ADVERTISEMENT. promote the Sale of this Piece, Mr. DODSLEY was for dedicating it to fome reigning Toast; but it was thought more for his Intereft to fend it into the World, with the Motto inscribed on the Golden Apple adjudged to Venus, for then a thousand Goddesses might seize it as their own. 1 (5) DEFORMITY: A N ESSA Y. I ; T is offenfive for a Man to speak much of himself; and few can do it with so good a grace as Montaigne. I wish I could or that I could be half so entertaining or instructive *. My Subject, however, will be my Apology; and I am fure it will draw no envy upon me. Bodily Deformity is visible to every eye; but the effects of it are known to very few; intimately known to none, but those who feel them; and they generally are not inclined to reveal them. As therefore I am furnished with the necessary materials, I will treat this uncommon Subject at large; and to view it in a Philofophical light is a Speculation which may be useful to Perfons fo oddly (I will not fay unhappily) distinguished; and perhaps not unentertaining to others. * The Marquis of Halifax, in a Letter to Charles Cotton, Efq. who tranflated Montaigne's Effays, fays, "It is the Book in the World, with which he is best entertained; and that Montaigne did not write for Praife, but to give the World a true Picture of himfelf and of Mankind." I do I do not pretend to be fo ingenious as Montaigne; but it is in my power to be as ingenuous. I may, with the fame naïveté *, remove the veil from my mental as well as perfonal Imperfections; and expose them naked to the world. And when I have thus anatomized myfelf, I hope my Heart will be found found and untainted, and my Intentions honest and fincere. Longinus+ fays, that Cæcilius wrote of the Sublime in a low way on the contrary, Mr. Pope ‡ calls Longinus "the great "Sublime he draws." Let it be my Ambition to imitate Longinus in Style and Sentiment; and, like Cæcilius, to make these appear a contrast to my Subject; to write of Deformity with Beauty; and by a finished Piece to atone for an ill-turned Person. If any Reader imagines, that a Print of me § in the Frontispiece of this Work would give him a clearer idea of the Subject; I have no objection, provided he will be at the expence of engraving. But, for want of it, let him know, that I am scarce five feet high; that my Back was bent in my Mother's Womb; and that in Perfon I resemble fop, the Prince of Orange, Marthal Luxemburg, Lord Treasurer Salisbury, Scarron, and Mr. Pope; not to mention Therfites and Richard the Third; whom I do not claim as Members of our Society; the first being a Child of the Poet's * Vertù naïve, an expreffion of Montaigne; and which Fontenelle puts into his mouth in his Dialogue with Socrates. + In the beginning of his Treatife on the Sublime. In his Effay on Criticifm. It was a difobliging stroke to a Lady; but it was faid of Mademoifelle de Gournai, that, to vindicate her honour from reflexion, the need only prefix her picture to her book. General Dictionary, under the word GOURNAL. 5 fancy; fancy*; the last mifrepresented by Hiftorians, who thought they must draw the devil in a bad shape. But I will not (on this occafion) accept of Richard's ftatue from the hand of any Historian, or even of Shakspeare himself; but only from that of his own Biographer, who tells us (and he ought to know) that Richard was a handsome man. As I have the greatest reason to thank God that I was born in this Island, and enjoy the bleffings of his Majesty's reign; let me not be unthankful that I was not born in Sparta, where I had no fooner seen the light, but I should have been deprived of it, and have been thrown, as an useless thing, into a cavern by Mount Taygetust. Inhuman Lycurgus! thus to destroy your own fpecies. Surrounded by the innocents whom you have murdered, may I not haunt you among the Shades below for this barbarity? That it was ill policy, the glorious lift of names which I have produced is a proof; your own Agefilaus confutes your maxim; and I hope to confute it too by my own behaviour. Is the carcafe the better part of the man? and is it to be valued by weight, like that of cattle in a market? Instead of this Lacedemonian severity, those who had the care of my infancy fell into another Extreme; and, out of Tenderness, * "Tam mala Therfiten prohibebat forma latere, "Quam pulchrâ Nireus confpiciendus erat." Ov. Ep. ex Ponto, xiii. ver. 4. + George Buck, Efq. who, in his Hiftory of Richard the Third, endeavours to represent him as a prince of much better shape (both of body and mind) than he had been generally esteemed. And Bifhop Nicolfon calls Buck a more candid compofer of annals than Sir Thomas More. See his Hiftorical Library. See Plutarch, in the life of Lycurgus. tried |