digressions for filling up a treatise "that shall make a very comely
figure on a bookseller's shelf, there to be preserved neat and clean for
a long eternity, never to be thumbed or greased by students: but when
the fulness of time is come, shall happily undergo the trial of
purgatory in order to ascend the sky." He continues:--

"From such elements as these I am alive to behold the day, wherein
the corporation of authors can outvie all its brethren in the
guild. A happiness derived to us, with a great many others, from
our Scythian ancestors, among whom the number of pens was so
infinite that Grecian eloquence had no other way of expressing it
than by saying that in the regions of the north it was hardly
possible for a man to travel--the very air was so replete with
feathers."

The above is taken from the "Tale of a Tub" published in 1704, but never
directly owned by him. At the commencement of it he says that,

"Wisdom is a fox, who after long hunting will at last cost you the
pains to dig out; it is a cheese which, by how much the richer, has
the thicker, the homelier, and the coarser coat; and whereof to a
judicious palate the maggots are the best; it is a sack posset,
wherein the deeper you go you will find it the sweeter. Wisdom is a
hen, whose cackling we must value and consider, because it is
attended with an egg, but then, lastly, it is a nut, which unless
you choose with judgment may cost you a tooth, and pay you with
nothing but a worm."

He attacks indiscriminately the Pope, Luther, and Calvin. Of the first
he says--

"I have seen him, Peter, in his fits take three old high-crowned
hats, and clap them all on his head three story high, with a huge
bunch of keys at his girdle, and an angling rod in his left hand.
In which guise, whoever went to take him by the hand in the way of
salutation, Peter with much grace, like a well educated spaniel,
would present them with his foot; and if they refused his civility,
then he would raise it as high as their chaps, and give them a
damned kick in the mouth, which has ever since been called a
salute."

He also ridicules Transubstantiation, representing Peter as asking his
brothers to dine, and giving them a loaf of bread, and insisting that it
was mutton.

In the history of Martin Luther--a continuation of the "Tale of a Tub,"
he repre