known.

I am willing to flatter myself with hopes, that,
by collecting these papers, I am not preparing, for
my future life, either shame or repentance. That all
are happily imagined, or accurately polished, that
the same sentiments have not sometimes recurred, or
the same expressions been too frequently repeated,
I have not confidence in my abilities sufficient to
warrant. He that condemns himself to compose on
a stated day, will often bring to his task an attention
dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination
overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties,
a body languishing with disease: he will labour on
a barren topick, till it is too late to change it; or, in
the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into
wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication
cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce.

Whatever shall be the final sentence of mankind,
I have at least endeavoured to deserve their kindness.
I have laboured to refine our language to
grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial
barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular
combinations. Something, perhaps, I have added to the
elegance of its construction, and something to the
harmony of its cadence. When common words were
less pleasing to the ear, or less distinct in their
signification, I have familiarized the terms of
philosophy, by applying them to popular ideas, but have