PREFACE.

Twickenham, May 27, 1727.

THE papers papers that compose the first of these volumes were printed about sixteen years ago, to which there are now added two or three small tracts; and the verses are transferred into a volume apart, with the addition of such others as we since have written. The second (and perhaps a third) will consist of several small treatises in prose, in which a friend or two is concerned with us.

Having both of us been extremely ill treated by some booksellers (especially one Edmund Curl), it was our opinion that the best method we could take for justifying ourselves, would be to publish whatever loose papers, in prose and verse, we have formerly written; not only such as have already stolen into the world (very much to our regret, and perhaps very little to our credit), but such as in any probability hereafter may run the same fate; having been obtained from us by the importunity, and divulged by the indiscretion of friends, although restrained by promises, which few of them are ever known to observe, and often think they make us a compliment in breaking.

But the consequences have been still worse: we have been entitled, and have had our names prefixed at length, to whole volumes of mean productions,

equally offensive to good manners and good sense, which we never saw nor heard of till they appeared in print.

For a forgery in setting a false name to a writing, which may prejudice another's fortune, the law punishes the offender with the loss of his ears; but has inflicted no adequate penalty for such, as prejudice another's reputation in doing the same thing in print; though all and every individual book, so sold under a false name, are manifestly so many several and multiplied forgeries.

Indeed we hoped, that the good nature, or at least the good judgment of the world, would have cleared us from the imputation of such things, as had been thus charged upon us by the malice of enemies, the want of judgment of friends, the unconcern of indifferent persons, and the confident assertions of booksellers. *

We are ashamed to find so ill a taste prevail, as to make it a necessary work to do this justice to ourselves. It is very possible for any author to write below himself: either his subject not proving so fruitful, or fitted for him, as he at first imagined; or his health, his humour, or the present disposition of his mind, unqualifying him at that juncture: however, if he possessed any distinguishing marks

* Curl had the effrontery to print, in his occasional miscellanies, whatever manuscript pieces the voice of the public ascribed to literary characters of eminence, although some of them were never intended for the public eye. In one of his collections he inserted a profane and indecent parody on the first psalm, with the name of Pope prefixed to it. There is too much reason to suppose the piece genuine; but this neither diminishes the infamy, nor apologizes for the impudence of the bookseller, in giving to the public what the author, on his better reflection, probably repented of having ever written.

of style, or peculiarity of thinking, there would remain in his least successful writings some few tokens, whereby persons of taste might discover him.

But, since it hath otherwise fallen out, we think we have sufficiently paid for our want of prudence, and determine for the future to be less communicative or, rather, having done with such amusements, we are resolved to give up what we cannot fairly disown, to the severity of critics, the malice of personal enemies, and the indulgence of friends.

We are sorry for the satire interspersed in some of these pieces upon a few people, from whom the highest provocations have been received, and who, by their conduct since, have shewn, that they have not yet forgiven us the wrong they did. It is a very unlucky circumstance to be obliged to retaliate the injuries of such authors, whose works are so soon forgotten, that we are in danger already of appearing the first aggressors. It is to be lamented, that Virgil let pass a line, which told posterity he had two enemies called Bavius and Mævius. The wisest way is not once to name them, but (as the madman advised the gentleman, who told him he wore a sword to kill his enemies) to let them alone and they will die of themselves. And according to this rule we have acted throughout all those writings, which we designed for the press: but in these, the publication whereof was not owing to our folly, but that of others, the omission of the names was not in our power. At the worst, we can only give them that liberty now for something, which they have so many years exercised for nothing, of railing and scribbling against us. And it is some commendation, that we have not done it all this while, but avoided publickly to characterize any person without long experience. Nonum prematur in annum is a good rule for all writers of characters; be

cause it may happen to those, who vent praise or censure too precipitately, as it did to an eminent English poet, who celebrated a young nobleman for erecting Dryden's monument upon a promise, which his lordship forgot till it was done by another. In regard to two persons only, we wish our raillery, though ever so tender, or resentment, though ever so just, had not been indulged. We speak of Sir John Vanbrugh, who was a man of wit, and of honour; and of Mr Addison, whose name deserves all respect from every lover of learning. *

We cannot deny (and perhaps most writers of our kind have been in the same circumstances) that in several parts of our lives, and according to the dispositions we were in, we have written some things, which we may wish never to have thought on. Some sallies of levity ought to be imputed to youth, (supposed in charity, as it was in truth, to be the time in which we wrote them); others to the gaiety of our minds at certain junctures common to all men. The publishing of these, which we cannot disown, and without our consent, is, I think, a greater injury, than that of ascribing to us the most stupid productions, which we can wholly deny.

This has been usually practised in other countries after a man's decease; which in a great measure accounts for that manifest inequality found in the works of the best authors; the collectors only considering, that so many more sheets raise the price of the book; and the greatest fame a writer is in possession of, the more of such trash he may bear to have tacked to him. Thus it is apparently the

*This is an apology for the satire called Van's House, and for the celebrated lines on Addison, which first appeared as the "Fragment of a Satire," published in these Micellanies,

editor's interest to insert what the author's judgment had rejected; and care is always taken to intersperse these additions in such a manner, that scarce any book of consequence can be bought, without purchasing something unworthy of the author along with it.

But in our own country it is still worse those very booksellers, who have supported themselves upon an author's fame while he lived, have done their utmost after his death to lessen it by such practices; even a man's last will is not secure from being exposed in print; whereby his most particular regards, and even his dying tendernesses, are laid open. It has been humorously said, that some have fished the very jakes for papers left there by men of wit: but it is no jest to affirm, that the cabinets of the sick, and the closets of the dead, have been broke open and ransacked to publish our private letters, and divulge to all mankind the most secret sentiments and intercourse of friendship. Nay, these fellows are arrived to that height of impudence, that, when the author has publickly disowned a spurious piece, they have disputed his own name with him in printed advertisements; which has been practised to Mr Congreve and Mr Prior.

*

We are therefore compelled, in respect to truth, to submit to a very great hardship; to own such pieces, as in our stricter judgments we would have suppressed for ever: we are obliged to confess, that this whole collection, in a manner, consists of what we not only thought unlikely to reach the future, but unworthy even of the present age; not our stu

* Johnson justly remarks, that, in this overstrained and clamorous complaint, violations of property are said to be committed for the sake of letters and manuscripts, which are rarely attempted to obtain treasures of much greater commercial value.