simplicity of her heart, "I mean, that excellent Meditation upon a Broomstick." The company looked at each other with some surprise, and could scarce refrain from laughing. But they all agreed that they had never heard of such a meditation before. "Upon my word," said my lady, "there it is, look into that book, and convince yourselves." One of them opened the book, and found it there indeed, but in Swift's handwriting; upon which a general burst of laughter ensued: and my lady, when the first surprise was over, enjoyed the joke as much as any of them; saying, "What a vile trick has that rogue played me! But it is his way, he never baulks his humour in any thing." The affair ended in a great deal of harmless mirth, and Swift, you may be sure, was not asked to proceed any farther into the Meditations."

Whoever has read the vapid and metaphorical flourishes of this once celebrated moralist (only equalled in the flowery pages of Harvey's Meditations,) will find, in the pretended violation of Mr Boyle's dignity, a pedantic and affected sytle, justly exposed to the ridicule of the world,

A MEDITATION UPON A BROOMSTICK.

THIS

HIS single stick, which you now behold in glori ously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest: it was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs: but now, in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk: it is now, at best, but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air; it is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and by a capricious kind of fate, destined to make other things clean, and be nasty itself: at length, worn to the stumps in the service of the maids, it is either thrown out of doors, or condemned to the last use, of kindling a fire. When I beheld this, I sighed, and said within myself, Surely man is a Broomstick! nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thri ving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, until the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk: he then flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs (all covered with powder) that never grew on his head; but now, should this our broomstick pretend to enter the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it

never bore, and all covered with dust, though the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our own excellencies, and other men's defaults!

But a broomstick, perhaps you will say, is an emblem of a tree standing on its head; and pray what is man, but a topsyturvy creature, his animal faculties perpetually mounted on his rational, his head where his heels should be, grovelling on the earth! and yet, with all his faults, he sets up to be a universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a remover of grievances, rakes into every slut's corner of nature, bringing hidden corruption to the light, and raises a mighty dust where there was none before; sharing deeply all the while in the very same pollutions he pretends to sweep away: his last days are spent in slavery to women, and generally the least deserving; till worn out to the stumps, like his brother besom, he is either kicked out of doors, or made use of to kindle flames for others to warm themselves by.

A

TRITICAL ESSAY

UPON THE

FACULTIES OF THE MIND.

ΤΟ

SIR,

BEING SO great a lover of antiquities, it was reasonable to suppose, you would be very much obliged with any thing that was new. I have been of late offended with many writers of essays and moral discourses, for running into stale topicks and threadbare quotations, and not handling their subject fully and closely all which errors I have carefully avoided in the following essay, which I have proposed as a pattern for young writers to imitate. The thoughts and observations being entirely new, the quotations untouched by others, the subject of mighty importance, and treated with much order and perspicuity, it has cost me a great deal of time; and I desire you will accept and consider it as the utmost effort of my genius.