temptations to have employed it longer; his reputation was at a greater
height than, I believe, ever any living author's was before him....
There is this noble difference between him and all the rest of our
polite and gallant authors: the latter have endeavoured to please the
age by falling in with them, and encouraging them in their fashionable
vices and false notions of things. It would have been a jest some time
since, for a man to have asserted that anything witty could be said in
praise of a married state; or that devotion and virtue were any way
necessary to the character of a fine gentleman. Bickerstaff ventured to
tell the town that they were a parcel of fops, fools, and vain
coquettes; but in such a manner as even pleased them, and made them more
than half inclined to believe that he spoke truth. Instead of complying
with the false sentiments or vicious tastes of the age, either in
morality, criticism, or good breeding, he has boldly assured them that
they were altogether in the wrong, and commanded them, with an authority
which perfectly well became him, to surrender themselves to his
arguments for virtue and good sense.

"It is incredible to conceive the effect his writings have had on the
town; how many thousand follies they have either quite banished, or
given a very great check to; how much countenance they have added to
virtue and religion; how many people they have rendered happy, by
showing them it was their own fault if they were not so; and, lastly,
how entirely they have convinced our fops and young fellows of the value
and advantages of learning. He has indeed rescued it out of the hands of
pedants and fools, and discovered the true method of making it amiable
and lovely to all mankind. In the dress he gives it, it is a most
welcome guest at tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed
by the merchants on the 'Change; accordingly, there is not a lady at
Court, nor a banker in Lombard Street, who is not verily persuaded that