A Tale of a Tub | Page 4

professed, and still continues, a peculiar malice.
It is not unlikely that, when your Highness will one day peruse what I am now writing,
you may be ready to expostulate with your governor upon the credit of what I here affirm,
and command him to show you some of our productions. To which he will answer--for I
am well informed of his designs--by asking your Highness where they are, and what is
become of them? and pretend it a demonstration that there never were any, because they
are not then to be found. Not to be found! Who has mislaid them? Are they sunk in the
abyss of things? It is certain that in their own nature they were light enough to swim upon
the surface for all eternity; therefore, the fault is in him who tied weights so heavy to their
heels as to depress them to the centre. Is their very essence destroyed? Who has
annihilated them? Were they drowned by purges or martyred by pipes? Who
administered them to the posteriors of -------. But that it may no longer be a doubt with
your Highness who is to be the author of this universal ruin, I beseech you to observe that
large and terrible scythe which your governor affects to bear continually about him. Be
pleased to remark the length and strength, the sharpness and hardness, of his nails and
teeth; consider his baneful, abominable breath, enemy to life and matter, infectious and
corrupting, and then reflect whether it be possible for any mortal ink and paper of this
generation to make a suitable resistance. Oh, that your Highness would one day resolve to
disarm this usurping maitre de palais of his furious engines, and bring your empire hors
du page.
It were endless to recount the several methods of tyranny and destruction which your
governor is pleased to practise upon this occasion. His inveterate malice is such to the
writings of our age, that, of several thousands produced yearly from this renowned city,
before the next revolution of the sun there is not one to be heard of. Unhappy infants!
many of them barbarously destroyed before they have so much as learnt their
mother-tongue to beg for pity. Some he stifles in their cradles, others he frights into
convulsions, whereof they suddenly die, some he flays alive, others he tears limb from
limb, great numbers are offered to Moloch, and the rest, tainted by his breath, die of a
languishing consumption.
But the concern I have most at heart is for our Corporation of Poets, from whom I am
preparing a petition to your Highness, to be subscribed with the names of one hundred
and thirty-six of the first race, but whose immortal productions are never likely to reach
your eyes, though each of them is now an humble and an earnest appellant for the laurel,
and has large comely volumes ready to show for a support to his pretensions. The
never-dying works of these illustrious persons your governor, sir, has devoted to
unavoidable death, and your Highness is to be made believe that our age has never
arrived at the honour to produce one single poet.
We confess immortality to be a great and powerful goddess, but in vain we offer up to her
our devotions and our sacrifices if your Highness's governor, who has usurped the
priesthood, must, by an unparalleled ambition and avarice, wholly intercept and devour

them.
To affirm that our age is altogether unlearned and devoid of writers in any kind, seems to
be an assertion so bold and so false, that I have been sometimes thinking the contrary
may almost be proved by uncontrollable demonstration. It is true, indeed, that although
their numbers be vast and their productions numerous in proportion, yet are they hurried
so hastily off the scene that they escape our memory and delude our sight. When I first
thought of this address, I had prepared a copious list of titles to present your Highness as
an undisputed argument for what I affirm. The originals were posted fresh upon all gates
and corners of streets; but returning in a very few hours to take a review, they were all
torn down and fresh ones in their places. I inquired after them among readers and
booksellers, but I inquired in vain; the memorial of them was lost among men, their place
was no more to be found; and I was laughed to scorn for a clown and a pedant, devoid of
all taste and refinement, little versed in the course of present affairs, and that knew
nothing of what had passed in the best companies of court and town. So that I can only
avow in general to your Highness that we do abound in learning and wit, but