Chapter 2.00: GEORGE LYTTLETON, ESQ;

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GEORGE LYTTLETON, ESQ;
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One of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury.

Sir,

Notwithstanding your constant refusal, when I have asked leave to prefix
your name to this dedication, I must still insist on my right to desire
your protection of this work.

To you, Sir, it is owing that this history was ever begun. It was by your
desire that I first thought of such a composition. So many years have
since past, that you may have, perhaps, forgotten this circumstance: but
your desires are to me in the nature of commands; and the impression of
them is never to be erased from my memory.

Again, Sir, without your assistance this history had never been completed.
Be not startled at the assertion. I do not intend to draw on you the
suspicion of being a romance writer. I mean no more than that I partly owe
to you my existence during great part of the time which I have employed in
composing it: another matter which it may be necessary to remind you of;
since there are certain actions of which you are apt to be extremely
forgetful; but of these I hope I shall always have a better memory than
yourself.

Lastly, It is owing to you that the history appears what it now is. If
there be in this work, as some have been pleased to say, a stronger
picture of a truly benevolent mind than is to be found in any other, who
that knows you, and a particular acquaintance of yours, will doubt whence
that benevolence hath been copied? The world will not, I believe, make me
the compliment of thinking I took it from myself. I care not: this they
shall own, that the two persons from whom I have taken it, that is to say,
two of the best and worthiest men in the world, are strongly and zealously
my friends. I might be contented with this, and yet my vanity will add a
third to the number; and him one of the greatest and noblest, not only in
his rank, but in every public and private virtue. But here, whilst my
gratitude for the princely benefactions of the Duke of Bedford bursts from
my heart, you must forgive my reminding you that it was you who first
recommended me to the notice of my benefactor.

And what are your objections to the allowance of the honour which I have
sollicited? Why, you have commended the book so warmly, that you should be
ashamed of reading your name before the dedication. Indeed, sir, if the
book itself doth not make you ashamed of your commendations, nothing that
I can here write will, or ought. I am not to give up my right to your
protection and patronage, because you have commended my book: for though I
acknowledge so many obligations to you, I do not add this to the number;
in which friendship, I am convinced, hath so little share: since that can
neither biass your judgment, nor pervert your integrity. An enemy may at
any time obtain your commendation by only deserving it; and the utmost
which the faults of your friends can hope for, is your silence; or,
perhaps, if too severely accused, your gentle palliation.

In short, sir, I suspect, that your dislike of public praise is your true
objection to granting my request. I have observed that you have, in common
with my two other friends, an unwillingness to hear the least mention of
your own virtues; that, as a great poet says of one of you, (he might
justly have said it of all three), you

_Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame_.

If men of this disposition are as careful to shun applause, as others are
to escape censure, how just must be your apprehension of your character
falling into my hands; since what would not a man have reason to dread, if
attacked by an author who had received from him injuries equal to my
obligations to you!

And will not this dread of censure increase in proportion to the matter
which a man is conscious of having afforded for it? If his whole life, for
instance, should have been one continued subject of satire, he may well
tremble when an incensed satirist takes him in hand. Now, sir, if we apply
this to your modest aversion to panegyric, how reasonable will your fears
of me appear!

Yet surely you might have gratified my ambition, from this single
confidence, that I shall always prefer the indulgence of your inclinations
to the satisfaction of my own. A very strong instance of which I shall
give you in this address, in which I am determined to follow the example
of all other dedicators, and will consider not what my patron really
deserves to have written, but what he will be best pleased to read.

Without further preface then, I here present you with the labours of some
years of my life. What merit these labours have is already known to
yourself. If, from your favourable judgment, I have conceived some esteem
for them, it cannot be imputed to vanity; since I should have agreed as
implicitly to your opinion, had it been given in favour of any other man's
production. Negatively, at least, I may be allowed to say, that had I been
sensible of any great demerit in the work, you are the last person to
whose protection I would have ventured to recommend it.

From the name of my patron, indeed, I hope my reader will be convinced, at
his very entrance on this work, that he will find in the whole course of
it nothing prejudicial to the cause of religion and virtue, nothing
inconsistent with the strictest rules of decency, nor which can offend
even the chastest eye in the perusal. On the contrary, I declare, that to
recommend goodness and innocence hath been my sincere endeavour in this
history. This honest purpose you have been pleased to think I have
attained: and to say the truth, it is likeliest to be attained in books of
this kind; for an example is a kind of picture, in which virtue becomes,
as it were, an object of sight, and strikes us with an idea of that
loveliness, which Plato asserts there is in her naked charms.

Besides displaying that beauty of virtue which may attract the admiration
of mankind, I have attempted to engage a stronger motive to human action
in her favour, by convincing men, that their true interest directs them to
a pursuit of her. For this purpose I have shown that no acquisitions of
guilt can compensate the loss of that solid inward comfort of mind, which
is the sure companion of innocence and virtue; nor can in the least
balance the evil of that horror and anxiety which, in their room, guilt
introduces into our bosoms. And again, that as these acquisitions are in
themselves generally worthless, so are the means to attain them not only
base and infamous, but at best incertain, and always full of danger.
Lastly, I have endeavoured strongly to inculcate, that virtue and
innocence can scarce ever be injured but by indiscretion; and that it is
this alone which often betrays them into the snares that deceit and
villainy spread for them. A moral which I have the more industriously
laboured, as the teaching it is, of all others, the likeliest to be
attended with success; since, I believe, it is much easier to make good
men wise, than to make bad men good.

For these purposes I have employed all the wit and humour of which I am
master in the following history; wherein I have endeavoured to laugh
mankind out of their favourite follies and vices. How far I have succeeded
in this good attempt, I shall submit to the candid reader, with only two
requests: First, that he will not expect to find perfection in this work;
and Secondly, that he will excuse some parts of it, if they fall short of
that little merit which I hope may appear in others.

I will detain you, sir, no longer. Indeed I have run into a preface, while
I professed to write a dedication. But how can it be otherwise? I dare not
praise you; and the only means I know of to avoid it, when you are in my
thoughts, are either to be entirely silent, or to turn my thoughts to some
other subject.

Pardon, therefore, what I have said in this epistle, not only without your
consent, but absolutely against it; and give me at least leave, in this
public manner, to declare that I am, with the highest respect and
gratitude,—

Sir,

Your most obliged,

Obedient, humble servant,