ADVERTISEMENT.
This Paper is a Sort of Bill of Complaint, begun many Years since, and drawn up by snatches, as the several Occasions offer'd. I had no thoughts of publishing it, till it pleas'd some Persons of Rank and Fortune [the Authors of Verses to the Imitator of Horace, and of an Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court,] to attack in a very extraordinary Manner, not only my Writings (of which being publick the Publick judge) but my Person, Morals and Family, whereof to those who know me not, a truer Information may be requisite. Being divided between the Necessity to say Something of Myself, and my own Laziness to undertake so awkward a Task, I thought it the shortest way to put the last hand to this Epistle. If it have any thing pleasing, it will be That by which I am most desirous to please, the Truth and the Sentiment; and if any thing offensive, it will be only to those I am least sorry to offend, the Vicious or the Ungenerous.
Many
