 the
two masters it was, that had been practising upon his instrument, -- as to make
all reasoning upon it needless.
    -- For in the account which Hafen Slawkenbergius gives the world of his
motives and occasions for writing, and spending so many years of his life upon
this one work. - Towards the end of his prologomena, which by the bye should
have come first, -- but the bookbinder has most injudiciously placed it betwixt
the analitical contents of the book, and the book itself, -- he informs his
reader, that ever since he had arrived at the age of discernment, and was able
to sit down coolly, and consider within himself the true state and condition of
man, and distinguish the main end and design of his being; -- or, -- to shorten
my translation, for Slawkenbergius's book is in Latin, and not a little prolix
in this passage, -- ever since I understood, quoth Slawkenbergius, any thing, --
or rather what was what, -- and could perceive that the point of long noses had
been too loosely handled by all who had gone before; -- have I, Slawkenbergius,
felt a strong impulse, with a mighty and an unresistible call within me, to gird
up myself to this undertaking.
    And to do justice to Slawkenbergius, he has entered the list with a stronger
lance, and taken a much larger career in it, than any one man who had ever
entered it before him, -- and indeed, in many respects, deserves to be en-nich'd
as a prototype for all writers, of voluminous works at least, to model their
books by, -- for he has taken in, Sir, the whole subject, - examined every part
of it, dialectically, - then brought it into full day; dilucidating it with all
the light which either the collision of his own natural parts could strike, - or
the profoundest knowledge of the sciences had impowered him to cast upon it, --
collating, collecting and compiling, - begging, borrowing, and stealing, as he
went along, all that had been wrote or wrangled thereupon in the schools and
porticos of the learned: so that Slawkenbergius his book may properly be
considered, not only as a model, - but as a thorough-stitch'd DIGEST and regular
institute of noses; comprehending in it, all that is, or can be needful to be
known about them.
    For this cause it is, that I forbear to speak of so many (otherwise)
valuable books and treatises of
