My LORD,

Though the author has written a large Dedication, yet that being
addressed to a Prince whom I am never likely to have the honour of
being known to; a person, besides, as far as I can observe, not at
all regarded or thought on by any of our present writers; and I
being wholly free from that slavery which booksellers usually lie
under to the caprices of authors, I think it a wise piece of
presumption to inscribe these papers to your Lordship, and to
implore your Lordship's protection of them. God and your Lordship
know their faults and their merits; for as to my own particular, I
am altogether a stranger to the matter; and though everybody else
should be equally ignorant, I do not fear the sale of the book at
all the worse upon that score. Your Lordship's name on the front in
capital letters will at any time get off one edition: neither would
I desire any other help to grow an alderman than a patent for the
sole privilege of dedicating to your Lordship.

I should now, in right of a dedicator, give your Lordship a list of
your own virtues, and at the same time be very unwilling to offend
your modesty; but chiefly I should celebrate your liberality towards
men of great parts and small fortunes, and give you broad hints that
I mean myself. And I was just going on in the usual method to
peruse a hundred or two of dedications, and transcribe an abstract
to be applied to your Lordship, but I was diverted by a certain
accident. For upon the covers of these papers I casually observed
written in large letters the two following words, DETUR DIGNISSIMO,
which, for aught I knew, might contain some important meaning. But