It is high time to combat this Error of Life, and the more, because it is grown up to a heighth not only scandalous, but criminal and offensive, and, in some things, unnatural; and still the more, because 'tis a Mistake that is encreasing, and 'tis fear'd may go higher, till at last it may break out into yet greater Abominations.
The Difficulty before me is, to know how to reprove with Decency offences against Decency; how to expose Modestly Things which 'tis hardly Modest so much as to mention, and which must require abundance of clean Linnen to wrap them up in; how to speak of nauseous and offensive Things, in Terms which shall not give offence, and scourge immodest Actions with an unblameable Modesty; that is, without running out into Expressions which shall offend the modest Ears of those that read them; this, I say, is the only Difficulty.
I am insulted already on this Head by the rude and self-guilty World; my very Title and the bare advertising my Book, they say is a Breach upon Modesty, and it offends their Ears even before it is published. They not only tell me it will be an Obscene and immodest Book, but that it is impossible it should be otherwise; They say, I may pretend to as much reservedness and darkness of Expression as I please, and may skulk behind a Croud, or indeed a Cloud of Words; but my meaning will be reach'd, and the lewd Age will make plain English of it; nay, that I shall make plain English of it my self, before I have gone half thro' the Work.
Others, armed with the same ill Nature, have their Tongues poisoned with another kind of Venom, and they tell me it is an immodest
