PREFACE


The following History is given in a series of letters, written
Principally in a double yet separate correspondence;

Between two young ladies of virtue and honor, bearing an inviolable
friendship for each other, and writing not merely for amusement, but
upon the most interesting subjects; in which every private family,
more or less, may find itself concerned; and,

Between two gentlemen of free lives; one of them glorying in his
talents for stratagem and invention, and communicating to the other,
in confidence, all the secret purposes of an intriguing head and
resolute heart.

But here it will be proper to observe, for the sake of such as may
apprehend hurt to the morals of youth, from the more freely-written
letters, that the gentlemen, though professed libertines as to the
female sex, and making it one of their wicked maxims, to keep no
faith with any of the individuals of it, who are thrown into their
power, are not, however, either infidels or scoffers; nor yet such
as think themselves freed from the observance of those other moral
duties which bind man to man.

On the contrary, it will be found, in the progress of the work, that