
    - Pray what was that man's name, - for I write in such a hurry, I have no
time to recollect or look for it, -- who first made the observation, »That there
was great inconstancy in our air and climate?« Whoever he was, 'twas a just and
good observation in him. - But the corollary drawn from it, namely, »That it is
this which has furnished us with such a variety of odd and whimsical
characters;« - that was not his; - it was found out by another man, at least a
century and a half after him: - Then again, - that this copious store-house of
original materials, is the true and natural cause that our Comedies are so much
better than those of France, or any others that either have, or can be wrote
upon the Continent; -- that discovery was not fully made till about the middle
of king William's reign, - when the great Dryden, in writing one of his long
prefaces, (if I mistake not) most fortunately hit upon it. Indeed towards the
latter end of queen Anne, the great Addison began to patronize the notion, and
more fully explained it to the world in one or two of his Spectators; - but the
discovery was not his. - Then, fourthly and lastly, that this strange
irregularity in our climate, producing so strange an irregularity in our
characters, -- doth thereby, in some sort, make us amends, by giving us somewhat
to make us merry with when the weather will not suffer us to go out of doors, -
that observation is my own; - and was struck out by me this very rainy day,
March 26, 1759, and betwixt the hours of nine and ten in the morning.
    Thus, - thus my fellow labourers and associates in this great harvest of our
learning, now ripening before our eyes; thus it is, by slow steps of casual
increase, that our knowledge physical, metaphysical, physiological, polemical,
nautical, mathematical, ænigmatical, technical, biographical, romantical,
chemical, and obstetrical, with fifty other branches of it, (most of 'em ending,
as these do, in ical) have, for these two last centuries and more, gradually
been creeping upwards towards that AAkmh of their perfections, from which, if we
may form a conjecture from the advances of these last seven years, we cannot
possibly be far off.
    When that happens, it is to be hoped, it will put an end to all kind of
writings whatsoever
