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THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE POSTERITY
SIR,
I here present your Highness with the fruits of a very few leisure
hours, stolen from the short intervals of a world of business, and
of an employment quite alien from such amusements as this; the poor
production of that refuse of time which has lain heavy upon my hands
during a long prorogation of Parliament, a great dearth of foreign
news, and a tedious fit of rainy weather. For which, and other
reasons, it cannot choose extremely to deserve such a patronage as
that of your Highness, whose numberless virtues in so few years,
make the world look upon you as the future example to all princes.
For although your Highness is hardly got clear of infancy, yet has
the universal learned world already resolved upon appealing to your
future dictates with the lowest and most resigned submission, fate
having decreed you sole arbiter of the productions of human wit in
this polite and most accomplished age. Methinks the number of
appellants were enough to shock and startle any judge of a genius
less unlimited than yours; but in order to prevent such glorious
trials, the person, it seems, to whose care the education of your
Highness is committed, has resolved, as I am told, to keep you in
almost an universal ignorance of our studies, which it is your
inherent birthright to inspect.
It is amazing to me that this person should have assurance, in the
face of the sun, to go about persuading your Highness that our age
is almost wholly illiterate and has hardly produced one writer upon
any subject. I know very well that when your Highness shall come to
riper years, and have gone through the learning of antiquity, you
will be too curious to neglect inquiring into the authors of the
very age before you; and to think that this insolent, in the account
he is preparing for your view, designs to reduce them to a number so
insignificant as I am ashamed to mention; it moves my zeal and my
spleen for the honour and interest of our vast flourishing body, as
well as of myself, for whom I know by long experience he has
professed, and still continues, a peculiar malice.
It is not unlikely that, when your Highness will one day peruse what
I am now writing, you may be ready to expostulate with your governor
upon the credit of what I here affirm, and command him to show you
some of our productions. To which he will answer--for I am well
informed of his designs--by asking your Highness where they are, and
what is become of them? and pretend it a demonstration that there
never were any, because they are not then to be found. Not to be
found! Who has mislaid them? Are they sunk in the abyss of things?
It is certain that in their own nature they were light enough to
swim upon the surface for all eternity; therefore, the fault is in
him who tied weights so heavy to their heels as to depress them to
the centre. Is their very essence destroyed? Who has annihilated
them? Were they drowned by purges or martyred by pipes? Who
administered them to the posteriors of -------. But that it may no
longer be a doubt with your Highness who is to be the author of this
universal ruin, I beseech you to observe that large and terrible
scythe which your governor affects to bear continually about him.
Be pleased to remark the length and strength, the sharpness and
hardness, of his nails and teeth; consider his baneful, abominable
breath, enemy to life and matter, infectious and corrupting, and
then reflect whether it be possible for any mortal ink and paper of
this generation to make a suitable resistance. Oh, that your
Highness would one day resolve to disarm this usurping maitre de
palais of his furious engines, and bring your empire hors du page.
It were endless to recount the several methods of tyranny and
destruction which your governor is pleased to practise upon this
occasion. His inveterate malice is such to the writings of our age,
that, of several thousands produced yearly from this renowned city,
before the next revolution of the sun there is not one to be heard
of. Unhappy infants! many of them barbarously destroyed before they
have so much as learnt their mother-tongue to beg for pity. Some he
stifles in their cradles, others he frights into convulsions,
whereof they suddenly die, some he flays alive, others he tears limb
from limb, great numbers are offered to Moloch, and the rest,
tainted by his breath, die of a languishing consumption.
But the concern I have most at heart is for our Corporation of
Poets, from whom I am preparing a petition to your Highness, to be
subscribed with the names of one hundred and thirty-six of the first
race, but whose immortal productions are never likely to reach your
eyes, though each of them is now an humble and an earnest appellant
for the laurel, and has large comely volumes ready to show for a
support to his pretensions. The never-dying works of these
illustrious persons your governor, sir, has devoted to unavoidable
death, and your Highness is to be made believe that our age has
never arrived at the honour to produce one single poet.
We confess immortality to be a great and powerful goddess, but in
vain we offer up to her our devotions and our sacrifices if your
Highness's governor, who has usurped the priesthood, must, by an
unparalleled ambition and avarice, wholly intercept and devour them.
To affirm that our age is altogether unlearned and devoid of writers
in any kind, seems to be an assertion so bold and so false, that I
have been sometimes thinking the contrary may almost be proved by
uncontrollable demonstration. It is true, indeed, that although
their numbers be vast and their productions numerous in proportion,
yet are they hurried so hastily off the scene that they escape our
memory and delude our sight. When I first thought of this address,
I had prepared a copious list of titles to present your Highness as
an undisputed argument for what I affirm. The originals were posted
fresh upon all gates and corners of streets; but returning in a very
few hours to take a review, they were all torn down and fresh ones
in their places. I inquired after them among readers and
booksellers, but I inquired in vain; the memorial of them was lost
among men, their place was no more to be found; and I was laughed to
scorn for a clown and a pedant, devoid of all taste and refinement,
little versed in the course of present affairs, and that knew
nothing of what had passed in the best companies of court and town.
So that I can only avow in general to your Highness that we do
abound in learning and wit, but to fix upon particulars is a task
too slippery for my slender abilities. If I should venture, in a
windy day, to affirm to your Highness that there is a large cloud
near the horizon in the form of a bear, another in the zenith with
the head of an ass, a third to the westward with claws like a
dragon; and your Highness should in a few minutes think fit to
examine the truth, it is certain they would be all chanced in figure
and position, new ones would arise, and all we could agree upon
would be, that clouds there were, but that I was grossly mistaken in
the zoography and topography of them.
But your governor, perhaps, may still insist, and put the question,
What is then become of those immense bales of paper which must needs
have been employed in such numbers of books? Can these also be
wholly annihilated, and to of a sudden, as I pretend? What shall I
say in return of so invidious an objection? It ill befits the
distance between your Highness and me to send you for ocular
conviction to a jakes or an oven, to the windows of a bawdyhouse, or
to a sordid lanthorn. Books, like men their authors, have no more
than one way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand to
go out of it and return no more.
I profess to your Highness, in the integrity of my heart, that what
I am going to say is literally true this minute I am writing; what
revolutions may happen before it shall be ready for your perusal I
can by no means warrant; however, I beg you to accept it as a
specimen of our learning, our politeness, and our wit. I do
therefore affirm, upon the word of a sincere man, that there is now
actually in being a certain poet called John Dryden, whose
translation of Virgil was lately printed in large folio, well bound,
and if diligent search were made, for aught I know, is yet to be
seen. There is another called Nahum Tate, who is ready to make oath
that he has caused many reams of verse to be published, whereof both
himself and his bookseller, if lawfully required, can still produce
authentic copies, and therefore wonders why the world is pleased to
make such a secret of it. There is a third, known by the name of
Tom Durfey, a poet of a vast comprehension, an universal genius, and
most profound learning. There are also one Mr. Rymer and one Mr.
Dennis, most profound critics. There is a person styled Dr.
Bentley, who has wrote near a thousand pages of immense erudition,
giving a full and true account of a certain squabble of wonderful
importance between himself and a bookseller; he is a writer of
infinite wit and humour, no man rallies with a better grace and in
more sprightly turns. Further, I avow to your Highness that with
these eyes I have beheld the person of William Wotton, B.D., who has
written a good-sized volume against a friend of your governor, from
whom, alas! he must therefore look for little favour, in a most
gentlemanly style, adorned with utmost politeness and civility,
replete with discoveries equally valuable for their novelty and use,
and embellished with traits of wit so poignant and so apposite, that
he is a worthy yoke-mate to his fore-mentioned friend.
Why should I go upon farther particulars, which might fill a volume
with the just eulogies of my contemporary brethren? I shall
bequeath this piece of justice to a larger work, wherein I intend to
write a character of the present set of wits in our nation; their
persons I shall describe particularly and at length, their genius
and understandings in miniature.
In the meantime, I do here make bold to present your Highness with a
faithful abstract drawn from the universal body of all arts and
sciences, intended wholly for your service and instruction. Nor do
I doubt in the least but your Highness will peruse it as carefully
and make as considerable improvements as other young princes have
already done by the many volumes of late years written for a help to
their studies.
That your Highness may advance in wisdom and virtue, as well as
years, and at last outshine all your royal ancestors, shall be the
daily prayer of,
SIR,
Your Highness's most devoted, &c. Decemb. 1697.
Content of The Epistle Dedicatory [Jonathan Swift's ebook: A Tale of a Tub]
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