Library / Literature & Fiction
A Tale of a Tub
- Pages
- about 167
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 3 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
A modeft Defence of the Proceedings of the Rabble in all Ages.
A Voyage into England, by a Perfon of Quality in Terra Auftralis
incognita, tranflated from the Original.
A Critical Effay upon the Art of Canting, Philofophically,
Phyfically, and Mufically confidered.
THOUGH the author has written a large Dedication, yet that being
addressed to a Prince whom I am never likely to have the honour of being
known to; a person, besides, as far as I can observe, not at all regarded
or thought on by any of our present writers; and I being wholly free from
that slavery which booksellers usually lie under to the caprices of
authors, I think it a wise piece of presumption to inscribe these papers
to your Lordship, and to implore your Lordship’s protection of them. God
and your Lordship know their faults and their merits; for as to my own
particular, I am altogether a stranger to the matter; and though
everybody else should be equally ignorant, I do not fear the sale of the
book at all the worse upon that score. Your Lordship’s name on the front
in capital letters will at any time get off one edition: neither would I
desire any other help to grow an alderman than a patent for the sole
privilege of dedicating to your Lordship.
I should now, in right of a dedicator, give your Lordship a list of your
own virtues, and at the same time be very unwilling to offend your
modesty; but chiefly I should celebrate your liberality towards men of
great parts and small fortunes, and give you broad hints that I mean
myself. And I was just going on in the usual method to peruse a hundred
or two of dedications, and transcribe an abstract to be applied to your
Lordship, but I was diverted by a certain accident. For upon the covers
of these papers I casually observed written in large letters the two
following words, DETUR DIGNISSIMO, which, for aught I knew, might contain
some important meaning.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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