So that if ever any design was unfortunately executed, it must be that of this answerer, who, when he would have it observed that the author’s wit is not his own, is able to produce but three instances, two of them mere trifles, and all three manifestly false. If this be the way these gentlemen deal with the world in those criticisms, where we have not leisure to defeat them, their readers had need be cautious how they rely upon their credit; and whether this proceeding can be reconciled to humanity or truth, let those who think it worth their while determine.
It is agreed, this answerer would have succeeded much better, if he had stuck wholly to his business as a commentator upon the Tale of a Tub, wherein it cannot be denied that he hath been of some service to the public, and has given very fair conjectures towards clearing up some difficult passages; but it is the frequent error of those men (otherwise very commendable for their labours), to make excursions beyond their talent and their office, by pretending to point out the beauties and the faults; which is no part of their trade, which they always fail in, which the world never expected from them, nor gave them any thanks for endeavouring at. The part of Minellius, would have fallen in with his genius, and might have been serviceable to many readers, who cannot enter into the abstruser parts of that discourse; but optat ephippia bos piger. The dull, unwieldy, ill-shaped ox would needs put on the furniture of a horse, not considering he was born to labour, to plough the ground for the sake of superior beings, and that he has neither the shape, mettle, nor speed, of that nobler animal he would affect to personate.
It is another pattern of this answerer’s fair dealing to give us hints that the author is dead, and yet to lay the suspicion upon somebody, I know not who, in the country; to which can be only returned, that he is absolutely mistaken in all his conjectures; and surely conjectures are, at best, too light a pretence to allow a man to assign a name in public. He condemns a book, and consequently the author, of whom he is utterly ignorant; yet at the same time fixes in print what he thinks a disadvantageous character upon those who never deserved it. A man who receives a buffet in the dark, may be allowed to be vexed; but it is an odd kind of revenge, to go to cuffs in broad day with the first he meets with, and lay the last night’s injury at his door. And thus much for this discreet, candid, pious, and ingenious answerer.
How the author came to be without his papers, is a story not proper to be told, and of very little use, being a private fact of which the reader would believe as little or as much as he thought good. He had, however, a blotted copy by him, which he intended to have writ over, with many alterations, and this the publishers were well aware of, having put it into the bookseller’s preface, that they apprehended a surreptitious copy, which was to be altered, &c. This, though not regarded by readers, was a real truth, only the surreptitious copy was rather that which was printed; and they made all haste they could, which indeed was needless; the author not being at all prepared; but he has been told the bookseller was in much pain, having given a good sum of money for the copy. In the author’s original copy there were not so many chasms as appear in the book; and why some of them were left, he knows not; had the publication been trusted to him, he should have made several corrections of passages, against which nothing hath been ever objected. He should likewise have altered a few of those that seem with any reason to be excepted against; but to deal freely, the greatest number he should have left untouched as never suspecting it possible any wrong interpretations could be made of them.
The author observes, at the end of the book there is a discourse called A Fragment, which he more wondered to see in print than all the rest. Having been a most imperfect sketch, with the addition of a few loose hints, which he once lent a gentleman, who had designed a discourse of somewhat the same subject; he never thought of it afterwards; and it was a sufficient surprise to see it pieced up together, wholly out of the method and scheme he had intended; for it was the ground-work of a much larger discourse, and he was sorry to observe the materials so foolishly employed.
There is one further objection made by those who have answered this book, as well as by some others, that Peter is frequently made to repeat oaths and curses. Every reader observes it was necessary to know that Peter did swear and curse. The oaths are not printed out, but only supposed, and the idea of an oath is not immoral, like the idea of a profane or immodest speech. A man may laugh at the Popish folly of cursing people to hell, and imagine them swearing, without any crime; but lewd words or dangerous opinions though printed by halves, fill the reader’s mind with ill ideas; and of these the author cannot be accused. For the judicious reader will find that the severest strokes of satire in his book are levelled against the modern custom of employing wit upon those topics; of which there is a remarkable instance in the three hundred and nineteenth page, as well as in several others, though perhaps once or twice expressed in too free a manner, excusable only for the reasons already alleged. Some overtures have been made by a third hand to the bookseller, for the author’s altering those passages which he thought might require it. But it seems the bookseller will not hear of any such thing, being apprehensive it might spoil the sale of the book. The author cannot conclude this apology without making this one reflection; that, as wit is the noblest and most useful gift of human nature, so humor is the most agreeable; and where these two enter far into the composition of any work, they will render it always acceptable to the world. Now, the great part of those who have no share or taste of either, but by their pride, pedantry, and ill manners, lay themselves bare to the lashes of both, think the blow is weak, because they are insensible; and, where wit hath any mixture of raillery, ’tis but calling it banter, and the work is done. This polite word of theirs was first borrowed from the bullies in White-Friars, then fell among the footmen, and at last retired to the pedants; by whom it is applied as properly to the productions of wit, as if I should apply it to Sir Isaac Newton’s mathematics. But, if this bantering, as they call it, be so despisable a thing, whence comes it to pass the have such a perpetual itch towards it themselves? To instance only in the answerer already mentioned; it is grievous to see him, in some of his writings, at every turn going out of his way to be waggish, to tell us of a cow that pricked up her tail; and in his answer to this discourse, he says, it is all a farce and a ladle; with other passages equally shining. One may say of these impedimenta literarum, that wit owes them a shame; and they cannot take wiser counsel than to keep out of harm’s way, or at least not to come till they are sure they are called.
To conclude: with those allowances above required, this book should be read; after which, the author conceives, few things will remain which may not be excused in a young writer. He wrote only to the men of wit and taste, and he thinks he is not mistaken in his accounts, when he says they have been all of his side, enough to give him the vanity of telling his name, wherein the world with all its wise conjectures, is yet very much in the dark; which circumstance is no disagreeable amusement either to the public or himself.
The author is informed, that the bookseller has prevailed on several gentlemen to write some explanatory notes; for the goodness of which he is not to answer, having never seen any of them, nor intends it, till they appear in print; when it is not unlikely he may have the pleasure to find twenty meanings which never entered into his imagination.
June 3, 1709.
POSTSCRIPT
Since the writing of this which was about a year ago, a prostitute bookseller hath published a foolish paper, under the name of Notes on the Tale of a Tub, with some account of the author: and, with an insolence which, I suppose, is punishable by law, hath presumed to assign certain names. It will be enough for the author to assure the world, that the writer of that paper is utterly wrong in all his conjectures upon that affair. The author farther asserts that the whole work is entirely of one hand, which every reader of judgment will easily discover. The gentleman who gave the copy to the bookseller, being a friend of the author, and using no other liberties besides that of expunging certain passages where now the chasms appear under the name of desiderata. But if any person will prove his claim to three lines in the whole book, let him step forth, and tell his name and titles; upon which, the bookseller shall have orders to prefix them to the next edition, and the claimant shall from henceforward be acknowledged the undisputed author.