SECTION V.

A DIGRESSION IN THE MODERN KIND.

HE, whom the world is pleased to honour with the title of modern authors, should never have been able to compass our great design of an everlasting remembrance, and never-dying fame, if our endeavours had not been so highly serviceable to the general good of mankind. This, O Universe! is the adventurous attempt of me thy secretary;

Quemvis preferre laborem.

Suadet, et inducit noctes vigilare serenas.

To this end, I have some time since, with a world of pains and art, dissected the carcass of human nature, and read many useful lectures upon the several parts both containing and contained, till at last it smelled so strong I could preserve it no longer. Upon which I have been at a great expense to fit up all the bones with exact contexture, and in due symmetry, so that I am ready to show a very complete

U

anatomy thereof to all curious "gentlemen and others." But not to digress further in the midst of a digression, as I have known some authors enclose digressions in one another, like a nest of boxes, I do affirm, that having carefully cut up human nature, I have found a very strange, new, and important discovery—that the public good of mankind is performed by two ways, instruction and diversion. And I have further proved in my said several readings (which perhaps the world may one day see, if I can prevail on any friend to steal a copy, or on any certain gentlemen of my admirers to be very importunate), that as mankind is now disposed, he receives much greater advantage by being diverted than instructed, his epidemical diseases being fastidiousness, amorphy, and oscitation; whereas in the present universal empire of wit and learning, there seems but little matter left for instruction. However, in compliance with a lesson of great age and authority, I have attempted carrying the point in all its heights, and accordingly, throughout this divine treatise have skilfully kneaded up both together, with a layer of utile and a layer of dulce.

When I consider how exceedingly our illustrious moderns have eclipsed the weak glimmering lights of the ancients, and turned them out of the road of all fashionable commerce, to a degree that our choice town-wits of most refined accomplishments are in grave dispute whether there have been ever any

ancients or no,* in which point we are like to receive wonderful satisfaction from the most useful labours and lucubrations of that worthy modern, Dr. Bentley, -I say, when I consider all this, I cannot but bewail that no famous modern hath ever yet attempted an universal system, in a small portable volume, of all things that are to be known, or believed, or imagined, or practised in life. I am, however, forced to acknowledge that such an enterprise was thought on some time ago by a great philosopher of O. Brazil.† The method he proposed was by a certain curious receipt, a nostrum, which after his untimely death I found among his papers, and do here, out of my great affection for the modern learned, present them with it, not doubting it may one day encourage some worthy undertaker.

"You take fair, correct copies, well-bound in calfskin, and lettered at the back, of all modern bodies of arts and science whatsoever, and in what language you please. These you distil in balneo Mariæ, infusing quintessence of poppy q. s., together with three pints of lethe, to be had from apothecaries. You cleanse away carefully the sordes and caput mortuum,

* The learned person here meant hath been endeavouring to annihilate so many ancient writers, that until he is pleased to stop his hand, it will be dangerous to affirm whether there have been any ancients in

the world.

+ This is an imaginary island, akin to that which is called Painter's wives island, placed in some unknown part of the ocean, merely at the fancy of the map-maker.

letting all that is volatile evaporate. You preserve only the first running, which is again to be distilled seventeen times, till what remains will amount to about two drams. This you keep in a glass vial hermetically sealed for one-and-twenty days; then you begin your catholic treatise, taking every morning fasting, first shaking the vial, three drops of this elixir, snuffing it strongly up your nose. It will dilate itself about the brain (where there is any) in fourteen minutes, and you immediately perceive in your head an infinite number of abstracts, summaries, compendiums, extracts, collections, medullas, excerpta quædams, florilegias, and the like, all disposed into great order, and reducible upon paper."

I must needs own it was by the assistance of this arcanum that I, though otherwise impar, have adventured upon so daring an attempt, never achieved or undertaken before but by a certain author called Homer, in whom, though otherwise a person not without some abilities, and, for an ancient, of a toler able genius, I have discovered many gross errors, which are not to be forgiven his very ashes, if by chance any of them are left. For whereas we are assured he designed his work for a complete body* of all knowledge, human, divine, political, and mechanic, it is manifest he hath wholly neglected some, and been very imperfect in the rest. For, first

* Homerus omnes res humanas poematis complexus est.-Xenophon in conviv.

of all, as eminent a cabalist as his disciples would represent him, his account of the "opus magnum" is extremely poor and deficient; he seems to have read but very superficially, either Sendivogus, Behmen, or Antophrosophia Theomagica. He is also quite mistaken about the sphæra pyroplastica, a neglect not to be atoned for; and if the reader will admit so severe a censure, vix crederem autorem hunc unquam audivisse ignis vocem. His failings are not less prominent in several parts of the mechanics. For having read his writings with the utmost application usual among modern wits, I could never yet discover the least direction about the structure of that useful instrument, a save-all. For want of which, if the moderns had not lent their assistance, we might yet have wandered in the dark. But I have still behind a fault far more notorious to tax this author with; I mean his gross ignorance in the common laws of this realm, and in the doctrine as well as discipline of the Church of England † a defect indeed for which both he and all the ancients stand most justly censured by my worthy andingenious friend, Mr. Wotton, Bachelor of Divinity,

* A treatise written about fifty years ago by a Welsh gentleman of Cambridge. His name, as I remember, was Vaughan, as appears by the answer written to it by the learned Dr. Henry Moor. It is a piece of the most unintelligible fustian that perhaps was ever published in any language.

+ Mr. Wotton (to whom our author never gives any quarter), in his comparison of ancient and modern learning, numbers divinity, law, &c., among those parts of knowledge wherein we excel the ancients.