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 jesuit207, 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 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 almanack upon it, he gave me to understand that he had maturely 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 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 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.208’
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 D'Urfey'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 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 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 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 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 doze, 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.209 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,210 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 gait 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 occasions 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