A Modest
PREFACE
Containing
Many Words to the Wiſe.
BEING about to deliver to the learned World in theſe Letters, one of the nobleſt Preſents that ever was made to it, I muſt own, I have been as much perplex'd how to introduce them properly, by a Preface worthy of them, as Cervantes himſelf, when he fell on that which stands before his inimitable Don Quixote, or as Thuanus was how to begin the firſt Sentence of his Hiſtory, which we are told, coſt him ſo many painful Hours, before he could ſettle it to his Mind.
I queſtion if Malherb who spent a Quire of Paper, in finiſhing his Simile of Phillis's gathering Flowers in a Garden; or the illuſtrious Balzac who us'd to take a Week to write a Letter in, for fear of the French Criticks; ever toil'd more than I have done, to give full Satisfaction in this IntroductoryDiſ-
