fallen in with his genius, and might have been serviceable to many readers, who cannot enter into the abstruser parts of that difcourfe; but Optat ephippia bos piger: the dull, unwieldy, ill-fhaped ox would needs put on the furniture of a horse, not confidering he was born to labour, to plow the ground for the fake of fuperior beings, and that he has neither the shape, mettle, nor speed of that noble animal he would affect to perfonate.

It is another pattern of this answerer's fair dealing, to give us hints that the author is dead, and yet to lay the fufpicion upon fome-body, I know not who, in the country; to which can only be returned, that he is abfolutely mistaken in all his conjectures; and furely conjectures are, at best, too light a pretence to allow a man to affign a name in public. He condemns a book, and confequently the author, of whom he is utterly ignorant, yet at the same time fixes, in print, what he thinks a disadvantageous character upon those who never deferved it. A man, who receives a buffet in the dark, may be allowed to be vexed; but it is an odd kind

of

of revenge to go to cuffs in broad day with the first he meets, and lay the laft nights's injury at his door. And thus much for this difcreet, candid, pious, and ingenious

anfwerer.

How the author came to be without his papers, is a ftory not proper to be told, and of very little ufe, being a private fact. of which the reader would believe âs little, or as much, as he thought good. He had however a blotted copy by him, which he intended to have written over with many alterations, and this the publishers were well aware of, having put it into the bookfeller's preface, that they apprehended a furreptitious copy, which was to be altered, &c. This, though not regarded by readers, was a real truth, only the furreptitious copy was rather that, which was printed; and they made all the haste they could, which indeed was needlefs, the author not being at all prepared : but he has been told, the bookfeller was in much pain, having given a good fum of money for the copy.

In the author's original copy there were not so many chafms as appear in the

book;

book; and why fome of them were left, he knows not: had the publication been trusted to him, he would have made several corrections of paffages, against which nothing hath been ever objected. He would likewife have altered a few of thofe, that feem with any reason to be excepted against; but, to deal freely, the greatest number he should have left untouched, as never fufpecting it poffible any wrong interpretations could be made of them.

The author obferves, at the end of the book there is a discourse, called, a fragment; which he more wondered to fee in print, than all the reft; having been a most imperfect sketch, with the addition of a few loose hints, which he once lent a gentleman, who had defigned a discourse on somewhat the fame fubject; he never thought of it afterwards; and it was a fufficient furprize to fee it pieced up together, wholly out of the method and fcheme he had intended, for it was the ground-work of a much larger discourse; and he was forry to observe the materials fo foolishly employed.

There is one farther objection made by

thofe

those who have answered this book, as well as by fome others, that Peter is frequently made to repeat oaths and curses. Every reader obferves, it was neceffary to know that Peter did fwear and curfe. The oaths are not printed out, but only fuppofed; and the idea of an oath is not immoral, like the idea of a prophane or immodeft fpeech. A man may laugh at the popish folly of curfiug people to hell, and imagine them fwearing, without any crime; but lewd words, or dangerous opinions, though printed by halves, fill the reader's mind with ill ideas; and of these the author cannot be accufed. For the judicious reader will find, that the fevereft ftrokes of fatyr, in his book, are levelled against the modern cuftom of employing wit upon thofe topics, of which there is a remarkable inftance in the 1 56, 157th pages, as well as in feveral others, though perhaps once or twice expreffed in too free a manner, excufable only for the reasons already alledged. Some overtures have been made by a third hand to the bookfeller for the author's altering thofe paffages, which he thought might require

it:

it but it seems the bookfeller will not hear of any fuch thing, being apprehenfive it might spoil the fale of the book.

The author cannot conclude this apology without making this one reflection; that, as wit is the noblest and most useful gift of human nature, fo humour is the moft agreeable; and where these two enter far into the compofition of any work, they will render it always acceptable to the world. Now, the great part of those who have no fhare or taste of either, but by their pride, pedantry, and ill manners lay themselves bare to the lashes of both, think the blow is weak, because they are infenfible; and where wit hath any mixture of raillery, it is but calling it banter, and the work is done. This polite word of theirs was first borrowed from the bullies in White-Friers, then fell among the footmen, and at last retired to the pedants, by whom it is applied as properly to the productions of wit, as if I fhould apply it to Sir Ifaac Newton's mathematics: but, if this bantering, as they call it, be fo despiseable a thing, whence comes it to pass they have fuch a perpetual itch to

wards