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Satyr upon that National Folly was publish'd, tho' almost Forty Years ago. Nothing was more frequent in our Mouths before that, nothing so universally Blush'd for and laugh'd at since. The Time, I believe, is yet to come, that any Author printed it, or that any Man of Sense spoke it in earnest; whereas, before you had it in the best Writers, and in the most florid Speeches, before the most august Assemblies, upon the most solemn Occasions.
Could the Practice complain'd of in this Work, ten thousand times more scandalous, grown up to be odious and shameless; to wise Men hateful, and to good Men horrid, I mean that of talking lewdly, be hiss'd out of the World by a just Satyr; could it be lash'd off the Stage of Life by the Pen, happy would the Author be that could boast of such Success.
Could all the Third Chapter, and the Fourth Chapter, and the Fifth, and Seventh, and Ninth, and Eleventh Chapter-Crimes, be met with in the same Manner, and with the same Success, I should think this, however difficult, the best and happiest Undertaking that ever came into, or went out of my Hands.
I cannot desire a greater Scope in any Subject, that calls for Censure among Men; I think I may say, I must have all the Wise, the Religious, the modest Part of Mankind with me, in the Reproof. The Crimes I attack are not only Offences against Heaven, but against all good Men, against Society, against Humanity, against Virtue, against Reason, and, in some Things, against Nature; Crimes that modest Words cannot (without great difficulty) explain, modest Tonguesexpress,
