TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THOMAS,
EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY.
BARON HERBERT OF CARDIFF, LORD BOSS OF KENDAL, PAR,
FITZHUGH, MARMION, ST. QUINTIN, AND SIIURLAND;
LORD PRESIDENT OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST
HONOURARLE PRIVY COUNCIL, AND LORD
LIEUTENANT OF THE COUNTY OF
WILTS, AND OF SOUTH WALES.
MY LORD,
This Treatise, which is grown up under your lordship's eye, and has ventured into the world by your order, does now, by a natural kind of right, come to your lordship for that protection, which you several years since promised it. It is not that I think any name, how great soever, set at the beginning of a book, will be able to cover the faults that are to be found in it. Things in print must stand and fall by their own worth, or the reader's fancy. But there being nothing more to be desired for truth than a fair, unprejudiced hearing, nobody is more likely to procure me that than your lordship, who are allowed to have got so intimate an acquaintance with her, in her more retired recesses. Your lordship is known to have so far advanced your speculations in the most abstract and general knowledge of things, beyond
