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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.

two principal things, which were the bulk and the subject, and found it would never take but after a long vacation, and then only in case it should happen to be a hard year for turnips. Upon which I desired to know, considering my urgent necessities, what he thought might be acceptable that month. He looked westward, and said, "I doubt not we shall have a fit of bad weather; however, if you could prepare some pretty little banter, but not in verse, or a small treatise upon the it would run like wild-fire. But if it hold up, I have already hired an author to write something against Dr. Bentley, which I am sure will turn to account."*

At length we agreed upon the expedient, that when a customer comes for one of these, and desires in confidence to know the author, he will tell him very privately, as a friend, naming whichever of the wits shall happen to be that week in vogue; and if Durfey's last play should be in course, I had as lieve he may be the person as Congreve. This I mention because I am wonderfully well acquainted with the present relish of courteous readers, and have often observed, with singular pleasure, that a fly driven from a honey-pot will immediately with very good appetite alight and finish his meal on an excrement.

When Dr. Prideaux brought the copy of his Connection of the Old and New Testament to the bookseller, he told him it was a dry subject, and the printing could not safely be ventured unless he could enliven it with a little humour.-Hawkes.

I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive, therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells: a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there, and often when there is nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and a half under ground, it shall pass however for wondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason than because it is wondrous dark.

I am now trying an experiment very frequent among modern authors, which is, to write upon nothing when the subject is utterly exhausted to let the pen still move on, by some called the ghost of wit delighting to walk after the death of its body. And to say the truth, there seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done. By the time that an author hath written out a book, he and his readers are become old acquaintance, and grow very loth to part; so that I have sometimes known it to be in writing as in visiting, where the ceremony of taking leave has employed more time than the whole conversation before. The conclusion of a treatise resembles the conclusion of human life, which hath sometimes been compared to the end of a feast, where few are satisfied to depart ut plenus vitæ

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