vein behind the ear happens to be cut, a man becomes a eunuch.* And the females were nothing backwarder in beholding and edifying by them: whereof those who had already used the means looked about them with great concern, in hopes of conceiving a suitable offspring by such a prospect. Others, who stood candidates for benevolence, found there a plentiful choice, and were sure to fix upon such as discovered the largest ears, that the breed might not dwindle between them. Lastly, the more devout sisters, who look upon all extraordinary dilatations of that member as protrusions of zeal or spiritual excrescences, were sure to honour every head they sat upon as if they had been marks of grace; but especially that of the preacher, whose ears were usually of the prime magnitude, which, upon that account, he was very frequent and exact in exposing with all advantages to the people, in his rhetorical paroxysms turning sometimes to hold forth the one, and sometimes to hold forth the other. From which custom, the whole operation of preaching is to this very day, among their professors, styled by the phrase of holding forth.

Such was the progress of the saints for advancing the size of that member, and it is thought the success. would have been every way answerable, if in process of time a cruel king had not arisen, who raised a bloody persecution against all ears above a certain

* Lib. de aere, locis, et aquis.

standard.* Upon which some were glad to hide their flourishing sprouts in a black border, others crept wholly under a periwig, some were slit, others cropped, and a great number sliced off to the stumps. But of this more hereafter in my General History of Ears, which I design very speedily to bestow upon the public.

From this brief survey of the falling state of ears in the last age, and the small care had to advance their ancient growth in the present, it is manifest how little reason we can have to rely upon a hold so short, so weak, and so slippery; and that whoever desires to catch mankind fast must have recourse to some other methods. Now, he that will examine human nature with circumspection enough may discover several handles, whereof the six† senses afford one a-piece, besides a great number that are screwed to the passions, and some few riveted to the intellect. Among these last curiosity is one, and, of all others, affords the firmest grasp: curiosity, that spur in the side, that bridle in the mouth, that ring in the nose, of a lazy and impatient and a grunting reader. By this handle it is that an author should seize upon his readers, which, as soon as he hath once compassed, all resistance and struggling are in vain, and they become his prisoners as close as he pleases, till weariness or dulness forces him to let go his grip.

*This was Charles II., who at his restoration turned out all the dissenting teachers that would not conform.

Including Scaliger's.

And therefore I, the author of this miraculous treatise, having hitherto, beyond expectation, maintained, by the aforesaid handle, a firm hold upon my gentle readers, it is with great reluctance that I am at length compelled to remit my grasp, leaving them in the perusal of what remains to that natural oscitancy inherent in the tribe. I can only assure thee, courteous reader, for both our comforts, that my concern is altogether equal to thine, for my unhappiness in losing or mislaying among my papers the remaining part of these memoirs, which consisted of accidents, turns, and adventures, both new, agreeable, and surprising, and therefore calculated in all due points to the delicate taste of this our noble age. But, alas! with my utmost endeavours, I have been able only to retain a few of the heads, under which there was a full account how Peter got a protection out of the King's Bench, and of a reconcilement between Jack and him, upon a design they had, in a certain rainy night, to trepan brother Martin into a spunging-house, and there strip him to the skin: how Martin, with much ado, showed them both a fair pair of heels; how a new warrant came out against Peter, upon which how Jack left him in the lurch, stole his protection, and made use of it himself. How Jack's tatters came into fashion in court and city; how he got upon a great horse,*

* Sir Humphrey Edwin, a Presbyterian, was some years ago Lord Mayor of London, and had the insolence to go in his formalities to a conventicle, with the ensigns of his office.

and ate custard.* But the particulars of all these, with several others, which have now slid out of my memory, are lost beyond all hopes of recovery. For which misfortune, leaving my readers to condole with each other, as far as they shall find it to agree with their several constitutions, but conjuring them, by all the friendship that hath passed between us from the title-page to this, not to proceed so far as to injure their healths for an accident past remedy, I now go on to the ceremonial part of an accomplished writer, and therefore, by a courtly modern, least of all others to be omitted.

* Custard is a famous dish at a lord mayor's feast.

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 in the brain. Well fare the heart of that noble Jesuit* 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 nation 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 hath 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 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

* Père d'Orleans.