e divided as well as popish missionaries.
However, one _Esdras_, an apothecary, as he qualifies himself, has
published a piping-hot pamphlet against Mr. Pope's '_Rape of the Lock_,'
which he entitles '_A Key to the Lock_,' wherewith he pretends to unlock
nothing less than a _plot_ carried on by Mr. Pope in that poem against
the last and this present ministry and government."

He observes on _Sermons_,--"'Tis not much to be questioned, but of all
modern pamphlets what or wheresoever, the _English stitched Sermons_ be
the most edifying, useful, and instructive, yet they could not escape
the critical Mr. Bayle's sarcasm. He says, 'Republique des Lettres,'
March, 1710, in this article _London_, 'We see here sermons swarm daily
from the press. Our eyes only behold manna: are you desirous of knowing
the reason? It is, that the ministers being allowed to _read_ their
sermons in the pulpit, _buy all they meet with_, and take no other
trouble than to read them, and thus pass for very able scholars at a
very cheap rate!'"

He now begins more directly the history of pamphlets, which he branches
out from four different etymologies. He says, "However foreign the word
_Pamphlet_ may appear, it is a genuine English word, rarely known or
adopted in any other language: its pedigree cannot well be traced higher
than the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. In its first state
wretched must have been its appearance, since the great linguist John
Minshew, in his '_Guide into Tongues_,' printed in 1617, gives it the
most miserable character of which any libel can be capable. Mr. Minshew
says (and his words were quoted by Lord Chief Justice Holt), 'A
PAMPHLET, that is _Opusculum Stolidorum_, the diminutive performance of
fools; from [Greek: pan], _all_, and [Greek: pletho], I _fill_, to wit,
_all_ places. According to the vulgar saying, all things are full of
fools, or foolish things; for such multitudes of pamphlets, unworthy of
the very names of libels, being more vile than common shores and the
filth of beggars, and being flying papers daubed over and besmeared with
the foams of drunkards, are tossed far and near into the mouths and
hands of scoundrels; neither will the sham oracles of Apollo be esteemed
so mercenary as a Pamphlet.'"

Those who will have the word to be derived from PAM, the famous knave of
LOO, do not differ much from Minshew; for the derivation of the word
_Pam_ is in all probability from [Greek: pan], _all_; or the _