ABSTRACT
I am fortunate enough in your Lordship’s approbation, and can dispense with the rest of mankind. And this I am bold to affirm though I have not the Honour of much acquaintance with your Lordship; for it is sufficient that I have seen in some little sketches of your Pen, excellent Masteries and a Spirit inimitable; and that I have been entertained by others with the wit, which your Lordship with a gentile and careless freedom, sprinkles in your ordinary converse; and often supplies vulgar and necessitous wits wherewith to enrich themselves, and sometimes to treat their friends; and when your Lordship is pleased to ascend above us, you do it with a strange readiness and agility of mind, and by swift and easy motions attain to heights, which others by much climbing, dull industry, and constraint cannot reach. Nor is this vast wit crowded together in a little soul, where it wants freedom, and is uneasy, but fills up the spaces of a large and generous mind, infinitely delighting to oblige all, but especially to encourage any blossoming merits; and ready to forgive large and voluminous faults for the sake of any one thing tolerably said or done.
