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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 of the brain. Well fare the heart of that noble Jesuit
{155} 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 notion 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 has 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 it 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 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 this month. He
looked westward and said, "I doubt we shall have a bit 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
wildfire. 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 this 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 the 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.
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 can see to the bottom of the
deepest, provided any water be there; and that often when there is
nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though
it be but a yard and 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
has written out a book, he and his readers are become old
acquaintance, and grow very loathe 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 has sometimes been compared to the end of a feast,
where few are satisfied to depart ut plenus vitae conviva. For men
will sit down after the fullest meal, though it be only to dose or
to sleep out the rest of the day. But in this latter I differ
extremely from other writers, and shall be too proud if, by all my
labours, I can have any ways contributed to the repose of mankind in
times so turbulent and unquiet as these. Neither do I think such an
employment so very alien from the office of a wit as some would
suppose; for among a very polite nation in Greece {157} there were
the same temples built and consecrated to Sleep and the Muses,
between which two deities they believed the strictest friendship was
established.
I have one concluding favour to request of my reader, that he will
not expect to be equally diverted and informed by every line or
every page of this discourse, but give some allowance to the
author's spleen and short fits or intervals of dulness, as well as
his own, and lay it seriously to his conscience whether, if he were
walking the streets in dirty weather or a rainy day, he would allow
it fair dealing in folks at their ease from a window, to criticise
his gate and ridicule his dress at such a juncture.
In my disposure of employments of the brain, I have thought fit to
make invention the master, and to give method and reason the office
of its lackeys. The cause of this distribution was from observing
it my peculiar case to be often under a temptation of being witty
upon occasion where I could be neither wise nor sound, nor anything
to the matter in hand. And I am too much a servant of the modern
way to neglect any such opportunities, whatever pains or
improprieties I may be at to introduce them. For I have observed
that from a laborious collection of seven hundred and thirty-eight
flowers and shining hints of the best modern authors, digested with
great reading into my book of common places, I have not been able
after five years to draw, hook, or force into common conversation
any more than a dozen. Of which dozen the one moiety failed of
success by being dropped among unsuitable company, and the other
cost me so many strains, and traps, and ambages to introduce, that I
at length resolved to give it over. Now this disappointment (to
discover a secret), I must own, gave me the first hint of setting up
for an author, and I have since found among some particular friends
that it is become a very general complaint, and has produced the
same effects upon many others. For I have remarked many a towardly
word to be wholly neglected or despised in discourse, which hath
passed very smoothly with some consideration and esteem after its
preferment and sanction in print. But now, since, by the liberty
and encouragement of the press, I am grown absolute master of the
occasions and opportunities to expose the talents I have acquired, I
already discover that the issues of my observanda begin to grow too
large for the receipts. Therefore I shall here pause awhile, till I
find, by feeling the world's pulse and my own, that it will be of
absolute necessity for us both to resume my pen.
[In some early editions of "The Tale of a Tub," Swift added, under
the title of "What Follows after Section IX.," the following sketch
for a "History of Martin."]
Content of The Conclusion [Jonathan Swift's ebook: A Tale of a Tub]
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