BOOK X.

IN WHICH THE HISTORY GOES FORWARD ABOUT TWELVE

HOURS.

VOL. II.

G

CONTAINING

CHAPTER I.

INSTRUCTIONS VERY NECESSARY ΤΟ BE
PERUSED BY MODERN CRITICS.

READER, it is impossible we should know what sort of person thou wilt be; for, perhaps, thou mayst be as learned in human nature as Shakespeare himself was, and, perhaps, thou mayst be no wiser than some of his editors. Now lest this latter should be the case, we think proper, before we go any farther together, to give thee a few wholesome admonitions; that thou mayst not as grossly misunderstand and misrepresent us, as some of the said editors have misunderstood and misrepresented their author.

First, then, we warn thee not too hastily to condemn any 100 ut be

of the incidents in this our history, as impertinent and
foreign to our main design, because thou dost not immedi-
ately conceive in what manner such incident may conduce to to?
that design. This work may, indeed, be considered as a
great creation of our own; and for a little reptile of a
critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts,
without knowing the manner in which the whole is connected,
and before he comes to the final catastrophe, is a most
presumptuous absurdity. The allusion and metaphor we have
here made use of, we must acknowledge to be infinitely too
great for our occasion; but there is, indeed, no other which
is at all adequate to express the difference between an
author of the first rate, and a critic of the lowest.

Another caution we would give thee, my good reptile, is that thou dost not find out too near a resemblance between

y too lions Icertain characters here introduced; as for instance, between semblance y

Characters

Ene talenty,

3- do but condem a clariter as a tod Fre became it is

not perfecty good.

the landlady who appears in the seventh book, and her in
the ninth. Thou art to know, friend, that there are certain.
characteristics, in which most individuals of every profession

and occupation agree. To be able to preserve these

characteristics, and at the same time to diversify their
operations, is one talent of a good writer. Again, to mark
the nice distinction between two persons actuated by the
same vice or folly, is another; and as this last talent is
found in very few writers, so is the true discernment of it
found in as few readers; though, I believe, the observation
of this forms a very principal pleasure in those who are
capable of the discovery; every person, for instance, can
distinguish between Sir Epicure Mammon, and Sir Fopling
Flutter; but to note the difference between Sir Fopling
Flutter and Sir Courtly Nice, requires a more exquisite
judgment; for want of which, vulgar spectators of plays very
often do great injustice in the theatre; where I have sometimes
known a poet in danger of being convicted as a thief, upon
much worse evidence than the resemblance of hands hath
been held to be in the law. In reality, I apprehend every
amorous widow on the stage would run the hazard of being
condemned as a servile imitation of Dido, but that happily
very few of our playhouse critics understand enough of Latin
to read Virgil.

In the next place, we must admonish thee, my worthy
friend, (for, perhaps, thy heart may be better than thy head,)
not to condemn a character as a bad one, because it is not
perfectly a good one. If thou dost delight in these models
of perfection, there are books enow written to gratify thy
taste; but as we have not, in the course of our conversation,
ever happened to meet with any such person, we have not
chosen to introduce any such here. To say the truth, I a
little question whether mere man ever arrived at this
consummate degree of excellence, as well as whether there
hath ever existed a monster bad enough to verify that