should, from a nice, unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let slip an opportunity put into his hands, that would have made him absolute master of the lives, liberties, and the fortunes of his people! Neither do I say this with the least intention to detract from the many virtues of that excellent king, whose character, I am sensible, will, on this account, be very much lessened in the opinion of an English reader; but, I take this defect among them to have risen from their ignorance, by not having hitherto reduced politics into a science, as the more acute wits of Europe have done. For, I remember very well, in a discourse one day with the king, when I happened to say, "there were several thousand books among us written upon the art of government," it gave him (directly contrary to my intention) a very mean opinion of our understandings. He professed both to abominate and despise all mystery, refinement, and intrigue, either in a prince or in a minister. He could not tell what I meant by secrets of state, where an enemy, or some rival nation, were not in the case. He confined the knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds, to common sense and reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and criminal causes; with some other obvious topics, which are not worth considering. And he gave it for his opinion "That whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together." A Voyage to Brobdingnag.

CONCERNING MADNESS.

LET us next examine the great introducers of new schemes in philosophy, and search till we can find from what faculty of the soul the disposition arises in mortal man, of taking it into his head to advance new systems, with such an eager zeal, in things agreed on all hands impossible to be known: from what seeds this disposition springs, and to what quality of human nature

these grand innovators have been indebted for their number of disciples. Because it is plain, that several of the chief among them, both ancient and modern, were usually mistaken by their adversaries, and indeed by all, except their own followers, to have been persons crazed, or out of their wits; having generally proceeded, in the common course of their words and actions, by a method very different from the vulgar dictates of unrefined reason; agreeing for the most part in their several models, with their present undoubted successors in the academy of modern Bedlam; whose merits and principles I shall farther examine in due place. Of this kind were Epicurus, Diogenes, Apollonius, Lucretius, Paracelsus, Des Cartes, and others; who, if they were now in the world, tied fast, and separate from their followers, would, in this our undistinguishing age, incur manifest danger of phlebotomy, and whips, and chains, and dark chambers, and straw. For what man, in the natural state or course of thinking, did ever conceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and breadth, and height of his own? yet this is the first humble and civil design of all innovators in the empire of reason. Epicurus modestly hoped, that, one time or other, a certain fortuitous concourse of all men's opinions, after perpetual justlings, the sharp with the smooth, the light and the heavy, the round and the square, would, by certain clinamina, unite in the notions of atoms and void, as these did in the originals of all things. Cartesius reckoned to see, before he died, the sentiments of all philosophers, like so many lesser stars in his romantic system, wrapped and drawn within his own vortex. Now, I would gladly be informed, how it is possible to account for such imaginations as these in particular men, without recourse to my phenomenon of vapours, ascending from the lower faculties to overshadow the brain, and there distilling into conceptions, for which the narrowness of our mother-tongue has not yet assigned any other name beside that of madness or phrensy. Let us therefore now conjecture how it comes to pass, that none of these great prescribers do ever fail providing themselves and their notions with a number of implicit disciples. And, I think, the reason is easy to be assigned for there is a peculiar string in the harmony of

human understanding, which, in several individuals, is exactly of the same tuning. This, if you can dexterously screw up to its right key, and then strike gently upon it, whenever you have the good fortune to light among those of the same pitch, they will, by a secret necessary sympathy, strike exactly at the same time. And in this one circumstance lies all the skill or luck of the matter; for, if you chance to jar the string among those who are either above or below your own height, instead of subscribing to your doctrine, they will tie you fast, call you mad, and feed you with bread and water. It is therefore a point of the nicest conduct, to distinguish and adapt this noble talent, with respect to the differences of persons and times. Cicero understood this very well, when writing to a friend in England, with a caution, among other matters, to beware of being cheated by our hackneycoachmen, (who it seems, in those days were as arrant rascals as they are now,) has these remarkable words: Est quod gaudeas te in ista loca venisse, ubi aliquid sapere viderere. For, to speak a bold truth, it is a fatal miscarriage so ill to order affairs, as to pass for a fool in one company, when, in another, you might be treated as a philosopher. Which I desire some certain gentlemen of my acquaintance to lay up in their hearts, as a very seasonable innuendo.

A Tale of a Tub.

P. 137, l. 2. Arrived. Participle, not verb. "Is arrived" is now thought a Gallicism, perhaps not justly.

P. 141, l. 8. Them, the Brobdingnagians, though nobody but the king has been the subject of discourse.

P. 142, I. 24. Clinamina. The Epicurean postulate of a slight declension from the perpendicular in the rain of atoms through space, which brings them together.

P. 142, l. 36. Fail providing. This, like "agreed impossible," is characteristic of Swift's elliptic shortenings of phrase. The

P. 143, l. 12. Cicero. The actual quotation is from Ep. ad Fam. vii. 10. reader will hardly need to be told that there is nothing about hackney coachmen in the original. The series of letters to Trebatius is, however, full of “chaff," and in a previous epistle (7) Cicero suggests that if his friend finds that there is nothing to be made in Britain, he shall take an essedum (the war chariots which Cæsar's expedition had made famous) and come back.

WHEN

SIR RICHARD STEELE.

Richard Steele was born at Dublin in 1671(?) He entered Merton College, Oxford, but went into the army. In 1709 he founded with the Tatler an unrivalled series of periodicals. Despite many gifts of fortune, he was always in difficulties till his death, near Carmarthen, in 1729. He ranks first among English humourists for geniality without boisterousness, and sentiment without gush.

SARCASMS ON MARRIAGE.

HEN I consider the false impressions which are received by the generality of the world, I am troubled at none more than a certain levity of thought, which many young women of quality have entertained, to the hazard of their characters, and the certain misfortune of their lives. The first of the following letters may best represent the faults I would now point at, and the answer to it, the temper of mind in a contrary cha

racter.

"My dear Harriot,

"If thou art she, but oh! how fallen, how changed, what an apostate how lost to all that is gay and agreeable! To be married I find is to be buried alive; I cannot conceive it more dismal to be shut up in a vault to converse with the shades of my ancestors, than to be carried down to an old manor-house in the country, and confined to the conversation of a sober husband, and an awkward chambermaid. For variety I suppose you may entertain yourself with madam in her grogram gown, the spouse of your parish vicar, who has by this time, I am sure,

well furnished you with receipts for making salves and possets, distilling cordial waters, making syrups, and applying poultices.

"Blest solitude! I wish thee joy, my dear, of thy loved retirement, which indeed you would persuade me is very agreeable, and different enough from what I have here described : but, child, I am afraid thy brains are a little disordered with romances and novels. After six months' marriage to hear thee talk of love, and paint the country scenes so softly, is a little extravagant; one would think you lived the lives of sylvan deities, or roved among the walks of Paradise, like the first happy pair. But pray thee leave these whimsies, and come to town in order to live, and talk like other mortals. However, as I am extremely interested in your reputation, I would willingly give you a little good advice at your first appearance under the character of a married woman. It is a little insolent in me, perhaps, to advise a matron; but I am so afraid you will make so silly a figure as a fond wife, that I cannot help warning you not to appear in any public places with your husband, and never to saunter about St. James's Park together: if you presume to enter the ring at Hyde Park together, you are ruined for ever; nor must you take the least notice of one another at the playhouse, or opera, unless you would be laughed at for a very loving couple, most happily paired in the yoke of wedlock. I would recommend the example of an acquaintance of ours to your imitation; she is the most negligent and fashionable wife in the world; she is hardly ever seen in the same place with her husband, and if they happen to meet, you would think them perfect strangers; she never was heard to name him in his absence, and takes care he shall never be the subject of any discourse that she has a share in. I hope you will propose this lady as a pattern, though I am very much afraid you will be so silly to think Portia, etc., Sabine and Roman wives, much brighter examples. I wish it may never come into your head to imitate these antiquated creatures so far as to come into public in the habit, as well as air, of a Roman matron. You make already the entertainment at Mrs. Modish's tea-table: she says, she always thought you a discreet person, and qualified to manage a family with admirable prudence; she dies to see

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