Since my setting about this work, I have seen several late treatises that are half taken up with introductory Prefaces to the publick: – on a serious examination to what end those long discourses were penn'd, they seem to me to have been occasioned either by one or the other of the following motives:

First, That an author having contracted with his bookseller for a certain number of sheets, without having well consider'd whether his head be stored with subject matter to make good his engagement, finds himself under a necessity of filling up the vacant pages by saying something by way of an introduction, preface, or advertisement to the reader.

Or, secondly, That fearing the eyes of the public will not be sufficiently open to the merit of his performance; or, perhaps, not have the curiosity even to look into it at all, he thinks proper to bespeak their favour by a pompous prelude, and sounds his own praises, like a trumpet at the door of a Puppet-shew.

Now I am too great a lover of liberty ever to bind myself by any such slavish agreement; the first of these incentives is quite out of the question, and cannot possibly have any weight with me.

And as to the second, – As a more perfect knowledge of myself, than I perceive some others have, will not permit me to be over vain in any thing I do, so the indolence of my nature will not permit me to be over anxious for the success.

Besides not having the temptation of the motives aforesaid, I have more adventures to relate than can be easily crowded into this volume, therefore have neither time nor paper to spare for an address, which would afford so little satisfaction to myself in the writing, and perhaps less to my reader in the perusing.