John Bull | Page 5

ages,
under pretence of raising money for the war,* have padlocked all those
very pens that were to celebrate the actions of their heroes, by silencing
at once the whole university of Grub Street. I am persuaded that
nothing but the prospect of an approaching peace could have
encouraged them to make so bold a step. But suffer me, in the name of
the rest of the matriculates of that famous university, to ask them some
plain questions: Do they think that peace will bring along with it the
golden age? Will there be never a dying speech of a traitor? Are
Cethegus and Catiline turned so tame, that there will be no opportunity
to cry about the streets, "A Dangerous Plot?" Will peace bring such
plenty that no gentleman will have occasion to go upon the highway, or
break into a house? I am sorry that the world should be so much
imposed upon by the dreams of a false prophet, as to imagine the
Millennium is at hand. O Grub Street! thou fruitful nursery of towering
geniuses! How do I lament thy downfall? Thy ruin could never be
meditated by any who meant well to English liberty. No modern
lyceum will ever equal thy glory: whether in soft pastorals thou didst
sing the flames of pampered apprentices and coy cook maids; or
mournful ditties of departing lovers; or if to Maeonian strains thou
raisedst thy voice, to record the stratagems, the arduous exploits, and
the nocturnal scalade of needy heroes, the terror of your peaceful
citizens, describing the powerful Betty or the artful Picklock, or the
secret caverns and grottoes of Vulcan sweating at his forge, and
stamping the queen's image on viler metals which he retails for beef
and pots of ale; or if thou wert content in simple narrative, to relate the
cruel acts of implacable revenge, or the complaint of ravished virgins
blushing to tell their adventures before the listening crowd of city
damsels, whilst in thy faithful history thou intermingledst the gravest
counsels and the purest morals. Nor less acute and piercing wert thou in
thy search and pompous descriptions of the works of nature; whether in
proper and emphatic terms thou didst paint the blazing comet's fiery tail,

the stupendous force of dreadful thunder and earthquakes, and the
unrelenting inundations. Sometimes, with Machiavelian sagacity, thou
unravelledst intrigues of state, and the traitorous conspiracies of rebels,
giving wise counsel to monarchs. How didst thou move our terror and
our pity with thy passionate scenes between Jack Catch and the heroes
of the Old Bailey? How didst thou describe their intrepid march up
Holborn Hill? Nor didst thou shine less in thy theological capacity,
when thou gavest ghostly counsels to dying felons, and didst record the
guilty pangs of Sabbath breakers. How will the noble arts of John
Overton's** painting and sculpture now languish? where rich invention,
proper expression, correct design, divine attitudes, and artful contrast,
heightened with the beauties of Clar. Obscur., embellished thy
celebrated pieces, to the delight and astonishment of the judicious
multitude! Adieu, persuasive eloquence! the quaint metaphor, the
poignant irony, the proper epithet, and the lively simile, are fled for
ever! Instead of these, we shall have, I know not what! The illiterate
will tell the rest with pleasure.
* Act restraining the liberty of the press, etc. ** The engraver of the
cuts before the Grub Street papers.
I hope the reader will excuse this digression, due by way of condolence
to my worthy brethren of Grub Street, for the approaching barbarity
that is likely to overspread all its regions by this oppressive and
exorbitant tax. It has been my good fortune to receive my education
there; and so long as I preserved some figure and rank amongst the
learned of that society, I scorned to take my degree either at Utrecht or
Leyden, though I was offered it gratis by the professors in those
universities.
And now that posterity may not be ignorant in what age so excellent a
history was written (which would otherwise, no doubt, be the subject of
its inquiries), I think it proper to inform the learned of future times, that
it was compiled when Louis XIV. was King of France, and Philip his
grandson of Spain; when England and Holland, in conjunction with the
Emperor and the Allies, entered into a war against these two princes,
which lasted ten years, under the management of the Duke of
Marlborough, and was put to a conclusion by the Treaty of Utrecht,
under the ministry of the Earl of Oxford, in the year 1713.
Many at that time did imagine the history of John Bull, and the

personages mentioned in it, to be allegorical, which the author would
never own. Notwithstanding, to indulge the reader's fancy and curiosity,