All I fret and fume at, and what most distresses my invention at present, is how to bring the point itself to bear; for as your worships well know, that of these heavenly emanations of wit and judgment, which I have so bountifully wished both for your worships and myself--there is but a certain quantum stored up for us all, for the use and behoof of the whole race of mankind; and such small modicums of 'em are only sent forth into this wide world, circulating here and there in one bye corner or another--and in such narrow streams, and at such prodigious intervals from each other, that one would wonder how it holds out, or could be sufficient for the wants and emergencies of so many great estates, and populous empires.
Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova Zembla, North Lapland, and in all those cold and dreary tracks of the globe, which lie more directly under the arctick and antartick circles, where the whole province of a man's concernments lies for near nine months together within the narrow compass of his cave--where the spirits are compressed almost to nothing--and where the passions of a man, with every thing which belongs to them, are as frigid as the zone itself--there the least quantity of judgment imaginable does the business--and of wit--there is a total and an absolute saving--for as not one spark is wanted--so not one spark is given.
Angels and ministers of grace defend us! what a dismal thing would it have been to have governed a kingdom, to have fought a battle, or made a treaty, or run a match, or wrote a book, or got a child, or held a provincial chapter there, with so plentiful a lack of wit and judgment about us! For mercy's sake, let us think no more about it, but travel on as fast as we can southwards into Norway--crossing over Swedeland, if you please, through the small triangular province of Angermania to the lake of Bothmia;coasting along it through east and west Bothnia, down to Carelia, and so on, through all those states and provinces which border upon the far side of the Gulf of Finland, and the north-east of the Baltick, up to Petersbourg, and just stepping into Ingria;--then stretching over directly from thence through the north parts of the Russian empire--leaving Siberia a little upon the left hand, till we got into the very heart of Russian and Asiatick Tartary.
Now through this long tour which I have led you, you observe the good people are better off by far, than in the polar countries which we have just left:--for if you hold your hand over your eyes, and look very attentively, you may perceive some small glimmerings (as it were) of wit, with a comfortable provision of good plain houshold judgment, which, taking the quality and quantity of it together, they make a very good shift with--and had they more of either the one or the other, it would destroy the proper balance betwixt them, and I am satisfied moreover they would want occasions to put them to use.
Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more luxuriant island, where you perceive the spring-tide of our blood and humours runs high--where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy, and lechery, and other whoreson passions upon our hands to govern and subject to reason--the height of our wit, and the depth of our judgment, you see, are exactly proportioned to the length and breadth of our necessities--and accordingly we have them sent down amongst us in such a flowing kind of decent and creditable plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to complain.
It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot and cold--wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular and settled way;--so that sometimes for near half a century together, there shall be very little wit or judgment either to be seen or heard of amongst us:--the small channels of them shall seem quite dried up--then all of a sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of running again like fury--you would think they would never stop:--and then it is, that in writing, and fighting, and twenty other gallant things, we drive all the world before us.
It is by these observations, and a wary reasoning by analogy in that kind of argumentative process, which Suidas calls dialectick induction--that Idraw and set up this position as most true and veritable;That of these two luminaries so much of their irradiations are suffered from time to time to shine down upon us, as he, whose infinite wisdom which dispenses every thing in exact weight and measure, knows will just serve to light us on our way in this night of our obscurity; so that your reverences and worships now find out, nor is it a moment longer in my power to conceal it from you, That the fervent wish in your behalf with which I set out, was no more than the first insinuating How d'ye of a caressing prefacer, stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, into silence. For alas! could this effusion of light have been as easily procured, as the exordium wished it--I tremble to think how many thousands for it, of benighted travellers (in the learned sciences at least) must have groped and blundered on in the dark, all the nights of their lives--running their heads against posts, and knocking out their brains without ever getting to their journies end;--some falling with their noses perpendicularly into sinks--others horizontally with their tails into kennels. Here one half of a learned profession tilting full but against the other half of it, and then tumbling and rolling one over the other in the dirt like hogs.--Here the brethren of another profession, who should have run in opposition to each other, flying on the contrary like a flock of wild geese, all in a row the same way.--What confusion!--what mistakes!--fiddlers and painters judging by their eyes and ears--admirable!--trusting to the passions excited--in an air sung, or a story painted to the heart--instead of measuring them by a quadrant.