may gnaw the bones. This I understand for a more generous proceeding, than to turn the company's stomach, by inviting them again to-morrow, to a scurvy meal of scraps.

If the reader fairly considers the strength of what I have advanced in the foregoing section, I am convinced it will produce a wonderful revolution in his notions and opinions; and he will be abundantly better prepared, to receive and to relish, the concluding part of this miraculous treatise.

Readers

may be divided into three classes, the superficial, the ignorant, and the learned: and I have, with much felicity fitted my pen to the genius and advantage of each. The superficial reader, will be strangely provoked to laughter: which clears the breast and the lungs, is sovereign against the spleen, and the most innocent of all diureticks. The ignorant reader, between whom and the former, the distinction is extremely nice, will find himself disposed to stare; which is an admirable remedy for ill eyes, serves to raise and enliven the spirits, and wonderfully helps perspiration. But the Jeader truly learned, chiefly for whose benefit I wake when others sleep, and sleep when others wake, will here find sufficient matter to employ his speculations, for the rest of his life. It were much to be wished, and I do here humbly propose for an experiment, that every prince in Christendom will take seven of the deepest schoJars in his dominions, and shut them up close for seven years, in seven chambers, with a command to write seven ample commentaries, on this comprehensive discourse. I shall venture to affirm, that whatever difference may be found in their several conjectures, they will be all, without the least distortion, manifestly deducible from the text.

Mean

time, it is my earnest request, that so useful an undertaking may be entered upon, if their majesties

please, with all convenient speed; because I have a strong inclination, before I leave the world, to taste a blessing, which we mysterious writers can seldom reach, till we have gotten into our graves : whether it is, that fame, being a fruit grafted on the body, can hardly grow, and much less ripen, till the stock is in the earth: or, whether she be a bird of prey, and is lured, among the rest, to pursue after the scent of a carcase: or whether she conceives her trumpet sounds best and farthest, when she stands on a tomb, by the advantage of a rising ground, and the echo of a hollow vault.

*

It is true, indeed, the republick of dark authors, after they once found out this excellent expedient of dying, have been peculiarly happy in the variety, as well as extent of their reputation. For, Night being the universal mother of things, wise philosophers hold all writings to be fruitful, in the proportion they are dark; and therefore, the true illuminated (that is to say, the darkest of all) have met with such numberless commentators, whose scholastick midwifery has delivered them of meanings, that the authors themselves perhaps never conceived, and yet may very justly be allowed the lawful parents of them ; the words of such writers being like seed, which, however scattered at random, when they light upon a fruitful ground, will mul

*It should be, in the proportion that they are dark :' or, in proportion as they are dark :' or, still better, in proportion to their darkness.' S.

A name of the Rosicrucians. MS. Pate. These were Fanatick alchemists, who in search after the great secret bad invented a means altogether proportioned to their end: it was a kind of theological philosophy, made up of almost equal mixtures of Pagan platonism, Christian quietism, and the Jewish cabbala. Warburton on the Rape of the Lock. H.

Nothing is more frequent than for commentators to force interpretations, which the author never meant,

H.

fiply far beyond either the hopes or imagination of

the sower.

And therefore, in order to promote so useful a work, I will here take leave to glance a few innuendoes, that may be of great assistance to those sublime spirits, who shall be appointed to labour in a universal comment, upon this wonderful discourse. And first*, I have couched a very profound mystery in the number of O's multiplied by seven, and divided by nine. Also, if a devout brother of the rosy cross, will pray fervently for sixty-three mornings with a lively faith, and then transpose certain letters and syllables, according to prescription in the second and fifth Section; they will certainly reveal into a full receipt of the opus magnum. Lastly, whoever will be at the pains to calculate the whole number of each letter in this treatise, and sum up the difference exactly between the several numbers, assigning the true natural cause for every such difference; the discoveries in the product, will plentifully reward his labour. But then he must beware of Bythus and Sigé †, and be sure not to forget the qualities of Achamoth; à cujus lacrymis humecta prodit substantia, à risu lucida, à tristitia, et à

*This is what the Cabbalists among the Jews have done with the Pible, and pretend to find wonderful mysteries by it. Original.

I was told by an eminent divine, whom I consulted on this point, that these two barbarous words, with that of Achamoth, and its qualities, as here set down, are quoted from Irenæus. This he discovered by searching that ancient writer for another quotation of our author, which he has placed in the title-page, and refers to the book and chapter; the curious were very inquisitive, whether those barbarous words, basyma cacabasa, &c. are really in Irenæus, and upon inquiry, it was found they were a sort of cant or jargon of certain hereticks, and therefore very properly prefixed to such 2. a book as this of our author. W. WOTTON.

timore mobilis; wherein Eugenius Philalethes * hath committed an unpardonable mistake.

SECT. XI.

A TALE OF A TUB.

AFTER SO wide a compass as I have wandered, I do now gladly overtake, and close in with my subject, and shall henceforth hold on with it an even pace to the end of my journey, except some beautiful prospect appears within sight of my way; whereof though at prefent I have neither warning nor expectation, yet upon such an accident, come when it will, I shall beg my reader's favour and company, allowing me to conduct him through it along with myself. For, in writing, it is, as in travelling; if a man is in haste to be at home, (which I acknowledge to be none of my case, having never so little business as when I am there) and his horse be tired with long riding, and ill ways, or naturally a jade, I advise him clearly to make the straightest and the commonest road, be it ever so

*To the treatise mentioned above, p. 118, called Anthroposophia Theomagica, there is, another annexed, called Anima magica abscondita, written by the same author, Vaughan, under the name of Eugenius Philalethes, but in neither of those treatises is there any mention of Achamoth, or its qualities, so that this is nothing but amusement, and a ridicule of dark, unin telligible writers; only the words, à cujus lacrymis, &c. are, as we have said, transcribed from Irenæus, though I know not from what part. I believe one of the author's designs was to set curious men a hunting through indexes, and inquiring for books out of the common road, W. WOTTON,

dirty but then surely we must own such a man to be a scurvy companion at best; he spatters himself and his fellow travellers at every step all their thoughts, and wishes, and conversation, turn intirely upon the subject of their journey's end; and at every splash and plunge, and stumble, they heartily wish one another at the devil.

On the other side, when a traveller and his horse are in heart and plight; when his purse is full, and the day before him; he takes the road only where it is clean and convenient; entertains his company there as agreeably as he can; but, upon the first occasion, carries them along with him to every delightful scene in view, whether of art, of nature, or of both; and if they, chance to refuse, out of stupidity or weariness, let them jog on by themselves and be dn'd; he'll overtake them at the next town; at which arriving, he rides furiously through; the men, women, and children run out to gaze; a hundred noisy curs* run barking after him, of which if he honours the boldest with a lash of his whip, it is rather out of sport than revenge: but should some sourer mongrel dare too near an approach, he receives a salute on the chaps by an accidental stroke from the courser's heels, nor is any ground lost by the blow, which sends him yelping and limping home.

I now proceed to sum up the singular adventures of my renowned Jack; the state of whose dispósitions and fortunes the careful reader does, no doubt, most exactly remember, as I last parted with them in the conclusion of a former Section. Therefore his next care must be, from two of the foregoing, to extract a scheme of notions, that

By these are meant what the author, p. 100, calls, the true criticks. H.