With submission, these little arts of getting off an edition, do ill become any author above the size of Marten[6] the surgeon.  My Lord tells us, that “many thousands of the two former parts of his History are in the kingdom,"[7] and now he perpetually advertises in the gazette, that he intends to publish the third:  This is exactly in the method and style of Marten:  “The seventh edition (many thousands of the former editions having been sold off in a small time) of Mr. Marten’s book concerning secret diseases,” &c.

[Footnote 6:  This is John Marten, the author of two treatises on the gout, and a “Treatise of all the Degrees and Symptoms of the Venereal Disease” (1708?-9).  His notoriety brought on him the ire of a “licens’d practitioner in physick and surgery,” one J. Spinke, who, in a pamphlet entitled “Quackery Unmask’d” (1709), dealt Marten some most uncourteous blows.  From the pamphlet, it is difficult to judge whether Spinke or Marten were the greater quack; we should judge the former.  Certainly Marten deserves our sympathy, if only for Spinke’s virulence. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 7:  Page 26.]

Does his Lordship intend to publish his great volume by subscription, and is this Introduction only by way of specimen?  I was inclined to think so, because, in the prefixed letter to Mr. Churchill, which introduces this Introduction, there are some dubious expressions:  He says, “the advertisements he published were in order to move people to furnish him with materials, which might help him to finish his work with great advantage.”  If he means half-a-guinea upon the subscription, and t’other half at the delivery, why does he not tell us so in plain terms?

I am wondering how it came to pass, that this diminutive letter to Mr. Churchill should understand the business of introducing better than the Introduction itself; or why the Bishop did not take it into his head to send the former into the world some months before the latter; which would have been a greater improvement upon the solemnity of the procession?

Since I writ these last lines, I have perused the whole pamphlet (which I had only dipped in before) and found I have been hunting upon a wrong scent; for the author hath in several parts of his piece, discovered the true motives which put him upon sending it abroad at this juncture; I shall therefore consider them as they come in my way.

My Lord begins his Introduction with an account of the reasons why he was guilty of so many mistakes in the first volume of his “History of the Reformation:”  His excuses are just, rational, and extremely consistent.  He says, “he wrote in haste,"[8] which he confirms by adding, “that it lay a year after he wrote it before it was put into the press:"[9] At the same time he mentioned a passage extremely to the honour of that pious and excellent prelate, Archbishop Sancroft, which demonstrates his Grace to have been a person of great sagacity, and almost a prophet.  Dr.