In the mean time I do here give this public notice, that my resolutions are, to circumscribe within this discourse, the whole stock of matter I have been so many years providing. Since my vein is once opened, I am content to exhaust it all at a running, for the peculiar advantage of my dear country, and for the universal benefit of mankind. Therefore, hospitably considering the number of my guests, they shall have my whole entertainment at a meal; and I scorn to set up the leavings in the cupboard. What the guests cannot eat, may be given to the poor; and the dogs† under the table 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 diuretics. 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

By dogs, the author means common injudicious critics, as he explains it himself before in his Digression upon Critics.

enliven the spirits, and wonderfully helps perspiration. But the reader 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 scholars 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 republic 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 scholastic 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 multiply 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 dif

A name of the Rosicrucians. These were fanatic alchemists, who, in search after the great secret, had invented a means altoge ther 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.

This is what the cabbalists among the Jews have done with the Bible, and pretend to find wonderful mysteries by it.

ference, 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 solida, et à timore mobilis; wherein Eugenius Philalethes* hath committed an unpardonable mistake.

† 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 heretics, and therefore very properly prefixed to such a book as this of our author. W. WOTTON.

* Vid. Anima magica abscondita.

To the treatise mentioned above, p. 132, 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, unintelligible 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.

SECT. XI.

A TALE OF A TUB.

AFTER ER 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 present 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 be naturally a jade, I advise him clearly to make the straightest and the commonest road, be it ever so 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 entirely 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