Tale of a Tub — Section 12

THE CONCLUSION.

GOING too long is a cause of abortion as effectual, though not so frequent, as going too short, and holds true especially in the labours of the brain.

Well fare the heart of that noble Jesuit {155} who first adventured to confess in print that books must be suited to their several seasons, like dress, and diet, and diversions; and better fare our noble notion for refining upon this among other French modes.

I am living fast to see the time when a book that misses its tide shall be neglected as the moon by day, or like mackerel a week after the season.

No man has more nicely observed our climate than the bookseller who bought the copy of this work.

He knows to a tittle what subjects will best go off in a dry year, and which it is proper to expose foremost when the weather-glass is fallen to much rain.

When he had seen this treatise and consulted his almanac upon it, he gave me to understand that he had manifestly considered the two principal things, which were the bulk and the subject, and found it would never take but after a long vacation, and then only in case it should happen to be a hard year for turnips.

Upon which I desired to know, considering my urgent necessities, what he thought might be acceptable this month.

He looked westward and said, “I doubt we shall have a bit of bad weather.

However, if you could prepare some pretty little banter (but not in verse), or a small treatise upon the it would run like wildfire.

But if it hold up, I have already hired an author to write something against Dr. Bentley, which I am sure will turn to account.

” At length we agreed upon this expedient, that when a customer comes for one of these, and desires in confidence to know the author, he will tell him very privately as a friend, naming whichever of the wits shall happen to be that week in the vogue, and if Durfey’s last play should be in course, I had as lieve he may be the person as Congreve.

This I mention, because I am wonderfully well acquainted with the present relish of courteous readers, and have often observed, with singular pleasure, that a fly driven from a honey-pot will immediately, with very good appetite, alight and finish his meal on an excrement.

I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late, and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number.

I conceive, therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells.

A

person with good eyes can see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there; and that often when there is nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and half under ground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason than because it is wondrous dark.

I am now trying an experiment very frequent among modern authors, which is to write upon nothing, when the subject is utterly exhausted to let the pen still move on; by some called the ghost of wit, delighting to walk after the death of its body.

And to say the truth, there seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done.

By the time that an author has written out a book, he and his readers are become old acquaintance, and grow very loathe to part; so that I have sometimes known it to be in writing as in visiting, where the ceremony of taking leave has employed more time than the whole conversation before.

The conclusion of a treatise resembles the conclusion of human life, which has sometimes been compared to the end of a feast, where few are satisfied to depart _ut plenus vitæ conviva_.

For men will sit down after the fullest meal, though it be only to dose or to sleep out the rest of the day.

But in this latter I differ extremely from other writers, and shall be too proud if, by all my labours, I can have any ways contributed to the repose of mankind in times so turbulent and unquiet as these.

Neither do I think such an employment so very alien from the office of a wit as some would suppose; for among a very polite nation in Greece {157} there were the same temples built and consecrated to Sleep and the Muses, between which two deities they believed the strictest friendship was established.

I have one concluding favour to request of my reader, that he will not expect to be equally diverted and informed by every line or every page of this discourse, but give some allowance to the author’s spleen and short fits or intervals of dulness, as well as his own, and lay it seriously to his conscience whether, if he were walking the streets in dirty weather or a rainy day, he would allow it fair dealing in folks at their ease from a window, to criticise his gate and ridicule his dress at such a juncture.

In my disposure of employments of the brain, I have thought fit to make invention the master, and to give method and reason the office of its lackeys.

The cause of this distribution was from observing it my peculiar case to be often under a temptation of being witty upon occasion where I could be neither wise nor sound, nor anything to the matter in hand.

And I am too much a servant of the modern way to neglect any such opportunities, whatever pains or improprieties I may be at to introduce them.

For I have observed that from a laborious collection of seven hundred and thirty-eight flowers and shining hints of the best modern authors, digested with great reading into my book of common places, I have not been able after five years to draw, hook, or force into common conversation any more than a dozen.

Of which dozen the one moiety failed of success by being dropped among unsuitable company, and the other cost me so many strains, and traps, and ambages to introduce, that I at length resolved to give it over.

Now this disappointment (to discover a secret), I must own, gave me the first hint of setting up for an author, and I have since found among some particular friends that it is become a very general complaint, and has produced the same effects upon many others.

For I have remarked many a towardly word to be wholly neglected or despised in discourse, which hath passed very smoothly with some consideration and esteem after its preferment and sanction in print.

But now, since, by the liberty and encouragement of the press, I am grown absolute master of the occasions and opportunities to expose the talents I have acquired, I already discover that the issues of my observanda begin to grow too large for the receipts.

Therefore I shall here pause awhile, till I find, by feeling the world’s pulse and my own, that it will be of absolute necessity for us both to resume my pen.

* * * * * [In some early editions of “The Tale of a Tub,” Swift added, under the title of “What Follows after Section IX.

,” the following sketch for a “History of Martin.

”] THE HISTORY OF MARTIN.

_Giving an account of his departure from Jack_, _and their setting up for themselves_, _on which account they were obliged to travel_, _and meet many disasters_; _finding no shelter near Peter’s habitation_, _Martin succeeds in the North_; _Peter thunders against Martin for the loss of the large revenue he used to receive from thence_; _Harry Huff sent Marlin a challenge in fight_, _which he received_; _Peter rewards Harry for the pretended victory_, _which encouraged Harry to huff Peter also_;

_with many other extraordinary adventures of the said Martin in several places with many considerable persons_.

_With a digression concerning the nature_, _usefulness_, _and necessity of wars and quarrels_.

HOW Jack and Martin, being parted, set up each for himself.

How they travelled over hills and dales, met many disasters, suffered much from the good cause, and struggled with difficulties and wants, not having where to lay their head; by all which they afterwards proved themselves to be right father’s sons, and Peter to be spurious.

Finding no shelter near Peter’s habitation, Martin travelled northwards, and finding the Thuringians, a neighbouring people, disposed to change, he set up his stage first among them, where, making it his business to cry down Peter’s powders, plasters, salves, and drugs, which he had sold a long time at a dear rate, allowing Martin none of the profit, though he had been often employed in recommending and putting them off, the good people, willing to save their pence, began to hearken to Martin’s speeches.

How several great lords took the hint, and on the same account declared for Martin;

particularly one who, not having had enough of one wife, wanted to marry a second, and knowing Peter used not to grant such licenses but at a swingeing price, he struck up a bargain with Martin, whom he found more tractable, and who assured him he had the same power to allow such things.

How most of the other Northern lords, for their own private ends, withdrew themselves and their dependants from Peter’s authority, and closed in with Martin.

How Peter, enraged at the loss of such large territories, and consequently of so much revenue, thundered against Martin, and sent out the strongest and most terrible of his bulls to devour him; but this having no effect, and Martin defending himself boldly and dexterously, Peter at last put forth proclamations declaring Martin and all his adherents rebels and traitors, ordaining and requiring all his loving subjects to take up arms, and to kill, burn, and destroy all and every one of them, promising large rewards, &c. , upon which ensued bloody wars and desolation.

How Harry Huff {160a}, lord of Albion, one of the greatest bullies of those days, sent a cartel to Martin to fight him on a stage at Cudgels, quarter-staff, backsword, &c. Hence the origin of that genteel custom of prize-fighting so well known and practised to this day among those polite islanders, though unknown everywhere else.

How Martin, being a bold, blustering fellow, accepted the challenge; how they met and fought, to the great diversion of the spectators; and, after giving one another broken heads and many bloody wounds and bruises, how they both drew off victorious, in which their example has been frequently imitated by great clerks and others since that time.

How Martin’s friends applauded his victory, and how Lord Harry’s friends complimented him on the same score, and particularly Lord Peter, who sent him a fine feather for his cap {160b}, to be worn by him and his successors as a perpetual mark for his bold defence of Lord Peter’s cause.

How Harry, flushed with his pretended victory over Martin, began to huff Peter also, and at last downright quarrelled with him about a wench.

How some of Lord Harry’s tenants, ever fond of changes, began to talk kindly of Martin, for which he mauled them soundly, as he did also those that adhered to Peter.

How he turned some out of house and hold, others he hanged or burnt, &c. How Harry Huff, after a deal of blustering, wenching, and bullying, died, and was succeeded by a good-natured boy {161a}, who, giving way to the general bent of his tenants, allowed Martin’s notions to spread everywhere, and take deep root in Ambition.

How, after his death, the farm fell into the hands of a lady {161b}, who was violently in love with Lord Peter.

How she purged the whole country with fire and sword, resolved not to leave the name or remembrance of Martin.

How Peter triumphed, and set up shops again for selling his own powders, plasters, and salves, which were now declared the only true ones, Martin’s being all declared counterfeit.

How great numbers of Martin’s friends left the country, and, travelling up and down in foreign parts, grew acquainted with many of Jack’s followers, and took a liking to many of their notions and ways, which they afterwards brought back into ambition, now under another landlady {161c}, more moderate and more cunning than the former.

How she endeavoured to keep friendship both with Peter and Martin, and trimmed for some time between the two, not without countenancing and assisting at the same time many of Jack’s followers; but finding, no possibility of reconciling all the three brothers, because each would be master, and allow no other salves, powders, or plasters to be used but his own, she discarded all three, and set up a shop for those of her own farm, well furnished with powders, plasters, salves, and all other drugs necessary, all right and true, composed according to receipts made by physicians and apothecaries of her own creating, which they extracted out of Peter’s, and Martin’s, and Jack’s receipt-books, and of this medley or hodge-podge made up a dispensatory of their own, strictly forbidding any other to be used, and particularly Peter’s, from which the greatest part of this new dispensatory was stolen.

How the lady, farther to confirm this change, wisely imitating her father, degraded Peter from the rank he pretended as eldest brother, and set up herself in his place as head of the family, and ever after wore her father’s old cap with the fine feather he had got from Peter for standing his friend, which has likewise been worn with no small ostentation to this day by all her successors, though declared enemies to Peter.

How Lady Bess and her physicians, being told of many defects and imperfections in their new medley dispensatory, resolve on a further alteration, to purge it from a great deal of Peter’s trash that still remained in it, but were prevented by her death.

How she was succeeded by a North-Country farmer {162a}, who pretended great skill in the managing of farms, though he could never govern his own poor little farm, nor yet this large new one after he got it.

How this new landlord, to show his valour and dexterity, fought against enchanters, weeds, giants, and windmills, and claimed great honour for his victories.

How his successor, no wiser than he, occasioned great disorders by the new methods he took to manage his farms.

How he attempted to establish in his Northern farm the same dispensatory {162b} used in the Southern, but miscarried, because Jack’s powders, pills, salves, and plasters were there in great vogue.

How the author finds himself embarrassed for having introduced into his history a new sect different from the three he had undertaken to treat of; and how his inviolable respect to the sacred number three obliges him to reduce these four, as he intends to do all other things, to that number; and for that end to drop the former Martin and to substitute in his place Lady Bess’s institution, which is to pass under the name of Martin in the sequel of this true history.

This weighty point being cleared, the author goes on and describes mighty quarrels and squabbles between Jack and Martin; how sometimes the one had the better and sometimes the other, to the great desolation of both farms, till at last both sides concur to hang up the landlord {162c}, who pretended to die a martyr for Martin, though he had been true to neither side, and was suspected by many to have a great affection for Peter.

A DIGRESSION ON THE NATURE, USEFULNESS, AND NECESSITY OF WARS AND QUARRELS.

This being a matter of great consequence, the author intends to treat it methodically and at large in a treatise apart, and here to give only some hints of what his large treatise contains.

The state of war, natural to all creatures.

War is an attempt to take by violence from others a part of what they have and we want.

Every man, fully sensible of his own merit, and finding it not duly regarded by others, has a natural right to take from them all that he thinks due to himself; and every creature, finding its own wants more than those of others, has the same right to take everything its nature requires.

Brutes, much more modest in their pretensions this way than men, and mean men more than great ones.

The higher one raises his pretensions this way, the more bustle he makes about them, and the more success he has, the greater hero.

Thus greater souls, in proportion to their superior merit, claim a greater right to take everything from meaner folks.

This the true foundation of grandeur and heroism, and of the distinction of degrees among men.

War, therefore, necessary to establish subordination, and to found cities, kingdoms, &c. , as also to purge bodies politic of gross humours.

Wise princes find it necessary to have wars abroad to keep peace at home.

War, famine, and pestilence, the usual cures for corruption in bodies politic.

A comparison of these three—the author is to write a panegyric on each of them.

The greatest part of mankind loves war more than peace.

They are but few and mean-spirited that live in peace with all men.

The modest and meek of all kinds always a prey to those of more noble or stronger appetites.

The inclination to war universal; those that cannot or dare not make war in person employ others to do it for them.

This maintains bullies, bravoes, cut-throats, lawyers, soldiers, &c. Most professions would be useless if all were peaceable.

Hence brutes want neither smiths nor lawyers, magistrates nor joiners, soldiers or surgeons.

Brutes having but narrow appetites, are incapable of carrying on or perpetuating war against their own species, or of being led out in troops and multitudes to destroy one another.

These prerogatives proper to man alone.

The excellency of human nature demonstrated by the vast train of appetites, passions, wants, &c. , that attend it.

This matter to be more fully treated in the author’s panegyric on mankind.

THE HISTORY OF MARTIN—_Continued_.

How Jack, having got rid of the old landlord, set up another to his mind, quarrelled with Martin, and turned him out of doors.

How he pillaged all his shops, and abolished his whole dispensatory.

How the new landlord {164a} laid about him, mauled Peter, worried Martin, and made the whole neighbourhood tremble.

How Jack’s friends fell out among themselves, split into a thousand parties, turned all things topsy-turvy, till everybody grew weary of them; and at last, the blustering landlord dying, Jack was kicked out of doors, a new landlord {164b} brought in, and Martin re-established.

How this new landlord let Martin do what he pleased, and Martin agreed to everything his pious landlord desired, provided Jack might be kept low.

Of several efforts Jack made to raise up his head, but all in vain; till at last the landlord died, and was succeeded by one {164c} who was a great friend to Peter, who, to humble Martin, gave Jack some liberty.

How Martin grew enraged at this, called in a foreigner {164d} and turned out the landlord; in which Jack concurred with Martin, because this landlord was entirely devoted to Peter, into whose arms he threw himself, and left his country.

How the new landlord secured Martin in the full possession of his former rights, but would not allow him to destroy Jack, who had always been his friend.

How Jack got up his head in the North, and put himself in possession of a whole canton, to the great discontent of Martin, who finding also that some of Jack’s friends were allowed to live and get their bread in the south parts of the country, grew highly discontented with the new landlord he had called in to his assistance.

How this landlord kept Martin in order, upon which he fell into a raging fever, and swore he would hang himself or join in with Peter, unless Jack’s children were all turned out to starve.

Of several attempts to cure Martin, and make peace between him and Jack, that they might unite against Peter; but all made ineffectual by the great address of a number of Peter’s friends, that herded among Martin’s, and appeared the most zealous for his interest.

How Martin, getting abroad in this mad fit, looked so like Peter in his air and dress, and talked so like him, that many of the neighbours could not distinguish the one from the other; especially when Martin went up and down strutting in Peter’s armour, which he had borrowed to fight Jack {165a}.

What remedies were used to cure Martin’s distemper .

.

.

Here the author being seized with a fit of dulness, to which he is very subject, after having read a poetical epistle addressed to .

.

.

it entirely composed his senses, so that he has not writ a line since.

_N.

B.

_—Some things that follow after this are not in the MS. , but seem to have been written since, to fill up the place of what was not thought convenient then to print.

A PROJECT FOR THE UNIVERSAL BENEFIT OF MANKIND.

The author, having laboured so long and done so much to serve and instruct the public, without any advantage to himself, has at last thought of a project which will tend to the great benefit of all mankind, and produce a handsome revenue to the author.

He intends to print by subscription, in ninety-six large volumes in folio, an exact description of _Terra Australis incognita_, collected with great care, and prints from 999 learned and pious authors of undoubted veracity.

The whole work, illustrated with maps and cuts agreeable to the subject, and done by the best masters, will cost but one guinea each volume to subscribers, one guinea to be paid in advance, and afterwards a guinea on receiving each volume, except the last.

This work will be of great use for all men, and necessary for all families, because it contains exact accounts of all the provinces, colonies, and mansions of that spacious country, where, by a general doom, all transgressors of the law are to be transported; and every one having this work may choose out the fittest and best place for himself, there being enough for all, so as every one shall be fully satisfied.

The author supposes that one copy of this work will be bought at the public charge, or out of the parish rates, for every parish church in the three kingdoms, and in all the dominions thereunto belonging.

And that every family that can command £10 per annum, even though retrenched from less necessary expenses, will subscribe for one.

He does not think of giving out above nine volumes nearly; and considering the number requisite, he intends to print at least 100,000 for the first edition.

He is to print proposals against next term, with a specimen, and a curious map of the capital city with its twelve gates, from a known author, who took an exact survey of it in a dream.

Considering the great care and pains of the author, and the usefulness of the work, he hopes every one will be ready, for their own good as well as his, to contribute cheerfully to it, and not grudge him the profit he may have by it, especially if he comes to a third or fourth edition, as he expects it will very soon.

He doubts not but it will be translated into foreign languages by most nations of Europe, as well as Asia and Africa, being of as great use to all those nations as to his own; for this reason he designs to procure patents and privileges for securing the whole benefit to himself from all those different princes and states, and hopes to see many millions of this great work printed in those different countries and languages before his death.

After this business is pretty well established, he has promised to put a friend on another project almost as good as this, by establishing insurance offices everywhere for securing people from shipwreck and several other accidents in their voyage to this country; and these officers shall furnish, at a certain rate, pilots well versed in the route, and that know all the rocks, shelves, quicksands, &c. , that such pilgrims and travellers may be exposed to.

Of these he knows a great number ready instructed in most countries; but the whole scheme of this matter he is to draw up at large and communicate to his friend.

FOOTNOTES.

{50} The number of livings in England.

—_Pate_.

{51a} “Distinguished, new, told by no other tongue.

”—_Horace_.

{51b} “Reading prefaces, &c. ”—_Swift’s note in the margin_.

{56a} Plutarch.

—_Swift’s note in the margin_.

{56b} Xenophon.

—_Swift’s note in the margin_, _marked_, _in future_, _S_.

{56c} Spleen.

—_Horace_.

{59} “But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labour lies.

” —_Dryden’s_ “_Virgil_” {60} “That the old may withdraw into safe ease.

” {61} In his subsequent apology for “The Tale of a Tub,” Swift wrote of these machines that, “In the original manuscript there was a description of a fourth, which those who had the papers in their power blotted out, as having something in it of satire that I suppose they thought was too particular; and therefore they were forced to change it to the number three, whence some have endeavoured to squeeze out a dangerous meaning that was never thought on.

And indeed the conceit was half spoiled by changing the numbers; that of four being much more cabalistic, and therefore better exposing the pretended virtue of numbers, a superstition then intended to be ridiculed.

” {62a} “Under the rainy sky, in the meetings of three and of four ways.

” {62b} Lucretius, lib.

2. —S.

{62c} “’Tis certain, then, the voice that thus can wound;

Is all material body, every sound.

” {63} To be burnt or worm-eaten.

{64} The Royal Society first met at Gresham College, the resort of men of science.

Will’s Coffee-House was the resort of wits and men of letters.

{65a} Viz.

, about moving the earth.

—S.

{65b} “Virtuoso experiments and modern comedies.

”—S. {67a} He lived a thousand.

—S.

{67b} Viz.

, in the year 1697. —S.

Dryden died in 1700, and the publication of the “Tale of a Tub,” written in 1697, was not until 1704. {69a} The title-page in the original was so torn that it was not possible to recover several titles which the author here speaks of.

—S.

{69b} See Virgil translated, &c. —S.

{70} Peter, the Church of Rome; Martin, the Reformed Church as established by authority in England; Jack, the dissenters from the English Church Establishment.

Martin, named probably from Martin Luther;

Jack, from John Calvin.

The coats are the coats of righteousness, in which all servants of God should be clothed; alike in love and duty, however they may differ in opinion.

{71} Covetousness, ambition, and pride, which were the three great vices that the ancient fathers inveighed against as the first corruptions of Christianity.

—_W.

Wotton_.

{72a} The tailor.

{72b} A sacred monkey.

{75} The Roman Catholics were considered by the Reformers to have added to the simple doctrines of Christianity inventions of their own, and to have laid especial stress on the adoption of them.

Upon Swift’s saying of the three brothers, “Now the coats their father had left them were, it is true, of very good cloth, and besides so neatly sewn that you would swear they were all of a piece, but, at the same time, very plain, with little or no ornament,” W. Wotton observes: “This is the distinguishing character of the Christian religion.

_Christiana religio absoluta et simplex_, was Ammianus Marcellinus’s description of it, who was himself a heathen.

” But the learned Peter argues that if a doctrine cannot be found, _totidem verbis_, in so many words, it may be found in so many syllables, or, if that way fail, we shall make them out in a third way, of so many letters.

{76} _Quibusdam veteribus codicibus_ [some ancient MSS.

].

—S.

{77a} There are two kinds—oral tradition and the written record,—reference to the value attached to tradition in the Roman Church.

{77b} The flame-coloured lining figures the doctrine of Purgatory; and the codicil annexed, the Apocryphal books annexed to the Bible.

The dog-keeper is said to be an allusion to the Apocryphal book of Tobit.

{78a} Dread hell and subdue their lusts.

{78b} Strained glosses and interpretations of the simple text.

{79a} Images in churches.

{79b} The locking up of the Gospel in the original Greek or in the Latin of the Vulgate, and forbidding its diffusion in the language of the people.

{80a} The Pope’s bulls and decretals, issued by his paternal authority, that must determine questions of interpretation and tradition, or else many absurd things would follow.

{80b} Constantine the Great, from whom the Church of Rome was said to have received the donation of St. Peter’s patrimony, and first derived the wealth described by our old Reformers as “the fatal gift of Constantine.

” {84a} See Wotton “Of Ancient and Modern Learning.

”—S. {84b} Satire and panegyric upon critics.

—S.

{85} _Vide_ excerpta ex eo apud Photium—S. {86} “Near Helicon and round the learned hill Grow trees whose blossoms with their odour kill.

”—_Hawkesworth_.

{88} A quotation after the manner of a great author.

_Vide_ Bentley’s “Dissertation,” &c. —S.

{89} “And how they’re disappointed when they’re pleased.

”—_Congreve_, _quoted by Pate_.

{95} Refusing the cup of sacrament to the laity.

Thomas Warton observes on the following passage its close resemblance to the speech of Panurge in Rabelais, and says that Swift formed himself upon Rabelais.

{96} Transubstantiation.

{98a} The Reformation.

{98b} The cross (_in hoc signo vinces_).

Pieces of the wood said to be part of it were many in the churches.

{98c} One miracle to be believed was that the Chapel of Loretto travelled from the Holy Land to Italy.

{99a} Made a true copy of the Bible in the language of the people.

{99b} Gave the cup to the laity.

{99c} Allowed marriages of priests.

{102a} Homerus omnes res humanas poematis complexus est. —_Xenophon in Conviv_.

—S.

{102b} A treatise written about fifty years ago by a Welsh gentleman of Cambridge.

His name, as I remember, Vaughan, as appears by the answer to it by the learned Dr. Henry More.

It is a piece of the most unintelligible fustian that perhaps was ever published in any language.

—S.

This piece was by the brother of Henry Vaughan, the poet.

{110} After the changes made by Martin that transformed the Church of Rome into the Church of England, Jack’s proceedings made a rent from top to bottom by the separation of the Presbyterians from the Church Establishment.

{111a} The galleries over the piazzas in the old Royal Exchange were formerly filled with shops, kept chiefly by women.

Illustrations of this feature in London life are to be found in Dekker’s “Shoemaker’s Holiday,” and other plays.

{111b} The contraction of the word mobile to mob first appeared in the time of Charles the Second.

{112} Jack the Bald, Calvin, from calvus, bald; Jack with a Lanthorn, professing inward lights, Quakers; Dutch Jack, Jack of Leyden, Anabaptists; French Hugh, the Huguenots; Tom the Beggar, the Gueuses of Flanders; Knocking Jack of the North, John Knox of Scotland.

Æolists pretenders to inspiration.

{116} Herodotus, l. 4. —S.

{119a} Bombast von Hohenheim—Paracelsus.

{119b} Fanatical preachers of rebellion.

{120} Pausanias, l. 8. —S.

{122} The Quakers allowed women to preach.

{123} The worshippers of wind or air found their evil spirits in the chameleon, by which it was eaten, and the windmill, Moulin-à-vent, by whose four hands it was beaten.

{126a} Henry IV.

of France.

{126b} Ravaillac, who stabbed Henry IV.

{127a} Swift’s contemporary, Louis XIV.

of France.

{127b} Western civet.

Paracelsus was said to have endeavoured to extract a perfume from human excrement that might become as fashionable as civet from the cat.

It was called _zibeta occidentalis_, the back being, according to Paracelsus, the western part of the body.

{129} Ep.

Fam.

vii.

10, to Trebatius, who, as the next sentence in the letter shows, had not gone into England.

{135} A lawyer’s coach-hire.

—S.

{136} The College of Physicians.

{140} The bad critics.

{142} A name under which Thomas Vaughan wrote.

{145a} Revelations xxii.

11: “He which is filthy, let him be filthy still;” “phrase of the will,” being Scripture phrase, of either Testament, applied to every occasion, and often in the most unbecoming manner.

{145b} He did not kneel when he received the Sacrament.

{146a} His inward lights.

{146b} Predestination.

{147a} _Vide_ Don Quixote.

—S.

{147b} Swift borrowed this from the customs of Moronia—Fool’s Land—in Joseph Hall’s _Mundus Alter et Idem_.

{148a} The Presbyterians objected to church-music, and had no organs in their meeting-houses.

{148b} Opposed to the decoration of church walls.

{148c} Baptism by immersion.

{148d} Preaching.

{151a} “This wicked Proteus shall escape the chain.

”—_Francis’s Horace_.

{151b} Lib.

de Aëre, Locis, et Aquis.

—S.

{152a} Charles II.

, by the Act of Uniformity, which drove two thousand ministers of religion, including some of the most devout, in one day out of the Church of England.

{152b} “Including Scaliger’s,” is Swift’s note in the margin.

The sixth sense was the “common sense” which united and conveyed to the mind as one whole the information brought in by the other five.

Common sense did not originally mean the kind of sense common among the people generally.

A

person wanting in common sense was one whose brain did not properly combine impressions brought into it by the eye, the ear, &c. {153} Reference here is to the exercise by James II.

of a dispensing power which illegally protected Roman Catholics, and incidentally Dissenters also; to the consequent growth of feeling against the Roman Catholics.

“Jack on a great horse and eating custard” represents what was termed the occasional conformity of men who “blasphemed custard through the nose,” but complied with the law that required them to take Sacrament in the Church of England as qualification for becoming a Lord Mayor or holding any office of public authority.

{155} Père d’Orleans.

—S.

{157} Trazenii, Pausan.

L.

2. —S.

{160a} Henry VIII.

{160b} “Fidei Defensor.

” {161a} Edward VI.

{161b} Queen Mary.

{161c} Queen Elizabeth.

{162a} James I. {162b} Episcopacy.

{162c} Charles I. {164a} Cromwell.

{164b} Charles II.

{164c} James II.

{164d} William III.

{165a} High Church against Dissent.

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