helps to make up the crowd half so much as yourself? Don't you
consider that you take up more room with that carcass than any five
here? Is not the place as free for us as for you? Bring your own
guts to a reasonable compass, and then I'll engage we shall have
room enough for us all."

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof
I hope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I
am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful
and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or
sentence is printed in a different character shall be judged to
contain something extraordinary either of wit or sublime.

As for the liberty I have thought fit to take of praising myself,
upon some occasions or none, I am sure it will need no excuse if a
multitude of great examples be allowed sufficient authority; for it
is here to be noted that praise was originally a pension paid by the
world, but the moderns, finding the trouble and charge too great in
collecting it, have lately bought out the fee-simple, since which
time the right of presentation is wholly in ourselves. For this
reason it is that when an author makes his own eulogy, he uses a
certain form to declare and insist upon his title, which is commonly
in these or the like words, "I speak without vanity," which I think
plainly shows it to be a matter of right and justice. Now, I do
here once for all declare, that in every encounter of this nature
through the following treatise the form aforesaid is implied, which
I mention to save the trouble of repeating it on so many occasions.

It is a great ease to my conscience that I have written so elaborate
and useful a discourse without one grain of satire intermixed, which