Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/192

184 aside all regards, not only of Christianity, but common truth and justice; one who is dead to all sense of shame, and seems to be past the getting or losing of a reputation, should, with so many advantages, and upon so unlimited a subject, come out with so poor, so jejune a production. Should we pity, or be amazed at so perverse a talent, which, instead of qualifying an author to give a new turn to old matter, disposes him quite contrary to talk in an old beaten trivial manner upon topicks wholly new? to make so many sallies into pedantry without a call, upon a subject the most alien, and in the very moments he is declaiming against it, and in an age too, where it is so violently exploded, especially among those readers he proposes to entertain?

I know it will be said, that this is only to talk in the common style of an answerer; but I have not so little policy. If there were any hope of reputation or merit from such victory, I should be apt, like others, to cry up the courage and conduct of an enemy. Whereas to detect the weakness, the malice, the sophistry, the falsehood, the ignorance of such a writer, requires little more than to rank his perfections in such an order, and place them in such a light, that the commonest reader may form a judgment of them.

It may still be a wonder how so heavy a book, written upon a subject in appearance so little instructive or diverting, should survive to three editions, and consequently find a better reception than is usual with such bulky spiritless volumes; and this, in an age, that pretends so soon to be nauseated with what