posed to run away with his reason, which I have observed from long experience, to be a very light rider, and easily shaken off; upon which account, my friends will never trust me alone, without a solemn promise to vent my speculations in this, or the like manner, for the universal benefit of humankind; which perhaps the gentle, courteous, and candid reader, brimful of that modern charity and tenderness usually annexed to his office, will be very hardly persuaded to believe.
SECT. X.
A FARTHER DIGRESSION.
IT is an unanswerable argument of a very refined age[1], the wonderful civilities that have passed of late years between the nation of authors, and that of readers. There can hardly pop out a play, a pamphlet, or a poem, without a preface full of acknowledgement to the world for the general reception and applause they have given it, which the Lord knows where, or when, or how, or from whom it received. In due deference to so laudable a custom, I do here return my humble thanks to his majesty, and both houses of parliament; to the lords of the king's most honourable privy-council; to the reverend the judges; to the clergy, and gentry, and yeomanry of this land: but in a more especial man-
- ↑ This first sentence is wholly ungrammatical; it may be thus amended. It is an unanswerable argument of the age's being very refined, that wonderful civilities have passed, &c.
