Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 8.djvu/272

262 to be over free; because, when I began my collection, such kind of converse was almost in its infancy, till it was taken into the protection of my honoured patronesses at court, by whose countenance and sanction it has become a choice flower in the nosegay of wit and politeness.

Some will perhaps object, that when I bring my company to dinner, I mention too great a variety of dishes, not always consistent with the art of cookery, or proper for the season of the year; and part of the first course mingled with the second; beside a failure in politeness by introducing a black pudding to a lord's table, and at a great entertainment: but, if I had omitted the black pudding, I desire to know what would have become of that exquisite reason given by miss Notable for not eating it; the world perhaps might have lost it for ever, and I should have been justly answerable for having left it out of my collection, I therefore cannot but hope, that such hypercritical readers will please to consider, my business was to make so full and complete a body of refined sayings as compact as I could; only taking care to produce them in the most natural and probable manner, in order to allure my readers into the very substance and marrow of this most admirable and necessary art.

I am heartily sorry, and was much disappointed to find, that so universal and polite an entertainment as cards has hitherto contributed very little to the enlargement of my work. I have sat by many hundred times with the utmost vigilance, and my tablebook ready, without being able, in eight hours, to gather matter for one single phrase in my book. But this, I think, may be easily accounted for,