ABSTRACT
In the opening of A Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit (1704), an anonymous author claims he has been roaming through the bookstalls of Fleet Street, Westminster and St. Paul’s for three whole days looking for a model so he can present his rambling discourse to his reader. His best choice has been to style it as a letter to a friend. Because he knows that most friends immediately like to pass on any material they receive to the press, he urges his imagined addressee to apply the usual set of disclaimers to the published material:
I desire you will be my Witness to the World, how careless and sudden a Scribble it has been; That it was but Yesterday, when You and I began accidentally to fall into Discourse on this Matter: That I was not very well, when We parted; That the Post is in such haste, I have had no manner of Time to digest it into Order, or correct the Style; And if any other Modern Excuses, for Haste and Negligence, shall occur to you in Reading, I beg you to insert them, faithfully promising they shall be thankfully acknowledged. 1
