Tale of a Tub. p. 109 Z---nds where’s the wonder of that? By G---- I saw a large House of Lime and Stone travel over Sea and Land. By G--- Gentlemen, I tell you nothing but Truth, and the Devil broil them eternally that will not believe me. If there is any Thing like this in our Language from the lewdest of our Stage-Writers, I give them over to MrCollier and the Reformers to do with them what they please. Yet I am inform’d these Florid Strokes came from the Pen of a Reverend Doctor, who has sollicited lately for a Deanery, and sets up mightily for a Refiner of our Tongue, which he would adorn with some more such graces of Speech; as, Preface, p. 21. Lord, what a Filthy Croud is here; Bless me! what Devil has rak’d this Rabble together; Z---nds, what squeezing is this! A Plague confound you for an overgrown Sloven? Who in the Devil’s Name, I wonder, helps to make up the Crowd half so much as your self? Don’t you consider with a Pox, that you take up more room with that Carcass than any Five here? Bring your own Guts to a reasonable Compass, and be d—d. I tremble while I repeat such Stuff, which I defy any Man to match in any Language, Dead or Living, Pagan or Christian; and yet this is the Eloquence, as is pretended, of a sound Orthodox Divine; one of the Champions of our Church, and the design’d Chairman of a new Academy to reform and improve our Stile. I shall only add here another Flower in p. 101. If you fail hereof G—— damn you and yours to all Eternity, says the same Reverend Author, whose Works on some other Occasion I shall examine, as to their Divinity, Piety, and other Merit, that the World may see on what Foot that Author has establish’d his Fame, and how judiciously a Man of his Cloth made himself first known to the World. Whether the late Examiner, the Miscellanies in Prose and Verse publish’d by Morphew, and some more such Political and Pious Productions, did not come from the same Hand, I shall not determine. They are generally said to be written by the same Person, and how nearly related that Person is to our Letter Writer, is as well known as that he is a Doctor of Divinity, and hopes to make his Fortune by Preferments in that Church of which he is so bright an Ornament, as appears by what has been already quoted; by which one may perceive, how well qualify’d he is to form Schemes, for the refining of our Tongue, and the Advancement of Religion; of both which he has written. The latter does not come under Consideration so naturally in this Discourse as it will in another, and therefore it shall be deferr’d till such an Opportunity offers. Perhaps Our Elegant Writer will pretend to justify these Innovations in our Speech, for which the best Critick upon him would be my Lord Chief Justice, by the Example of our Modern Poets, and the Oaths and Curies of the Stage, where I never heard any thing so very Lewd, in Defyance of our Religion, Laws, and whatever is held Sacred by Christians, and Protestants. If he had a hand in the Conduct of the Allies, the Remarks, and other such Factious Papers, as is reported, and he never once thought fit to disown, being more Proud of the Honour done him in it, than asham’d of the Falshood and Scandal of those Libels, it is no strange Matter that a Man of such a Conscience should do or write any Thing; Cursing and Swearing being not so bad as the Robberies that Libeller has committed on the good Name of the best and greatest Men of this Age and Nation.
The merriest part of the Project he has been hatching, for an English Academy to bring our Tongue to his pitch of Perfection, is that he has assign’d, that Task to the Tories, whose Wit have so distinguish’d them in all Times. If there had ever been a Man among ’em who had a right Notion of Letters or Language, who had any relish of Politeness, it had been something. But as there never was one, unless it were two or three Apostate Whigs who had been bred up by the Charity of those Friends they deserted, that had any smattering of Learning, except in Pedantry, nor Tast of any Books but Eikon Basilike, and the Thirtieth of January Sermons; ’tis amazing that he shou’d be so foolish as to fancy, that Learning which always goes by the Stile of Common-wealth, would submit to the Arbitary Government of an Ignorant and Tyrannical Faction. Nor is it at all strange, that those, who by their Practices and Principles, have for above Fourscore Years been doing their utmost to Enslave us, shou’d always have a Contempt for Wit and Eloquence, which ever have been the Friends of Reason and Liberty.
Whoever reads the Thirty Fifth Chapter of Longinus will find, that ’tis impossible for a Tory to succeed in Eloquence, and that if they cannot impose so far on Men’s Understandings, as to make Fustian pass for Oratory, their Project of an Academy, will be as Chimerical as if they shou’d flatter us with a Trade and Settlements in the Moon. The Reader will not be displeas’d, to see what the Ancients thought of the Capacity of Men of such Principles in Matters of Eloquence, and let a long Experience among us, prove the right Judgment the Philosopher in Longinus made of them 1500 Years ago. He is treating of the Causes of the Decay of Humane Wit; I can never enough admire, said he, how it came to pass, that there are so many Orators in our Times, and so few of ’em rise very high in the Sublime; so Steril are our Wits now a Days; is it not, continues he, because what is generally said of Free Governments, that they nourish and form great Genius’s is true? especially, since almost all the Famous Orators that ever flourish’d and liv’d died with them? Indeed, can there be anything that raises the Souls of Great Men more than Liberty; any thing which can more powerfully excite and awaken in us that Sentiment of Nature which provokes us to Emulation, and the glorious desire of seeing our selves advanc’d above others? Add to this, that the Rewards propos’d in such Governments, whet and perfectly Polish the Orators Wit and make ’em cultivate the Talents Nature has given them; insomuch, that we see the Liberty of their Country shine in their Orations. He goes on, but as for us, who were early taught to endure the Yoke of Domination, and have been, as it were, wrapt up in the Customs and Ways of Arbitrary Rule; who in a Word, never tasted that living and Flowing Spring of Eloquence and Liberty; we commonly, instead of Orators, become pompous Flatterers, for which reason, I believe a Man Born in Servitude, may be capable of other Sciencies, but no Slave can ever be an Orator, since when the Mind is depress’d and broken by Slavery, it will never dare to think, or say any thing bold. All its Vigour evaporates of it self, and it remains always as in Bonds; in short, to make use of Homer’s Expression.
The Day that makes a Free Born Man a Slave,
Robs him of half his Vertue.
It is observable, that Boileau has no manner of remark on all this Passage; it wou’d not have agreed with his Pension, from his Master the French King, to have said a Word in praise of it, nor with his Conscience to have condemn’d it; but Dacier, who had a Hugonot Education, observes speaking of Liberty, shining in the Orations of Orators living in Free States, that as those Men are their own Masters, their Mind us’d to this Independence, produces nothing but what has the Marks of that Liberty, which is the Principal Aim of all their Actions.
Now what a Friend the Letter writer, is to Liberty, we may see in the Examiner of the 26th of April, 1711, which, tho’, it may be he did not Write himself, whatever some People say to the contrary, he and his Party have sufficiently own’d to make them accountable for every Word in that and the rest of them. The reason why Publick Injuries are so seldom redress’d is for want of Arbitrary Power, he calls it Discretionary; ’tis true, and if I have wrong’d him, by putting Arbitrary in its Place; I ask his Pardon.—
Having said thus much of his Party in general, I might descend to Particulars, and examine the sufficiency of the Characters of his Academicians, a List of them being handed up and down, in which the Author is not forgot. It is set off with Names that must not be repeated, and amongst the rest are a Doctor or two, two or three Poets and Tell Tales, and that Learned and Facetious Person Mr. D——ny, whose very Name gives unspeakeable Hopes of the Progress of such a Society, in refining our Language, which he and most of his Brethren are so great Masters of, that if twenty of the List will oblige us with as many Lines of Common Sense and Common Grammar, I will be bound to read every thing that shall be publish’d by this Famous Academy, that is to be or under their Auspices, tho’ I had much rather change that Pennance for Ogilby and Blome. To give us the better Idea of his Scheme, he has consulted with very Judicious Persons; we may judge of what truth there is in his Panegyricks, by that of the deceas’d Examiner on himself; where he says, he had written with so much Reputation, and so much to the Confusion of the Whigs, that they themselves have a Value for his Person and Abilities, tho they have an Aversion to his Cause. Of the same size, I doubt not, are the able and judicious Persons he has consulted about his Design, which must be own’d to be very good in it self, and capable of such Improvement as wou’d make it one of the Glories of Her Majesty’s most Glorious Reign. But alas, he will never have the Honour of it. A Noble Lord, on whom he has written Libels and Encomiums, was the first that thought of such a thing, and some Years since nam’d forty Gentlemen to be Members of an Academy, on a Foundation refining on the French of which Number I am very well satisfy’d, not a Man of his most Illustrious Band wou’d ever have been, and that tho’ he is so generous as to promise the Whigs that they shall come in if they will, he must look ’em out better Company, or his Academy will have the Glory of this great Work to themselves. Indeed the way is prepar’d for them to Immortality, two English Grammars having been publish’d within this Twelvemonth, and it remains to him and his Fraternity, to add a Dictionary worthy those Immortal Labours; for which, there are not a Set of Men in England better qualify’d, and so equal to so honourable a Task.
One wou’d think, that towards advancing this Scheme, all the Literati of this Kingdom had sent their Powers to Him. That all the Whigs as well as Tories had entrusted him with their Proxies; for he says I do here in the Name of all the Learned and Polite Persons of the Nation complain, &c. Whereas whatever has been brag’d by him in other Papers of the Nine in Ten, being on his side for the Land and Church Interest, not nine in a thousand will trust him with that of Wit. And I do here in the Name of all the Whigs, protest against all and every thing done or to be done in it, by him or in his Name; being a Person with whom they will have no manner of Dealings, as he very well knows, or they might now have had him Scribbling for them as well as when that Discourse was written of the Contests and Dissentions of the Nobles and Commons in Athens and Rome, wherein it is said, ’tis agreed, that in all Governments there is an absolute unlimited Power which naturally and originally seems to be plac’d in the People in the whole Body; wherever the Executive part lies; again, this unlimited Power plac’d fundamentally in the Body of a People, &c. and that he wrote better then than he has done since is not to be wonder’d at, if there is any truth in what Longinus’s Philosopher says.
It would be a poor Triumph to convict him of an Error in History 1700 Years ago, where he tells us, That Cæsar never attempted this Island; no Conquest was ever attempted till the Time of Claudius, since I do not find that he or his Brethren have any Notion at all that Truth is necessary in History: For they deny what was done Yesterday, as frankly as if it had been in Julius Cæsar’s Time; yet he himself has been sometimes forc’d to confess the Power of Truth, and pay Allegiance to it; as where he says, the great Reason of the Corruption of the Roman Tongue was the changing their Government into Tyranny, which ruined the Study of Eloquence; and because the Whigs shall have a Share in it, he adds, and their calling in the Palatines, their giving several Towns in Germany the Freedom of the City. A very pleasant Reason that; for when the Roman Language was in the height of its Purity in the Augustan Age, the Cities of Asia and Africk were admitted to that Privilege, as much as the Europeans were afterwards; and yet it cannot be pretended the Moors were naturally more Polite than the Germans. It is plain therefore this was a Party Stroke in favour of the Naturalization Act, to shew what Inconveniences it hinders by preventing Foreigners coming among us to debauch our Stile, as may be seen by the prodigious Number of Dutch Words that K. William brought with him into England.