To confirm this opinion, hear
the words of the famous troglodyte philosopher. "It is certain," said
he, "some grains of folly are of course annexed as part in the
composition of human nature; only the choice is left us whether we
please to wear them inlaid or embossed, and we need not go very far to
seek how that is usually determined, when we remember it is with human
faculties as with liquors, the lightest will be ever at the top."
There is in this famous island of Britain a certain paltry scribbler,
very voluminous, whose character the reader cannot wholly be a stranger
to. He deals in a pernicious kind of writings called "Second Parts",
and usually passes under the name of "The Author of the First". I
easily foresee that as soon as I lay down my pen this nimble operator
will have stole it, and treat me as inhumanly as he has already done
Dr. Blackmore, Lestrange, and many others who shall here be nameless. I
therefore fly for justice and relief into the hands of that great
rectifier of saddles and lover of mankind, Dr. Bentley, begging he will
take this enormous grievance into his most modern consideration; and if
it should so happen that the furniture of an ass in the shape of a
second part must for my sins be clapped, by mistake, upon my back, that
he will immediately please, in the presence of the world, to lighten me
of the burden, and take it home to his own house till the true beast
thinks fit to call for it.
In the meantime, I do here give this public notice that my resolutions
are to circumscribe within this discourse the whole stock of matter I
have been so many years providing.
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