Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/187

Rh of which title, I do utterly disapprove and declare against that pernicious custom, of making the preface a bill of fare to the book. For I have always looked upon it as a high point of indiscretion in monster-mongers, and other retailers of strange sights, to hang out a fair large picture over the door, drawn after the life, with a most eloquent description underneath: this has saved me many a three-pence; for my curiosity was fully satisfied, and I never offered to go in, though often invited by the urging and attending orator, with his last moving and standing piece of rhetorick; Sir, upon my word, we are just going to begin. Such is exactly the fate at this time of prefaces, epistles, advertisements, introductions, prolegomenas, apparatuses, to the readers. This expedient was admirable at first; our great Dryden has long carried it as far as it would go, and with incredible success. He has often said to me in confidence, that the world would have never suspected him to be so great a poet, if he had not assured them so frequently in his prefaces, that it was impossible they could either doubt, or forget it. Perhaps it may be so; however, I much fear, his instructions have edified out of their place, and taught men to grow wiser in certain points, where he never intended they should; for it is lamentable to behold, with what a lazy scorn, many of the yawning readers of our age, do nowadays twirl over forty or fifty pages of preface and dedication (which is the usual modern stint) as if it were so much Latin. Though it must be also allowed on the other hand, that a very considerable number is known to proceed Rh