ABSTRACT
Sir, I am shock’d and scandalized beyond measure at your title, and so I believe
is every body else that hears it: – What but the very Devil incarnate can have tempted you to assume one so ungracious to all degrees of people? – An invisible Spy! – why, it is a character more to be dreaded than an Excise, a Custom-house or a Sheri ’s O cer; – nay, than even a King’s Messenger:– human prudence has taught us to elude the scrutiny of all known examiners; but who can guard against what they do not see? – You may be at our very elbows without our knowing you are; – you may explore all the necessary arts and mysteries of our several avocations, without our having it in our power to bribe you to secrecy: – What therefore can you expect, as there is no other way of dealing with you, but to have your book damn’d the rst moment of its publication; and to be plain with you, I, who am an author as well as yourself, have already, at the request of some leading men, prepar’d a thing for the press which will e ectually do your business? – As a brother of the quill, however, thinking it becoming in me to give you this timely notice, and likewise to advise you to cancel all such pages, as upon a strict examination you shall nd may possibly be construed into a libel, – whether the matters they contain are founded either upon truth or ction; – you know very well, that the one is liable to the same punishment as the other; with this di erence only, that the former being the most stinging, is, generally speaking, treated with the most severity; – I have heard some menaces thrown out against you, and sincerely wish you may escape the e ects, and meet with no other chastisement for your folly, than what you will receive from the pen of
Scriblerius.
