e will
take this enormous grievance into his most modern consideration; and if
it should so happen that the furniture of an ass in the shape of a
second part must for my sins be clapped, by mistake, upon my back, that
he will immediately please, in the presence of the world, to lighten me
of the burden, and take it home to his own house till the true beast
thinks fit to call for it.

In the meantime, I do here give this public notice that my resolutions
are to circumscribe within this discourse the whole stock of matter I
have been so many years providing. Since my vein is once opened, I am
content to exhaust it all at a running, for the peculiar advantage of
my dear country, and for the universal benefit of mankind. Therefore,
hospitably considering the number of my guests, they shall have my
whole entertainment at a meal, and I scorn to set up the leavings in
the cupboard. What the guests cannot eat may be given to the poor, and
the dogs under the table may gnaw the bones.[180] This I understand for
a more generous proceeding than to turn the company's stomachs by
inviting them again to-morrow to a scurvy meal of scraps.

If the reader fairly considers the strength of what I have advanced in
the foregoing section, I am convinced it will produce a wonderful
revolution in his notions and opinions, and he will be abundantly
better prepared to receive and to relish the concluding part of this
miraculous treatise. Readers may be divided into three classes, the
superficial, the ignorant, and the learned, and I have with much
felicity fitted my pen to the genius and advantage of each. The
superficial reader will be strangely provoked to laughter, which clears
the breast and the lungs, is sovereign against the spleen, and the most
innocent of all diuretics. The ignorant reader (between whom and the
former the distinction is extremely nice) will find himself disposed to
stare, which is an admirable remedy for ill eyes, serves to raise and
enliven the spirits, and wonderfully helps perspiration. But the reader
truly learned, chiefly for whose benefit I wake when others sleep, and
sleep when others wake, will here find sufficient matter to employ his
speculations for the rest of his life. It were much to be wished, and I
do here humbly propose for an experiment, that every prince in
Christendom will take seven of the deepest scholars in his dominions
and shut them up close for seven years in seven chambers, with a
command to w