OATH.

(A curious one.)

Borgarutius once swore never to have any thing more to do with the booksellers. The trouble he was involved in, during the printing of his book of Anatomy, and the vexation he met with in the printers’ work, made him, in a fret, take such an oath, but

when he was got from under the press, he broke his word. He compares himself in this to those women who, in the pains of childbirth, protest they will never expose themselves to the like any more; yet notwithstanding, when the pain is over, forget their protestations: he adds, that his zeal for the good of the public, obliged him to forget his oath.

Every body knows the story of the. woman, who made the protestations above hinted at, who notwithstanding was no sooner delivered, than she desired that the blessed candle, which was burning on the table, might be put out: “for,” says she “it may serve me another time.” One cannot here properly apply the Italian proverb, “passato il pericolo, gabbato il Santo; when the danger is over, send the saint a grazing.” It is well known that there are particular and indispensible reasons which very justly discharge a woman from any thing she may have sworn on such an occasion. It is not the same thing in respect to vows made at sea in a storm, which are commonly forgot on shore.

There are no authors so subject as poets, to forget that they solemnly promised to print no more.

How light and inconstant is man,
How apt of his promise to fail!
I have sworn, in the best verse I can,
To meddle no more with a tale.

These are the words of the ingenious La Fontaine, in the beginning of one of his tales. La Fontaine au Conte de la Clochette. ¹⁰¹ Menage very unnecessarily bestows two chapters to prove that poets, after they have sworn to write no more, still write on.

Art. Borgarutius.