POSTSCRIPT. I BEG pardon for giving my reader this irregular trouble, having omitted something of consequence in this affair. It is said that by the bill, which perhaps may be proposed to the Commons, his Majesty is to have the naming of the twenty-five hereditary Scottish Peers; that they are all to be named before the next session: but that if it should happen that any of the present sixteen should not be of the number of those not named by his Majesty, in such case the present temporary Peers are to remain Lords of parliament so long as this parliament subsists, and their hereditary successors are during that term to be withheld from what, it is proba ble, they may be more than a little desirous of, viz. a seat in the House of Peers. If this is to be the case, I beg leave to ask these two questions: The first is, Whether any of those Lords, who at present are of the House of Peers, will continue to be very easy company, when they shall find themselves excluded at the end of this parliament? For that some of them are to be excluded seems to be indisputable, if what is mentioned above is a right state of the case; for otherwise the sixteen might have been all declared here On Monday, April 6, 1719, the day on which the Fourth Plebeian was published, the Peerage Bill was reported in the House of Lords, and ordered for a third reading on the 14th: but when that day arrived, a noble Lord in a very high station observed, "That the bill had made a great noise, raised strange apprehensions; and since the design of it had been so misrepresented, and so misunderstood, that it was like to meet with great opposition in the other House, he thought it advisable to let that matter lie still, till a more proper opportunity:" and thereupon the third reading of the said bill was put off to that day fortnight. The bill, which was in consequence dropt for that session, was revived in December following, when Steele again figured away on the subject, as may be seen in page 381 et seq. Several also of the pamphlets relating to that affair, printed during the preceding session, were revived, and new ones printed; among these were, 1. "An account of the Conduct of the Ministry with relation to the Peerage Bill, in a Letter to a Friend in the Country." 2. Considerations on the Peerage Bill, addressed to the Whigs, by a Member of the Lower House." 3. "The Constitution explained; in relation to the Independency of the House of Lords; with Reasons for strengthening that Branch of the Legislature most liable to abuse; and an Answer to all the Objections made to the new-revived Peerage Bill." ditary, and his Majesty only left to add nine to the Scots, as he is six to the English. The next question I would ask is, Whether it is not very natural to think, that those Scottish Peers who are to be the hereditary successors of the present elective ones, will not be very pressing to be put in possession? Should both these points be allowed, as I believe they must, and likewise that the patrons of this project do not wish for anything so much as to be in the full enjoyment of this salutary scheme, then I will venture to affirm, that there is no one expedient to gratify the ardent desires of those gentlemen, to deliver them from the disquietude of those that are in, and from the importunity of those that are to come in, but the dissolution of this parliament. On the other hand; if this bill should not be offered to the House of Commons, or, if offered, should not pass, I leave every one to judge whether the present sixteen Scottish Peers will not be very solicitous of sitting out the remainder of the septennial term, to wear off the impressions which it is to be feared such an attempt as is talked of may have made upon the minds of their electors. t+t This day is published "The Occasional Paper, Vol. III. Numb. X. Of Genius." Printed for Em. Matthews, J. Roberts, &c., where may be had, the second edition of "The Occasional Paper, Vol. III. Numb. IX., of Plays and Masquerades." St. James's Post, March 29, 1719. THE READER. John Nichols' Preface to the Edition of 1789. "THE Reader was published in opposition to "The Examiner." The Lover and the Reader, first published together, as the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, in half sheets, were soon collected into one volume in 12mo, and a small number of them were printed in 8vo upon royal and demy paper to complete sets of the author's works. They are now republished with care and illustrations, in the same forms and with the same view. This step a consideration of the elegance and usefulness of Steele's writings and publications prompted, and will abundantly justify. With a more particular design, Steele assumed a very general title for his paper, that gave him a great latitude in the choice of his subjects, and left him at liberty to treat with propriety on any topic the productions of the press might supply or suggest for entertainment, correction, or instruction, in whatever way he judged requisite or expedient. The chief scope and design of this work, will best be discovered by a general account of the paper above-mentioned, to which it was directly opposed. For this purpose it may be sufficient to quote some passages from a more full and particular account given in the notes on the Tatler, to which the curious are referred for further satisfaction, and especially to the notes on the Tatler, in 6 vols. crown 8vo, edit. of 1786, No. 210, and No. 229. "The paper intituled, The Examiner, was an engine of state ad captandum vulgus, in the four last inglorious years of the reign of Queen Anne. It was employed occasionally, most commonly once, sometimes twice a week, to display the wisdom and blazon the integrity of her ministers during that period; to contrast their skill and virtues with the ignorance and vices of their predecessors; to whitewash or blacken characters; to state or misstate facts; to varnish men and things, as simulation and dissimulation thought proper, and just as the nature and exigencies of their weak and wicked administration required. As it was directed to a variety of purposes, it was played off by a variety of hands, who, from the highest to the lowest, were venal prostitutes who did as they were desired to do, and all wrought, to borrow the elegant words of one of their principals, like Scrub hang-dog instruments of mischief, and under-spur leathers,' rather fortiter in re than suaviter in modo." Some lucubrations in the Tatler of a political nature, of which Steele was the author, or at least the publisher, exceedingly offended the ministry above-mentioned, and gave birth to the Examiner. The animadversions in it on Steele and his politics, are penned with so much asperity and so little wit, that now that personal malice is passed, they counteract the ends of their original publication. This work, in its early infancy, was committed to the care and conduct of Dr. Swift, who, as he declares in a confidential letter to Mrs. Johnson, with the assistance of under-spur leathers, penned and published the papers by the encouragement and direction of the great men, who assured him that they were all true. See Swift's " Works," Vol. XXII. p. 120, ed. cr. 8vo, 1769. Of this ill-employed clergyman, and all concerned with him in this ignominious service, it may be truly said, as Swift himself says, that for the value of sixpence a woman from Billingsgate, prompted by the great men, who were the directors, might have done the business better than the best of them. Swift, in his Journal Letters to Mrs. Johnson, has given the history of the Examiner very particularly; the curious may have recourse to that source for further information, or save themselves the trouble by consulting the fair, impartial statement of Swift's own account in the notes on the Tatler, to the numbers abovementioned. See Tatler in 6 vols. cr. 8vo, No. 210, and No. 229, ut supra." The two following papers, out of the nine of which the series consists, are the only ones attributed to Addison. No. 3. MONDAY, APRIL 16, 1714. Qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carmina, Mævi. VIRG. Ecl. iii. 90. Who hates not living Bavius, let him be, Dead Mævius, damned to love thy works and thee. DRYDen. IN my last I took notice of that sublime writer, "The Examiner." The next to him among the journalists in dignity and order is "The Post-Boy:" this writer is excellent in his kind; but presenting them both to my imagination at one view, makes me turn to a passage of a paper published in the volume of Medleys, called "The Whig-Examiner." There the author, speaking of a paper intituled, "A Letter to the Examiner," finds it necessary to consider the nature of Nonsense and afterwards very pleasantly, exquisitely pleasantly, represents to us the difference we ought to make between high nonsense and low nonsense. A reader cannot see anything anywhere that has more wit and humour in it, nor that is more necessary to prepare him for the reading the authors of whom I am speaking. A page or two of his will make up for many a page of mine, therefore I shall rehearse him. "The Whig-Examiner," No. 4, has it thus: "Hudibras has defined nonsense (as Cowley does wit) by negatives. Nonsense (says he) is that which is neither true nor false. These two great properties of nonsense, which are always essential to it, give it such a peculiar advantage over all other writings, that it is incapable of being either answered or contradicted. It stands upon its own basis like a rock of adamant, secured by its natural situation against all conquests or attacks. There is no one place about it weaker than another, to favour an enemy in his approaches: the major and the minor are of equal strength. Its questions admit of no reply, and its assertions are not to be invali dated. A man may as well hope to distinguish colours in the midst of darkness, as to find out what to approve and disapprove in nonsense. You may as well assault an army that is buried in intrenchments. If it affirms anything, you cannot lay hold of it; or if it denies, you cannot confute it. In a word, there are greater depths and obscurities, greater intricacies and perplexities, in an elaborate and well-written piece of nonsense, that in the most abstruse and profound tract of school divinity. "After this short panegyric upon nonsense, which may appear as extravagant to an ordinary reader as Erasmus's Encomium of Folly;' I must here solemnly protest, that I have not done it to curry favour with my antagonist, or to reflect any praise in an oblique manner upon the Letter to the Examiner;' I have no private considerations to warp me in this controversy, since my first entering upon it. But before I proceed any further, because it may be of great use to me in this dispute to state the whole nature of nonsense, and because it is a subject entirely new, I must take notice that there are two kinds of it, viz. high nonsense, and low nonsense. "Low nonsense is the talent of a cold, phlegmatic temper, that in a poor, dispirited style creeps along servilely through darkness and confusion. A writer of this complexion gropes his way softly amongst self-contradictions, and grovels in absurdities: Videri vult pauper and est pauper; he has neither wit nor sense, and pretends to none. "On the contrary, your high nonsense blusters and makes a noise: it stalks upon hard words, and rattles through polysyllables. It is loud and sonorous, smooth and periodical. It has something in it like manliness and force, and makes one think of the name of Sir Hercules Nonsense, in the play called The Nest of Fools.' In a word, your high non |