however they pretend to spit wholly out of themselves, is 
+improved by the same arts, by feeding upon the insects and vermin 
+of the age.  As for us, the Ancients, we are content with the bee, 
+to pretend to nothing of our own beyond our wings and our voice:  
+that is to say, our flights and our language.  For the rest, 
+whatever we have got has been by infinite labour and search, and 
+ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is, that, 
+instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to till our hives 
+with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of 
+things, which are sweetness and light."
+
+It is wonderful to conceive the tumult arisen among the books upon 
+the close of this long descant of AEsop:  both parties took the 
+hint, and heightened their animosities so on a sudden, that they 
+resolved it should come to a battle.  Immediately the two main 
+bodies withdrew, under their several ensigns, to the farther parts 
+of the library, and there entered into cabals and consults upon the 
+present emergency.  The Moderns were in very warm debates upon the 
+choice of their leaders; and nothing less than the fear impending 
+from their enemies could have kept them from mutinies upon this 
+occasion.  The difference was greatest among the horse, where every 
+private trooper pretended to the chief command, from Tasso and 
+Milton to Dryden and Wither.  The light-horse were commanded by 
+Cowley and Despreaux.  There came the bowmen under their valiant 
+leaders, Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes; whose strength was such 
+that they could shoot their arrows beyond the atmosphere, never to 
+fall down again, but turn, like that of Evander, into meteors; or, 
+like the cannon-ball, into stars.  Paracelsus brought a squadron of 
+stinkpot-flingers from the snowy mountains of Rhaetia.  There came 
+a vast body of dragoons, of different nations, under the leading of 
+Harvey, their great aga:  part armed with scythes, the weapons of 
+death; part with lances and long knives, all steeped in poison; 
+part shot bullets of a most malignant nature, and used white 
+powder, which infallibly killed without report.  There came several 
+bodies of heavy-armed foot, all mercenaries, under the ensigns of 
+Guicciardini, Davila, Polydore Vergil, Buchanan, Mariana, Camden, 
+and others.  The engineers were commanded by Regiomontanus and 
+Wilkins.  The rest was a confused multitude, led by Scotus, 
+Aquinas, and Bellarmine; of mighty bulk and stature, but without 
+either arms, courage, or discipline.  In the last place came 
+infinite swarms of calones, a disorderly rout led by L'Estrange; 
+rogues and ragamuffins, that follow the camp for nothing but the 
+plunder, all without coats to cover them.
+
+The army of the Ancients was much fewer in number; Homer led the 
+horse, and Pindar the light-horse; Euclid was chief engineer; Plato 
+and Aristotle commanded the bowmen; Herodotus and Livy the foot; 
+Hippocrates, the dragoons; the allies, led by Vossius and Temple, 
+brought up the rear.
+
+All things violently tending to a decisive battle, Fame, who much 
+frequented, and had a large apartment formerly assigned her in the 
+regal library, fled up straight to Jupiter, to whom she delivered a 
+faithful account of all that passed between the two parties below; 
+for among the gods she always tells truth.  Jove, in great concern, 
+convokes a council in the Milky Way.  The senate assembled, he 
+declares the occasion of convening them; a bloody battle just 
+impendent between two mighty armies of ancient and modern 
+creatures, called books, wherein the celestial interest was but too 
+deeply concerned.  Momus, the patron of the Moderns, made an 
+excellent speech in their favour, which was answered by Pallas, the 
+protectress of the Ancients.  The assembly was divided in their 
+affections; when Jupiter commanded the Book of Fate to be laid 
+before him.  Immediately were brought by Mercury three large 
+volumes in folio, containing memoirs of all things past, present, 
+and to come.  The clasps were of silver double gilt, the covers of 
+celestial turkey leather, and the paper such as here on earth might 
+pass almost for vellum.  Jupiter, having silently read the decree, 
+would communicate the import to none, but presently shut up the 
+book.
+
+Without the doors of this assembly there attended a vast number of 
+light, nimble gods, menial servants to Jupiter:  those are his 
+ministering instruments in all affairs below.  They travel in a 
+caravan, more or less together, and are fastened to each other like 
+a link of galley-slaves, by a light chain, which passes from them 
+to Jupiter's great toe:  and yet, in receiving or delivering a 
+message, they may never approach above the lowest step of his 
+throne, where he and they whisper to each other through a large 
+hollow trunk.  These deities are called by mortal men accidents or 
+events; but the gods call them second causes.  Jupiter having 
+delivered his message to a certain number of these divinities, they 
+flew immediately down to the pinnacle of the regal library, and 
+consulting a few minutes, entered unseen, and disposed the parties 
+according to their orders.
+
+Meanwhile Momus, fearing the worst, and calling to mind an ancient 
+prophecy which bore no very good face to his children the Moderns, 
+bent his flight to the region of a malignant deity called 
+Criticism.  She dwelt on the top of a snowy mountain in Nova 
+Zembla; there Momus found her extended in her den, upon the spoils 
+of numberless volumes, half devoured.  At her right hand sat 
+Ignorance, her father and husband, blind with age; at her left, 
+Pride, her mother, dressing her up in the scraps of paper herself 
+had torn.  There was Opinion, her sister, light of foot, hood-
+winked, and head-strong, yet giddy and perpetually turning.  About 
+her played her children, Noise and Impudence, Dulness and Vanity, 
+Positiveness, Pedantry, and Ill-manners.  The goddess herself had 
+claws like a cat; her head, and ears, and voice resembled those of 
+an ass; her teeth fallen out before, her eyes turned inward, as if 
+she looked only upon herself; her diet was the overflowing of her 
+own gall; her spleen was so large as to stand prominent, like a dug 
+of the first rate; nor wanted excrescences in form of teats, at 
+which a crew of ugly monsters were greedily sucking; and, what is 
+wonderful to conceive, the bulk of spleen increased faster than the 
+sucking could diminish it.  "Goddess," said Momus, "can you sit 
+idly here while our devout worshippers, the Moderns, are this 
+minute entering into a cruel battle, and perhaps now lying under 
+the swords of their enemies? who then hereafter will ever sacrifice 
+or build altars to our divinities?  Haste, therefore, to the 
+British Isle, and, if possible, prevent their destruction; while I 
+make factions among the gods, and gain them over to our party."
+
+Momus, having thus delivered himself, stayed not for an answer, but 
+left the goddess to her own resentment.  Up she rose in a rage, 
+and, as it is the form on such occasions, began a soliloquy:  "It 
+is I" (said she) "who give wisdom to infants and idiots; by me 
+children grow wiser than their parents, by me beaux become 
+politicians, and schoolboys judges of philosophy; by me sophisters 
+debate and conclude upon the depths of knowledge; and coffee-house 
+wits, instinct by me, can correct an author's style, and display 
+his minutest errors, without understanding a syllable of his matter 
+or his language; by me striplings spend their judgment, as they do 
+their estate, before it comes into their hands.  It is I who have 
+deposed wit and knowledge from their empire over poetry, and 
+advanced myself in their stead.  And shall a few upstart Ancients 
+dare to oppose me?  But come, my aged parent, and you, my children 
+dear, and thou, my beauteous sister; let us ascend my chariot, and 
+haste to assist our devout Moderns, who are now sacrificing to us a 
+hecatomb, as I perceive by that grateful smell which from thence 
+reaches my nostrils."
+
+The goddess and her train, having mounted the chariot, which was 
+drawn by tame geese, flew over infinite regions, shedding her 
+influence in due places, till at length she arrived at her beloved 
+island of Britain; but in hovering over its metropolis, what 
+blessings did she not let fall upon her seminaries of Gresham and 
+Covent-garden!  And now she reached the fatal plain of St. James's 
+library, at what time the two armies were upon the point to engage; 
+where, entering with all her caravan unseen, and landing upon a 
+case of shelves, now desert, but once inhabited by a colony of 
+virtuosos, she stayed awhile to observe the posture of both armies.
+
+But here the tender cares of a mother began to fill her thoughts 
+and move in her breast:  for at the head of a troup of Modern 
+bowmen she cast her eyes upon her son Wotton, to whom the fates had 
+assigned a very short thread.  Wotton, a young hero, whom an 
+unknown father of mortal race begot by stolen embraces with this 
+goddess.  He was the darling of his mother above all her children, 
+and she resolved to go and comfort him.  But first, according to 
+the good old custom of deities, she cast about to change her shape, 
+for fear the divinity of her countenance might dazzle his mortal 
+sight and overcharge the rest of his senses.  She therefore 
+gathered up her person into an octavo compass:  her body grow white 
+and arid, and split in pieces with dryness; the thick turned into 
+pasteboard, and the thin into paper; upon which her parents and 
+children artfully strewed a black juice, or decoction of gall and 
+soot, in form of letters:  her head, and voice, and spleen, kept 
+their primitive form; and that which before was a cover of skin did 
+still continue so.  In this guise she marched on towards the 
+Moderns, indistinguishable in shape and dress from the divine 
+Bentley, Wotton's dearest friend.  "Brave Wotton," said the 
+goddess, "why do our troops stand idle here, to spend their present 
+vigour and opportunity of the day? away, let us haste to the 
+generals, and advise to give the onset immediately."  Having spoke 
+thus, she took the ugliest of her monsters, full glutted from her 
+spleen, and flung it invisibly into his mouth, which, flying 
+straight up into his head, squeezed out his eye-balls, gave him a 
+distorted look, and half-overturned his brain.  Then she privately 
+ordered two of her beloved children, Dulness and Ill-manners, 
+closely to attend his person in all encounters.  Having thus 
+accoutred him, she vanished in a mist, and the hero perceived it 
+was the goddess his mother.
+
+The destined hour of fate being now arrived, the fight began; 
+whereof, before I dare adventure to make a particular description, 
+I must, after the example of other authors, petition for a hundred 
+tongues, and mouths, and hands, and pens, which would all be too 
+little to perform so immense a work.  Say, goddess, that presidest 
+over history, who it was that first advanced in the field of 
+battle!  Paracelsus, at the head of his dragoons, observing Galen 
+in the adverse wing, darted his javelin with a mighty force, which 
+the brave Ancient received upon his shield, the point breaking in 
+the second fold . . . HIC PAUCA
+. . . . DESUNT
+
+They bore the wounded aga on their shields to his
+chariot . . . 
+DESUNT . . . 
+NONNULLA. . . . 
+
+Then Aristotle, observing Bacon advance with a furious mien, drew 
+his bow to the head, and let fly his arrow, which missed the 
+valiant Modern and went whizzing over his head; but Descartes it 
+hit; the steel point quickly found a defect in his head-piece; it 
+pierced the leather and the pasteboard, and went in at his right 
+eye.  The torture of the pain whirled the valiant bow-man round 
+till death, like a star of superior influence, drew him into his 
+own vortex INGENS HIATUS . . . .
+HIC IN MS. . . . . 
+.  . .  . when Homer appeared at the head of the cavalry, mounted 
+on a furious horse, with difficulty managed by the rider himself, 
+but which no other mortal durst approach; he rode among the enemy's 
+ranks, and bore down all before him.  Say, goddess, whom he slew 
+first and whom he slew last!  First, Gondibert advanced against 
+him, clad in heavy armour and mounted on a staid sober gelding, not 
+so famed for his speed as his docility in kneeling whenever his 
+rider would mount or alight.  He had made a vow to Pallas that he 
+would never leave the field till he had spoiled Homer of his 
+armour:  madman, who had never once seen the wearer, nor understood 
+his strength!  Him Homer overthrew, horse and man, to the ground, 
+there to be trampled and choked in the dirt.  Then with a long 
+spear he slew Denham, a stout Modern, who from his father's side 
+derived his lineage from Apollo, but his mother was of mortal race.  
+He fell, and bit the earth.  The celestial part Apollo took, and 
+made it a star; but the terrestrial lay wallowing upon the ground.  
+Then Homer slew Sam Wesley with a kick of his horse's heel; he took 
+Perrault by mighty force out of his saddle, then hurled him at 
+Fontenelle, with the same blow dashing out both their brains.
+
+On the left wing of the horse Virgil appeared, in shining armour, 
+completely fitted to his body; he was mounted on a dapple-grey 
+steed, the slowness of whose pace was an effect of the highest 
+mettle and vigour.  He cast his eye on the adverse wing, with a 
+desire to find an object worthy of his valour, when behold upon a 
+sorrel gelding of a monstrous size appeared a foe, issuing from 
+among the thickest of the enemy's squadrons; but his speed was less 
+than his noise; for his horse, old and lean, spent the dregs of his 
+strength in a high trot, which, though it made slow advances, yet 
+caused a loud clashing of his armour, terrible to hear.  The two 
+cavaliers had now approached within the throw of a lance, when the 
+stranger desired a parley, and, lifting up the visor of his helmet, 
+a face hardly appeared from within which, after a pause, was known 
+for that of the renowned Dryden.  The brave Ancient suddenly 
+started, as one possessed with surprise and disappointment 
+together; for the helmet was nine times too large for the head, 
+which appeared situate far in the hinder part, even like the lady 
+in a lobster, or like a mouse under a canopy of state, or like a 
+shrivelled beau from within the penthouse of a modern periwig; and 
+the voice was suited to the visage, sounding weak and remote.  
+Dryden, in a long harangue, soothed up the good Ancient; called him 
+father, and, by a large deduction of genealogies, made it plainly 
+appear that they were nearly related.  Then he humbly proposed an 
+exchange of armour, as a lasting mark of hospitality between them.  
+Virgil consented (for the goddess Diffidence came unseen, and cast 
+a mist before his eyes), though his was of gold and cost a hundred 
+beeves, the other's but of rusty iron.  However, this glittering 
+armour became the Modern yet worsen than his own.  Then they agreed 
+to exchange horses; but, when it came to the trial, Dryden was 
+afraid and utterly unable to mount. . . ALTER HIATUS
+. . . . IN MS.
+
+Lucan appeared upon a fiery horse of admirable shape, but 
+headstrong, bearing the rider where he list over the field; he made 
+a mighty slaughter among the enemy's horse; which destruction to 
+stop, Blackmore, a famous Modern (but one of the mercenaries), 
+strenuously opposed himself, and darted his javelin with a strong 
+hand, which, falling short of its mark, struck deep in the earth.  
+Then Lucan threw a lance; but AEsculapius came unseen and turned 
+off the point.  "Brave Modern," said Lucan, "I perceive some god 
+protects you, for never did my arm so deceive me before:  but what 
+mortal can contend with a god?  Therefore, let us fight no longer, 
+but present gifts to each other."  Lucan then bestowed on the 
+Modern a pair of spurs, and Blackmore gave Lucan a bridle. . . . 
+PAUCA DESUNT. . . .
+. . . . 
+
+Creech:  but the goddess Dulness took a cloud, formed into the 
+shape of Horace, armed and mounted, and placed in a flying posture 
+before him.  Glad was the cavalier to begin a combat with a flying 
+foe, and pursued the image, threatening aloud; till at last it led 
+him to the peaceful bower of his father, Ogleby, by whom he was 
+disarmed and assigned to his repose.
+
+Then Pindar slew -, and - and Oldham, and -, and Afra the Amazon, 
+light of foot; never advancing in a direct line, but wheeling with 
+incredible agility and force, he made a terrible slaughter among 
+the enemy's light-horse.  Him when Cowley observed, his generous 
+heart burnt within him, and he advanced against the fierce Ancient, 
+imitating his address, his pace, and career, as well as the vigour 
+of his horse and his own skill would allow.  When the two cavaliers 
+had approached within the length of three javelins, first Cowley 
+threw a lance, which missed Pindar, and, passing into the enemy's 
+ranks, fell ineffectual to the ground.  Then Pindar darted a 
+javelin so large and weighty, that scarce a dozen Cavaliers, as 
+cavaliers are in our degenerate days, could raise it from the 
+ground; yet he threw it with ease, and it went, by an unerring 
+hand, singing through the air; nor could the Modern have avoided 
+present death if he had not luckily opposed the shield that had 
+been given him by Venus.  And now both heroes drew their swords; 
+but the Modern was so aghast and disordered that he knew not where 
+he was; his shield dropped from his hands; thrice he fled, and 
+thrice he could not escape.  At last he turned, and lifting up his 
+hand in the posture of a suppliant, "Godlike Pindar," said he, 
+"spare my life, and possess my horse, with these arms, beside the 
+ransom which my friends will give when they hear I am alive and 
+your prisoner."  "Dog!" said Pindar, "let your ransom stay with 
+your friends; but your carcase shall be left for the fowls of the 
+air and the beasts of the field."  With that he raised his sword, 
+and, with a mighty stroke, cleft the wretched Modern in twain, the 
+sword pursuing the blow; and one half lay panting on the ground, to 
+be trod in pieces by the horses' feet; the other half was borne by 
+the frighted steed through the field.  This Venus took, washed it 
+seven times in ambrosia, then struck it thrice with a sprig of 
+amaranth; upon which the leather grow round and soft, and the 
+leaves turned into feathers, and, being gilded before, continued 
+gilded still; so it became a dove, and she harnessed it to her 
+chariot. . . .
+. . . . HIATUS VALDE DE-
+. . . . FLENDUS IN MS.
+
+
+THE EPISODE OF BENTLEY AND WOTTON.
+
+
+Day being far spent, and the numerous forces of the Moderns half 
+inclining to a retreat, there issued forth, from a squadron of 
+their heavy-armed foot, a captain whose name was Bentley, the most 
+deformed of all the Moderns; tall, but without shape or comeliness; 
+large, but without strength or proportion.  His armour was patched 
+up of a thousand incoherent pieces, and the sound of it, as he 
+marched, was loud and dry, like that made by the fall of a sheet of 
+lead, which an Etesian wind blows suddenly down from the roof of 
+some steeple.  His helmet was of old rusty iron, but the vizor was 
+brass, which, tainted by his breath, corrupted into copperas, nor 
+wanted gall from the same fountain, so that, whenever provoked by 
+anger or labour, an atramentous quality, of most malignant nature, 
+was seen to distil from his lips.  In his right hand he grasped a 
+flail, and (that he might never be unprovided of an offensive 
+weapon) a vessel full of ordure in his left.  Thus completely 
+armed, he advanced with a slow and heavy pace where the Modern 
+chiefs were holding a consult upon the sum of things, who, as he 
+came onwards, laughed to behold his crooked leg and humped 
+shoulder, which his boot and armour, vainly endeavouring to hide, 
+were forced to comply with and expose.  The generals made use of 
+him for his talent of railing, which, kept within government, 
+proved frequently of great service to their cause, but, at other 
+times, did more mischief than good; for, at the least touch of 
+offence, and often without any at all, he would, like a wounded 
+elephant, convert it against his leaders.  Such, at this juncture, 
+was the disposition of Bentley, grieved to see the enemy prevail, 
+and dissatisfied with everybody's conduct but his own.  He humbly 
+gave the Modern generals to understand that he conceived, with 
+great submission, they were all a pack of rogues, and fools, and 
+confounded logger-heads, and illiterate whelps, and nonsensical 
+scoundrels; that, if himself had been constituted general, those 
+presumptuous dogs, the Ancients, would long before this have been 
+beaten out of the field.  "You," said he, "sit here idle, but when 
+I, or any other valiant Modern kill an enemy, you are sure to seize 
+the spoil.  But I will not march one foot against the foe till you 
+all swear to me that whomever I take or kill, his arms I shall 
+quietly possess."  Bentley having spoken thus, Scaliger, bestowing 
+him a sour look, "Miscreant prater!" said he, "eloquent only in 
+thine own eyes, thou railest without wit, or truth, or discretion.  
+The malignity of thy temper perverteth nature; thy learning makes 
+thee more barbarous; thy study of humanity more inhuman; thy 
+converse among poets more grovelling, miry, and dull.  All arts of 
+civilising others render thee rude and untractable; courts have 
+taught thee ill manners, and polite conversation has finished thee 
+a pedant.  Besides, a greater coward burdeneth not the army.  But 
+never despond; I pass my word, whatever spoil thou takest shall 
+certainly be thy own; though I hope that vile carcase will first 
+become a prey to kites and worms."
+
+Bentley durst not reply, but, half choked with spleen and rage, 
+withdrew, in full resolution of performing some great achievement.  
+With him, for his aid and companion, he took his beloved Wotton, 
+resolving by policy or surprise to attempt some neglected quarter 
+of the Ancients' army.  They began their march over carcases of 
+their slaughtered friends; then to the right of their own forces; 
+then wheeled northward, till they came to Aldrovandus's tomb, which 
+they passed on the side of the declining sun.  And now they 
+arrived, with fear, toward the enemy's out-guards, looking about, 
+if haply they might spy the quarters of the wounded, or some 
+straggling sleepers, unarmed and remote from the rest.  As when two 
+mongrel curs, whom native greediness and domestic want provoke and 
+join in partnership, though fearful, nightly to invade the folds of 
+some rich grazier, they, with tails depressed and lolling tongues, 
+creep soft and slow.  Meanwhile the conscious moon, now in her 
+zenith, on their guilty heads darts perpendicular rays; nor dare 
+they bark, though much provoked at her refulgent visage, whether 
+seen in puddle by reflection or in sphere direct; but one surveys 
+the region round, while the other scouts the plain, if haply to 
+discover, at distance from the flock, some carcase half devoured, 
+the refuse of gorged wolves or ominous ravens.  So marched this 
+lovely, loving pair of friends, nor with less fear and 
+circumspection, when at a distance they might perceive two shining 
+suits of armour hanging upon an oak, and the owners not far off in 
+a profound sleep.  The two friends drew lots, and the pursuing of 
+this adventure fell to Bentley; on he went, and in his van 
+Confusion and Amaze, while Horror and Affright brought up the rear.  
+As he came near, behold two heroes of the Ancient army, Phalaris 
+and AEsop, lay fast asleep.  Bentley would fain have despatched 
+them both, and, stealing close, aimed his flail at Phalaris's 
+breast; but then the goddess Affright, interposing, caught the 
+Modern in her icy arms, and dragged him from the danger she 
+foresaw; both the dormant heroes happened to turn at the same 
+instant, though soundly sleeping, and busy in a dream.  For 
+Phalaris was just that minute dreaming how a most vile poetaster 
+had lampooned him, and how he had got him roaring in his bull.  And 
+AEsop dreamed that as he and the Ancient were lying on the ground, 
+a wild ass broke loose, ran about, trampling and kicking in their 
+faces.  Bentley, leaving the two heroes asleep, seized on both 
+their armours, and withdrew in quest of his darling Wotton.
+
+He, in the meantime, had wandered long in search of some 
+enterprise, till at length he arrived at a small rivulet that 
+issued from a fountain hard by, called, in the language of mortal 
+men, Helicon.  Here he stopped, and, parched with thirst, resolved 
+to allay it in this limpid stream.  Thrice with profane hands he 
+essayed to raise the water to his lips, and thrice it slipped all 
+through his fingers.  Then he stopped prone on his breast, but, ere 
+his mouth had kissed the liquid crystal, Apollo came, and in the 
+channel held his shield betwixt the Modern and the fountain, so 
+that he drew up nothing but mud.  For, although no fountain on 
+earth can compare with the clearness of Helicon, yet there lies at 
+bottom a thick sediment of slime and mud; for so Apollo begged of 
+Jupiter, as a punishment to those who durst attempt to taste it 
+with unhallowed lips, and for a lesson to all not to draw too deep 
+or far from the spring.
+
+At the fountain-head Wotton discerned two heroes; the one he could 
+not distinguish, but the other was soon known for Temple, general 
+of the allies to the Ancients.  His back was turned, and he was 
+employed in drinking large draughts in his helmet from the 
+fountain, where he had withdrawn himself to rest from the toils of 
+the war.  Wotton, observing him, with quaking knees and trembling 
+hands, spoke thus to himself:  O that I could kill this destroyer 
+of our army, what renown should I purchase among the chiefs! but to 
+issue out against him, man against man, shield against shield, and 
+lance against lance, what Modern of us dare? for he fights like a 
+god, and Pallas or Apollo are ever at his elbow.  But, O mother! if 
+what Fame reports be true, that I am the son of so great a goddess, 
+grant me to hit Temple with this lance, that the stroke may send 
+him to hell, and that I may return in safety and triumph, laden 
+with his spoils.  The first part of this prayer the gods granted at 
+the intercession of his mother and of Momus; but the rest, by a 
+perverse wind sent from Fate, was scattered in the air.  Then 
+Wotton grasped his lance, and, brandishing it thrice over his head, 
+darted it with all his might; the goddess, his mother, at the same 
+time adding strength to his arm.  Away the lance went hizzing, and 
+reached even to the belt of the averted Ancient, upon which, 
+lightly grazing, it fell to the ground.  Temple neither felt the 
+weapon touch him nor heard it fall:  and Wotton might have escaped 
+to his army, with the honour of having remitted his lance against 
+so great a leader unrevenged; but Apollo, enraged that a javelin 
+flung by the assistance of so foul a goddess should pollute his 
+fountain, put on the shape of -, and softly came to young Boyle, 
+who then accompanied Temple:  he pointed first to the lance, then 
+to the distant Modern that flung it, and commanded the young hero 
+to take immediate revenge.  Boyle, clad in a suit of armour which 
+had been given him by all the gods, immediately advanced against 
+the trembling foe, who now fled before him.  As a young lion in the 
+Libyan plains, or Araby desert, sent by his aged sire to hunt for 
+prey, or health, or exercise, he scours along, wishing to meet some 
+tiger from the mountains, or a furious boar; if chance a wild ass, 
+with brayings importune, affronts his ear, the generous beast, 
+though loathing to distain his claws with blood so vile, yet, much 
+provoked at the offensive noise, which Echo, foolish nymph, like 
+her ill-judging sex, repeats much louder, and with more delight 
+than Philomela's song, he vindicates the honour of the forest, and 
+hunts the noisy long-eared animal.  So Wotton fled, so Boyle 
+pursued.  But Wotton, heavy-armed, and slow of foot, began to slack 
+his course, when his lover Bentley appeared, returning laden with 
+the spoils of the two sleeping Ancients.  Boyle observed him well, 
+and soon discovering the helmet and shield of Phalaris his friend, 
+both which he had lately with his own hands new polished and gilt, 
+rage sparkled in his eyes, and, leaving his pursuit after Wotton, 
+he furiously rushed on against this new approacher.  Fain would he 
+be revenged on both; but both now fled different ways:  and, as a 
+woman in a little house that gets a painful livelihood by spinning, 
+if chance her geese be scattered o'er the common, she courses round 
+the plain from side to side, compelling here and there the 
+stragglers to the flock; they cackle loud, and flutter o'er the 
+champaign; so Boyle pursued, so fled this pair of friends:  finding 
+at length their flight was vain, they bravely joined, and drew 
+themselves in phalanx.  First Bentley threw a spear with all his 
+force, hoping to pierce the enemy's breast; but Pallas came unseen, 
+and in the air took off the point, and clapped on one of lead, 
+which, after a dead bang against the enemy's shield, fell blunted 
+to the ground.  Then Boyle, observing well his time, took up a 
+lance of wondrous length and sharpness; and, as this pair of 
+friends compacted, stood close side by side, he wheeled him to the 
+right, and, with unusual force, darted the weapon.  Bentley saw his 
+fate approach, and flanking down his arms close to his ribs, hoping 
+to save his body, in went the point, passing through arm and side, 
+nor stopped or spent its force till it had also pierced the valiant 
+Wotton, who, going to sustain his dying friend, shared his fate.  
+As when a skilful cook has trussed a brace of woodcocks, he with 
+iron skewer pierces the tender sides of both, their legs and wings 
+close pinioned to the rib; so was this pair of friends transfixed, 
+till down they fell, joined in their lives, joined in their deaths; 
+so closely joined that Charon would mistake them both for one, and 
+waft them over Styx for half his fare.  Farewell, beloved, loving 
+pair; few equals have you left behind:  and happy and immortal 
+shall you be, if all my wit and eloquence can make you.
+
+And now. . . . 
+
+DESUNT COETERA.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II - A MEDITATION UPON A BROOMSTICK.
+
+
+
+ACCORDING TO THE STYLE AND MANNER OF THE HON. ROBERT BOYLE'S 
+MEDITATIONS.
+
+THIS single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that 
+neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest.  
+It was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs; but now in 
+vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying 
+that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk; it is now at 
+best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside-down, the 
+branches on the earth, and the root in the air; it is now handled 
+by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and, by a 
+capricious kind of fate, destined to make other things clean, and 
+be nasty itself; at length, worn to the stumps in the service of 
+the maids, it is either thrown out of doors or condemned to the 
+last use - of kindling a fire.  When I behold this I sighed, and 
+said within myself, "Surely mortal man is a broomstick!"  Nature 
+sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, 
+wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this 
+reasoning vegetable, till the axe of intemperance has lopped off 
+his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk; he then flies to 
+art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural 
+bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew on his 
+head; but now should this our broomstick pretend to enter the 
+scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered 
+with dust, through the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we 
+should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity.  Partial judges 
+that we are of our own excellencies, and other men's defaults!
+
+But a broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree 
+standing on its head; and pray what is a man but a topsy-turvy 
+creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, 
+his head where his heels should be, grovelling on the earth?  And 
+yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and 
+corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances, rakes into every 
+slut's corner of nature, bringing hidden corruptions to the light, 
+and raises a mighty dust where there was none before, sharing 
+deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to 
+sweep away.  His last days are spent in slavery to women, and 
+generally the least deserving; till, worn to the stumps, like his 
+brother besom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of to 
+kindle flames for others to warm themselves by.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III - PREDICTIONS FOR THE YEAR 1708.
+
+WHEREIN THE MONTH, AND DAY OF THE MONTH ARE SET DOWN, THE PERSONS 
+NAMED, AND THE GREAT ACTIONS AND EVENTS OF NEXT YEAR PARTICULARLY 
+RELATED AS WILL COME TO PASS.
+
+WRITTEN TO PREVENT THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND FROM BEING FARTHER IMPOSED 
+ON BY VULGAR ALMANACK-MAKERS.
+
+BY ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, ESQ.
+
+
+
+
+I HAVE long considered the gross abuse of astrology in this 
+kingdom, and upon debating the matter with myself, I could not 
+possibly lay the fault upon the art, but upon those gross impostors 
+who set up to be the artists.  I know several learned men have 
+contended that the whole is a cheat; that it is absurd and 
+ridiculous to imagine the stars can have any influence at all upon 
+human actions, thoughts, or inclinations; and whoever has not bent 
+his studies that way may be excused for thinking so, when he sees 
+in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated by a few mean 
+illiterate traders between us and the stars, who import a yearly 
+stock of nonsense, lies, folly, and impertinence, which they offer 
+to the world as genuine from the planets, though they descend from 
+no greater a height than their own brains.
+
+I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational defence of 
+this art, and therefore shall say no more in its justification at 
+present than that it hath been in all ages defended by many learned 
+men, and among the rest by Socrates himself, whom I look upon as 
+undoubtedly the wisest of uninspired mortals:  to which if we add 
+that those who have condemned this art, though otherwise learned, 
+having been such as either did not apply their studies this way, or 
+at least did not succeed in their applications, their testimony 
+will not be of much weight to its disadvantage, since they are 
+liable to the common objection of condemning what they did not 
+understand.
+
+Nor am I at all offended, or think it an injury to the art, when I 
+see the common dealers in it, the students in astrology, the 
+Philomaths, and the rest of that tribe, treated by wise men with 
+the utmost scorn and contempt; but rather wonder, when I observe 
+gentlemen in the country, rich enough to serve the nation in 
+Parliament, poring in Partridge's Almanack to find out the events 
+of the year at home and abroad, not daring to propose a hunting-
+match till Gadbury or he have fixed the weather.
+
+I will allow either of the two I have mentioned, or any other of 
+the fraternity, to he not only astrologers, but conjurers too, if I 
+do not produce a hundred instances in all their almanacks to 
+convince any reasonable man that they do not so much as understand 
+common grammar and syntax; that they are not able to spell any word 
+out of the usual road, nor even in their prefaces write common 
+sense or intelligible English.  Then for their observations and 
+predictions, they are such as will equally suit any age or country 
+in the world.  "This month a certain great person. will be 
+threatened with death or sickness."  This the newspapers will tell 
+them; for there we find at the end of the year that no month passes 
+without the death of some person of note; and it would be hard if 
+it should be otherwise, when there are at least two thousand 
+persons of note in this kingdom, many of them old, and the 
+almanack-maker has the liberty of choosing the sickliest season of 
+the year where lie may fix his prediction.  Again, "This month an 
+eminent clergyman will be preferred;" of which there may be some 
+hundreds, half of them with one foot in the grave.  Then "such a 
+planet in such a house shows great machinations, plots, and 
+conspiracies, that may in time be brought to light:" after which, 
+if we hear of any discovery, the astrologer gets the honour; if 
+not, his prediction still stands good.  And at last, "God preserve 
+King William from all his open and secret enemies, Amen."  When if 
+the King should happen to have died, the astrologer plainly 
+foretold it; otherwise it passes but for the pious ejaculation of a 
+loyal subject; though it unluckily happened in some of their 
+almanacks that poor King William was prayed for many months after 
+he was dead, because it fell out that he died about the beginning 
+of the year.
+
+To mention no more of their impertinent predictions:  what have we 
+to do with their advertisements about pills and drink for disease? 
+or their mutual quarrels in verse and prose of Whig and Tory, 
+wherewith the stars have little to do?
+
+Having long observed and lamented these, and a hundred other abuses 
+of this art, too tedious to repeat, I resolved to proceed in a new 
+way, which I doubt not will be to the general satisfaction of the 
+kingdom.  I can this year produce but a specimen of what I design 
+for the future, having employed most part of my time in adjusting 
+and correcting the calculations I made some years past, because I 
+would offer nothing to the world of which I am not as fully 
+satisfied as that I am now alive.  For these two last years I have 
+not failed in above one or two particulars, and those of no very 
+great moment.  I exactly foretold the miscarriage at Toulon, with 
+all its particulars, and the loss of Admiral Shovel, though I was 
+mistaken as to the day, placing that accident about thirty-six 
+hours sooner than it happened; but upon reviewing my schemes, I 
+quickly found the cause of that error.  I likewise foretold the 
+Battle of Almanza to the very day and hour, with the lose on both 
+sides, and the consequences thereof.  All which I showed to some 
+friends many months before they happened - that is, I gave them 
+papers sealed up, to open at such a time, after which they were at 
+liberty to read them; and there they found my predictions true in 
+every article, except one or two very minute.
+
+As for the few following predictions I now offer the world, I 
+forbore to publish them till I had perused the several almanacks 
+for the year we are now entered on.  I find them all in the usual 
+strain, and I beg the reader will compare their manner with mine.  
+And here I make bold to tell the world that I lay the whole credit 
+of my art upon the truth of these predictions; and I will be 
+content that Partridge, and the rest of his clan, may hoot me for a 
+cheat and impostor if I fail in any single particular of moment.  I 
+believe any man who reads this paper will look upon me to be at 
+least a person of as much honesty and understanding as a common 
+maker of almanacks.  I do not lurk in the dark; 1 am not wholly 
+unknown in the world; I have set my name at length, to be a mark of 
+infamy to mankind, if they shall find I deceive them.
+
+In one thing I must desire to be forgiven, that I talk more 
+sparingly of home affairs.  As it will be imprudence to discover 
+secrets of State, so it would be dangerous to my person; but in 
+smaller matters, and that are not of public consequence, I shall be 
+very free; and the truth of my conjectures will as much appear from 
+those as the others.  As for the most signal events abroad, in 
+France, Flanders, Italy, and Spain, I shall make no scruple to 
+predict them in plain terms.  Some of them are of importance, and I 
+hope I shall seldom mistake the day they will happen; therefore I 
+think good to inform the reader that I all along make use of the 
+Old Style observed in England, which I desire he will compare with 
+that of the newspapers at the time they relate the actions I 
+mention.
+
+I must add one word more.  I know it hath been the opinion of 
+several of the learned, who think well enough of the true art of 
+astrology, that the stars do only incline, and not force the 
+actions or wills of men, and therefore, however I may proceed by 
+right rules, yet I cannot in prudence so confidently assure the 
+events will follow exactly as I predict them.
+
+I hope I have maturely considered this objection, which in some 
+cases is of no little weight.  For example:  a man may, by the 
+influence of an over-ruling planet, be disposed or inclined to 
+lust, rage, or avarice, and yet by the force of reason overcome 
+that bad influence; and this was the case of Socrates.  But as the 
+great events of the world usually depend upon numbers of men, it 
+cannot be expected they should all unite to cross their 
+inclinations from pursuing a general design wherein they 
+unanimously agree.  Besides, the influence of the stars reaches to 
+many actions and events which are not any way in the power of 
+reason, as sickness, death, and what we commonly call accidents, 
+with many more, needless to repeat.
+
+But now it is time to proceed to my predictions, which I have begun 
+to calculate from the time that the sun enters into Aries.  And 
+this I take to be properly the beginning of the natural year.  I 
+pursue them to the time that he enters Libra, or somewhat more, 
+which is the busy period of the year.  The remainder I have not yet 
+adjusted, upon account of several impediments needless here to 
+mention.  Besides, I must remind the reader again that this is but 
+a specimen of what I design in succeeding years to treat more at 
+large, if I may have liberty and encouragement.
+
+My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I will mention it, to show 
+how ignorant those sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own 
+concerns.  It relates to Partridge, the almanack-maker.  I have 
+consulted the stars of his nativity by my own rules, and find he 
+will infallibly die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at 
+night, of a raging fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, 
+and settle his affairs in time.
+
+The month of APRIL will be observable for the death of many great 
+persons.  On the 4th will die the Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop 
+of Paris; on the 11th, the young Prince of Asturias, son to the 
+Duke of Anjou; on the 14th, a great peer of this realm will die at 
+his country house; on the 19th, an old layman of great fame for 
+learning, and on the 23rd, an eminent goldsmith in Lombard Street.  
+I could mention others, both at home and abroad, if I did not 
+consider it is of very little use or instruction to the reader, or 
+to the world.
+
+As to public affairs:  On the 7th of this month there will be an 
+insurrection in Dauphiny, occasioned by the oppressions of the 
+people, which will not be quieted in some months.
+
+On the 15th will be a violent storm on the south-east coast of 
+France, which will destroy many of their ships, and some in the 
+very harbour.
+
+The 11th will be famous for the revolt of a whole province or 
+kingdom, excepting one city, by which the affairs of a certain 
+prince in the Alliance will take a better face.
+
+MAY, against common conjectures, will be no very busy month in 
+Europe, but very signal for the death of the Dauphin, which will 
+happen on the 7th, after a short fit of sickness, and grievous 
+torments with the strangury.  He dies less lamented by the Court 
+than the kingdom.
+
+On the 9th a Marshal of France will break his leg by a fall from 
+his horse.  I have not been able to discover whether he will then 
+die or not.
+
+On the 11th will begin a most important siege, which the eyes of 
+all Europe will be upon:  I cannot be more particular, for in 
+relating affairs that so nearly concern the Confederates, and 
+consequently this kingdom, I am forced to confine myself for 
+several reasons very obvious to the reader.
+
+On the 15th news will arrive of a very surprising event, than which 
+nothing could be more unexpected.
+
+On the 19th three noble ladies of this kingdom will, against all 
+expectation, prove with child, to the great joy of their husbands.
+
+On the 23rd a famous buffoon of the playhouse will die a ridiculous 
+death, suitable to his vocation.
+
+JUNE.  This month will be distinguished at home by the utter 
+dispersing of those ridiculous deluded enthusiasts commonly called 
+the Prophets, occasioned chiefly by seeing the time come that many 
+of their prophecies should be fulfilled, and then finding 
+themselves deceived by contrary events.  It is indeed to be admired 
+how any deceiver can be so weak to foretell things near at hand, 
+when a very few months must of necessity discover the impostor to 
+all the world; in this point less prudent than common almanack-
+makers, who are so wise to wonder in generals, and talk dubiously, 
+and leave to the reader the business of interpreting.
+
+On the 1st of this month a French general will be killed by a 
+random shot of a cannon-ball.
+
+On the 6th a fire will break out in the suburbs of Paris, which 
+will destroy above a thousand houses, and seems to be the 
+foreboding of what will happen, to the surprise of all Europe, 
+about the end of the following month.
+
+On the 10th a great battle will be fought, which will begin at four 
+of the clock in the afternoon, and last till nine at night with 
+great obstinacy, but no very decisive event.  I shall not name the 
+place, for the reasons aforesaid, but the commanders on each left 
+wing will be killed.  I see bonfires and hear the noise of guns for 
+a victory.
+
+On the 14th there will be a false report of the French king's 
+death.
+
+On the 20th Cardinal Portocarero will die of a dysentery, with 
+great suspicion of poison, but the report of his intention to 
+revolt to King Charles will prove false.
+
+JULY.  The 6th of this month a certain general will, by a glorious 
+action, recover the reputation he lost by former misfortunes.
+
+On the 12th a great commander will die a prisoner in the hands of 
+his enemies.
+
+On the 14th a shameful discovery will be made of a French Jesuit 
+giving poison to a great foreign general; and when he is put to the 
+torture, will make wonderful discoveries.
+
+In short, this will prove a month of great action, if I might have 
+liberty to relate the particulars.
+
+At home, the death of an old famous senator will happen on the 15th 
+at his country house, worn with age and diseases.
+
+But that which will make this month memorable to all posterity is 
+the death of the French king, Louis the Fourteenth, after a week's 
+sickness at Marli, which will happen on the 29th, about six o'clock 
+in the evening.  It seems to be an effect of the gout in his 
+stomach, followed by a flux.  And in three days after Monsieur 
+Chamillard will follow his master, dying suddenly of an apoplexy.
+
+In this month likewise an ambassador will die in London, but I 
+cannot assign the day.
+
+AUGUST.  The affairs of France will seem to suffer no change for a 
+while under the Duke of Burgundy's administration; but the genius 
+that animated the whole machine being gone, will be the cause of 
+mighty turns and revolutions in the following year.  The new king 
+makes yet little change either in the army or the Ministry, but the 
+libels against his grandfather, that fly about his very Court, give 
+him uneasiness.
+
+I see an express in mighty haste, with joy and wonder in his looks, 
+arriving by break of day on the 26th of this month, having 
+travelled in three days a prodigious journey by land and sea.  In 
+the evening I hear bells and guns, and see the blazing of a 
+thousand bonfires.
+
+A young admiral of noble birth does likewise this month gain 
+immortal honour by a great achievement.
+
+The affairs of Poland are this month entirely settled; Augustus 
+resigns his pretensions which he had again taken up for some time:  
+Stanislaus is peaceably possessed of the throne, and the King of 
+Sweden declares for the emperor.
+
+I cannot omit one particular accident here at home:  that near the 
+end of this month much mischief will be done at Bartholomew Fair by 
+the fall of a booth.
+
+SEPTEMBER.  This month begins with a very surprising fit of frosty 
+weather, which will last near twelve days.
+
+The Pope, having long languished last month, the swellings in his 
+legs breaking, and the flesh mortifying, will die on the 11th 
+instant; and in three weeks' time, after a mighty contest, be 
+succeeded by a cardinal of the Imperial faction, but native of 
+Tuscany, who is now about sixty-one years old.
+
+The French army acts now wholly on the defensive, strongly 
+fortified in their trenches, and the young French king sends 
+overtures for a treaty of peace by the Duke of Mantua; which, 
+because it is a matter of State that concerns us here at home, I 
+shall speak no farther of it.
+
+I shall add but one prediction more, and that in mystical terms, 
+which shall be included in a verse out of Virgil -
+
+
+ALTER ERIT JAM TETHYS, ET ALTERA QUAE VEHAT ARGO
+DELECTOS HEROAS.
+
+
+Upon the 25th day of this month, the fulfilling of this prediction 
+will be manifest to everybody.
+
+This is the farthest I have proceeded in my calculations for the 
+present year.  I do not pretend that these are all the great events 
+which will happen in this period, but that those I have set down 
+will infallibly come to pass.  It will perhaps still be objected 
+why I have not spoken more particularly of affairs at home, or of 
+the success of our armies abroad, which I might, and could very 
+largely have done; but those in power have wisely discouraged men 
+from meddling in public concerns, and I was resolved by no means to 
+give the least offence.  This I will venture to say, that it will 
+be a glorious campaign for the Allies, wherein the English forces, 
+both by sea and land, will have their full share of honour; that 
+Her Majesty Queen Anne will continue in health and prosperity; and 
+that no ill accident will arrive to any in the chief Ministry.
+
+As to the particular events I have mentioned, the readers may judge 
+by the fulfilling of them, whether I am on the level with common 
+astrologers, who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pothooks for 
+planets, to amuse the vulgar, have, in my opinion, too long been 
+suffered to abuse the world.  But an honest physician ought not to 
+be despised because there are such things as mountebanks.  I hope I 
+have some share of reputation, which I would not willingly forfeit 
+for a frolic or humour; and I believe no gentleman who reads this 
+paper will look upon it to be of the same cast or mould with the 
+common scribblers that are every day hawked about.  My fortune has 
+placed me above the little regard of scribbling for a few pence, 
+which I neither value nor want; therefore, let no wise man too 
+hastily condemn this essay, intended for a good design, to 
+cultivate and improve an ancient art long in disgrace, by having 
+fallen into mean and unskilful hands.  A little time will determine 
+whether I have deceived others or myself; and I think it is no very 
+unreasonable request that men would please to suspend their 
+judgments till then.  I was once of the opinion with those who 
+despise all predictions from the stars, till in the year 1686 a man 
+of quality showed me, written in his album, that the most learned 
+astronomer, Captain H-, assured him, he would never believe 
+anything of the stars' influence if there were not a great 
+revolution in England in the year 1688.  Since that time I began to 
+have other thoughts, and after eighteen years' diligent study and 
+application, I think I have no reason to repent of my pains.  I 
+shall detain the reader no longer than to let him know that the 
+account I design to give of next year's events shall take in the 
+principal affairs that happen in Europe; and if I be denied the 
+liberty of offering it to my own country, I shall appeal to the 
+learned world, by publishing it in Latin, and giving order to have 
+it printed in Holland.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV - THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE FIRST OF MR. BICKERSTAFF'S 
+PREDICTIONS;
+
+BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF MR. PARTRIDGE
+THE ALMANACK-MAKER, UPON THE 29TH INSTANT.
+IN A LETTER TO A PERSON OF HONOUR; WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1708.
+
+
+
+MY LORD, - In obedience to your lordship's commands, as well as to 
+satisfy my own curiosity, I have for some days past inquired 
+constantly after Partridge the almanack-maker, of whom it was 
+foretold in Mr. Bickerstaff's predictions, published about a month 
+ago, that he should die the 29th instant, about eleven at night, of 
+a raging fever.  I had some sort of knowledge of him when I was 
+employed in the Revenue, because he used every year to present me 
+with his almanack, as he did other gentlemen, upon the score of 
+some little gratuity we gave him.  I saw him accidentally once or 
+twice about ten days before he died, and observed he began very 
+much to droop and languish, though I hear his friends did not seem 
+to apprehend him in any danger.  About two or three days ago he 
+grew ill, was confined first to his chamber, and in a few hours 
+after to his bed, where Dr. Case and Mrs. Kirleus were sent for, to 
+visit and to prescribe to him.  Upon this intelligence I sent 
+thrice every day one servant or other to inquire after his health; 
+and yesterday, about four in the afternoon, word was brought me 
+that he was past hopes; upon which, I prevailed with myself to go 
+and see him, partly out of commiseration, and I confess, partly out 
+of curiosity.  He knew me very well, seemed surprised at my 
+condescension, and made me compliments upon it as well as he could 
+in the condition he was.  The people about him said he had been for 
+some time delirious; but when I saw him, he had his understanding 
+as well as ever I knew, and spoke strong and hearty, without any 
+seeming uneasiness or constraint.  After I had told him how sorry I 
+was to see him in those melancholy circumstances, and said some 
+other civilities suitable to the occasion, I desired him to tell me 
+freely and ingenuously, whether the predictions Mr. Bickerstaff had 
+published relating to his death had not too much affected and 
+worked on his imagination.  He confessed he had often had it in his 
+head, but never with much apprehension, till about a fortnight 
+before; since which time it had the perpetual possession of his 
+mind and thoughts, and he did verily believe was the true natural 
+cause of his present distemper:  "For," said he, "I am thoroughly 
+persuaded, and I think I have very good reasons, that Mr. 
+Bickerstaff spoke altogether by guess, and knew no more what will 
+happen this year than I did myself."  I told him his discourse 
+surprised me, and I would be glad he were in a state of health to 
+be able to tell me what reason he had to be convinced of Mr. 
+Bickerstaff's ignorance.  He replied, "I am a poor, ignorant 
+follow, bred to a mean trade, yet I have sense enough to know that 
+all pretences of foretelling by astrology are deceits, for this 
+manifest reason, because the wise and the learned, who can only 
+know whether there be any truth in this science, do all unanimously 
+agree to laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor ignorant 
+vulgar give it any credit, and that only upon the word of such 
+silly wretches as I and my fellows, who can hardly write or read."  
+I then asked him why he had not calculated his own nativity, to see 
+whether it agreed with Bickerstaff's prediction, at which he shook 
+his head and said, "Oh, sir, this is no time for jesting, but for 
+repenting those fooleries, as I do now from the very bottom of my 
+heart."  "By what I can gather from you," said I, "the observations 
+and predictions you printed with your almanacks were mere 
+impositions on the people."  He replied, "If it were otherwise I 
+should have the less to answer for.  We have a common form for all 
+those things; as to foretelling the weather, we never meddle with 
+that, but leave it to the printer, who takes it out of any old 
+almanack as he thinks fit; the rest was my own invention, to make 
+my almanack sell, having a wife to maintain, and no other way to 
+get my bread; for mending old shoes is a poor livelihood; and," 
+added he, sighing, "I wish I may not have done more mischief by my 
+physic than my astrology; though I had some good receipts from my 
+grandmother, and my own compositions were such as I thought could 
+at least do no hurt."
+
+I had some other discourse with him, which now I cannot call to 
+mind; and I fear I have already tired your lordship.  I shall only 
+add one circumstance, that on his death-bed he declared himself a 
+Nonconformist, and had a fanatic preacher to be his spiritual 
+guide.  After half an hour's conversation I took my leave, being 
+half stifled by the closeness of the room.  I imagined he could not 
+hold out long, and therefore withdrew to a little coffee-house hard 
+by, leaving a servant at the house with orders to come immediately 
+and tell me, as nearly as he could, the minute when Partridge 
+should expire, which was not above two hours after, when, looking 
+upon my watch, I found it to be above five minutes after seven; by 
+which it is clear that Mr. Bickerstaff was mistaken almost four 
+hours in his calculation.  In the other circumstances he was exact 
+enough.  But, whether he has not been the cause of this poor man's 
+death, as well as the predictor, may be very reasonably disputed.  
+However, it must be confessed the matter is odd enough, whether we 
+should endeavour to account for it by chance, or the effect of 
+imagination.  For my own part, though I believe no man has less 
+faith in these matters, yet I shall wait with some impatience, and 
+not without some expectation, the fulfilling of Mr. Bickerstaff's 
+second prediction, that the Cardinal do Noailles is to die upon the 
+4th of April, and if that should be verified as exactly as this of 
+poor Partridge, I must own I should be wholly surprised, and at a 
+loss, and should infallibly expect the accomplishment of all the 
+rest.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V - BAUCIS AND PHILEMON.
+IMITATED FROM THE EIGHTH BOOK OF OVID.
+
+
+
+IN ancient times, as story tells,
+The saints would often leave their cells,
+And stroll about, but hide their quality,
+To try good people's hospitality.
+It happened on a winter night,
+As authors of the legend write,
+Two brother hermits, saints by trade,
+Taking their tour in masquerade,
+Disguised in tattered habits, went
+To a small village down in Kent;
+Where, in the strollers' canting strain,
+They begged from door to door in vain;
+Tried every tone might pity win,
+But not a soul would let them in.
+Our wandering saints in woeful state,
+Treated at this ungodly rate,
+Having through all the village passed,
+To a small cottage came at last,
+Where dwelt a good honest old yeoman,
+Called, in the neighbourhood, Philemon,
+Who kindly did these saints invite
+In his poor hut to pass the night;
+And then the hospitable Sire
+Bid goody Baucis mend the fire;
+While he from out the chimney took
+A flitch of bacon off the hook,
+And freely from the fattest side
+Cut out large slices to be fried;
+Then stepped aside to fetch 'em drink,
+Filled a large jug up to the brink,
+And saw it fairly twice go round;
+Yet (what is wonderful) they found
+'Twas still replenished to the top,
+As if they ne'er had touched a drop
+The good old couple were amazed,
+And often on each other gazed;
+For both were frightened to the heart,
+And just began to cry, - What art!
+Then softly turned aside to view,
+Whether the lights were burning blue.
+The gentle pilgrims soon aware on't,
+Told 'em their calling, and their errant;
+"Good folks, you need not be afraid,
+We are but saints," the hermits said;
+"No hurt shall come to you or yours;
+But, for that pack of churlish boors,
+Not fit to live on Christian ground,
+They and their houses shall be drowned;
+Whilst you shall see your cottage rise,
+And grow a church before your eyes."
+They scarce had spoke; when fair and soft,
+The roof began to mount aloft;
+Aloft rose every beam and rafter,
+The heavy wall climbed slowly after.
+The chimney widened, and grew higher,
+Became a steeple with a spire.
+The kettle to the top was hoist,
+And there stood fastened to a joist;
+But with the upside down, to show
+Its inclination for below.
+In vain; for a superior force
+Applied at bottom, stops its coarse,
+Doomed ever in suspense to dwell,
+'Tis now no kettle, but a bell.
+A wooden jack, which had almost
+Lost, by disuse, the art to roast,
+A sudden alteration feels,
+Increased by new intestine wheels;
+And what exalts the wonder more,
+The number made the motion slower.
+The flyer, though 't had leaden feet,
+Turned round so quick, you scarce could see 't;
+But slackened by some secret power,
+Now hardly moves an inch an hour.
+The jack and chimney near allied,
+Had never left each other's side;
+The chimney to a steeple grown,
+The jack would not be left alone;
+But up against the steeple reared,
+Became a clock, and still adhered;
+And still its love to household cares
+By a shrill voice at noon declares,
+Warning the cook-maid not to burn
+That roast meat which it cannot turn.
+The groaning chair began to crawl,
+Like a huge snail along the wall;
+There stuck aloft in public view;
+And with small change a pulpit grew.
+The porringers, that in a row
+Hung high, and made a glittering show,
+To a less noble substance changed,
+Were now but leathern buckets ranged.
+The ballads pasted on the wall,
+Of Joan of France, and English Moll,
+Fair Rosamond, and Robin Hood,
+The Little Children in the Wood,
+Now seemed to look abundance better,
+Improved in picture, size, and letter;
+And high in order placed, describe
+The heraldry of every tribe.
+A bedstead of the antique mode,
+Compact of timber, many a load,
+Such as our ancestors did use,
+Was metamorphosed into pews:
+Which still their ancient nature keep,
+By lodging folks disposed to sleep.
+The cottage, by such feats as these,
+Grown to a church by just degrees,
+The hermits then desired their host
+To ask for what he fancied most.
+Philemon having paused a while,
+Returned 'em thanks in homely style;
+Then said, "My house is grown so fine,
+Methinks I still would call it mine:
+I'm old, and fain would live at ease,
+Make me the Parson, if you please."
+He spoke, and presently he feels
+His grazier's coat fall down his heels;
+He sees, yet hardly can believe,
+About each arm a pudding sleeve;
+His waistcoat to a cassock grew,
+And both assumed a sable hue;
+But being old, continued just
+As thread-bare, and as full of dust.
+His talk was now of tithes and dues;
+He smoked his pipe and read the news;
+Knew how to preach old sermons next,
+Vamped in the preface and the text;
+At christenings well could act his part,
+And had the service all by heart;
+Wished women might have children fast,
+And thought whose sow had farrowed last
+Against Dissenters would repine,
+And stood up firm for Right divine.
+Found his head filled with many a system,
+But classic authors, - he ne'er missed 'em.
+Thus having furbished up a parson,
+Dame Baucis next they played their farce on.
+Instead of home-spun coifs were seen
+Good pinners edg'd with colberteen;
+Her petticoat transformed apace,
+Became black satin flounced with lace.
+Plain Goody would no longer down,
+'Twas Madam, in her grogram gown.
+Philemon was in great surprise,
+And hardly could believe his eyes,
+Amazed to see her look so prim;
+And she admired as much at him.
+Thus, happy in their change of life,
+Were several years this man and wife;
+When on a day, which proved their last,
+Discoursing o'er old stories past,
+They went by chance amidst their talk,
+To the church yard to take a walk;
+When Baucis hastily cried out,
+"My dear, I see your forehead sprout!"
+"Sprout," quoth the man, "what's this you tell us?
+I hope you don't believe me jealous,
+But yet, methinks, I feel it true;
+And really, yours is budding too -
+Nay, - now I cannot stir my foot;
+It feels as if 'twere taking root."
+Description would but tire my Muse;
+In short, they both were turned to Yews.
+Old Goodman Dobson of the green
+Remembers he the trees has seen;
+He'll talk of them from noon till night,
+And goes with folks to show the sight;
+On Sundays, after evening prayer,
+He gathers all the parish there,
+Points out the place of either Yew:
+Here Baucis, there Philemon grew,
+Till once a parson of our town,
+To mend his barn, cut Baucis down;
+At which, 'tis hard to be believed
+How much the other tree was grieved,
+Grow scrubby, died a-top, was stunted:
+So the next parson stubbed and burnt it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI - THE LOGICIANS REFUTED.
+
+
+
+LOGICIANS have but ill defined
+As rational, the human kind;
+Reason, they say, belongs to man,
+But let them prove it, if they can.
+Wise Aristotle and Smiglesius,
+By ratiocinations specious,
+Have strove to prove with great precision,
+With definition and division,
+HOMO EST RATIONE PRAEDITUM;
+But, for my soul, I cannot credit 'em.
+And must, in spite of them, maintain
+That man and all his ways are vain;
+And that this boasted lord of nature
+Is both a weak and erring creature.
+That instinct is a surer guide
+Than reason-boasting mortals pride;
+And, that brute beasts are far before 'em,
+DEUS EST ANIMA BRUTORUM.
+Whoever knew an honest brute,
+At law his neighbour prosecute,
+Bring action for assault and battery,
+Or friend beguile with lies and flattery?
+O'er plains they ramble unconfined,
+No politics disturb their mind;
+They eat their meals, and take their sport,
+Nor know who's in or out at court.
+They never to the levee go
+To treat as dearest friend a foe;
+They never importune his grace,
+Nor ever cringe to men in place;
+Nor undertake a dirty job,
+Nor draw the quill to write for Bob.
+Fraught with invective they ne'er go
+To folks at Paternoster Row:
+No judges, fiddlers, dancing-masters,
+No pickpockets, or poetasters
+Are known to honest quadrupeds:
+No single brute his fellows leads.
+Brutes never meet in bloody fray,
+Nor cut each others' throats for pay.
+Of beasts, it is confessed, the ape
+Comes nearest us in human shape;
+Like man, he imitates each fashion,
+And malice is his ruling passion:
+But, both in malice and grimaces,
+A courtier any ape surpasses.
+Behold him humbly cringing wait
+Upon the minister of state;
+View him, soon after, to inferiors
+Aping the conduct of superiors:
+He promises, with equal air,
+And to perform takes equal care.
+He, in his turn, finds imitators,
+At court the porters, lacqueys, waiters
+Their masters' manners still contract,
+And footmen, lords, and dukes can act.
+Thus, at the court, both great and small
+Behave alike, for all ape all.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII - THE PUPPET SHOW.
+
+
+
+THE life of man to represent,
+And turn it all to ridicule,
+Wit did a puppet-show invent,
+Where the chief actor is a fool.
+
+The gods of old were logs of wood,
+And worship was to puppets paid;
+In antic dress the idol stood,
+And priests and people bowed the head.
+
+No wonder then, if art began
+The simple votaries to frame,
+To shape in timber foolish man,
+And consecrate the block to fame.
+
+From hence poetic fancy learned
+That trees might rise from human forms
+The body to a trunk be turned,
+And branches issue from the arms.
+
+Thus Daedalus and Ovid too,
+That man's a blockhead have confessed,
+Powel and Stretch the hint pursue;
+Life is the farce, the world a jest.
+
+The same great truth South Sea hath proved
+On that famed theatre, the ally,
+Where thousands by directors moved
+Are now sad monuments of folly.
+
+What Momus was of old to Jove
+The same harlequin is now;
+The former was buffoon above,
+The latter is a Punch below.
+
+This fleeting scene is but a stage,
+Where various images appear,
+In different parts of youth and age
+Alike the prince and peasant share.
+
+Some draw our eyes by being great,
+False pomp conceals mere wood within,
+And legislators rang'd in state
+Are oft but wisdom in machine.
+
+A stock may chance to wear a crown,
+And timber as a lord take place,
+A statue may put on a frown,
+And cheat us with a thinking face.
+
+Others are blindly led away,
+And made to act for ends unknown,
+By the mere spring of wires they play,
+And speak in language not their own.
+
+Too oft, alas! a scolding wife
+Usurps a jolly fellow's throne,
+And many drink the cup of life
+Mix'd and embittered by a Joan.
+
+In short, whatever men pursue
+Of pleasure, folly, war, or love,
+This mimic-race brings all to view,
+Alike they dress, they talk, they move.
+
+Go on, great Stretch, with artful hand,
+Mortals to please and to deride,
+And when death breaks thy vital band
+Thou shalt put on a puppet's pride.
+
+Thou shalt in puny wood be shown,
+Thy image shall preserve thy fame,
+Ages to come thy worth shall own,
+Point at thy limbs, and tell thy name.
+
+Tell Tom he draws a farce in vain,
+Before he looks in nature's glass;
+Puns cannot form a witty scene,
+Nor pedantry for humour pass.
+
+To make men act as senseless wood,
+And chatter in a mystic strain,
+Is a mere force on flesh and blood,
+And shows some error in the brain.
+
+He that would thus refine on thee,
+And turn thy stage into a school,
+The jest of Punch will ever be,
+And stand confessed the greater fool.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII - CADENUS AND VANESSA.
+
+WRITTEN ANNO 1713.
+
+
+
+THE shepherds and the nymphs were seen
+Pleading before the Cyprian Queen.
+The counsel for the fair began
+Accusing the false creature, man.
+The brief with weighty crimes was charged,
+On which the pleader much enlarged:
+That Cupid now has lost his art,
+Or blunts the point of every dart;
+His altar now no longer smokes;
+His mother's aid no youth invokes -
+This tempts free-thinkers to refine,
+And bring in doubt their powers divine,
+Now love is dwindled to intrigue,
+And marriage grown a money-league.
+Which crimes aforesaid (with her leave)
+Were (as he humbly did conceive)
+Against our Sovereign Lady's peace,
+Against the statutes in that case,
+Against her dignity and crown:
+Then prayed an answer and sat down.
+
+The nymphs with scorn beheld their foes:
+When the defendant's counsel rose,
+And, what no lawyer ever lacked,
+With impudence owned all the fact.
+But, what the gentlest heart would vex,
+Laid all the fault on t'other sex.
+That modern love is no such thing
+As what those ancient poets sing;
+A fire celestial, chaste, refined,
+Conceived and kindled in the mind,
+Which having found an equal flame,
+Unites, and both become the same,
+In different breasts together burn,
+Together both to ashes turn.
+But women now feel no such fire,
+And only know the gross desire;
+Their passions move in lower spheres,
+Where'er caprice or folly steers.
+A dog, a parrot, or an ape,
+Or some worse brute in human shape
+Engross the fancies of the fair,
+The few soft moments they can spare
+From visits to receive and pay,
+From scandal, politics, and play,
+From fans, and flounces, and brocades,
+From equipage and park-parades,
+From all the thousand female toys,
+From every trifle that employs
+The out or inside of their heads
+Between their toilets and their beds.
+In a dull stream, which, moving slow,
+You hardly see the current flow,
+If a small breeze obstructs the course,
+It whirls about for want of force,
+And in its narrow circle gathers
+Nothing but chaff, and straws, and feathers:
+The current of a female mind
+Stops thus, and turns with every wind;
+Thus whirling round, together draws
+Fools, fops, and rakes, for chaff and straws.
+Hence we conclude, no women's hearts
+Are won by virtue, wit, and parts;
+Nor are the men of sense to blame
+For breasts incapable of flame:
+The fault must on the nymphs be placed,
+Grown so corrupted in their taste.
+The pleader having spoke his best,
+Had witness ready to attest,
+Who fairly could on oath depose,
+When questions on the fact arose,
+That every article was true;
+NOR FURTHER THOSE DEPONENTS KNEW:
+Therefore he humbly would insist,
+The bill might be with costs dismissed.
+The cause appeared of so much weight,
+That Venus from the judgment-seat
+Desired them not to talk so loud,
+Else she must interpose a cloud:
+For if the heavenly folk should know
+These pleadings in the Courts below,
+That mortals here disdain to love,
+She ne'er could show her face above.
+For gods, their betters, are too wise
+To value that which men despise.
+"And then," said she, "my son and I
+Must stroll in air 'twixt earth and sky:
+Or else, shut out from heaven and earth,
+Fly to the sea, my place of birth;
+There live with daggled mermaids pent,
+And keep on fish perpetual Lent."
+But since the case appeared so nice,
+She thought it best to take advice.
+The Muses, by their king's permission,
+Though foes to love, attend the session,
+And on the right hand took their places
+In order; on the left, the Graces:
+To whom she might her doubts propose
+On all emergencies that rose.
+The Muses oft were seen to frown;
+The Graces half ashamed look down;
+And 'twas observed, there were but few
+Of either sex, among the crew,
+Whom she or her assessors knew.
+The goddess soon began to see
+Things were not ripe for a decree,
+And said she must consult her books,
+The lovers' Fletas, Bractons, Cokes.
+First to a dapper clerk she beckoned,
+To turn to Ovid, book the second;
+She then referred them to a place
+In Virgil (VIDE Dido's case);
+As for Tibullus's reports,
+They never passed for law in Courts:
+For Cowley's brief, and pleas of Waller,
+Still their authority is smaller.
+There was on both sides much to say;
+She'd hear the cause another day;
+And so she did, and then a third,
+She heard it - there she kept her word;
+But with rejoinders and replies,
+Long bills, and answers, stuffed with lies
+Demur, imparlance, and essoign,
+The parties ne'er could issue join:
+For sixteen years the cause was spun,
+And then stood where it first begun.
+Now, gentle Clio, sing or say,
+What Venus meant by this delay.
+The goddess, much perplexed in mind,
+To see her empire thus declined,
+When first this grand debate arose
+Above her wisdom to compose,
+Conceived a project in her head,
+To work her ends; which, if it sped,
+Would show the merits of the cause
+Far better than consulting laws.
+In a glad hour Lucina's aid
+Produced on earth a wondrous maid,
+On whom the queen of love was bent
+To try a new experiment.
+She threw her law-books on the shelf,
+And thus debated with herself:-
+"Since men allege they ne'er can find
+Those beauties in a female mind
+Which raise a flame that will endure
+For ever, uncorrupt and pure;
+If 'tis with reason they complain,
+This infant shall restore my reign.
+I'll search where every virtue dwells,
+From Courts inclusive down to cells.
+What preachers talk, or sages write,
+These I will gather and unite,
+And represent them to mankind
+Collected in that infant's mind."
+This said, she plucks in heaven's high bowers
+A sprig of Amaranthine flowers,
+In nectar thrice infuses bays,
+Three times refined in Titan's rays:
+Then calls the Graces to her aid,
+And sprinkles thrice the now-born maid.
+From whence the tender skin assumes
+A sweetness above all perfumes;
+From whence a cleanliness remains,
+Incapable of outward stains;
+From whence that decency of mind,
+So lovely in a female kind.
+Where not one careless thought intrudes
+Less modest than the speech of prudes;
+Where never blush was called in aid,
+The spurious virtue in a maid,
+A virtue but at second-hand;
+They blush because they understand.
+The Graces next would act their part,
+And show but little of their art;
+Their work was half already done,
+The child with native beauty shone,
+The outward form no help required:
+Each breathing on her thrice, inspired
+That gentle, soft, engaging air
+Which in old times adorned the fair,
+And said, "Vanessa be the name
+By which thou shalt be known to fame;
+Vanessa, by the gods enrolled:
+Her name on earth - shall not be told."
+But still the work was not complete,
+When Venus thought on a deceit:
+Drawn by her doves, away she flies,
+And finds out Pallas in the skies:
+Dear Pallas, I have been this morn
+To see a lovely infant born:
+A boy in yonder isle below,
+So like my own without his bow,
+By beauty could your heart be won,
+You'd swear it is Apollo's son;
+But it shall ne'er be said, a child
+So hopeful has by me been spoiled;
+I have enough besides to spare,
+And give him wholly to your care.
+Wisdom's above suspecting wiles;
+The queen of learning gravely smiles,
+Down from Olympus comes with joy,
+Mistakes Vanessa for a boy;
+Then sows within her tender mind
+Seeds long unknown to womankind;
+For manly bosoms chiefly fit,
+The seeds of knowledge, judgment, wit,
+Her soul was suddenly endued
+With justice, truth, and fortitude;
+With honour, which no breath can stain,
+Which malice must attack in vain:
+With open heart and bounteous hand:
+But Pallas here was at a stand;
+She know in our degenerate days
+Bare virtue could not live on praise,
+That meat must be with money bought:
+She therefore, upon second thought,
+Infused yet as it were by stealth,
+Some small regard for state and wealth:
+Of which as she grew up there stayed
+A tincture in the prudent maid:
+She managed her estate with care,
+Yet liked three footmen to her chair,
+But lest he should neglect his studies
+Like a young heir, the thrifty goddess
+(For fear young master should be spoiled)
+Would use him like a younger child;
+And, after long computing, found
+'Twould come to just five thousand pound.
+The Queen of Love was pleased and proud
+To we Vanessa thus endowed;
+She doubted not but such a dame
+Through every breast would dart a flame;
+That every rich and lordly swain
+With pride would drag about her chain;
+That scholars would forsake their books
+To study bright Vanessa's looks:
+As she advanced that womankind
+Would by her model form their mind,
+And all their conduct would be tried
+By her, as an unerring guide.
+Offending daughters oft would hear
+Vanessa's praise rung in their ear:
+Miss Betty, when she does a fault,
+Lets fall her knife, or spills the salt,
+Will thus be by her mother chid,
+"'Tis what Vanessa never did."
+Thus by the nymphs and swains adored,
+My power shall be again restored,
+And happy lovers bless my reign -
+So Venus hoped, but hoped in vain.
+For when in time the martial maid
+Found out the trick that Venus played,
+She shakes her helm, she knits her brows,
+And fired with indignation, vows
+To-morrow, ere the setting sun,
+She'd all undo that she had done.
+But in the poets we may find
+A wholesome law, time out of mind,
+Had been confirmed by Fate's decree;
+That gods, of whatso'er degree,
+Resume not what themselves have given,
+Or any brother-god in Heaven;
+Which keeps the peace among the gods,
+Or they must always be at odds.
+And Pallas, if she broke the laws,
+Must yield her foe the stronger cause;
+A shame to one so much adored
+For Wisdom, at Jove's council-board.
+Besides, she feared the queen of love
+Would meet with better friends above.
+And though she must with grief reflect
+To see a mortal virgin deck'd
+With graces hitherto unknown
+To female breasts, except her own,
+Yet she would act as best became
+A goddess of unspotted fame;
+She knew, by augury divine,
+Venus would fail in her design:
+She studied well the point, and found
+Her foe's conclusions were not sound,
+From premises erroneous brought,
+And therefore the deduction's nought,
+And must have contrary effects
+To what her treacherous foe expects.
+In proper season Pallas meets
+The queen of love, whom thus she greets
+(For Gods, we are by Homer told,
+Can in celestial language scold),
+"Perfidious Goddess! but in vain
+You formed this project in your brain,
+A project for thy talents fit,
+With much deceit, and little wit;
+Thou hast, as thou shalt quickly see,
+Deceived thyself instead of me;
+For how can heavenly wisdom prove
+An instrument to earthly love?
+Know'st thou not yet that men commence
+Thy votaries, for want of sense?
+Nor shall Vanessa be the theme
+To manage thy abortive scheme;
+She'll prove the greatest of thy foes,
+And yet I scorn to interpose,
+But using neither skill nor force,
+Leave all things to their natural course."
+The goddess thus pronounced her doom,
+When, lo, Vanessa in her bloom,
+Advanced like Atalanta's star,
+But rarely seen, and seen from far:
+In a new world with caution stepped,
+Watched all the company she kept,
+Well knowing from the books she read
+What dangerous paths young virgins tread;
+Would seldom at the park appear,
+Nor saw the play-house twice a year;
+Yet not incurious, was inclined
+To know the converse of mankind.
+First issued from perfumers' shops
+A crowd of fashionable fops;
+They liked her how she liked the play?
+Then told the tattle of the day,
+A duel fought last night at two
+About a lady - you know who;
+Mentioned a new Italian, come
+Either from Muscovy or Rome;
+Gave hints of who and who's together;
+Then fell to talking of the weather:
+Last night was so extremely fine,
+The ladies walked till after nine.
+Then in soft voice, and speech absurd,
+With nonsense every second word,
+With fustian from exploded plays,
+They celebrate her beauty's praise,
+Run o'er their cant of stupid lies,
+And tell the murders of her eyes.
+With silent scorn Vanessa sat,
+Scarce list'ning to their idle chat;
+Further than sometimes by a frown,
+When they grew pert, to pull them down.
+At last she spitefully was bent
+To try their wisdom's full extent;
+And said, she valued nothing less
+Than titles, figure, shape, and dress;
+That merit should be chiefly placed
+In judgment, knowledge, wit, and taste;
+And these, she offered to dispute,
+Alone distinguished man from brute:
+That present times have no pretence
+To virtue, in the noble sense
+By Greeks and Romans understood,
+To perish for our country's good.
+She named the ancient heroes round,
+Explained for what they were renowned;
+Then spoke with censure, or applause,
+Of foreign customs, rites, and laws;
+Through nature and through art she ranged,
+And gracefully her subject changed:
+In vain; her hearers had no share
+In all she spoke, except to stare.
+Their judgment was upon the whole,
+ - That lady is the dullest soul -
+Then tipped their forehead in a jeer,
+As who should say - she wants it here;
+She may be handsome, young, and rich,
+But none will burn her for a witch.
+A party next of glittering dames,
+From round the purlieus of St. James,
+Came early, out of pure goodwill,
+To see the girl in deshabille.
+Their clamour 'lighting from their chairs,
+Grew louder, all the way up stairs;
+At entrance loudest, where they found
+The room with volumes littered round,
+Vanessa held Montaigne, and read,
+Whilst Mrs. Susan combed her head:
+They called for tea and chocolate,
+And fell into their usual chat,
+Discoursing with important face,
+On ribbons, fans, and gloves, and lace:
+Showed patterns just from India brought,
+And gravely asked her what she thought,
+Whether the red or green were best,
+And what they cost?  Vanessa guessed,
+As came into her fancy first,
+Named half the rates, and liked the worst.
+To scandal next - What awkward thing
+Was that, last Sunday, in the ring?
+I'm sorry Mopsa breaks so fast;
+I said her face would never last,
+Corinna with that youthful air,
+Is thirty, and a bit to spare.
+Her fondness for a certain earl
+Began, when I was but a girl.
+Phyllis, who but a month ago
+Was married to the Tunbridge beau,
+I saw coquetting t'other night
+In public with that odious knight.
+They rallied next Vanessa's dress;
+That gown was made for old Queen Bess.
+Dear madam, let me set your head;
+Don't you intend to put on red?
+A petticoat without a hoop!
+Sure, you are not ashamed to stoop;
+With handsome garters at your knees,
+No matter what a fellow sees.
+Filled with disdain, with rage inflamed,
+Both of herself and sex ashamed,
+The nymph stood silent out of spite,
+Nor would vouchsafe to set them right.
+Away the fair detractors went,
+And gave, by turns, their censures vent.
+She's not so handsome in my eyes:
+For wit, I wonder where it lies.
+She's fair and clean, and that's the most;
+But why proclaim her for a toast?
+A baby face, no life, no airs,
+But what she learnt at country fairs.
+Scarce knows what difference is between
+Rich Flanders lace, and Colberteen.
+I'll undertake my little Nancy,
+In flounces has a better fancy.
+With all her wit, I would not ask
+Her judgment, how to buy a mask.
+We begged her but to patch her face,
+She never hit one proper place;
+Which every girl at five years old
+Can do as soon as she is told.
+I own, that out-of-fashion stuff
+Becomes the creature well enough.
+The girl might pass, if we could get her
+To know the world a little better.
+(TO KNOW THE WORLD! a modern phrase
+For visits, ombre, balls, and plays.)
+Thus, to the world's perpetual shame,
+The queen of beauty lost her aim,
+Too late with grief she understood
+Pallas had done more harm than good;
+For great examples are but vain,
+Where ignorance begets disdain.
+Both sexes, armed with guilt and spite,
+Against Vanessa's power unite;
+To copy her few nymphs aspired;
+Her virtues fewer swains admired;
+So stars, beyond a certain height,
+Give mortals neither heat nor light.
+Yet some of either sex, endowed
+With gifts superior to the crowd,
+With virtue, knowledge, taste, and wit,
+She condescended to admit;
+With pleasing arts she could reduce
+Men's talents to their proper use;
+And with address each genius hold
+To that wherein it most excelled;
+Thus making others' wisdom known,
+Could please them and improve her own.
+A modest youth said something new,
+She placed it in the strongest view.
+All humble worth she strove to raise;
+Would not be praised, yet loved to praise.
+The learned met with free approach,
+Although they came not in a coach.
+Some clergy too she would allow,
+Nor quarreled at their awkward bow.
+But this was for Cadenus' sake;
+A gownman of a different make.
+Whom Pallas, once Vanessa's tutor,
+Had fixed on for her coadjutor.
+But Cupid, full of mischief, longs
+To vindicate his mother's wrongs.
+On Pallas all attempts are vain;
+One way he knows to give her pain;
+Vows on Vanessa's heart to take
+Due vengeance, for her patron's sake.
+Those early seeds by Venus sown,
+In spite of Pallas, now were grown;
+And Cupid hoped they would improve
+By time, and ripen into love.
+The boy made use of all his craft,
+In vain discharging many a shaft,
+Pointed at colonels, lords, and beaux;
+Cadenus warded off the blows,
+For placing still some book betwixt,
+The darts were in the cover fixed,
+Or often blunted and recoiled,
+On Plutarch's morals struck, were spoiled.
+The queen of wisdom could foresee,
+But not prevent the Fates decree;
+And human caution tries in vain
+To break that adamantine chain.
+Vanessa, though by Pallas taught,
+By love invulnerable thought,
+Searching in books for wisdom's aid,
+Was, in the very search, betrayed.
+Cupid, though all his darts were lost,
+Yet still resolved to spare no cost;
+He could not answer to his fame
+The triumphs of that stubborn dame,
+A nymph so hard to be subdued,
+Who neither was coquette nor prude.
+I find, says he, she wants a doctor,
+Both to adore her, and instruct her:
+I'll give her what she most admires,
+Among those venerable sires.
+Cadenus is a subject fit,
+Grown old in politics and wit;
+Caressed by Ministers of State,
+Of half mankind the dread and hate.
+Whate'er vexations love attend,
+She need no rivals apprehend
+Her sex, with universal voice,
+Must laugh at her capricious choice.
+Cadenus many things had writ,
+Vanessa much esteemed his wit,
+And called for his poetic works!
+Meantime the boy in secret lurks.
+And while the book was in her hand,
+The urchin from his private stand
+Took aim, and shot with all his strength
+A dart of such prodigious length,
+It pierced the feeble volume through,
+And deep transfixed her bosom too.
+Some lines, more moving than the rest,
+Struck to the point that pierced her breast;
+And, borne directly to the heart,
+With pains unknown, increased her smart.
+Vanessa, not in years a score,
+Dreams of a gown of forty-four;
+Imaginary charms can find,
+In eyes with reading almost blind;
+Cadenus now no more appears
+Declined in health, advanced in years.
+She fancies music in his tongue,
+Nor farther looks, but thinks him young.
+What mariner is not afraid
+To venture in a ship decayed?
+What planter will attempt to yoke
+A sapling with a falling oak?
+As years increase, she brighter shines,
+Cadenus with each day declines,
+And he must fall a prey to Time,
+While she continues in her prime.
+Cadenus, common forms apart,
+In every scene had kept his heart;
+Had sighed and languished, vowed and writ,
+For pastime, or to show his wit;
+But time, and books, and State affairs,
+Had spoiled his fashionable airs,
+He now could praise, esteem, approve,
+But understood not what was love.
+His conduct might have made him styled
+A father, and the nymph his child.
+That innocent delight he took
+To see the virgin mind her book,
+Was but the master's secret joy
+In school to hear the finest boy.
+Her knowledge with her fancy grew,
+She hourly pressed for something new;
+Ideas came into her mind
+So fact, his lessons lagged behind;
+She reasoned, without plodding long,
+Nor ever gave her judgment wrong.
+But now a sudden change was wrought,
+She minds no longer what he taught.
+Cadenus was amazed to find
+Such marks of a distracted mind;
+For though she seemed to listen more
+To all he spoke, than e'er before.
+He found her thoughts would absent range,
+Yet guessed not whence could spring the change.
+And first he modestly conjectures,
+His pupil might be tired with lectures,
+Which helped to mortify his pride,
+Yet gave him not the heart to chide;
+But in a mild dejected strain,
+At last he ventured to complain:
+Said, she should be no longer teased,
+Might have her freedom when she pleased;
+Was now convinced he acted wrong,
+To hide her from the world so long,
+And in dull studies to engage
+One of her tender sex and age.
+That every nymph with envy owned,
+How she might shine in the GRANDE-MONDE,
+And every shepherd was undone,
+To see her cloistered like a nun.
+This was a visionary scheme,
+He waked, and found it but a dream;
+A project far above his skill,
+For Nature must be Nature still.
+If she was bolder than became
+A scholar to a courtly dame,
+She might excuse a man of letters;
+Thus tutors often treat their betters,
+And since his talk offensive grew,
+He came to take his last adieu.
+Vanessa, filled with just disdain,
+Would still her dignity maintain,
+Instructed from her early years
+To scorn the art of female tears.
+Had he employed his time so long,
+To teach her what was right or wrong,
+Yet could such notions entertain,
+That all his lectures were in vain?
+She owned the wand'ring of her thoughts,
+But he must answer for her faults.
+She well remembered, to her cost,
+That all his lessons were not lost.
+Two maxims she could still produce,
+And sad experience taught her use;
+That virtue, pleased by being shown,
+Knows nothing which it dare not own;
+Can make us without fear disclose
+Our inmost secrets to our foes;
+That common forms were not designed
+Directors to a noble mind.
+Now, said the nymph, I'll let you see
+My actions with your rules agree,
+That I can vulgar forms despise,
+And have no secrets to disguise.
+I knew by what you said and writ,
+How dangerous things were men of wit;
+You cautioned me against their charms,
+But never gave me equal arms;
+Your lessons found the weakest part,
+Aimed at the head, but reached the heart.
+Cadenus felt within him rise
+Shame, disappointment, guilt, surprise.
+He know not how to reconcile
+Such language, with her usual style:
+And yet her words were so expressed,
+He could not hope she spoke in jest.
+His thoughts had wholly been confined
+To form and cultivate her mind.
+He hardly knew, till he was told,
+Whether the nymph were young or old;
+Had met her in a public place,
+Without distinguishing her face,
+Much less could his declining age
+Vanessa's earliest thoughts engage.
+And if her youth indifference met,
+His person must contempt beget,
+Or grant her passion be sincere,
+How shall his innocence be clear?
+Appearances were all so strong,
+The world must think him in the wrong;
+Would say he made a treach'rous use.
+Of wit, to flatter and seduce;
+The town would swear he had betrayed,
+By magic spells, the harmless maid;
+And every beau would have his jokes,
+That scholars were like other folks;
+That when Platonic flights were over,
+The tutor turned a mortal lover.
+So tender of the young and fair;
+It showed a true paternal care -
+Five thousand guineas in her purse;
+The doctor might have fancied worst, -
+Hardly at length he silence broke,
+And faltered every word he spoke;
+Interpreting her complaisance,
+Just as a man sans consequence.
+She rallied well, he always knew;
+Her manner now was something new;
+And what she spoke was in an air,
+As serious as a tragic player.
+But those who aim at ridicule,
+Should fix upon some certain rule,
+Which fairly hints they are in jest,
+Else he must enter his protest;
+For let a man be ne'er so wise,
+He may be caught with sober lies;
+A science which he never taught,
+And, to be free, was dearly bought;
+For, take it in its proper light,
+'Tis just what coxcombs call a bite.
+But not to dwell on things minute,
+Vanessa finished the dispute,
+Brought weighty arguments to prove,
+That reason was her guide in love.
+She thought he had himself described,
+His doctrines when she fist imbibed;
+What he had planted now was grown,
+His virtues she might call her own;
+As he approves, as he dislikes,
+Love or contempt her fancy strikes.
+Self-love in nature rooted fast,
+Attends us first, and leaves us last:
+Why she likes him, admire not at her,
+She loves herself, and that's the matter.
+How was her tutor wont to praise
+The geniuses of ancient days!
+(Those authors he so oft had named
+For learning, wit, and wisdom famed).
+Was struck with love, esteem, and awe,
+For persons whom he never saw.
+Suppose Cadenus flourished then,
+He must adore such God-like men.
+If one short volume could comprise
+All that was witty, learned, and wise,
+How would it be esteemed, and read,
+Although the writer long were dead?
+If such an author were alive,
+How all would for his friendship strive;
+And come in crowds to see his face?
+And this she takes to be her case.
+Cadenus answers every end,
+The book, the author, and the friend,
+The utmost her desires will reach,
+Is but to learn what he can teach;
+His converse is a system fit
+Alone to fill up all her wit;
+While ev'ry passion of her mind
+In him is centred and confined.
+Love can with speech inspire a mute,
+And taught Vanessa to dispute.
+This topic, never touched before,
+Displayed her eloquence the more:
+Her knowledge, with such pains acquired,
+By this new passion grew inspired.
+Through this she made all objects pass,
+Which gave a tincture o'er the mass;
+As rivers, though they bend and twine,
+Still to the sea their course incline;
+Or, as philosophers, who find
+Some fav'rite system to their mind,
+In every point to make it fit,
+Will force all nature to submit.
+Cadenus, who could ne'er suspect
+His lessons would have such effect,
+Or be so artfully applied,
+Insensibly came on her side;
+It was an unforeseen event,
+Things took a turn he never meant.
+Whoe'er excels in what we prize,
+Appears a hero to our eyes;
+Each girl, when pleased with what is taught,
+Will have the teacher in her thought.
+When miss delights in her spinnet,
+A fiddler may a fortune get;
+A blockhead, with melodious voice
+In boarding-schools can have his choice;
+And oft the dancing-master's art
+Climbs from the toe to touch the heart.
+In learning let a nymph delight,
+The pedant gets a mistress by't.
+Cadenus, to his grief and shame,
+Could scarce oppose Vanessa's flame;
+But though her arguments were strong,
+At least could hardly with them wrong.
+Howe'er it came, he could not tell,
+But, sure, she never talked so well.
+His pride began to interpose,
+Preferred before a crowd of beaux,
+So bright a nymph to come unsought,
+Such wonder by his merit wrought;
+'Tis merit must with her prevail,
+He never know her judgment fail.
+She noted all she ever read,
+And had a most discerning head.
+'Tis an old maxim in the schools,
+That vanity's the food of fools;
+Yet now and then your men of wit
+Will condescend to take a bit.
+So when Cadenus could not hide,
+He chose to justify his pride;
+Construing the passion she had shown,
+Much to her praise, more to his own.
+Nature in him had merit placed,
+In her, a most judicious taste.
+Love, hitherto a transient guest,
+Ne'er held possession in his breast;
+So long attending at the gate,
+Disdain'd to enter in so late.
+Love, why do we one passion call?
+When 'tis a compound of them all;
+Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet,
+In all their equipages meet;
+Where pleasures mixed with pains appear,
+Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
+Wherein his dignity and age
+Forbid Cadenus to engage.
+But friendship in its greatest height,
+A constant, rational delight,
+On virtue's basis fixed to last,
+When love's allurements long are past;
+Which gently warms, but cannot burn;
+He gladly offers in return;
+His want of passion will redeem,
+With gratitude, respect, esteem;
+With that devotion we bestow,
+When goddesses appear below.
+While thus Cadenus entertains
+Vanessa in exalted strains,
+The nymph in sober words intreats
+A truce with all sublime conceits.
+For why such raptures, flights, and fancies,
+To her who durst not read romances;
+In lofty style to make replies,
+Which he had taught her to despise?
+But when her tutor will affect
+Devotion, duty, and respect,
+He fairly abdicates his throne,
+The government is now her own;
+He has a forfeiture incurred,
+She vows to take him at his word,
+And hopes he will not take it strange
+If both should now their stations change
+The nymph will have her turn, to be
+The tutor; and the pupil he:
+Though she already can discern
+Her scholar is not apt to learn;
+Or wants capacity to reach
+The science she designs to teach;
+Wherein his genius was below
+The skill of every common beau;
+Who, though he cannot spell, is wise
+Enough to read a lady's eyes?
+And will each accidental glance
+Interpret for a kind advance.
+But what success Vanessa met
+Is to the world a secret yet;
+Whether the nymph, to please her swain,
+Talks in a high romantic strain;
+Or whether he at last descends
+To like with less seraphic ends;
+Or to compound the bus'ness, whether
+They temper love and books together;
+Must never to mankind be told,
+Nor shall the conscious muse unfold.
+Meantime the mournful queen of love
+Led but a weary life above.
+She ventures now to leave the skies,
+Grown by Vanessa's conduct wise.
+For though by one perverse event
+Pallas had crossed her first intent,
+Though her design was not obtained,
+Yet had she much experience gained;
+And, by the project vainly tried,
+Could better now the cause decide.
+She gave due notice that both parties,
+CORAM REGINA PROX' DIE MARTIS,
+Should at their peril without fail
+Come and appear, and save their bail.
+All met, and silence thrice proclaimed,
+One lawyer to each side was named.
+The judge discovered in her face
+Resentments for her late disgrace;
+And, full of anger, shame, and grief,
+Directed them to mind their brief;
+Nor spend their time to show their reading,
+She'd have a summary proceeding.
+She gathered under every head,
+The sum of what each lawyer said;
+Gave her own reasons last; and then
+Decreed the cause against the men.
+But, in a weighty case like this,
+To show she did not judge amiss,
+Which evil tongues might else report,
+She made a speech in open court;
+Wherein she grievously complains,
+"How she was cheated by the swains."
+On whose petition (humbly showing
+That women were not worth the wooing,
+And that unless the sex would mend,
+The race of lovers soon must end);
+"She was at Lord knows what expense,
+To form a nymph of wit and sense;
+A model for her sex designed,
+Who never could one lover find,
+She saw her favour was misplaced;
+The follows had a wretched taste;
+She needs must tell them to their face,
+They were a senseless, stupid race;
+And were she to begin again,
+She'd study to reform the men;
+Or add some grains of folly more
+To women than they had before.
+To put them on an equal foot;
+And this, or nothing else, would do't.
+This might their mutual fancy strike,
+Since every being loves its like.
+But now, repenting what was done,
+She left all business to her son;
+She puts the world in his possession,
+And let him use it at discretion."
+The crier was ordered to dismiss
+The court, so made his last O yes!
+The goddess would no longer wait,
+But rising from her chair of state,
+Left all below at six and seven,
+Harnessed her doves, and flew to Heaven.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX - STELLA'S BIRTHDAY, 1718.
+
+
+
+STELLA this day is thirty-four
+(We shan't dispute a year or more)
+However, Stella, be not troubled,
+Although thy size and years are doubled
+Since first I saw thee at sixteen,
+The brightest virgin on the green.
+So little is thy form declined;
+Made up so largely in thy mind.
+Oh, would it please the gods to split
+Thy beauty, size, and years, and wit,
+No age could furnish out a pair
+Of nymphs so graceful, wise, and fair:
+With half the lustre of your eyes,
+With half your wit, your years, and size.
+And then, before it grew too late,
+How should I beg of gentle fate,
+(That either nymph might lack her swain),
+To split my worship too in twain.
+
+
+STELLA'S BIRTHDAY, 1720.
+
+
+ALL travellers at first incline
+Where'er they see the fairest sign;
+And if they find the chambers neat,
+And like the liquor and the meat,
+Will call again and recommend
+The Angel Inn to every friend
+What though the painting grows decayed,
+The house will never lose its trade:
+Nay, though the treach'rous tapster Thomas
+Hangs a new angel two doors from us,
+As fine as daubers' hands can make it,
+In hopes that strangers may mistake it,
+We think it both a shame and sin,
+To quit the true old Angel Inn.
+Now, this is Stella's case in fact,
+An angel's face, a little cracked
+(Could poets, or could painters fix
+How angels look at, thirty-six):
+This drew us in at first, to find
+In such a form an angel's mind;
+And every virtue now supplies
+The fainting rays of Stella's eyes.
+See, at her levee, crowding swains,
+Whom Stella freely entertains,
+With breeding, humour, wit, and sense;
+And puts them but to small expense;
+Their mind so plentifully fills,
+And makes such reasonable bills,
+So little gets for what she gives,
+We really wonder how she lives!
+And had her stock been less, no doubt,
+She must have long ago run out.
+Then who can think we'll quit the place,
+When Doll hangs out a newer face;
+Or stop and light at Cloe's Head,
+With scraps and leavings to be fed.
+Then Cloe, still go on to prate
+Of thirty-six, and thirty-eight;
+Pursue your trade of scandal picking,
+Your hints that Stella is no chicken.
+Your innuendoes when you tell us,
+That Stella loves to talk with fellows;
+And let me warn you to believe
+A truth, for which your soul should grieve:
+That should you live to see the day
+When Stella's locks, must all be grey,
+When age must print a furrowed trace
+On every feature of her face;
+Though you and all your senseless tribe,
+Could art, or time, or nature bribe
+To make you look like beauty's queen,
+And hold for ever at fifteen;
+No bloom of youth can ever blind
+The cracks and wrinkles of your mind;
+All men of sense will pass your door,
+And crowd to Stella's at fourscore.
+
+
+STELLA'S BIRTHDAY.
+
+A GREAT BOTTLE OF WINE, LONG BURIED, BEING THAT DAY DUG UP.  1722.
+
+
+Resolved my annual verse to pay,
+By duty bound, on Stella's day;
+Furnished with paper, pens, and ink,
+I gravely sat me down to think:
+I bit my nails, and scratched my head,
+But found my wit and fancy fled;
+Or, if with more than usual pain,
+A thought came slowly from my brain,
+It cost me Lord knows how much time
+To shape it into sense and rhyme;
+And, what was yet a greater curse,
+Long-thinking made my fancy worse
+Forsaken by th' inspiring nine,
+I waited at Apollo's shrine;
+I told him what the world would sa
+If Stella were unsung to-day;
+How I should hide my head for shame,
+When both the Jacks and Robin came;
+How Ford would frown, how Jim would leer,
+How Sh-r the rogue would sneer,
+And swear it does not always follow,
+That SEMEL'N ANNO RIDET Apollo.
+I have assured them twenty times,
+That Phoebus helped me in my rhymes,
+Phoebus inspired me from above,
+And he and I were hand and glove.
+But finding me so dull and dry since,
+They'll call it all poetic licence.
+And when I brag of aid divine,
+Think Eusden's right as good as mine.
+Nor do I ask for Stella's sake;
+'Tis my own credit lies at stake.
+And Stella will be sung, while I
+Can only be a stander by.
+Apollo having thought a little,
+Returned this answer to a tittle.
+Tho' you should live like old Methusalem,
+I furnish hints, and you should use all 'em,
+You yearly sing as she grows old,
+You'd leave her virtues half untold.
+But to say truth, such dulness reigns
+Through the whole set of Irish Deans;
+I'm daily stunned with such a medley,
+Dean W-, Dean D-l, and Dean S-;
+That let what Dean soever come,
+My orders are, I'm not at home;
+And if your voice had not been loud,
+You must have passed among the crowd.
+But, now your danger to prevent,
+You must apply to Mrs. Brent,
+For she, as priestess, knows the rites
+Wherein the God of Earth delights.
+First, nine ways looking, let her stand
+With an old poker in her hand;
+Let her describe a circle round
+In Saunder's cellar on the ground
+A spade let prudent Archy hold,
+And with discretion dig the mould;
+Let Stella look with watchful eye,
+Rebecea, Ford, and Grattons by.
+Behold the bottle, where it lies
+With neck elated tow'rds the skies!
+The god of winds, and god of fire,
+Did to its wondrous birth conspire;
+And Bacchus for the poet's use
+Poured in a strong inspiring juice:
+See! as you raise it from its tomb,
+It drags behind a spacious womb,
+And in the spacious womb contains
+A sovereign med'cine for the brains.
+You'll find it soon, if fate consents;
+If not, a thousand Mrs. Brents,
+Ten thousand Archys arm'd with spades,
+May dig in vain to Pluto's shades.
+From thence a plenteous draught infuse,
+And boldly then invoke the muse
+(But first let Robert on his knees
+With caution drain it from the lees);
+The muse will at your call appear,
+With Stella's praise to crown the year.
+
+
+STELLA'S BIRTHDAY, 1724.
+
+
+As when a beauteous nymph decays,
+We say she's past her dancing days;
+So poets lose their feet by time,
+And can no longer dance in rhyme.
+Your annual bard had rather chose
+To celebrate your birth in prose;
+Yet merry folks who want by chance
+A pair to make a country dance,
+Call the old housekeeper, and get her
+To fill a place, for want of better;
+While Sheridan is off the hooks,
+And friend Delany at his books,
+That Stella may avoid disgrace,
+Once more the Dean supplies their place.
+Beauty and wit, too sad a truth,
+Have always been confined to youth;
+The god of wit, and beauty's queen,
+He twenty-one, and she fifteen;
+No poet ever sweetly sung.
+Unless he were like Phoebus, young;
+Nor ever nymph inspired to rhyme,
+Unless like Venus in her prime.
+At fifty-six, if this be true,
+Am I a poet fit for you;
+Or at the age of forty-three,
+Are you a subject fit for me?
+Adieu bright wit, and radiant eyes;
+You must be grave, and I be wise.
+Our fate in vain we would oppose,
+But I'll be still your friend in prose;
+Esteem and friendship to express,
+Will not require poetic dress;
+And if the muse deny her aid
+To have them sung, they may be said.
+But, Stella say, what evil tongue
+Reports you are no longer young?
+That Time sits with his scythe to mow
+Where erst sat Cupid with his bow;
+That half your locks are turned to grey;
+I'll ne'er believe a word they say.
+'Tis true, but let it not be known,
+My eyes are somewhat dimish grown;
+For nature, always in the right,
+To your decays adapts my sight,
+And wrinkles undistinguished pass,
+For I'm ashamed to use a glass;
+And till I see them with these eyes,
+Whoever says you have them, lies.
+No length of time can make you quit
+Honour and virtue, sense and wit,
+Thus you may still be young to me,
+While I can better hear than see:
+Oh, ne'er may fortune show her spite,
+To make me deaf, and mend my sight.
+
+
+STELLA'S BIRTHDAY, MARCH 13, 1726.
+
+
+THIS day, whate'er the Fates decree,
+Shall still be kept with joy by me;
+This day, then, let us not be told
+That you are sick, and I grown old,
+Nor think on our approaching ills,
+And talk of spectacles and pills;
+To-morrow will be time enough
+To hear such mortifying stuff.
+Yet, since from reason may be brought
+A better and more pleasing thought,
+Which can, in spite of all decays,
+Support a few remaining days:
+From not the gravest of divines
+Accept for once some serious lines.
+Although we now can form no more
+Long schemes of life, as heretofore;
+Yet you, while time is running fast,
+Can look with joy on what is past.
+Were future happiness and pain
+A mere contrivance of the brain,
+As Atheists argue, to entice,
+And fit their proselytes for vice
+(The only comfort they propose,
+To have companions in their woes).
+Grant this the case, yet sure 'tis hard
+That virtue, styled its own reward,
+And by all sages understood
+To be the chief of human good,
+Should acting, die, or leave behind
+Some lasting pleasure in the mind.
+Which by remembrance will assuage
+Grief, sickness, poverty, and age;
+And strongly shoot a radiant dart,
+To shine through life's declining part.
+Say, Stella, feel you no content,
+Reflecting on a life well spent;
+Your skilful hand employed to save
+Despairing wretches from the grave;
+And then supporting with your store,
+Those whom you dragged from death before?
+So Providence on mortals waits,
+Preserving what it first creates,
+You generous boldness to defend
+An innocent and absent friend;
+That courage which can make you just,
+To merit humbled in the dust;
+The detestation you express
+For vice in all its glittering dress:
+That patience under to torturing pain,
+Where stubborn stoics would complain.
+Must these like empty shadows pass,
+Or forms reflected from a glass?
+Or mere chimaeras in the mind,
+That fly, and leave no marks behind?
+Does not the body thrive and grow
+By food of twenty years ago?
+And, had it not been still supplied,
+It must a thousand times have died.
+Then, who with reason can maintain
+That no effects of food remain?
+And, is not virtue in mankind
+The nutriment that feeds the mind?
+Upheld by each good action past,
+And still continued by the last:
+Then, who with reason can pretend
+That all effects of virtue end?
+Believe me, Stella, when you show
+That true contempt for things below,
+Nor prize your life for other ends
+Than merely to oblige your friends,
+Your former actions claim their part,
+And join to fortify your heart.
+ For virtue in her daily race,
+Like Janus, bears a double face.
+Look back with joy where she has gone,
+And therefore goes with courage on.
+She at your sickly couch will wait,
+And guide you to a better state.
+O then, whatever heav'n intends,
+Take pity on your pitying friends;
+Nor let your ills affect your mind,
+To fancy they can be unkind;
+Me, surely me, you ought to spare,
+Who gladly would your sufferings share;
+Or give my scrap of life to you,
+And think it far beneath your due;
+You to whose care so oft I owe
+That I'm alive to tell you so.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X - TO STELLA,
+
+VISITING ME IN MY SICKNESS, OCTOBER, 1727.
+
+
+
+PALLAS, observing Stella's wit
+Was more than for her sex was fit;
+And that her beauty, soon or late,
+Might breed confusion in the state;
+In high concern for human kind,
+Fixed honour in her infant mind.
+But (not in wranglings to engage
+With such a stupid vicious age),
+If honour I would here define,
+It answers faith in things divine.
+As natural life the body warms,
+And, scholars teach, the soul informs;
+So honour animates the whole,
+And is the spirit of the soul.
+Those numerous virtues which the tribe
+Of tedious moralists describe,
+And by such various titles call,
+True honour comprehends them all.
+Let melancholy rule supreme,
+Choler preside, or blood, or phlegm.
+It makes no difference in the case.
+Nor is complexion honour's place.
+But, lest we should for honour take
+The drunken quarrels of a rake,
+Or think it seated in a scar,
+Or on a proud triumphal car,
+Or in the payment of a debt,
+We lose with sharpers at piquet;
+Or, when a whore in her vocation,
+Keeps punctual to an assignation;
+Or that on which his lordship swears,
+When vulgar knaves would lose their ears:
+Let Stella's fair example preach
+A lesson she alone can teach.
+In points of honour to be tried,
+All passions must be laid aside;
+Ask no advice, but think alone,
+Suppose the question not your own;
+How shall I act? is not the case,
+But how would Brutus in my place;
+In such a cause would Cato bleed;
+And how would Socrates proceed?
+Drive all objections from your mind,
+Else you relapse to human kind;
+Ambition, avarice, and lust,
+And factious rage, and breach of trust,
+And flattery tipped with nauseous fleer,
+And guilt and shame, and servile fear,
+Envy, and cruelty, and pride,
+Will in your tainted heart preside.
+Heroes and heroines of old,
+By honour only were enrolled
+Among their brethren in the skies,
+To which (though late) shall Stella rise.
+Ten thousand oaths upon record
+Are not so sacred as her word;
+The world shall in its atoms end
+Ere Stella can deceive a friend.
+By honour seated in her breast,
+She still determines what is best;
+What indignation in her mind,
+Against enslavers of mankind!
+Base kings and ministers of state,
+Eternal objects of her hate.
+She thinks that Nature ne'er designed,
+Courage to man alone confined;
+Can cowardice her sex adorn,
+Which most exposes ours to scorn;
+She wonders where the charm appears
+In Florimel's affected fears;
+For Stella never learned the art
+At proper times to scream and start;
+Nor calls up all the house at night,
+And swears she saw a thing in white.
+Doll never flies to cut her lace,
+Or throw cold water in her face,
+Because she heard a sudden drum,
+Or found an earwig in a plum.
+Her hearers are amazed from whence
+Proceeds that fund of wit and sense;
+Which, though her modesty would shroud,
+Breaks like the sun behind a cloud,
+While gracefulness its art conceals,
+And yet through every motion steals.
+Say, Stella, was Prometheus blind,
+And forming you, mistook your kind?
+No; 'twas for you alone he stole
+The fire that forms a manly soul;
+Then, to complete it every way,
+He moulded it with female clay,
+To that you owe the nobler flame,
+To this, the beauty of your frame.
+How would ingratitude delight?
+And how would censure glut her spite?
+If I should Stella's kindness hide
+In silence, or forget with pride,
+When on my sickly couch I lay,
+Impatient both of night and day,
+Lamenting in unmanly strains,
+Called every power to ease my pains,
+Then Stella ran to my relief
+With cheerful face and inward grief;
+And though by Heaven's severe decree
+She suffers hourly more than me,
+No cruel master could require,
+From slaves employed for daily hire,
+What Stella by her friendship warmed,
+With vigour and delight performed.
+My sinking spirits now supplies
+With cordials in her hands and eyes,
+Now with a soft and silent tread,
+Unheard she moves about my bed.
+I see her taste each nauseous draught,
+And so obligingly am caught:
+I bless the hand from whence they came,
+Nor dare distort my face for shame.
+Best pattern of true friends beware,
+You pay too dearly for your care;
+If while your tenderness secures
+My life, it must endanger yours.
+For such a fool was never found,
+Who pulled a palace to the ground,
+Only to have the ruins made
+Materials for a house decayed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI - THE FIRST HE WROTE OCT. 17, 1727.
+
+
+
+MOST merciful Father, accept our humblest prayers in behalf of this 
+Thy languishing servant; forgive the sins, the frailties, and 
+infirmities of her life past.  Accept the good deeds she hath done 
+in such a manner that, at whatever time Thou shalt please to call 
+her, she may be received into everlasting habitations.  Give her 
+grace to continue sincerely thankful to Thee for the many favours 
+Thou hast bestowed upon her, the ability and inclination and 
+practice to do good, and those virtues which have procured the 
+esteem and love of her friends, and a most unspotted name in the 
+world.  O God, Thou dispensest Thy blessings and Thy punishments, 
+as it becometh infinite justice and mercy; and since it was Thy 
+pleasure to afflict her with a long, constant, weakly state of 
+health, make her truly sensible that it was for very wise ends, and 
+was largely made up to her in other blessings, more valuable and 
+less common.  Continue to her, O Lord, that firmness and constancy 
+of mind wherewith Thou hast most graciously endowed her, together 
+with that contempt of worldly things and vanities that she hath 
+shown in the whole conduct of her life.  O All-powerful Being, the 
+least motion of whose Will can create or destroy a world, pity us, 
+the mournful friends of Thy distressed servant, who sink under the 
+weight of her present condition, and the fear of losing the most 
+valuable of our friends; restore her to us, O Lord, if it be Thy 
+gracious Will, or inspire us with constancy and resignation to 
+support ourselves under so heavy an affliction.  Restore her, O 
+Lord, for the sake of those poor, who by losing her will be 
+desolate, and those sick, who will not only want her bounty, but 
+her care and tending; or else, in Thy mercy, raise up some other in 
+her place with equal disposition and better abilities.  Lessen, O 
+Lord, we beseech thee, her bodily pains, or give her a double 
+strength of mind to support them.  And if Thou wilt soon take her 
+to Thyself, turn our thoughts rather upon that felicity which we 
+hope she shall enjoy, than upon that unspeakable loss we shall 
+endure.  Let her memory be ever dear unto us, and the example of 
+her many virtues, as far as human infirmity will admit, our 
+constant imitation.  Accept, O Lord, these prayers poured from the 
+very bottom of our hearts, in Thy mercy, and for the merits of our 
+blessed Saviour.  AMEN.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII - THE SECOND PRAYER WAS WRITTEN NOV. 6, 1727.
+
+
+
+O MERCIFUL Father, who never afflictest Thy children but for their 
+own good, and with justice, over which Thy mercy always prevaileth, 
+either to turn them to repentance, or to punish them in the present 
+life, in order to reward them in a better; take pity, we beseech 
+Thee, upon this Thy poor afflicted servant, languishing so long and 
+so grievously under the weight of Thy Hand.  Give her strength, O 
+Lord, to support her weakness, and patience to endure her pains, 
+without repining at Thy correction.  Forgive every rash and 
+inconsiderate expression which her anguish may at any time force 
+from her tongue, while her heart continueth in an entire submission 
+to Thy Will.  Suppress in her, O Lord, all eager desires of life, 
+and lesson her fears of death, by inspiring into her an humble yet 
+assured hope of Thy mercy.  Give her a sincere repentance for all 
+her transgressions and omissions, and a firm resolution to pass the 
+remainder of her life in endeavouring to her utmost to observe all 
+thy precepts.  We beseech Thee likewise to compose her thoughts, 
+and preserve to her the use of her memory and reason during the 
+course of her sickness.  Give her a true conception of the vanity, 
+folly, and insignificancy of all human things; and strengthen her 
+so as to beget in her a sincere love of Thee in the midst of her 
+sufferings.  Accept and impute all her good deeds, and forgive her 
+all those offences against Thee, which she hath sincerely repented 
+of, or through the frailty of memory hath forgot.  And now, O Lord, 
+we turn to Thee in behalf of ourselves, and the rest of her 
+sorrowful friends.  Let not our grief afflict her mind, and thereby 
+have an ill effect on her present distemper.  Forgive the sorrow 
+and weakness of those among us who sink under the grief and terror 
+of losing so dear and useful a friend.  Accept and pardon our most 
+earnest prayers and wishes for her longer continuance in this evil 
+world, to do what Thou art pleased to call Thy service, and is only 
+her bounden duty; that she may be still a comfort to us, and to all 
+others, who will want the benefit of her conversation, her advice, 
+her good offices, or her charity.  And since Thou hast promised 
+that where two or three are gathered together in Thy Name, Thou 
+wilt be in the midst of them to grant their request, O Gracious 
+Lord, grant to us who are here met in Thy Name, that those 
+requests, which in the utmost sincerity and earnestness of our 
+hearts we have now made in behalf of this Thy distressed servant, 
+and of ourselves, may effectually be answered; through the merits 
+of Jesus Christ our Lord.  AMEN,
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII - THE BEASTS' CONFESSION (1732).
+
+
+
+WHEN beasts could speak (the learned say
+They still can do so every day),
+It seems, they had religion then,
+As much as now we find in men.
+It happened when a plague broke out
+(Which therefore made them more devout)
+The king of brutes (to make it plain,
+Of quadrupeds I only mean),
+By proclamation gave command,
+That every subject in the land
+Should to the priest confess their sins;
+And thus the pious wolf begins:
+Good father, I must own with shame,
+That, often I have been to blame:
+I must confess, on Friday last,
+Wretch that I was, I broke my fast:
+But I defy the basest tongue
+To prove I did my neighbour wrong;
+Or ever went to seek my food
+By rapine, theft, or thirst of blood.
+
+The ass approaching next, confessed,
+That in his heart he loved a jest:
+A wag he was, he needs must own,
+And could not let a dunce alone:
+Sometimes his friend he would not spare,
+And might perhaps be too severe:
+But yet, the worst that could be said,
+He was a wit both born and bred;
+And, if it be a sin or shame,
+Nature alone must bear the blame:
+One fault he hath, is sorry for't,
+His ears are half a foot too short;
+Which could he to the standard bring,
+He'd show his face before the king:
+Then, for his voice, there's none disputes
+That he's the nightingale of brutes.
+
+The swine with contrite heart allowed,
+His shape and beauty made him proud:
+In diet was perhaps too nice,
+But gluttony was ne'er his vice:
+In every turn of life content,
+And meekly took what fortune sent:
+Enquire through all the parish round,
+A better neighbour ne'er was found:
+His vigilance might seine displease;
+'Tis true, he hated sloth like pease.
+
+The mimic ape began his chatter,
+How evil tongues his life bespatter:
+Much of the cens'ring world complained,
+Who said his gravity was feigned:
+Indeed, the strictness of his morals
+Engaged him in a hundred quarrels:
+He saw, and he was grieved to see't,
+His zeal was sometimes indiscreet:
+He found his virtues too severe
+For our corrupted times to bear:
+Yet, such a lewd licentious age
+Might well excuse a stoic's rage.
+
+The goat advanced with decent pace:
+And first excused his youthful face;
+Forgiveness begged, that he appeared
+('Twas nature's fault) without a beard.
+'Tis true, he was not much inclined
+To fondness for the female kind;
+Not, as his enemies object,
+From chance or natural defect;
+Not by his frigid constitution,
+But through a pious resolution;
+For he had made a holy vow
+Of chastity, as monks do now;
+Which he resolved to keep for ever hence,
+As strictly, too, as doth his reverence.
+
+Apply the tale, and you shall find
+How just it suits with human kind.
+Some faults we own:  but, can you guess?
+Why? - virtue's carried to excess;
+Wherewith our vanity endows us,
+Though neither foe nor friend allows us.
+
+The lawyer swears, you may rely on't,
+He never squeezed a needy client:
+And this he makes his constant rule,
+For which his brethren call him fool;
+His conscience always was so nice,
+He freely gave the poor advice;
+By which he lost, he may affirm,
+A hundred fees last Easter term.
+While others of the learned robe
+Would break the patience of a Job;
+No pleader at the bar could match
+His diligence and quick despatch;
+Ne'er kept a cause, he well may boast,
+Above a term or two at most.
+
+The cringing knave, who seeks a place
+Without success, thus tells his case:
+Why should he longer mince the matter?
+He failed because he could not flatter:
+He had not learned to turn his coat,
+Nor for a party give his vote.
+His crime he quickly understood;
+Too zealous for the nation's good:
+He found the ministers resent it,
+Yet could not for his heart repent it.
+
+The chaplain vows he cannot fawn,
+Though it would raise him to the lawn:
+He passed his hours among his books;
+You find it in his meagre looks:
+He might, if he were worldly-wise,
+Preferment get, and spare his eyes:
+But owned he had a stubborn spirit,
+That made him trust alone in merit:
+Would rise by merit to promotion;
+Alas! a mere chimeric notion.
+
+The doctor, if you will believe him,
+Confessed a sin, and God forgive him:
+Called up at midnight, ran to save
+A blind old beggar from the grave:
+But, see how Satan spreads his snares;
+He quite forgot to say his prayers.
+He cannot help it, for his heart,
+Sometimes to act the parson's part,
+Quotes from the Bible many a sentence
+That moves his patients to repentance:
+And, when his medicines do no good,
+Supports their minds with heavenly food.
+At which, however well intended,
+He hears the clergy are offended;
+And grown so bold behind his back,
+To call him hypocrite and quack.
+In his own church he keeps a seat;
+Says grace before and after meat;
+And calls, without affecting airs,
+His household twice a day to prayers.
+He shuns apothecaries' shops;
+And hates to cram the sick with slops:
+He scorns to make his art a trade,
+Nor bribes my lady's favourite maid.
+Old nurse-keepers would never hire
+To recommend him to the Squire;
+Which others, whom he will not name,
+Have often practised to their shame.
+
+The statesman tells you with a sneer,
+His fault is to be too sincere;
+And, having no sinister ends,
+Is apt to disoblige his friends.
+The nation's good, his Master's glory,
+Without regard to Whig or Tory,
+Were all the schemes he had in view;
+Yet he was seconded by few:
+Though some had spread a thousand lies,
+'Twas he defeated the Excise.
+'Twas known, though he had borne aspersion,
+That standing troops were his aversion:
+His practice was, in every station,
+To serve the king, and please the nation.
+Though hard to find in every case
+The fittest man to fill a place:
+His promises he ne'er forgot,
+But took memorials on the spot:
+His enemies, for want of charity,
+Said he affected popularity:
+'Tis true, the people understood,
+That all he did was for their good;
+Their kind affections he has tried;
+No love is lost on either side.
+He came to court with fortune clear,
+Which now he runs out every year;
+Must, at the rate that he goes on,
+Inevitably be undone.
+Oh! if his Majesty would please
+To give him but a writ of ease,
+Would grant him license to retire,
+As it hath long been his desire,
+By fair accounts it would be found,
+He's poorer by ten thousand pound.
+He owns, and hopes it is no sin,
+He ne'er was partial to his kin;
+He thought it base for men in stations
+To crowd the court with their relations:
+His country was his dearest mother,
+And every virtuous man his brother:
+Through modesty or awkward shame
+(For which he owns himself to blame),
+He found the wisest men he could,
+Without respect to friends or blood;
+Nor never acts on private views,
+When he hath liberty to choose.
+
+The sharper swore he hated play,
+Except to pass an hour away:
+And well he might; for to his cost,
+By want of skill, he always lost.
+He heard there was a club of cheats,
+Who had contrived a thousand feats;
+Could change the stock, or cog a dye,
+And thus deceive the sharpest eye:
+No wonder how his fortune sunk,
+His brothers fleece him when he's drunk.
+
+I own the moral not exact;
+Besides, the tale is false in fact;
+And so absurd, that, could I raise up
+From fields Elysian, fabling AEsop;
+I would accuse him to his face,
+For libelling the four-foot race.
+Creatures of every kind but ours
+Well comprehend their natural powers;
+While we, whom reason ought to sway,
+Mistake our talents every day:
+The ass was never known so stupid
+To act the part of Tray or Cupid;
+Nor leaps upon his master's lap,
+There to be stroked, and fed with pap:
+As AEsop would the world persuade;
+He better understands his trade:
+Nor comes whene'er his lady whistles,
+But carries loads, and feeds on thistles;
+Our author's meaning, I presume, is
+A creature BIPES ET IMPLUMIS;
+Wherein the moralist designed
+A compliment on human-kind:
+For, here he owns, that now and then
+Beasts may degenerate into men.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV - AN ARGUMENT TO PROVE THAT THE
+ABOLISHING OF CHRISTIANITY IN ENGLAND
+MAY, AS THINGS NOW STAND, BE ATTENDED WITH
+SOME INCONVENIENCES, AND PERHAPS NOT PRODUCE
+THOSE MANY GOOD EFFECTS PROPOSED THEREBY.
+
+WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1708.
+
+
+
+I AM very sensible what a weakness and presumption it is to reason 
+against the general humour and disposition of the world.  I 
+remember it was with great justice, and a due regard to the 
+freedom, both of the public and the press, forbidden upon several 
+penalties to write, or discourse, or lay wagers against the - even 
+before it was confirmed by Parliament; because that was looked upon 
+as a design to oppose the current of the people, which, besides the 
+folly of it, is a manifest breach of the fundamental law, that 
+makes this majority of opinions the voice of God.  In like manner, 
+and for the very same reasons, it may perhaps be neither safe nor 
+prudent to argue against the abolishing of Christianity, at a 
+juncture when all parties seem so unanimously determined upon the 
+point, as we cannot but allow from their actions, their discourses, 
+and their writings.  However, I know not how, whether from the 
+affectation of singularity, or the perverseness of human nature, 
+but so it unhappily falls out, that I cannot be entirely of this 
+opinion.  Nay, though I were sure an order were issued for my 
+immediate prosecution by the Attorney-General, I should still 
+confess, that in the present posture of our affairs at home or 
+abroad, I do not yet see the absolute necessity of extirpating the 
+Christian religion from among us.
+
+This perhaps may appear too great a paradox even for our wise and 
+paxodoxical age to endure; therefore I shall handle it with all 
+tenderness, and with the utmost deference to that great and 
+profound majority which is of another sentiment.
+
+And yet the curious may please to observe, how much the genius of a 
+nation is liable to alter in half an age.  I have heard it affirmed 
+for certain by some very odd people, that the contrary opinion was 
+even in their memories as much in vogue as the other is now; and 
+that a project for the abolishing of Christianity would then have 
+appeared as singular, and been thought as absurd, as it would be at 
+this time to write or discourse in its defence.
+
+Therefore I freely own, that all appearances are against me.  The 
+system of the Gospel, after the fate of other systems, is generally 
+antiquated and exploded, and the mass or body of the common people, 
+among whom it seems to have had its latest credit, are now grown as 
+much ashamed of it as their betters; opinions, like fashions, 
+always descending from those of quality to the middle sort, and 
+thence to the vulgar, where at length they are dropped and vanish.
+
+But here I would not be mistaken, and must therefore be so bold as 
+to borrow a distinction from the writers on the other side, when 
+they make a difference betwixt nominal and real Trinitarians.  I 
+hope no reader imagines me so weak to stand up in the defence of 
+real Christianity, such as used in primitive times (if we may 
+believe the authors of those ages) to have an influence upon men's 
+belief and actions.  To offer at the restoring of that, would 
+indeed be a wild project:  it would be to dig up foundations; to 
+destroy at one blow all the wit, and half the learning of the 
+kingdom; to break the entire frame and constitution of things; to 
+ruin trade, extinguish arts and sciences, with the professors of 
+them; in short, to turn our courts, exchanges, and shops into 
+deserts; and would be full as absurd as the proposal of Horace, 
+where he advises the Romans, all in a body, to leave their city, 
+and seek a new seat in some remote part of the world, by way of a 
+cure for the corruption of their manners.
+
+Therefore I think this caution was in itself altogether unnecessary 
+(which I have inserted only to prevent all possibility of 
+cavilling), since every candid reader will easily understand my 
+discourse to be intended only in defence of nominal Christianity, 
+the other having been for some time wholly laid aside by general 
+consent, as utterly inconsistent with all our present schemes of 
+wealth and power.
+
+But why we should therefore cut off the name and title of 
+Christians, although the general opinion and resolution be so 
+violent for it, I confess I cannot (with submission) apprehend the 
+consequence necessary.  However, since the undertakers propose such 
+wonderful advantages to the nation by this project, and advance 
+many plausible objections against the system of Christianity, I 
+shall briefly consider the strength of both, fairly allow them 
+their greatest weight, and offer such answers as I think most 
+reasonable.  After which I will beg leave to show what 
+inconveniences may possibly happen by such an innovation, in the 
+present posture of our affairs.
+
+First, one great advantage proposed by the abolishing of 
+Christianity is, that it would very much enlarge and establish 
+liberty of conscience, that great bulwark of our nation, and of the 
+Protestant religion, which is still too much limited by 
+priestcraft, notwithstanding all the good intentions of the 
+legislature, as we have lately found by a severe instance.  For it 
+is confidently reported, that two young gentlemen of real hopes, 
+bright wit, and profound judgment, who, upon a thorough examination 
+of causes and effects, and by the mere force of natural abilities, 
+without the least tincture of learning, having made a discovery 
+that there was no God, and generously communicating their thoughts 
+for the good of the public, were some time ago, by an unparalleled 
+severity, and upon I know not what obsolete law, broke for 
+blasphemy.  And as it has been wisely observed, if persecution once 
+begins, no man alive knows how far it may reach, or where it will 
+end.
+
+In answer to all which, with deference to wiser judgments, I think 
+this rather shows the necessity of a nominal religion among us.  
+Great wits love to be free with the highest objects; and if they 
+cannot be allowed a god to revile or renounce, they will speak evil 
+of dignities, abuse the government, and reflect upon the ministry, 
+which I am sure few will deny to be of much more pernicious 
+consequence, according to the saying of Tiberius, DEORUM OFFENSA 
+DIIS CUROE.  As to the particular fact related, I think it is not 
+fair to argue from one instance, perhaps another cannot be 
+produced:  yet (to the comfort of all those who may be apprehensive 
+of persecution) blasphemy we know is freely spoke a million of 
+times in every coffee-house and tavern, or wherever else good 
+company meet.  It must be allowed, indeed, that to break an English 
+free-born officer only for blasphemy was, to speak the gentlest of 
+such an action, a very high strain of absolute power.  Little can 
+be said in excuse for the general; perhaps he was afraid it might 
+give offence to the allies, among whom, for aught we know, it may 
+be the custom of the country to believe a God.  But if he argued, 
+as some have done, upon a mistaken principle, that an officer who 
+is guilty of speaking blasphemy may, some time or other, proceed so 
+far as to raise a mutiny, the consequence is by no means to be 
+admitted:  for surely the commander of an English army is like to 
+be but ill obeyed whose soldiers fear and reverence him as little 
+as they do a Deity.
+
+It is further objected against the Gospel system that it obliges 
+men to the belief of things too difficult for Freethinkers, and 
+such who have shook off the prejudices that usually cling to a 
+confined education.  To which I answer, that men should be cautious 
+how they raise objections which reflect upon the wisdom of the 
+nation.  Is not everybody freely allowed to believe whatever he 
+pleases, and to publish his belief to the world whenever he thinks 
+fit, especially if it serves to strengthen the party which is in 
+the right?  Would any indifferent foreigner, who should read the 
+trumpery lately written by Asgil, Tindal, Toland, Coward, and forty 
+more, imagine the Gospel to be our rule of faith, and to be 
+confirmed by Parliaments?  Does any man either believe, or say he 
+believes, or desire to have it thought that he says he believes, 
+one syllable of the matter?  And is any man worse received upon 
+that score, or does he find his want of nominal faith a 
+disadvantage to him in the pursuit of any civil or military 
+employment?  What if there be an old dormant statute or two against 
+him, are they not now obsolete, to a degree, that Empson and Dudley 
+themselves, if they were now alive, would find it impossible to put 
+them in execution?
+
+It is likewise urged, that there are, by computation, in this 
+kingdom, above ten thousand parsons, whose revenues, added to those 
+of my lords the bishops, would suffice to maintain at least two 
+hundred young gentlemen of wit and pleasure, and free-thinking, 
+enemies to priestcraft, narrow principles, pedantry, and 
+prejudices, who might be an ornament to the court and town:  and 
+then again, so a great number of able [bodied] divines might be a 
+recruit to our fleet and armies.  This indeed appears to be a 
+consideration of some weight; but then, on the other side, several 
+things deserve to be considered likewise:  as, first, whether it 
+may not be thought necessary that in certain tracts of country, 
+like what we call parishes, there should be one man at least of 
+abilities to read and write.  Then it seems a wrong computation 
+that the revenues of the Church throughout this island would be 
+large enough to maintain two hundred young gentlemen, or even half 
+that number, after the present refined way of living, that is, to 
+allow each of them such a rent as, in the modern form of speech, 
+would make them easy.  But still there is in this project a greater 
+mischief behind; and we ought to beware of the woman's folly, who 
+killed the hen that every morning laid her a golden egg.  For, pray 
+what would become of the race of men in the next age, if we had 
+nothing to trust to beside the scrofulous consumptive production 
+furnished by our men of wit and pleasure, when, having squandered 
+away their vigour, health, and estates, they are forced, by some 
+disagreeable marriage, to piece up their broken fortunes, and 
+entail rottenness and politeness on their posterity?  Now, here are 
+ten thousand persons reduced, by the wise regulations of Henry 
+VIII., to the necessity of a low diet, and moderate exercise, who 
+are the only great restorers of our breed, without which the nation 
+would in an age or two become one great hospital.
+
+Another advantage proposed by the abolishing of Christianity is the 
+clear gain of one day in seven, which is now entirely lost, and 
+consequently the kingdom one seventh less considerable in trade, 
+business, and pleasure; besides the loss to the public of so many 
+stately structures now in the hands of the clergy, which might be 
+converted into play-houses, exchanges, market-houses, common 
+dormitories, and other public edifices.
+
+I hope I shall be forgiven a hard word if I call this a perfect 
+cavil.  I readily own there hath been an old custom, time out of 
+mind, for people to assemble in the churches every Sunday, and that 
+shops are still frequently shut, in order, as it is conceived, to 
+preserve the memory of that ancient practice; but how this can 
+prove a hindrance to business or pleasure is hard to imagine.  What 
+if the men of pleasure are forced, one day in the week, to game at 
+home instead of the chocolate-house?  Are not the taverns and 
+coffee-houses open?  Can there be a more convenient season for 
+taking a dose of physic?  Is not that the chief day for traders to 
+sum up the accounts of the week, and for lawyers to prepare their 
+briefs?  But I would fain know how it can be pretended that the 
+churches are misapplied?  Where are more appointments and 
+rendezvouses of gallantry?  Where more care to appear in the 
+foremost box, with greater advantage of dress?  Where more meetings 
+for business?  Where more bargains driven of all sorts?  And where 
+so many conveniences or incitements to sleep?
+
+There is one advantage greater than any of the foregoing, proposed 
+by the abolishing of Christianity, that it will utterly extinguish 
+parties among us, by removing those factious distinctions of high 
+and low church, of Whig and Tory, Presbyterian and Church of 
+England, which are now so many mutual clogs upon public 
+proceedings, and are apt to prefer the gratifying themselves or 
+depressing their adversaries before the most important interest of 
+the State.
+
+I confess, if it were certain that so great an advantage would 
+redound to the nation by this expedient, I would submit, and be 
+silent; but will any man say, that if the words, whoring, drinking, 
+cheating, lying, stealing, were, by Act of Parliament, ejected out 
+of the English tongue and dictionaries, we should all awake next 
+morning chaste and temperate, honest and just, and lovers of truth?  
+Is this a fair consequence?  Or if the physicians would forbid us 
+to pronounce the words pox, gout, rheumatism, and stone, would that 
+expedient serve like so many talismen to destroy the diseases 
+themselves?  Are party and faction rooted in men's hearts no deeper 
+than phrases borrowed from religion, or founded upon no firmer 
+principles?  And is our language so poor that we cannot find other 
+terms to express them?  Are envy, pride, avarice, and ambition such 
+ill nomenclators, that they cannot furnish appellations for their 
+owners?  Will not heydukes and mamalukes, mandarins and patshaws, 
+or any other words formed at pleasure, serve to distinguish those 
+who are in the ministry from others who would be in it if they 
+could?  What, for instance, is easier than to vary the form of 
+speech, and instead of the word church, make it a question in 
+politics, whether the monument be in danger?  Because religion was 
+nearest at hand to furnish a few convenient phrases, is our 
+invention so barren we can find no other?  Suppose, for argument 
+sake, that the Tories favoured Margarita, the Whigs, Mrs. Tofts, 
+and the Trimmers, Valentini, would not Margaritians, Toftians, and 
+Valentinians be very tolerable marks of distinction?  The Prasini 
+and Veniti, two most virulent factions in Italy, began, if I 
+remember right, by a distinction of colours in ribbons, which we 
+might do with as good a grace about the dignity of the blue and the 
+green, and serve as properly to divide the Court, the Parliament, 
+and the kingdom between them, as any terms of art whatsoever, 
+borrowed from religion.  And therefore I think there is little 
+force in this objection against Christianity, or prospect of so 
+great an advantage as is proposed in the abolishing of it.
+
+It is again objected, as a very absurd, ridiculous custom, that a 
+set of men should be suffered, much less employed and hired, to 
+bawl one day in seven against the lawfulness of those methods most 
+in use towards the pursuit of greatness, riches, and pleasure, 
+which are the constant practice of all men alive on the other six.  
+But this objection is, I think, a little unworthy so refined an age 
+as ours.  Let us argue this matter calmly.  I appeal to the breast 
+of any polite Free-thinker, whether, in the pursuit of gratifying a 
+pre-dominant passion, he hath not always felt a wonderful 
+incitement, by reflecting it was a thing forbidden; and therefore 
+we see, in order to cultivate this test, the wisdom of the nation 
+hath taken special care that the ladies should be furnished with 
+prohibited silks, and the men with prohibited wine.  And indeed it 
+were to be wished that some other prohibitions were promoted, in 
+order to improve the pleasures of the town, which, for want of such 
+expedients, begin already, as I am told, to flag and grow languid, 
+giving way daily to cruel inroads from the spleen.
+
+'Tis likewise proposed, as a great advantage to the public, that if 
+we once discard the system of the Gospel, all religion will of 
+course be banished for ever, and consequently along with it those 
+grievous prejudices of education which, under the names of 
+conscience, honour, justice, and the like, are so apt to disturb 
+the peace of human minds, and the notions whereof are so hard to be 
+eradicated by right reason or free-thinking, sometimes during the 
+whole course of our lives.
+
+Here first I observe how difficult it is to get rid of a phrase 
+which the world has once grown fond of, though the occasion that 
+first produced it be entirely taken away.  For some years past, if 
+a man had but an ill-favoured nose, the deep thinkers of the age 
+would, some way or other contrive to impute the cause to the 
+prejudice of his education.  From this fountain were said to be 
+derived all our foolish notions of justice, piety, love of our 
+country; all our opinions of God or a future state, heaven, hell, 
+and the like; and there might formerly perhaps have been some 
+pretence for this charge.  But so effectual care hath been since 
+taken to remove those prejudices, by an entire change in the 
+methods of education, that (with honour I mention it to our polite 
+innovators) the young gentlemen, who are now on the scene, seem to 
+have not the least tincture left of those infusions, or string of 
+those weeds, and by consequence the reason for abolishing nominal 
+Christianity upon that pretext is wholly ceased.
+
+For the rest, it may perhaps admit a controversy, whether the 
+banishing all notions of religion whatsoever would be inconvenient 
+for the vulgar.  Not that I am in the least of opinion with those 
+who hold religion to have been the invention of politicians, to 
+keep the lower part of the world in awe by the fear of invisible 
+powers; unless mankind were then very different from what it is 
+now; for I look upon the mass or body of our people here in England 
+to be as Freethinkers, that is to say, as staunch unbelievers, as 
+any of the highest rank.  But I conceive some scattered notions 
+about a superior power to be of singular use for the common people, 
+as furnishing excellent materials to keep children quiet when they 
+grow peevish, and providing topics of amusement in a tedious winter 
+night.
+
+Lastly, it is proposed, as a singular advantage, that the 
+abolishing of Christianity will very much contribute to the uniting 
+of Protestants, by enlarging the terms of communion, so as to take 
+in all sorts of Dissenters, who are now shut out of the pale upon 
+account of a few ceremonies, which all sides confess to be things 
+indifferent.  That this alone will effectually answer the great 
+ends of a scheme for comprehension, by opening a large noble gate, 
+at which all bodies may enter; whereas the chaffering with 
+Dissenters, and dodging about this or t'other ceremony, is but like 
+opening a few wickets, and leaving them at jar, by which no more 
+than one can get in at a time, and that not without stooping, and 
+sideling, and squeezing his body.
+
+To all this I answer, that there is one darling inclination of 
+mankind which usually affects to be a retainer to religion, though 
+she be neither its parent, its godmother, nor its friend.  I mean 
+the spirit of opposition, that lived long before Christianity, and 
+can easily subsist without it.  Let us, for instance, examine 
+wherein the opposition of sectaries among us consists.  We shall 
+find Christianity to have no share in it at all.  Does the Gospel 
+anywhere prescribe a starched, squeezed countenance, a stiff formal 
+gait, a singularity of manners and habit, or any affected forms and 
+modes of speech different from the reasonable part of mankind?  
+Yet, if Christianity did not lend its name to stand in the gap, and 
+to employ or divert these humours, they must of necessity be spent 
+in contraventions to the laws of the land, and disturbance of the 
+public peace.  There is a portion of enthusiasm assigned to every 
+nation, which, if it hath not proper objects to work on, will burst 
+out, and set all into a flame.  If the quiet of a State can be 
+bought by only flinging men a few ceremonies to devour, it is a 
+purchase no wise man would refuse.  Let the mastiffs amuse 
+themselves about a sheep's skin stuffed with hay, provided it will 
+keep them from worrying the flock.  The institution of convents 
+abroad seems in one point a strain of great wisdom, there being few 
+irregularities in human passions which may not have recourse to 
+vent themselves in some of those orders, which are so many retreats 
+for the speculative, the melancholy, the proud, the silent, the 
+politic, and the morose, to spend themselves, and evaporate the 
+noxious particles; for each of whom we in this island are forced to 
+provide a several sect of religion to keep them quiet; and whenever 
+Christianity shall be abolished, the Legislature must find some 
+other expedient to employ and entertain them.  For what imports it 
+how large a gate you open, if there will be always left a number 
+who place a pride and a merit in not coming in?
+
+Having thus considered the most important objections against 
+Christianity, and the chief advantages proposed by the abolishing 
+thereof, I shall now, with equal deference and submission to wiser 
+judgments, as before, proceed to mention a few inconveniences that 
+may happen if the Gospel should be repealed, which, perhaps, the 
+projectors may not have sufficiently considered.
+
+And first, I am very sensible how much the gentlemen of wit and 
+pleasure are apt to murmur, and be choked at the sight of so many 
+daggle-tailed parsons that happen to fall in their way, and offend 
+their eyes; but at the same time, these wise reformers do not 
+consider what an advantage and felicity it is for great wits to be 
+always provided with objects of scorn and contempt, in order to 
+exercise and improve their talents, and divert their spleen from 
+falling on each other, or on themselves, especially when all this 
+may be done without the least imaginable danger to their persons.
+
+And to urge another argument of a parallel nature:  if Christianity 
+were once abolished, how could the Freethinkers, the strong 
+reasoners, and the men of profound learning be able to find another 
+subject so calculated in all points whereon to display their 
+abilities?  What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived 
+of from those whose genius, by continual practice, hath been wholly 
+turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would 
+therefore never be able to shine or distinguish themselves upon any 
+other subject?  We are daily complaining of the great decline of 
+wit among as, and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only 
+topic we have left?  Who would ever have suspected Asgil for a wit, 
+or Toland for a philosopher, if the inexhaustible stock of 
+Christianity had not been at hand to provide them with materials?  
+What other subject through all art or nature could have produced 
+Tindal for a profound author, or furnished him with readers?  It is 
+the wise choice of the subject that alone adorns and distinguishes 
+the writer.  For had a hundred such pens as these been employed on 
+the side of religion, they would have immediately sunk into silence 
+and oblivion.
+
+Nor do I think it wholly groundless, or my fears altogether 
+imaginary, that the abolishing of Christianity may perhaps bring 
+the Church in danger, or at least put the Senate to the trouble of 
+another securing vote.  I desire I may not be mistaken; I am far 
+from presuming to affirm or think that the Church is in danger at 
+present, or as things now stand; but we know not how soon it may be 
+so when the Christian religion is repealed.  As plausible as this 
+project seems, there may be a dangerous design lurk under it.  
+Nothing can be more notorious than that the Atheists, Deists, 
+Socinians, Anti-Trinitarians, and other subdivisions of 
+Freethinkers, are persons of little zeal for the present 
+ecclesiastical establishment:  their declared opinion is for 
+repealing the sacramental test; they are very indifferent with 
+regard to ceremonies; nor do they hold the JUS DIVINUM of 
+episcopacy:  therefore they may be intended as one politic step 
+towards altering the constitution of the Church established, and 
+setting up Presbytery in the stead, which I leave to be further 
+considered by those at the helm.
+
+In the last place, I think nothing can be more plain, than that by 
+this expedient we shall run into the evil we chiefly pretend to 
+avoid; and that the abolishment of the Christian religion will be 
+the readiest course we can take to introduce Popery.  And I am the 
+more inclined to this opinion because we know it has been the 
+constant practice of the Jesuits to send over emissaries, with 
+instructions to personate themselves members of the several 
+prevailing sects amongst us.  So it is recorded that they have at 
+sundry times appeared in the guise of Presbyterians, Anabaptists, 
+Independents, and Quakers, according as any of these were most in 
+credit; so, since the fashion hath been taken up of exploding 
+religion, the Popish missionaries have not been wanting to mix with 
+the Freethinkers; among whom Toland, the great oracle of the Anti-
+Christians, is an Irish priest, the son of an Irish priest; and the 
+most learned and ingenious author of a book called the "Rights of 
+the Christian Church," was in a proper juncture reconciled to the 
+Romish faith, whose true son, as appears by a hundred passages in 
+his treatise, he still continues.  Perhaps I could add some others 
+to the number; but the fact is beyond dispute, and the reasoning 
+they proceed by is right:  for supposing Christianity to be 
+extinguished the people will never he at ease till they find out 
+some other method of worship, which will as infallibly produce 
+superstition as this will end in Popery.
+
+And therefore, if, notwithstanding all I have said, it still be 
+thought necessary to have a Bill brought in for repealing 
+Christianity, I would humbly offer an amendment, that instead of 
+the word Christianity may be put religion in general, which I 
+conceive will much better answer all the good ends proposed by the 
+projectors of it.  For as long as we leave in being a God and His 
+Providence, with all the necessary consequences which curious and 
+inquisitive men will be apt to draw from such promises, we do not 
+strike at the root of the evil, though we should ever so 
+effectually annihilate the present scheme of the Gospel; for of 
+what use is freedom of thought if it will not produce freedom of 
+action, which is the sole end, how remote soever in appearance, of 
+all objections against Christianity? and therefore, the 
+Freethinkers consider it as a sort of edifice, wherein all the 
+parts have such a mutual dependence on each other, that if you 
+happen to pull out one single nail, the whole fabric must fall to 
+the ground.  This was happily expressed by him who had heard of a 
+text brought for proof of the Trinity, which in an ancient 
+manuscript was differently read; he thereupon immediately took the 
+hint, and by a sudden deduction of a long Sorites, most logically 
+concluded:  why, if it be as you say, I may safely drink on, and 
+defy the parson.  From which, and many the like instances easy to 
+be produced, I think nothing can be more manifest than that the 
+quarrel is not against any particular points of hard digestion in 
+the Christian system, but against religion in general, which, by 
+laying restraints on human nature, is supposed the great enemy to 
+the freedom of thought and action.
+
+Upon the whole, if it shall still be thought for the benefit of 
+Church and State that Christianity be abolished, I conceive, 
+however, it may be more convenient to defer the execution to a time 
+of peace, and not venture in this conjuncture to disoblige our 
+allies, who, as it falls out, are all Christians, and many of them, 
+by the prejudices of their education, so bigoted as to place a sort 
+of pride in the appellation.  If, upon being rejected by them, we 
+are to trust to an alliance with the Turk, we shall find ourselves 
+much deceived; for, as he is too remote, and generally engaged in 
+war with the Persian emperor, so his people would be more 
+scandalised at our infidelity than our Christian neighbours.  For 
+they are not only strict observers of religions worship, but what 
+is worse, believe a God; which is more than is required of us, even 
+while we preserve the name of Christians.
+
+To conclude, whatever some may think of the great advantages to 
+trade by this favourite scheme, I do very much apprehend that in 
+six months' time after the Act is passed for the extirpation of the 
+Gospel, the Bank and East India stock may fall at least one per 
+cent.  And since that is fifty times more than ever the wisdom of 
+our age thought fit to venture for the preservation of 
+Christianity, there is no reason we should be at so great a loss 
+merely for the sake of destroying it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV - HINTS TOWARDS AN ESSAY ON CONVERSATION.
+
+
+
+I HAVE observed few obvious subjects to have been so seldom, or at 
+least so slightly, handled as this; and, indeed, I know few so 
+difficult to be treated as it ought, nor yet upon which there 
+seemeth so much to be said.
+
+Most things pursued by men for the happiness of public or private 
+life our wit or folly have so refined, that they seldom subsist but 
+in idea; a true friend, a good marriage, a perfect form of 
+government, with some others, require so many ingredients, so good 
+in their several kinds, and so much niceness in mixing them, that 
+for some thousands of years men have despaired of reducing their 
+schemes to perfection.  But in conversation it is or might be 
+otherwise; for here we are only to avoid a multitude of errors, 
+which, although a matter of some difficulty, may be in every man's 
+power, for want of which it remaineth as mere an idea as the other.  
+Therefore it seemeth to me that the truest way to understand 
+conversation is to know the faults and errors to which it is 
+subject, and from thence every man to form maxims to himself 
+whereby it may be regulated, because it requireth few talents to 
+which most men are not born, or at least may not acquire without 
+any great genius or study.  For nature bath left every man a 
+capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and 
+there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both, who, by a 
+very few faults that they might correct in half an hour, are not so 
+much as tolerable.
+
+I was prompted to write my thoughts upon this subject by mere 
+indignation, to reflect that so useful and innocent a pleasure, so 
+fitted for every period and condition of life, and so much in all 
+men's power, should be so much neglected and abused.
+
+And in this discourse it will be necessary to note those errors 
+that are obvious, as well as others which are seldomer observed, 
+since there are few so obvious or acknowledged into which most men, 
+some time or other, are not apt to run.
+
+For instance, nothing is more generally exploded than the folly of 
+talking too much; yet I rarely remember to have seen five people 
+together where some one among them hath not been predominant in 
+that kind, to the great constraint and disgust of all the rest.  
+But among such as deal in multitudes of words, none are comparable 
+to the sober deliberate talker, who proceedeth with much thought 
+and caution, maketh his preface, brancheth out into several 
+digressions, findeth a hint that putteth him in mind of another 
+story, which he promiseth to tell you when this is done; cometh 
+back regularly to his subject, cannot readily call to mind some 
+person's name, holdeth his head, complaineth of his memory; the 
+whole company all this while in suspense; at length, says he, it is 
+no matter, and so goes on.  And, to crown the business, it perhaps 
+proveth at last a story the company hath heard fifty times before; 
+or, at best, some insipid adventure of the relater.
+
+Another general fault in conversation is that of those who affect 
+to talk of themselves.  Some, without any ceremony, will run over 
+the history of their lives; will relate the annals of their 
+diseases, with the several symptoms and circumstances of them; will 
+enumerate the hardships and injustice they have suffered in court, 
+in parliament, in love, or in law.  Others are more dexterous, and 
+with great art will lie on the watch to hook in their own praise.  
+They will call a witness to remember they always foretold what 
+would happen in such a case, but none would believe them; they 
+advised such a man from the beginning, and told him the 
+consequences just as they happened, but he would have his own way.  
+Others make a vanity of telling their faults.  They are the 
+strangest men in the world; they cannot dissemble; they own it is a 
+folly; they have lost abundance of advantages by it; but, if you 
+would give them the world, they cannot help it; there is something 
+in their nature that abhors insincerity and constraint; with many 
+other unsufferable topics of the same altitude.
+
+Of such mighty importance every man is to himself, and ready to 
+think he is so to others, without once making this easy and obvious 
+reflection, that his affairs can have no more weight with other men 
+than theirs have with him; and how little that is he is sensible 
+enough.
+
+Where company hath met, I often have observed two persons discover 
+by some accident that they were bred together at the same school or 
+university, after which the rest are condemned to silence, and to 
+listen while these two are refreshing each other's memory with the 
+arch tricks and passages of themselves and their comrades.
+
+I know a great officer of the army, who will sit for some time with 
+a supercilious and impatient silence, full of anger and contempt 
+for those who are talking; at length of a sudden demand audience; 
+decide the matter in a short dogmatical way; then withdraw within 
+himself again, and vouchsafe to talk no more, until his spirits 
+circulate again to the same point.
+
+There are some faults in conversation which none are so subject to 
+as the men of wit, nor ever so much as when they are with each 
+other.  If they have opened their mouths without endeavouring to 
+say a witty thing, they think it is so many words lost.  It is a 
+torment to the hearers, as much as to themselves, to see them upon 
+the rack for invention, and in perpetual constraint, with so little 
+success.  They must do something extraordinary, in order to acquit 
+themselves, and answer their character, else the standers by may be 
+disappointed and be apt to think them only like the rest of 
+mortals.  I have known two men of wit industriously brought 
+together, in order to entertain the company, where they have made a 
+very ridiculous figure, and provided all the mirth at their own 
+expense.
+
+I know a man of wit, who is never easy but where he can be allowed 
+to dictate and preside; he neither expecteth to be informed or 
+entertained, but to display his own talents.  His business is to be 
+good company, and not good conversation, and therefore he chooseth 
+to frequent those who are content to listen, and profess themselves 
+his admirers.  And, indeed, the worst conversation I ever remember 
+to have heard in my life was that at Will's coffee-house, where the 
+wits, as they were called, used formerly to assemble; that is to 
+say, five or six men who had written plays, or at least prologues, 
+or had share in a miscellany, came thither, and entertained one 
+another with their trifling composures in so important an air, as 
+if they had been the noblest efforts of human nature, or that the 
+fate of kingdoms depended on them; and they were usually attended 
+with a humble audience of young students from the inns of courts, 
+or the universities, who, at due distance, listened to these 
+oracles, and returned home with great contempt for their law and 
+philosophy, their heads filled with trash under the name of 
+politeness, criticism, and belles lettres.
+
+By these means the poets, for many years past, were all overrun 
+with pedantry.  For, as I take it, the word is not properly used; 
+because pedantry is the too front or unseasonable obtruding our own 
+knowledge in common discourse, and placing too great a value upon 
+it; by which definition men of the court or the army may be as 
+guilty of pedantry as a philosopher or a divine; and it is the same 
+vice in women when they are over copious upon the subject of their 
+petticoats, or their fans, or their china.  For which reason, 
+although it be a piece of prudence, as well as good manners, to put 
+men upon talking on subjects they are best versed in, yet that is a 
+liberty a wise man could hardly take; because, beside the 
+imputation of pedantry, it is what he would never improve by.
+
+This great town is usually provided with some player, mimic, or 
+buffoon, who hath a general reception at the good tables; familiar 
+and domestic with persons of the first quality, and usually sent 
+for at every meeting to divert the company, against which I have no 
+objection.  You go there as to a farce or a puppet-show; your 
+business is only to laugh in season, either out of inclination or 
+civility, while this merry companion is acting his part.  It is a 
+business he hath undertaken, and we are to suppose he is paid for 
+his day's work.  I only quarrel when in select and private 
+meetings, where men of wit and learning are invited to pass an 
+evening, this jester should be admitted to run over his circle of 
+tricks, and make the whole company unfit for any other 
+conversation, besides the indignity of confounding men's talents at 
+so shameful a rate.
+
+Raillery is the finest part of conversation; but, as it is our 
+usual custom to counterfeit and adulterate whatever is too dear for 
+us, so we have done with this, and turned it all into what is 
+generally called repartee, or being smart; just as when an 
+expensive fashion cometh up, those who are not able to reach it 
+content themselves with some paltry imitation.  It now passeth for 
+raillery to run a man down in discourse, to put him out of 
+countenance, and make him ridiculous, sometimes to expose the 
+defects of his person or understanding; on all which occasions he 
+is obliged not to be angry, to avoid the imputation of not being 
+able to take a jest.  It is admirable to observe one who is 
+dexterous at this art, singling out a weak adversary, getting the 
+laugh on his side, and then carrying all before him.  The French, 
+from whom we borrow the word, have a quite different idea of the 
+thing, and so had we in the politer age of our fathers.  Raillery 
+was, to say something that at first appeared a reproach or 
+reflection, but, by some turn of wit unexpected and surprising, 
+ended always in a compliment, and to the advantage of the person it 
+was addressed to.  And surely one of the best rules in conversation 
+is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably 
+wish we had rather left unsaid; nor can there anything be well more 
+contrary to the ends for which people meet together, than to part 
+unsatisfied with each other or themselves.
+
+There are two faults in conversation which appear very different, 
+yet arise from the same root, and are equally blamable; I mean, an 
+impatience to interrupt others, and the uneasiness of being 
+interrupted ourselves.  The two chief ends of conversation are, to 
+entertain and improve those we are among, or to receive those 
+benefits ourselves; which whoever will consider, cannot easily run 
+into either of those two errors; because, when any man speaketh in 
+company, it is to be supposed he doth it for his hearers' sake, and 
+not his own; so that common discretion will teach us not to force 
+their attention, if they are not willing to lend it; nor, on the 
+other side, to interrupt him who is in possession, because that is 
+in the grossest manner to give the preference to our own good 
+sense.
+
+There are some people whose good manners will not suffer them to 
+interrupt you; but, what is almost as bad, will discover abundance 
+of impatience, and lie upon the watch until you have done, because 
+they have started something in their own thoughts which they long 
+to be delivered of.  Meantime, they are so far from regarding what 
+passes, that their imaginations are wholly turned upon what they 
+have in reserve, for fear it should slip out of their memory; and 
+thus they confine their invention, which might otherwise range over 
+a hundred things full as good, and that might be much more 
+naturally introduced.
+
+There is a sort of rude familiarity, which some people, by 
+practising among their intimates, have introduced into their 
+general conversation, and would have it pass for innocent freedom 
+or humour, which is a dangerous experiment in our northern climate, 
+where all the little decorum and politeness we have are purely 
+forced by art, and are so ready to lapse into barbarity.  This, 
+among the Romans, was the raillery of slaves, of which we have many 
+instances in Plautus.  It seemeth to have been introduced among us 
+by Cromwell, who, by preferring the scum of the people, made it a 
+court-entertainment, of which I have heard many particulars; and, 
+considering all things were turned upside down, it was reasonable 
+and judicious; although it was a piece of policy found out to 
+ridicule a point of honour in the other extreme, when the smallest 
+word misplaced among gentlemen ended in a duel.
+
+There are some men excellent at telling a story, and provided with 
+a plentiful stock of them, which they can draw out upon occasion in 
+all companies; and considering how low conversation runs now among 
+us, it is not altogether a contemptible talent; however, it is 
+subject to two unavoidable defects:  frequent repetition, and being 
+soon exhausted; so that whoever valueth this gift in himself hath 
+need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company, 
+that he may not discover the weakness of his fund; for those who 
+are thus endowed have seldom any other revenue, but live upon the 
+main stock.
+
+Great speakers in public are seldom agreeable in private 
+conversation, whether their faculty be natural, or acquired by 
+practice and often venturing.  Natural elocution, although it may 
+seem a paradox, usually springeth from a barrenness of invention 
+and of words, by which men who have only one stock of notions upon 
+every subject, and one set of phrases to express them in, they swim 
+upon the superficies, and offer themselves on every occasion; 
+therefore, men of much learning, and who know the compass of a 
+language, are generally the worst talkers on a sudden, until much 
+practice hath inured and emboldened them; because they are 
+confounded with plenty of matter, variety of notions, and of words, 
+which they cannot readily choose, but are perplexed and entangled 
+by too great a choice, which is no disadvantage in private 
+conversation; where, on the other side, the talent of haranguing 
+is, of all others, most insupportable.
+
+Nothing hath spoiled men more for conversation than the character 
+of being wits; to support which, they never fail of encouraging a 
+number of followers and admirers, who list themselves in their 
+service, wherein they find their accounts on both sides by pleasing 
+their mutual vanity.  This hath given the former such an air of 
+superiority, and made the latter so pragmatical, that neither of 
+them are well to be endured.  I say nothing here of the itch of 
+dispute and contradiction, telling of lies, or of those who are 
+troubled with the disease called the wandering of the thoughts, 
+that they are never present in mind at what passeth in discourse; 
+for whoever labours under any of these possessions is as unfit for 
+conversation as madmen in Bedlam.
+
+I think I have gone over most of the errors in conversation that 
+have fallen under my notice or memory, except some that are merely 
+personal, and others too gross to need exploding; such as lewd or 
+profane talk; but I pretend only to treat the errors of 
+conversation in general, and not the several subjects of discourse, 
+which would be infinite.  Thus we see how human nature is most 
+debased, by the abuse of that faculty, which is held the great 
+distinction between men and brutes; and how little advantage we 
+make of that which might be the greatest, the most lasting, and the 
+most innocent, as well as useful pleasure of life:  in default of 
+which, we are forced to take up with those poor amusements of dress 
+and visiting, or the more pernicious ones of play, drink, and 
+vicious amours, whereby the nobility and gentry of both sexes are 
+entirely corrupted both in body and mind, and have lost all notions 
+of love, honour, friendship, and generosity; which, under the name 
+of fopperies, have been for some time laughed out of doors.
+
+This degeneracy of conversation, with the pernicious consequences 
+thereof upon our humours and dispositions, hath been owing, among 
+other causes, to the custom arisen, for some time past, of 
+excluding women from any share in our society, further than in 
+parties at play, or dancing, or in the pursuit of an amour.  I take 
+the highest period of politeness in England (and it is of the same 
+date in France) to have been the peaceable part of King Charles 
+I.'s reign; and from what we read of those times, as well as from 
+the accounts I have formerly met with from some who lived in that 
+court, the methods then used for raising and cultivating 
+conversation were altogether different from ours; several ladies, 
+whom we find celebrated by the poets of that age, had assemblies at 
+their houses, where persons of the best understanding, and of both 
+sexes, met to pass the evenings in discoursing upon whatever 
+agreeable subjects were occasionally started; and although we are 
+apt to ridicule the sublime Platonic notions they had, or 
+personated in love and friendship, I conceive their refinements 
+were grounded upon reason, and that a little grain of the romance 
+is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human 
+nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that 
+is sordid, vicious, and low.  If there were no other use in the 
+conversation of ladies, it is sufficient that it would lay a 
+restraint upon those odious topics of immodesty and indecencies, 
+into which the rudeness of our northern genius is so apt to fall.  
+And, therefore, it is observable in those sprightly gentlemen about 
+the town, who are so very dexterous at entertaining a vizard mask 
+in the park or the playhouse, that, in the company of ladies of 
+virtue and honour, they are silent and disconcerted, and out of 
+their element.
+
+There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit themselves 
+and entertain their company with relating of facts of no 
+consequence, nor at all out of the road of such common incidents as 
+happen every day; and this I have observed more frequently among 
+the Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit 
+the minutest circumstances of time or place; which kind of 
+discourse, if it were not a little relieved by the uncouth terms 
+and phrases, as well as accent and gesture peculiar to that 
+country, would be hardly tolerable.  It is not a fault in company 
+to talk much; but to continue it long is certainly one; for, if the 
+majority of those who are got together be naturally silent or 
+cautious, the conversation will flag, unless it be often renewed by 
+one among them who can start new subjects, provided he doth not 
+dwell upon them, but leaveth room for answers and replies.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI - THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS.
+
+
+
+WE have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to 
+make us love one another.
+
+Reflect on things past as wars, negotiations, factions, etc.  We 
+enter so little into those interests, that we wonder how men could 
+possibly be so busy and concerned for things so transitory; look on 
+the present times, we find the same humour, yet wonder not at all.
+
+A wise man endeavours, by considering all circumstances, to make 
+conjectures and form conclusions; but the smallest accident 
+intervening (and in the course of affairs it is impossible to 
+foresee all) does often produce such turns and changes, that at 
+last he is just as much in doubt of events as the most ignorant and 
+inexperienced person.
+
+Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and orators, because 
+he that would obtrude his thoughts and reasons upon a multitude, 
+will convince others the more, as he appears convinced himself.
+
+How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice, when 
+they will not so much as take warning?
+
+I forget whether Advice be among the lost things which Aristo says 
+are to be found in the moon; that and Time ought to have been 
+there.
+
+No preacher is listened to but Time, which gives us the same train 
+and turn of thought that older people have tried in vain to put 
+into our heads before.
+
+When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the 
+good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds 
+run wholly on the bad ones.
+
+In a glass-house the workmen often fling in a small quantity of 
+fresh coals, which seems to disturb the fire, but very much 
+enlivens it.  This seems to allude to a gentle stirring of the 
+passions, that the mind may not languish.
+
+Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires 
+miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
+
+All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or 
+languor; it is like spending this year part of the next year's 
+revenue.
+
+The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the 
+follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the 
+former.
+
+Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation to 
+posterity, let him consider in old books what he finds that he is 
+glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.
+
+Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to 
+none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and 
+admire, not Achilles or AEneas.  With historians it is quite the 
+contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and 
+events we read, and we little regard the authors.
+
+When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this 
+sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
+
+Men who possess all the advantages of life, are in a state where 
+there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to 
+please them.
+
+It is unwise to punish cowards with ignominy, for if they had 
+regarded that they would not have been cowards; death is their 
+proper punishment, because they fear it most.
+
+The greatest inventions were produced in the times of ignorance, as 
+the use of the compass, gunpowder, and printing, and by the dullest 
+nation, as the Germans.
+
+One argument to prove that the common relations of ghosts and 
+spectres are generally false, may be drawn from the opinion held 
+that spirits are never seen by more than one person at a time; that 
+is to say, it seldom happens to above one person in a company to be 
+possessed with any high degree of spleen or melancholy.
+
+I am apt to think that, in the day of Judgment, there will be small 
+allowance given to the wise for their want of morals, nor to the 
+ignorant for their want of faith, because both are without excuse.  
+This renders the advantages equal of ignorance and knowledge.  But, 
+some scruples in the wise, and some vices in the ignorant, will 
+perhaps be forgiven upon the strength of temptation to each.
+
+The value of several circumstances in story lessens very much by 
+distance of time, though some minute circumstances are very 
+valuable; and it requires great judgment in a writer to 
+distinguish.
+
+It is grown a word of course for writers to say, "This critical 
+age," as divines say, "This sinful age."
+
+It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying 
+taxes on the next.  FUTURE AGES SHALL TALK OF THIS; THIS SHALL BE 
+FAMOUS TO ALL POSTERITY.  Whereas their time and thoughts will be 
+taken up about present things, as ours are now.
+
+The chameleon, who is said to feed upon nothing but air, hath, of 
+all animals, the nimblest tongue.
+
+When a man is made a spiritual peer he loses his surname; when a 
+temporal, his Christian name.
+
+It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side sets up false 
+lights, and makes a great noise, to make the enemy believe them 
+more numerous and strong than they really are.
+
+Some men, under the notions of weeding out prejudices, eradicate 
+virtue, honesty, and religion.
+
+In all well-instituted commonwealths, care has been taken to limit 
+men's possessions; which is done for many reasons, and among the 
+rest, for one which perhaps is not often considered:  that when 
+bounds are set to men's desires, after they have acquired as much 
+as the laws will permit them, their private interest is at an end, 
+and they have nothing to do but to take care of the public.
+
+There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the 
+censure of the world:  to despise it, to return the like, or to 
+endeavour to live so as to avoid it.  The first of these is usually 
+pretended, the last is almost impossible; the universal practice is 
+for the second.
+
+I never heard a finer piece of satire against lawyers than that of 
+astrologers, when they pretend by rules of art to tell when a suit 
+will end, and whether to the advantage of the plaintiff or 
+defendant; thus making the matter depend entirely upon the 
+influence of the stars, without the least regard to the merits of 
+the cause.
+
+The expression in Apocrypha about Tobit and his dog following him I 
+have often heard ridiculed, yet Homer has the same words of 
+Telemachus more than once; and Virgil says something like it of 
+Evander.  And I take the book of Tobit to be partly poetical.
+
+I have known some men possessed of good qualities, which were very 
+serviceable to others, but useless to themselves; like a sun-dial 
+on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, 
+but not the owner within.
+
+If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, 
+religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth and so go on to 
+old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would 
+appear at last!
+
+What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are 
+told expressly:  that they neither marry, nor are given in 
+marriage.
+
+It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of a 
+spider.
+
+The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our 
+desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
+
+Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the 
+same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life 
+and death.
+
+The reason why so few marriages are happy, is, because young ladies 
+spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
+
+If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will 
+find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
+
+Nothing more unqualifies a man to act with prudence than a 
+misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.
+
+The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the 
+happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
+
+Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing 
+is performed in the same posture with creeping.
+
+Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
+
+Although men are accused for not knowing their own weakness, yet 
+perhaps as few know their own strength.  It is, in men as in soils, 
+where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not 
+of.
+
+Satire is reckoned the easiest of all wit, but I take it to be 
+otherwise in very bad times:  for it is as hard to satirise well a 
+man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of 
+distinguished virtues.  It is easy enough to do either to people of 
+moderate characters.
+
+Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age; so that our 
+judgment grows harder to please, when we have fewer things to offer 
+it:  this goes through the whole commerce of life.  When we are 
+old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less 
+concerned whether we be pleased or no.
+
+No wise man ever wished to be younger.
+
+An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.
+
+The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an 
+inquiry.  It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or 
+bad, may he resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love 
+of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of 
+others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves.  This makes the 
+great distinction between virtue and vice.  Religion is the best 
+motive of all actions, yet religion is allowed to be the highest 
+instance of self-love.
+
+Old men view best at a distance with the eyes of their 
+understanding as well as with those of nature.
+
+Some people take more care to hide their wisdom than their folly.
+
+Anthony Henley's farmer, dying of an asthma, said, "Well, if I can 
+get this breath once OUT, I'll take care it never got IN again."
+
+The humour of exploding many things under the name of trifles, 
+fopperies, and only imaginary goods, is a very false proof either 
+of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions.  
+For instance, with regard to fame, there is in most people a 
+reluctance and unwillingness to be forgotten.  We observe, even 
+among the vulgar, how fond they are to have an inscription over 
+their grave.  It requires but little philosophy to discover and 
+observe that there is no intrinsic value in all this; however, if 
+it be founded in our nature as an incitement to virtue, it ought 
+not to be ridiculed.
+
+Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest 
+part of our devotion.
+
+The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing 
+to a scarcity of matter, and a scarcity of words; for whoever is a 
+master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in 
+speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common 
+speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe 
+them in, and these are always ready at the mouth.  So people come 
+faster out of a church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd 
+is at the door.
+
+Few are qualified to shine in company; but it is in most men's 
+power to be agreeable.  The reason, therefore, why conversation 
+runs so low at present, is not the defect of understanding, but 
+pride, vanity, ill-nature, affectation, singularity, positiveness, 
+or some other vice, the effect of a wrong education.
+
+To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride.  Vain men 
+delight in telling what honours have been done them, what great 
+company they have kept, and the like, by which they plainly confess 
+that these honours were more than their due, and such as their 
+friends would not believe if they had not been told:  whereas a man 
+truly proud thinks the greatest honours below his merit, and 
+consequently scorns to boast.  I therefore deliver it as a maxim, 
+that whoever desires the character of a proud man, ought to conceal 
+his vanity.
+
+Law, in a free country, is, or ought to be, the determination of 
+the majority of those who have property in land.
+
+One argument used to the disadvantage of Providence I take to be a 
+very strong one in its defence.  It is objected that storms and 
+tempests, unfruitful seasons, serpents, spiders, flies, and other 
+noxious or troublesome animals, with many more instances of the 
+like kind, discover an imperfection in nature, because human life 
+would be much easier without them; but the design of Providence may 
+clearly be perceived in this proceeding.  The motions of the sun 
+and moon - in short, the whole system of the universe, as far as 
+philosophers have been able to discover and observe, are in the 
+utmost degree of regularity and perfection; but wherever God hath 
+left to man the power of interposing a remedy by thought or labour, 
+there he hath placed things in a state of imperfection, on purpose 
+to stir up human industry, without which life would stagnate, or, 
+indeed, rather, could not subsist at all:  CURIS ACCUUNT MORTALIA 
+CORDA.
+
+Praise is the daughter of present power.
+
+How inconsistent is man with himself!
+
+I have known several persons of great fame for wisdom in public 
+affairs and counsels governed by foolish servants.
+
+I have known great Ministers, distinguished for wit and learning, 
+who preferred none but dunces.
+
+I have known men of great valour cowards to their wives.
+
+I have known men of the greatest cunning perpetually cheated.
+
+I knew three great Ministers, who could exactly compute and settle 
+the accounts of a kingdom, but were wholly ignorant of their own 
+economy.
+
+The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the 
+course of virtue, but seldom or never reclaims the vicious.
+
+Princes usually make wiser choices than the servants whom they 
+trust for the disposal of places:  I have known a prince, more than 
+once, choose an able Minister, but I never observed that Minister 
+to use his credit in the disposal of an employment to a person whom 
+he thought the fittest for it.  One of the greatest in this age 
+owned and excused the matter from the violence of parties and the 
+unreasonableness of friends.
+
+Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy when great ones 
+are not in the way.  For want of a block he will stumble at a 
+straw.
+
+Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary 
+to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are 
+otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.
+
+Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.
+
+Love of flattery in most men proceeds from the mean opinion they 
+have of themselves; in women from the contrary.
+
+If books and laws continue to increase as they have done for fifty 
+years past, I am in some concern for future ages how any man will 
+be learned, or any man a lawyer.
+
+Kings are commonly said to have LONG HANDS; I wish they had as LONG 
+EARS.
+
+Princes in their infancy, childhood, and youth are said to discover 
+prodigious parts and wit, to speak things that surprise and 
+astonish.  Strange, so many hopeful princes, and so many shameful 
+kings!  If they happen to die young, they would have been prodigies 
+of wisdom and virtue.  If they live, they are often prodigies 
+indeed, but of another sort.
+
+Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but 
+corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good 
+ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics.
+
+A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
+
+Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of diseases.  Both 
+wore originally the same trade, and still continue.
+
+Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason:  their 
+long beards, and pretences to foretell events.
+
+A person was asked at court, what he thought of an ambassador and 
+his train, who were all embroidery and lace, full of bows, cringes, 
+and gestures; he said, it was Solomon's importation, gold and apes.
+
+Most sorts of diversion in men, children, and other animals, is an 
+imitation of fighting.
+
+Augustus meeting an ass with a lucky name foretold himself good 
+fortune.  I meet many asses, but none of them have lucky names.
+
+If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is he keeps his at 
+the same time.
+
+Who can deny that all men are violent lovers of truth when we see 
+them so positive in their errors, which they will maintain out of 
+their zeal to truth, although they contradict themselves every day 
+of their lives?
+
+That was excellently observed, say I, when I read a passage in an 
+author, where his opinion agrees with mine.  When we differ, there 
+I pronounce him to be mistaken.
+
+Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing 
+to live another time.
+
+Laws penned with the utmost care and exactness, and in the vulgar 
+language, are often perverted to wrong meanings; then why should we 
+wonder that the Bible is so?
+
+Although men are accused for not knowing their weakness, yet 
+perhaps as few know their own strength.
+
+A man seeing a wasp creeping into a vial filled with honey, that 
+was hung on a fruit tree, said thus:  "Why, thou sottish animal, 
+art thou mad to go into that vial, where you see many hundred of 
+your kind there dying in it before you?"  "The reproach is just," 
+answered the wasp, "but not from you men, who are so far from 
+taking example by other people's follies, that you will not take 
+warning by your own.  If after falling several times into this 
+vial, and escaping by chance, I should fall in again, I should then 
+but resemble you."
+
+An old miser kept a tame jackdaw, that used to steal pieces of 
+money, and hide them in a hole, which the cat observing, asked why 
+he would hoard up those round shining things that he could make no 
+use of?  "Why," said the jackdaw, "my master has a whole chest 
+full, and makes no more use of them than I."
+
+Men are content to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their 
+folly.
+
+If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in 
+their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know 
+that they ever had any.
+
+After all the maxims and systems of trade and commerce, a stander-
+by would think the affairs of the world were most ridiculously 
+contrived.
+
+There are few countries which, if well cultivated, would not 
+support double the number of their inhabitants, and yet fewer where 
+one-third of the people are not extremely stinted even in the 
+necessaries of life.  I send out twenty barrels of corn, which 
+would maintain a family in bread for a year, and I bring back in 
+return a vessel of wine, which half a dozen good follows would 
+drink in less than a month, at the expense of their health and 
+reason.
+
+A man would have but few spectators, if he offered to show for 
+threepence how he could thrust a red-hot iron into a barrel of 
+gunpowder, and it should not take fire.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg eText The Battle of the Books and 
+Other Short Pieces
+
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