A Tale of a Tub | Page 7

it may not stray the breadth of a hair, upon peril of being lost. The
moderns have artfully fixed this Mercury, and reduced it to the circumstances of time,
place, and person. Such a jest there is that will not pass out of Covent Garden, and such a

one that is nowhere intelligible but at Hyde Park Corner. Now, though it sometimes
tenderly affects me to consider that all the towardly passages I shall deliver in the
following treatise will grow quite out of date and relish with the first shifting of the
present scene, yet I must need subscribe to the justice of this proceeding, because I
cannot imagine why we should be at expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the
former have made no sort of provision for ours; wherein I speak the sentiment of the very
newest, and consequently the most orthodox refiners, as well as my own. However, being
extremely solicitous that every accomplished person who has got into the taste of wit
calculated for this present month of August 1697 should descend to the very bottom of all
the sublime throughout this treatise, I hold it fit to lay down this general maxim.
Whatever reader desires to have a thorough comprehension of an author's thoughts,
cannot take a better method than by putting himself into the circumstances and posture of
life that the writer was in upon every important passage as it flowed from his pen, for this
will introduce a parity and strict correspondence of ideas between the reader and the
author. Now, to assist the diligent reader in so delicate an affair--as far as brevity will
permit--I have recollected that the shrewdest pieces of this treatise were conceived in bed
in a garret. At other times (for a reason best known to myself) I thought fit to sharpen my
invention with hunger, and in general the whole work was begun, continued, and ended
under a long course of physic and a great want of money. Now, I do affirm it will be
absolutely impossible for the candid peruser to go along with me in a great many bright
passages, unless upon the several difficulties emergent he will please to capacitate and
prepare himself by these directions. And this I lay down as my principal postulatum.
Because I have professed to be a most devoted servant of all modern forms, I apprehend
some curious wit may object against me for proceeding thus far in a preface without
declaiming, according to custom, against the multitude of writers whereof the whole
multitude of writers most reasonably complain. I am just come from perusing some
hundreds of prefaces, wherein the authors do at the very beginning address the gentle
reader concerning this enormous grievance. Of these I have preserved a few examples,
and shall set them down as near as my memory has been able to retain them.
One begins thus: "For a man to set up for a writer when the press swarms with," &c.
Another: "The tax upon paper does not lessen the number of scribblers who daily pester,"
&c.
Another: "When every little would-be wit takes pen in hand, 'tis in vain to enter the lists,"
&c.
Another: "To observe what trash the press swarms with," &c.
Another: "Sir, it is merely in obedience to your commands that I venture into the public,
for who upon a less consideration would be of a party with such a rabble of scribblers,"
&c.
Now, I have two words in my own defence against this objection. First, I am far from
granting the number of writers a nuisance to our nation, having strenuously maintained

the contrary in several parts of the following discourse; secondly, I do not well
understand the justice of this proceeding, because I observe many of these polite prefaces
to be not only from the same hand, but from those who are most voluminous in their
several productions; upon which I shall tell the reader a short tale.
A mountebank in Leicester Fields had drawn a huge assembly about him. Among the rest,
a fat unwieldy fellow, half stifled in the press, would be every fit crying out, "Lord! what
a filthy crowd is here. Pray, good people, give way a little. Bless need what a devil has
raked this rabble together. Z----ds, what squeezing is this? Honest friend, remove your
elbow." At last a weaver that stood next him could hold no longer. "A plague confound
you," said he, "for an overgrown sloven; and who in the devil's name, I wonder, helps to
make up the crowd half so much as yourself? Don't you consider that you take up more
room with that carcass than any five here? Is not the place as free for us as for you? Bring
your own guts