This page has been validated.
TO
Sir,
BEING so great a lover of antiquities, it was reasonable to suppose, you would be very much obliged with any thing that was new. I have been of late offended with many writers of essays and moral discourses, for running into stale topicks and threadbare quotations, and not handling their subject fully and closely: all which errours I have carefully avoided in the following essay, which I have proposed as a pattern for young writers to imitate. The thoughts and observations being entirely new, the quotations untouched by others, the subject of mighty importance, and treated with much order and perspicuity, it has cost me a great deal of time; and I desire you will accept and consider it as the utmost effort of my genius.
