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 humour 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 greater 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 Whitefriars, 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 they 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 intending 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:

is

SINCE the writing of this, which was about a year ago, a prosti tute 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 utterly wrong in all his conjectures upon that affair. The author further 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 next edition, and the claimant shall from henceforward be acknowledged the undisputed author.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

JOHN LORD SOMERS.

MY LORD,-Although the author has written a large dedication, yet that being addressed to a prince whom I am never likely to have the honour of being known to a person, besides, as far as I can observe, not at all regarded or thought on by any of our present writers; and being wholly free from that slavery which booksellers usually lie under to the caprices of authors, I think it a wise piece of presumption to inscribe these papers to your Lordship, and to implore your Lordship's protection of them. God, and your Lordship, know their faults and their merits; for as to my own particular, I am altogether a stranger to the matter; and though everybody else should be equally ignorant, I do not fear the sale of the book at all the worse upon that score. Your Lordship's name on the front in capital letters will at any time get off one edition; neither would I desire any other

help to grow an alderman than a patent for the sole privilege of dedicating to your Lordship.

I should now, in right of a dedicator, give your Lordship a list of your own virtues, and at the same time be very unwilling to offend your modesty; but chiefly I should celebrate your liberality towards men of great parts and small fortunes, and give you broad hints that I mean myself. And I was just going on in the usual method, to peruse a hundred or two of dedications, and transcribe an abstract, to be applied to your Lordship, but I was diverted by a certain accident. For upon the covers of these papers I casually observed, written in large letters, the two following words, DETUR DIGNISSIMO, which, for aught I knew, might contain some important meaning. But it unluckily fell out that none of the authors I employ understood Latin, though I have them often in pay to translate out of that language; I was therefore compelled to have recourse to the curate of our parish, who Englished it thus, Let it be given to the worthiest. And his comment was, that the author meant his work should be dedicated to the sublimest genius of the age for wit, learning, judgment, eloquence, and wisdom. I called at a poet's chamber (who works for my shop) in an alley hard by, showed him the translation, and desired his opinion who it was that the author could