was writ, and a year or two after it was published. Nay, the answerer overthrows this himself; for he allows the tale was writ in 1697, and I think that pamphlet was not printed till many years after. It was necessary that corruption should have some allegory as well as the rest; and the author invented the properest he could, without inquiring what other people had written; and the commonest reader will find there is not the least resemblance between the two stories. The third instance is in these words: "I have been assured that the Battle in St. James' Library is, mutatis mutandis, taken out of a French book, entitled Combat des Livres, if I misremember not." In which passage there are two clauses observable, "I have been assured," and "if I misremember not." I desire first to know whether, if that conjecture proves an utter falsehood, those two clauses will be a sufficient excuse for this worthy critic. The matter is a trifle; but would he venture to pronounce at this rate upon one of greater moment? I know nothing more contemptible in a writer than the character of a plagiary, which he here fixes at a venture, and this not for a passage, but a whole discourse taken out from another book, only mutatis mutandis. The author is as much in the dark about this as the answerer, and will imitate him by an affirmation at random, that if there, be a word of truth in this

reflection, he is a paltry imitating pedant, and the answerer is a person of wit, manners, and truth. He takes his boldness from never having seen any such treatise in his life, nor heard of it before; and he is sure it is impossible for two writers of different times and countries to agree in their thoughts after such a manner, that two continued discourses shall be the same, only mutatis mutandis. Neither will he insist upon the mistake on the title; but let the answerer and his friend produce any book they please, he defies them to show one single particular where the judicious reader will affirm he has been obliged for the smallest hint, giving only allowance for the accidental encountering of a single thought, which he knows may sometimes happen, though he has never yet found it in that discourse, nor has heard. it objected by anybody else.

So that if ever any design was unfortunately executed, it must be that of this answerer, who, when he would have it observed that the author's wit is none of his own, is able to produce but three instances, two of them mere trifles, and all three manifestly false. If this be the way these gentlemen deal with the world in those criticisms where we have not leisure to defeat them, their readers had need be cautious how they rely upon their credit; and whether this proceeding can be reconciled to humanity or truth,

let those who think it worth their while deter

mine.

It is agreed this answerer would have succeeded much better if he had stuck wholly to his business as a commentator upon the Tale of a Tub, wherein it cannot be denied that he hath been of some service to the public, and has given very fair conjectures towards clearing up some difficult passages; but it is the frequent error of those men (otherwise very commendable for their labours) to make excursions beyond their talent and their office, by pretending to point out the beauties and the faults, which is no part of their trade, which they always fail in, which the world never expected from them, nor gave them any thanks for endeavouring at. The part of Minellius or Farnaby * would have fallen in with his genius, and might have been serviceable to many readers who cannot enter into the abstruser parts of that discourse; but optat ephippia bos piger, the dull, unwieldy, ill-shaped ox would needs put on the furniture of a horse, not considering he was born to labour, to plough the ground for the sake of superior beings, and that he has neither the shape, mettle, nor speed of that nobler animal he would affect to personate.

* Low commentators, who wrote notes upon classic authors for the use of schoolboys.-Hawkes.

It is another pattern of this answerer's fair dealing to give us hints that the author is dead, and yet to lay the suspicion upon somebody, I know not who, in the country; to which can only be returned, that he is absolutely mistaken in all his conjectures; and surely conjectures are at best too light a pretence to allow a man to assign a name in public. He condemns a book, and consequently the author, of whom he is utterly ignorant, yet at the same time fixes in print what he thinks a disadvantageous character upon those who never deserve it. A man who receives a buffet in the dark may be allowed to be vexed; but it is an odd kind of revenge to go to cuffs in broad day with the first that he meets, and lay the last night's injury at his door. And thus much for this discreet, candid, pious, and ingenious

answerer.

How the author came to be without his papers is a story not proper to be told, and of very little use, being a private fact, of which the reader would believe as little or as much as he thought good. He had, however, a blotted copy by him, which he intended to have written over with many alterations, and this the publishers were well aware of, having put it into the bookseller's preface that they apprehended a surreptitious copy, which was to be altered, &c. This, though not regarded by readers, was a

real truth, only the surreptitious copy was rather that which was printed; and they made all the haste they could, which indeed was needless, the author not being at all prepared; but he has been told the bookseller was in much pain, having given a good sum for the copy.

In the author's original copy there were not so many chasms as appear in the book; and why some of them were left he knows not: had the publication been trusted to him, he would have made several corrections of passages against which nothing hath ever been objected. He would likewise have altered a few of those that seem with any reason to be excepted against; but, to deal freely, the greatest number he should have left untouched, as never suspecting it possible any wrong interpretations could be made of them.

The author observes at the end of the book there is a discourse called A Fragment, which he more wondered to see in print than all the rest. Having been a most imperfect sketch, with the addition of a few loose hints which he once lent a gentleman who had designed a discourse of somewhat the same subject, he never thought of it afterwards, and it was sufficient surprise to see it pieced up together wholly out of the method and scheme he had intended; for it was the groundwork of a much