From such encouragement and helps, it is easy to guess to what a degree of perfection I might have brought this great work, had it not been nipped in the bud by some illiterate people in both Houses of Parliament, who envying the great figure I was to make in future ages, under pretence of raising money for the war,* have padlocked all those very pens that were to celebrate the actions of their heroes, by silencing at once the whole university of Grub Street. Iam persuaded that nothing but the prospect of an approaching peace could have encouraged them to make so bold a step. But suffer me, in the name of the rest of the matriculates of that famous university, to ask them some plain questions: Do they think that peace will bring along with it the golden age? Will there be never a dying speech of a traitor? Are Cethegus and Catiline turned so tame, that there will be no opportunity to cry about the streets, "ADangerous Plot?" Will peace bring such plenty that no gentleman will have occasion to go upon the highway, or break into a house? Iam sorry that the world should be so much imposed upon by the dreams of a false prophet, as to imagine the Millennium is at hand. O Grub Street! thou fruitful nursery of towering geniuses! How do I lament thy downfall? Thy ruin could never be meditated by any who meant well to English liberty. No modern lyceum will ever equal thy glory: whether in soft pastorals thou didst sing the flames of pampered apprentices and coy cook maids; or mournful ditties of departing lovers; or if to Maeonian strains thou raisedst thy voice, to record the stratagems, the arduous exploits, and the nocturnal scalade of needy heroes, the terror of your peaceful citizens, describing the powerful Betty or the artful Picklock, or the secret caverns and grottoes of Vulcan sweating at his forge, and stamping the queen's image on viler metals which he retails for beef and pots of ale; or if thou wert content in simple narrative, to relate the cruel acts of implacable revenge, or the complaint of ravished virgins blushing to tell their adventures before the listening crowd of city damsels, whilst in thy faithful history thou intermingledst the gravest counsels and the purest morals. Nor less acute and piercing wert thou in thy search and pompous descriptions of the works of nature; whether in proper and emphatic terms thou didst paint the blazing comet's fiery tail, the stupendous force of dreadful thunder and earthquakes, and the unrelenting inundations.
Sometimes, with Machiavelian sagacity, thou unravelledst intrigues of state, and the traitorous conspiracies of rebels, giving wise counsel to monarchs. How didst thou move our terror and our pity with thy passionate scenes between Jack Catch and the heroes of the Old Bailey? How didst thou describe their intrepid march up Holborn Hill? Nor didst thou shine less in thy theological capacity, when thou gavest ghostly counsels to dying felons, and didst record the guilty pangs of Sabbath breakers. How will the noble arts of John Overton's** painting and sculpture now languish? where rich invention, proper expression, correct design, divine attitudes, and artful contrast, heightened with the beauties of Clar. Obscur., embellished thy celebrated pieces, to the delight and astonishment of the judicious multitude! Adieu, persuasive eloquence! the quaint metaphor, the poignant irony, the proper epithet, and the lively simile, are fled for ever! Instead of these, we shall have, I know not what! The illiterate will tell the rest with pleasure.
* Act restraining the liberty of the press, etc.
** The engraver of the cuts before the Grub Street papers.
I hope the reader will excuse this digression, due by way of condolence to my worthy brethren of Grub Street, for the approaching barbarity that is likely to overspread all its regions by this oppressive and exorbitant tax. It has been my good fortune to receive my education there; and so long as I preserved some figure and rank amongst the learned of that society, I scorned to take my degree either at Utrecht or Leyden, though I was offered it gratis by the professors in those universities.
And now that posterity may not be ignorant in what age so excellent a history was written (which would otherwise, no doubt, be the subject of its inquiries), I think it proper to inform the learned of future times, that it was compiled when Louis XIV. was King of France, and Philip his grandson of Spain; when England and Holland, in conjunction with the Emperor and the Allies, entered into a war against these two princes, which lasted ten years, under the management of the Duke of Marlborough, and was put to a conclusion by the Treaty of Utrecht, under the ministry of the Earl of Oxford, in the year 1713.
Many at that time did imagine the history of John Bull, and the personages mentioned in it, to be allegorical, which the author would never own. Notwithstanding, to indulge the reader's fancy and curiosity, I have printed at the bottom of the page the supposed allusions of the most obscure parts of the story.
