Of faction, because .(Hiatus in MS.). Of poetry, because its
orators do perorare with a song; and because, climbing up by slow
degrees, fate is sure to turn them off before they can reach within
many steps of the top; and because it is a preferment attained by
transferring of propriety and a confounding of meum and tuum.

Under the Stage-itinerant are couched those productions designed for
the pleasure and delight of mortal man, such as "Six Pennyworth of
Wit," "Westminster Drolleries," "Delightful Tales," "Complete
Jesters," and the like, by which the writers of and for Grub Street
have in these later ages so nobly triumphed over time, have clipped
his wings, pared his nails, filed his teeth, turned back his hour-
glass, blunted his scythe, and drawn the hobnails out of his shoes.
It is under this class I have presumed to list my present treatise,
being just come from having the honour conferred upon me to be
adopted a member of that illustrious fraternity.

Now, I am not unaware how the productions of the Grub Street
brotherhood have of late years fallen under many prejudices, nor how
it has been the perpetual employment of two junior start-up
societies to ridicule them and their authors as unworthy their
established post in the commonwealth of wit and learning. Their own
consciences will easily inform them whom I mean; nor has the world
been so negligent a looker-on as not to observe the continual
efforts made by the societies of Gresham and of Will's {64}, to
edify a name and reputation upon the ruin of ours. And this is yet
a more feeling grief to us, upon the regards of tenderness as well
as of justice, when we reflect on their proceedings not only as
unjust, but as ungrateful, undutiful, and unnatural. For how can it
be forgot by the world or themselves, to say nothing of our own