Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/201

Rh of idleness, and it is the peculiar happiness of our noble age, to gather the fruit.

Now the method of growing wise, learned, and sublime, having become so regular an affair, and so established in all its forms; the number of writers must needs have increased accordingly, and to a pitch that has made it of absolute necessity for them, to interfere continually with each other. Besides, it is reckoned, that there is not at this present, a sufficient quantity of new matter left in nature, to furnish and adorn any one particular subject, to the extent of a volume. This I am told by a very skilful computer, who has given a full demonstration of it from rules of arithmetick.

This perhaps may be objected against by those, who maintain the infinity of matter, and therefore will not allow, that any species of it can be exhausted. For answer to which, let us examine the noblest branch of modern wit or invention, planted and cultivated by the present age, and which, of all others, has born the most and the fairest fruit. For, though some remains of it were left us by the ancients, yet have not any of those, as I remember, been translated or compiled into systems for modern use. Therefore we may affirm to our own honour, that it has, in some sort, been both invented, and brought to perfection by the same hands. What I mean, is, that highly celebrated talent among the modern wits, of deducing similitudes, allusions, and applications, very surprising, agreeable, and apposite from the pudenda of either sex, together with their proper uses. And truly, having observed how little invention bears any vogue, beside what is derived into these channels, I have sometimes had a Rh