A Tale of a Tub | Page 9

are usually imputed to the want of invention among those who
are dealers in that kind; but I think with a great deal of injustice, the solution being easy
and natural, for the materials of panegyric, being very few in number, have been long
since exhausted; for as health is but one thing, and has been always the same, whereas
diseases are by thousands, besides new and daily additions, so all the virtues that have
been ever in mankind are to be counted upon a few fingers, but his follies and vices are
innumerable, and time adds hourly to the heap. Now the utmost a poor poet can do is to
get by heart a list of the cardinal virtues and deal them with his utmost liberality to his
hero or his patron. He may ring the changes as far as it will go, and vary his phrase till he
has talked round, but the reader quickly finds it is all pork, {56a} with a little variety of
sauce, for there is no inventing terms of art beyond our ideas, and when ideas are
exhausted, terms of art must be so too.
But though the matter for panegyric were as fruitful as the topics of satire, yet would it
not be hard to find out a sufficient reason why the latter will be always better received
than the first; for this being bestowed only upon one or a few persons at a time, is sure to
raise envy, and consequently ill words, from the rest who have no share in the blessing.
But satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any, since every
individual person makes bold to understand it of others, and very wisely removes his
particular part of the burden upon the shoulders of the World, which are broad enough
and able to bear it. To this purpose I have sometimes reflected upon the difference
between Athens and England with respect to the point before us. In the Attic {56b}
commonwealth it was the privilege and birthright of every citizen and poet to rail aloud
and in public, or to expose upon the stage by name any person they pleased, though of the

greatest figure, whether a Creon, an Hyperbolus, an Alcibiades, or a Demosthenes. But,
on the other side, the least reflecting word let fall against the people in general was
immediately caught up and revenged upon the authors, however considerable for their
quality or their merits; whereas in England it is just the reverse of all this. Here you may
securely display your utmost rhetoric against mankind in the face of the world; tell them
that all are gone astray; that there is none that doeth good, no, not one; that we live in the
very dregs of time; that knavery and atheism are epidemic as the pox; that honesty is fled
with Astraea; with any other common-places equally new and eloquent, which are
furnished by the splendida bills {56c}; and when you have done, the whole audience, far
from being offended, shall return you thanks as a deliverer of precious and useful truths.
Nay, further, it is but to venture your lungs, and you may preach in Covent Garden
against foppery and fornication, and something else; against pride, and dissimulation, and
bribery at Whitehall. You may expose rapine and injustice in the Inns-of-Court chapel,
and in a City pulpit be as fierce as you please against avarice, hypocrisy, and extortion. It
is but a ball bandied to and fro, and every man carries a racket about him to strike it from
himself among the rest of the company. But, on the other side, whoever should mistake
the nature of things so far as to drop but a single hint in public how such a one starved
half the fleet, and half poisoned the rest; how such a one, from a true principle of love
and honour, pays no debts but for wenches and play; how such a one runs out of his
estate; how Paris, bribed by Juno and Venus, loath to offend either party, slept out the
whole cause on the bench; or how such an orator makes long speeches in the Senate, with
much thought, little sense, and to no purpose;--whoever, I say, should venture to be thus
particular, must expect to be imprisoned for scandalum magnatum, to have challenges
sent him, to be sued for defamation, and to be brought before the bar of the House.
But I forget that I am expatiating on a subject wherein I have no concern, having neither a
talent nor an inclination for satire. On the other side, I am so entirely satisfied with the
whole present procedure of human things, that I have been for some years preparing
material towards "A