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ral; for, the materials of panegyrick, being very in number, have been long since exhausted. For, as health is but one thing, and has been always the same, whereas diseases are by thousands, beside new and daily additions; so, all the virtues that have been ever in mankind, are to be counted upon a few fingers; but their follies and vices are innumerable, and time adds hourly to the heap. Now the utmost a poor poet can do, is to get by heart a list of the cardinal virtues, and deal them with his utmost liberality to his hero, or his patron: he may ring the changes as far as it will go, and vary his phrase till he has talked round: but the reader quickly finds it is all pork, with a little variety of sauce. For there is no inventing terms of art beyond our ideas; and, when our ideas are exhausted, terms of art must be so too.

But, though the matter for panegyrick were as fruitful as the topicks of satire, yet would it not be hard to find out a sufficient reason, why the latter will be always better received, than the first. For, this being bestowed only upon one, or a few persons at a time, is sure to raise envy, and consequently ill words from the rest, who have no share in the blessing: but satire, being levelled at all, is never resented for an offence by any, since every individual person makes bold to understand it of others, and very wisely removes his particular part of the burden upon the shoulders of the world, which are broad enough, and able to bear it. To this purpose, I have sometimes reflected upon the difference between Athens and England, with respect to the point before us. In the Attick

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commonwealth, it was the privilege and birthright of every citizen and poet to rail aloud, and in publick, or to expose upon the stage, by name, any person they pleased, though of the greatest figure, whether a Creon, an Hyperbolus, an Alcibiades, or a Demosthenes: but, on the other side, the least reflecting word let fall against the people in general, was immediately caught up, and revenged upon the authors, however considerable for their quality or their merits. Whereas in England it is just the reverse of all this. Here, you may securely display your utmost rhetorick against mankind, in the face of the world; tell them, "That all are gone astray; that there is none that "doth good, no not one; that we live in the very "dregs of time; that knavery and atheism are "epidemick as the pox; that honesty is fled with "Astræa;" with any other common places, equally new and eloquent, which are furnished by the splendida bilis. And when you have done, the whole audience, far from being offended, shall return you thanks, as a deliverer of precious and useful truths. Nay farther; it is but to venture your lungs, and you may preach in Covent-Garden against foppery and fornication, and something else: against pride, and dissimulation, and bribery, at White-Hall: you may expose rapine and injustice in the inns of court chapel: and in a city pulpit, be as fierce as you please against avarice, hypocrisy, and extortion. "Tis but a bali bandied to and fro, and every man carries a racket about him, to strike it from himself, among the rest of

the company. But, on the other side, whoever should mistake the nature of things so far, as to drop but a single hint in publick, how such a one starved half the fleet, and half poisoned the rest: how such a one, from a true principle of love and honour, pays no debts but for wenches and play: how such a one has got a clap, and runs out of his estate: how Paris, bribed by Juno and Venus, loth to offend either party, slept out the whole cause on the bench: or, how such an orator makes long speeches in the senate with much thought, little sense, and to no purpose; whoever, I say, should venture to be thus particular, must expect to be imprisoned for scandalum magnatum; to have challenges sent him; to be sued for defamation; and to be brought before the bar of the house.

But I forget that I am expatiating on a subject, wherein I have no concern, having neither a talent nor an inclination for satire. On the other side, I am so entirely satisfied with the whole present procedure of human things, that I have been some years preparing materials towards A Panegyrick upon the World; to which I intended to add a second part, entitled, A modest Defence of the Proceedings of the Rabble in all Ages. Both these I had thoughts to publish, by way of Appendix to the following treatise; but finding my common-place book fill much slower than I had reason to expect, I have chosen to defer them to another occasion. Besides, I have been unhappily prevented in that design by a certain domestick misfortune, in the particulars whereof, though it would be very sea

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sonable, and much in the modern way, to inform the gentle reader, and would also be of great assistance towards extending this Preface into the size now in vogue, which by rule ought to be large in proportion as the subsequent volume is small; yet I shall now dismiss our impatient reader from any farther attendance at the porch; and, having duly prepared his mind by a preliminary discourse, shall gladly introduce him to the sublime mysteries, that ensue.