d several times at the window to
allure the boys and the rabble: The trumpeter sounded often, and the
doorkeeper cried a hundred times till he was hoarse, that they were just
going to begin; yet after all, we were forced sometimes to wait an hour
before Punch himself in person made his entry.

But why this ceremony among old acquaintance? The world and he have long
known one another: Let him appoint his hour and make his visit, without
troubling us all day with a succession of messages from his laqueys and
pages.

With submission, these little arts of getting off an edition, do ill
become any author above the size of Marten[6] the surgeon. My Lord tells
us, that "many thousands of the two former parts of his History are in
the kingdom,"[7] and now he perpetually advertises in the gazette, that
he intends to publish the third: This is exactly in the method and style
of Marten: "The seventh edition (many thousands of the former editions
having been sold off in a small time) of Mr. Marten's book concerning
secret diseases," &c.

[Footnote 6: This is John Marten, the author of two treatises on the
gout, and a "Treatise of all the Degrees and Symptoms of the Venereal
Disease" (1708?-9). His notoriety brought on him the ire of a "licens'd
practitioner in physick and surgery," one J. Spinke, who, in a pamphlet
entitled "Quackery Unmask'd" (1709), dealt Marten some most uncourteous
blows. From the pamphlet, it is difficult to judge whether Spinke or
Marten were the greater quack; we should judge the former. Certainly
Marten deserves our sympathy, if only for Spinke's virulence. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 7: Page 26.]

Does his Lordship intend to publish his great volume by subscription,
and is this Introduction only by way of specimen? I was inclined to
think so, because, in the prefixed letter to Mr. Churchill, which
introduces this Introduction, there are some dubious expressions: He
says, "the advertisements he published were in order to move people to
furnish him with materials, which might help him to finish his work with
great advantage." If he means half-a-guinea upon the subscription, and
t'other half at the delivery, why does he not tell us so in plain terms?

I am wondering how it came to pass, that this diminutive letter to Mr.
Churchill should understand the business of introducing better than the
Introduction itself; or why the Bishop did not take it into his head to
send the former into the world some months before