ter 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 burthen 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 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 reilecting 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

• Vid. Xenoph.

there is none that doth 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 Astraa; with any other common places, equally new and eloquent, which are furnished by the splendida bilis*. 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 farther, 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 has got a clap, and runs out of his estate; how Paris, bribed by Juno and Venus†,

* Hor. Spleen.

† Juno and Venus, are money and a mistress; very powerful bribes to a judge, if scandal says true.

I re

loth 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 forgot 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 some years preparing materials towards A panegyric upon the world, to which I intended to add a second part, intituled, A modest defence of the proceedings of the rabble in all ages. Both these I had thought to publish, by way of appendix to the following treatise; but, finding my commonplace book fill much slower than I had reason to expect, I have chosen to defer them to another occasion. Besides, I have been unhappily prevented in that design by a certain domestic misfortune: In the particulars whereof, though it would be very seasonable and much in the modern way, to inform the gentle reader, and

member such reflections were cast about that time, but I cannot fix the person intended here,

would also be of great assistance towards extending this preface into the size now in vogue, which by rule ought to be large, in proportion as the subsequent volume is small; yet I shall now dismiss our impatient reader from any farther attendance at the porch; and, having duly prepared his mind by a preliminary discourse, shall gladly introduce him to the sublime mysteries that ensue.