Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/234

182 stomach, by inviting them again to-morrow, to a scurvy meal of scraps.

If the reader fairly considers the strength of what I have advanced in the foregoing section, I am convinced it will produce a wonderful revolution in his notions and opinions; and he will be abundantly better prepared, to receive and to relish, the concluding part of this miraculous treatise. Readers may be divided into three classes, the superficial, the ignorant, and the learned: and I have, with much felicity, fitted my pen to the genius and advantage of each. The superficial reader, will be strangely provoked to laughter; which clears the breast and the lungs, is sovereign against the spleen, and the most innocent of all diureticks. The ignorant reader, between whom and the former, the distinction is extremely nice, will find himself disposed to stare; which is an admirable remedy for ill eyes, serves to raise and enliven the spirits, and wonderfully helps perspiration. But the reader truly learned, chiefly for whose benefit I wake when others sleep, and sleep when others wake, will here find sufficient matter to employ his speculations, for the rest of his life. It were much to be wished, and I do here humbly propose for an experiment, that every prince in Christendom will take seven of the deepest scholars in his dominions, and shut them up close for seven years, in seven chambers, with a command to write seven ample commentaries, on this comprehensive discourse. I shall venture to afiirm, that whatever difference may be found in their several conjectures, they will be all, without the least distortion, manifestly deducible from the text. Mean time, it is my earnest request, that so useful an dertaking