which fame confers on authors, too well, to endeavour any longer to obtain it; nor was the world ever more unwilling to bestow the glorious, envied prize, of the laurel or bays, than I should now be to receive any such garland or fool's cap. There is not, I believe (and it is bold to affirm) a single free Briton in this kingdom, who hates his wife more heartily than I detest the muses. They have, indeed, behaved to me like the most infamous harlots; and have laid many a spurious, as well as deformed production at my door: in all which, my good friends the criticks have, in their profound discernment, discovered some resemblance of the parent; and thus I have been reputed and reported the author of half the scurrility, bawdy, treason, and blasphemy, which these last few years have produced.
I am far from thinking every person who hath thus aspersed me, had a determinate design of doing me an injury; I impute it only to an idle, childish levity, which possesses too many minds, and makes them report their conjectures as matters of fact, without weighing the proof, or considering the consequence. But as to the former of these, my readers will do well to examine their own talents very strictly, before they are too thoroughly convinced of their abilities to distinguish an author's style so accurately, as from that only to pronounce an anonymous work to be his: and, as to the latter, a little reflection will convince them of the cruelty they are guilty of by such reports. For my own part, I can aver, that there are few crimes of which I should have been more ashamed, than of some writings laid to my charge. I am as well assured of the injuries I have suffered from such unjust imputations, not only in general character; but as they have, I conceive, frequently raised m inveterate enemies, in persons to whose disadvantage
