SECTION IV.

A TALE OF A TUB.

I HAVE now with much pains and study conducted the reader to a period where he must expect to hear of great revolutions. For no sooner had our learned brother, so often mentioned, got a warm house of his own over his head, than he began to look big, and take mightily upon him; insomuch that, unless the gentle reader, out of his great candour, will please a little to exalt his idea, I am afraid he will henceforth hardly know the hero of the play when he happens to meet him, his part, his dress, and his mien being so much altered.

He told his brothers he would have them to know that he was their elder, and consequently his father's sole heir; nay, a while after he would not allow them to call him brother, but Mr. PETER; and then he must be styled FATHER PETER; and sometimes My LORD PETER. To support this grandeur, which he soon began to consider could not be maintained with

out a better fonde than what he was born to, after much thought, he cast about at last to turn projector and virtuoso, wherein he so well succeeded, that many famous discoveries, projects, and machines which bear great vogue and practice at present in the world, are owing entirely to Lord PETER'S invention. I will deduce the best account I have been able to collect of the chief amongst them, without considering much the order came they out in, because I think authors are not well agreed as to that point.

I hope, when this treatise of mine shall be translated into foreign languages (as I may without vanity affirm that the labour of collecting, the faithfulness in recounting, and the great usefulness of the matter to the public, will amply deserve that justice), that the worthy members of the several academies abroad, especially those of France and Italy, will favourably accept these humble offers for the advancement of universal knowledge. I do also advertise the most reverend fathers, the eastern missionaries, that I have, purely for their sakes, made use of such words and phrases as will best admit an easy turn into any of the oriental languages, especially the Chinese. And so I proceed, with great content of mind, upon reflecting how much emolument this whole globe of the earth is like to reap by my labours.

The first undertaking of Lord Peter was to purchase a large continent,* lately said to have been

* That is, Purgatory.

discovered in Terra Australis Incognita. This tract of land he bought at a very great pennyworth from the discoverers themselves (though some pretended to doubt whether they had ever been there), and then retailed it into several cantons to certain dealers, who carried over colonies, but were all shipwrecked in the voyage. Upon which Lord Peter sold the said continent to other customers again, and again, and again, with the same success.

The second project I shall mention was his sovereign remedy for the worms,* especially those in the spleen. The patient was to eat nothing after supper for three nights. As soon as he went to bed he was carefully to lie on one side; and when he grew weary to turn upon the other. He must also duly confine his two eyes to the same object, and by no means break wind at both ends together, without manifest occasion. These prescriptions diligently observed, the worms would void insensibly, by perspiration ascending through the brain.

A third invention was the erecting of a whisperingoffice, for the public good and ease of all such as are

* Penance and absolution are played upon under the notion of a sovereign remedy for the worms, especially in the spleen: which, by observing Peter's prescription, would void insensibly by perspiration, ascending through the brain, &c.-W. Wotton.

Here the author ridicules the penances of the Church of Rome, which may be made as easy to the sinner as he pleases, provided he will pay for them accordingly.

By his whispering-office for the relief of eavesdroppers, physicians,

T

hypochondriacal, or troubled with the cholic, as likewise of all eavesdroppers, physicians, midwives, small politicians, friends fallen out, repeating poets, lovers happy or in despair, privy counsellors, pages, parasites, and buffoons; in short, of all such as are in danger of bursting with too much wind. An ass's head was placed so conveniently that the party affected might easily with his mouth accost either of the animal's ears, to which he was to apply close for a certain space, and by a fugitive faculty peculiar to the ears of that animal, receive immediate benefit, either by eructation, or expiration, or evomition.

Another very beneficial project of Lord Peter's was an office of insurance for tobacco-pipes, martyrs of the modern zeal, volumes of poetry, shadows, and rivers, that these, nor any of these, shall receive damage by fire, from whence our friendly societies may plainly find themselves to be only transcribers from this original, though the one and the other have been of great benefit to the undertakers, as well as of equal to the public.

Lord Peter was also held the original author of puppets and raree-shows, the great usefulness whereof being so generally known I shall not enlarge further upon this particular.

and privy counsellors, he ridicules auricular confessions; and the priest who takes it is described by the ass's head.-W. Wotton.

* This I take to be the office of indulgences, the gross abuse whereof first gave occasion for the Reformation.

But another discovery, for which he was much renowned, was his famous universal pickle.* For having remarked how your common pickle † in use among housewives was of no further benefit than to preserve dead flesh, and certain kinds of vegetables, Peter, with great cost as well as art, had contrived a pickle proper for houses, gardens, towns, men, women, children, and cattle, wherein he could preserve them as sound as insects in amber. Now this pickle, to the taste, the smell, and the sight, appeared exactly the same with what is in common service for beef and butter and herrings, and has been often that way applied with great success, but for its many sovereign virtues was quite a different thing. For Peter would put in a certain quantity of his powder pimper-limpimp, after which it never failed of success. The operation was performed by spargefaction,§ in a proper time of the moon. The patient who was to be pickled, if it were a house, would infallibly be preserved from all spiders, rats, and weazels; if the

Holy water he calls a universal pickle, to preserve houses, gardens, towns, men, women, children, and cattle, wherein he could preserve them as sound as insects in amber.-W. Wotton.

This is easily understood to be holy water, composed of the same ingredients with many other pickles.

And because holy water differs only in consecration from common water, as used for a beverage, &c., therefore he tells us that his pickle by the powder of pimper-lim pimp receives new virtues, though it differs not in sight nor smell from the common pickles which preserve beef and butter and herrings.-W. Wotton.

§ Sprinkling.