Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/186

134 I am confident to have included and exhausted all, that human imagination can rise or fall to. Particularly, I recommend to the perusal of the learned, certain discoveries, that are wholly untouched by others; whereof I shall only mention, among a great many more, my new help for smatterers, or the art of being deep-learned, and shallow-read. A curious invention about mouse-traps. A universal rule of reason, or every man his own carver; together with a most useful engine for catching of owls. All which, the judicious reader will find largely treated on, in the several parts of this discourse.

I hold myself obliged to give as much light as is possible, into the beauties and excellencies of what I am writing: because it is become the fashion and humour most applauded, among the first authors of this polite and learned age, when they would correct the ill-nature of critical, or inform the ignorance of courteous readers. Besides, there have been several famous pieces lately published, both in verse and prose, wherein, if the writers had not been pleased, out of their great humanity and affection to the publick, to give us a nice detail of the sublime and the admirable they contain, it is a thousand to one, whether we should ever have discovered one grain of either. For my own particular, I cannot deny, that whatever I have said upon this occasion, had been more proper in a preface, and more agreeable to the mode, which usually directs it thither. But I here think fit to lay hold on that great and honourable privilege, of being the last writer; I claim an absolute authority in right, as the freshest modern, which gives me a despotick power over all authors before me. In the strength of