Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/190

138 have forgot) consisted in certain admirable rules about the wearing of their coats; in the perusal whereof, the two brothers, at every period, duly comparing the doctrine with the practice, there was never seen a wider difference between two things; horrible, downright transgressions of every point. Upon which they both resolved, without farther delay, to fall immediately upon reducing the whole, exactly after their father's model.

But, here it is good to stop the hasty reader, ever impatient to see the end of an adventure, before we writers can duly prepare him for it. I am to record, that these two brothers began to be distinguished at this time, by certain names. One of them desired to be called MARTIN, and the other took the appellation of JACK. These two had lived in much friendship and agreement, under the tyranny of their brother Peter, as it is the talent of fellow-sufferers to do; men in misfortune, being like men in the dark, to whom all colours are the same: but when they came forward into the world, and began to display themselves to each other, and to the light, their complexions appeared extremely different; which the present posture of their affairs, gave them sudden opportunity to discover.

But, here the severe reader may justly tax me as a writer of short memory, a deficiency to which a true modern, cannot but, of necessity, be a little subject. Because, memory being an employment of the mind upon things past, is a faculty, for which the learned in our illustrious age, have no manner of occasion, who deal entirely with invention, and strike