THE

CANDID READER.

GREAT is the satisfaction I enjoy in beholding the daily and plentiful additions made to the commonwealth of letters by my contemporary writers. However, it is a pleasure of a very peculiar nature, and cannot be even conceived by any other person, if he doth not take the matter in the same light I do. I consider the whole body of writings, that have hitherto appeared in the world, of whatsoever kind, whether philosophical or poetical, historical or political, moral, theological, or critical; whether they be the performances of great wits or dunces, of the learned or illiterate, as one great community or republic of books, in which every individual performance hath its own place and use. As in a well-regulated commonwealth, consisting of men, there must be persons for all purposes, some to be treasurers, and others to be scavengers, some to be judges, and others to be hangmen; so in one of books, there ought to be some sublime and learned, others low and illiterate, some full of sense and life, others dull and stupid, some of a senatorial order, and some of a plebeian; because, all books being wrote, if I mistake not, in order to perusal, and all mankind being either obliged by duty, or moved by inclination, to peruse some kind of books or other, and there being such an infinite variety of tastes and capacities among men, prodigious numbers would be excluded from the great and delectable exercise of reading, were it not for the plentiful provision made, and laid in, by the writers of past and present times. We have now almost a competency of writings, calculated for all sorts of tastes, and all degrees of understanding. The plodding mathematician hath his Euclid or his Newton; the reader of fire and fancy hath his Lucan or his Milton; the sage politician, his Tacitus or Machiavel; the young ladies, their books of battles

and slaughter; the young gentlemen, their plays and novels; the honest farmer his Don Bellianis and Seven wise Masters; the gay have their comedies; the melancholy their tragedies; the morose, their satires; the flatterers, their panegyrics; the hasty precipitate reader hath his newspapers and duodecimos; the patient and laborious, his huge performances in folio. Give me a reader of ever so odd a turn, and I will give thee as odd a writer, who shall fit him as exactly as if nature had cut them out for each other. Nay, on the other hand, I will be bold to say, thou canst not shew me a writer, for whom I have not a reader ready, who shall tally with him, notch for notch, and nick for nick, from one end to the other.

Now, it is no way improbable that some who look upon their own minds as more refined than those of other men, may object to me the unreasonableness of being pleased to see such a number of ill tastes, indulged and fed by writings of a mean character, as they perhaps may call them, and so repugnant to right reason and nature.

But let those over nice persons consider what it is they are pleased to brand with such injurious appellations. Perhaps it is a romance, for instance, the renowned history of Valentine and Orson; which, upon a close scrutiny and calculation I find to be read by four persons, for one, who reads an Homer or a Newton. By what authority can this huge body of people, free, at least in these countries, and feared by the king of France, be deprived of their right to this delectable author? Or, with what assurance can a few supercilious critics take upon them to condemn their taste in this behalf?

Reason follows nature; and where is nature to be found, if not among those who are untainted with art, and unrefined by prejudices? If thou, O objector, whoever thou art, hast laboured to force nature, and acquire a certain luxury of taste, must thou presently take upon thee the office of a censor, and presume to reduce the world to thine own whimsical and formal way of thinking? Thou hast deviated from nature. It was study and art that taught thee to think in trammels, and reduced thee, from the boundless liberty of nature, to a parcel of dry rules concerning unity, uniformity, and probability. Surely, thou

must remember, that it was in schools and colleges thou learnedst these impertinences. The reader of Valentine and Orson is uneducated, that is, unprejudiced, and guided by nature alone to that amusing performance; and therefore thou doest ill to say his taste is unnatural. The books wherewith thou pleasest thyself, are of a nature so odd and out-of-the-way, that it is the work of a whole life to bring oneself to understand and relish them. They have certainly cracked thy brains, or thou couldest not be so absurd as to think them natural, merely because thou hast habituated thyself to them, or think of imposing a taste for them on others, who find a shorter and easier way to be pleased. Thou art like those wise people, who by forsaking nature, and reason too, have reduced themselves to such a pass, that they cannot take their breakfast till it is brought them from the Indies; whereas the reader of Valentine and Orson resembleth him, who findeth a pleasant and plentiful breakfast at home. Every particular class of readers is for giving rules to all the rest, and converting the whole world to their own opinions and tastes, because truly they cannot see the profit or pleasure of perusing those writings which others seem to be so entirely taken up with. The mathematician is utterly at a loss to understand the strange, and in his opinion, wild flights of Homer. The fire and imagination that break with such heat and lustre from that father of poetry, seem all frenzy and extravagance to his cold and sober understanding; nor is there any phenomenon in nature which he finds it so difficult to account for, as the surprising admiration with which his daring sallies and hair-brained fictions are attended to. It is amazing to him, that matters, which admit of no demonstration, should at all amuse or engage a reasonable creature, and gain such numbers of readers, imitators, and admirers in all ages and nations.

On the other hand, the poet, and in general, all readers of fire and fancy, are as much astonished at the strange infatuation of mathematical learning. They look upon it as a dry, but bewitching study, that engages, without giving pleasure, and draws on a whimsical sort of admirers, with hopes of discoveries which would render them famous, could they be made, and which nature hath hid from others,

but cannot conceal from the singular sagacity of their minds. The mathematician, if you will believe the poet, is the most stiff and conceited, the most enthusiastic and ignorant of all mankind; and his knowledge, if it may be called so, the most impertinent and useless.

The

Thus each unreasonably condemns the other. poet would propose the pleasures of imagination to persons who have none; and the mathematician again, is for estimating the poet's fire by his own ice. The same may be said of other readers, howsoever classed and distinguished. They admire their own, and condemn the studies of others; and a conceited spirit of proselytism reigns universally among them all.

Now, for my part, I am for giving toleration to all sorts of readers to indulge themselves uncensured and uncontrolled, in the perusal of all such writings as their various humours or tastes shall respectively dispose them to. There is no work made public, from the ponderous folio which cost a life in the composition, down to the daily journal, the child of half an hour, which doth not afford me a very sensible satisfaction, inasmuch as I look upon them all as new births to increase the commonwealth of letters, and new accessions to the treasury of reading. As on the one hand, I would not have the works of Homer, Plato, Paschal, Newton, or Berkley destroyed; so neither would I vote, that the lucubrations of Tom Brown, Durfey, Quarles, Forster, Morgan, Hucheson, or Drummond should perish. Let them live as long as they can, and enjoy their several sets of readers for ever, or for a winter, according as they calculate for duration; and let no man, nor set of men, pretend to condemn all such books, pamphlets, or ballads, as have not an imprimatur from them. As we freely live, so let us freely read. An universal caterer, either for head or stomach, would be the most absurd and unnatural of all tyrants.

I was led into these reflections by some extraordinary performances, which I have long admired, but lately heard condemned in a very arbitrary manner, as a silly and senseless sort of writings. The authors I am going to mention and justify, have many readers, and as many admirers, whose privilege of being instructed or diverted, as