The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon — John Shaqi
The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the MoonDefoe, Daniel
Science
The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon
Defoe, Daniel
Fantasy fiction; Interplanetary voyages -- Fiction; Moon -- Fiction; Political fiction; Satire
Also you are Instructed to know the true reason of the Affinity
between Poetry and Poverty; and that it is equally derived from
what's Natural and Intrinsick, as from Accident and Circumstance; how
the World being always full of Fools and Knaves, Wit is sure to miss
of a good Market; especially, if Wit and Truth happen to come in
Company; for the Fools don't understand it, and the Knaves can't bear
it.
But still 'tis own'd, and is most apparent, there is something also
Natural in the Case too, since there are some particular Vessels
Nature thinks necessary, to the more exact Composition of this nice
thing call'd a Wit, which as they are, or are not Interrupted in the
peculiar Offices for which they are appointed, are subject to various
Distempers, and more particularly to Effluxions and Vapour, Diliriums
Giddiness of the Brain, and Lapsa, or Looseness of the Tongue; and as
these Distempers, occasion'd by the exceeding quantity of Volatiles,
Nature is obliged to make use of in the Composition, are hardly to
be avoided, the Disasters which generally they push the Animal into,
are as necessarily consequent to them as Night is to the Setting of
the Sun; and these are very many, as disobliging Parents, who have
frequently in this Country whipt their Sons for making Verses; and
here I could not but reflect how useful a Discipline early Correction
must be to a Poet; and how easy the Town had been had N---t, E---w,
T. B--- P---s, D-- S-- D---fy, and an Hundred more of the jingling
Train of our modern Rhymers, been Whipt young, very young, for
Poetasting, they had never perhaps suckt in that Venome of Ribaldry,
which all the Satyr of the Age has never been able to scourge out of
them to this Day.
The further fatal Consequences of these unhappy Defects in Nature,
where she has damn'd a Man to Wit and Rhyme, has been loss of
Inheritance, Parents being aggravated by the obstinate young Beaus,
resolving to be Wits in spight of Nature, the wiser Head has been
obliged to Confederate with Nature, and with-hold the Birth-right
of Brains, which otherwise the young Gentleman might have enjoy'd,
to the great support of his Family and Posterity. Thus the famous
Waller, Denham, Dryden, and sundry Others, were oblig'd to condemn
their Race to Lunacy and Blockheadism, only to prevent the fatal
Destruction of their Families, and entailing the Plague of Wit and
Weathercocks upon their Posterity.
The yet farther Extravagancies which naturally attend the Mischief of
Wit, are Beau-ism, Dogmaticality, Whimsification, Impudensity, and
various kinds of Fopperosities (according to Mr. Boyl,) which issuing
out of the Brain, descend into all the Faculties, and branch
themselves by infinite Variety, into all the Actions of Life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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