all the author had; but the gentleman hath shown none, unless his
approbation of Mr Adams be such: but surely it would be preposterous
in him to call it so. I have, however, notwithstanding this
criticism, which I am told came from the mouth of a great orator in
a public coffee-house, left this blunder as it stood in the first
edition. I will not have the vanity to apply to anything in this
work the observation which M. Dacier makes in her preface to her
Aristophanes: _Je tiens pour une maxime constante, qu'une beaute
mediocre plait plus generalement qu'une beaute sans defaut._ Mr
Congreve hath made such another blunder in his Love for Love, where
Tattle tells Miss Prue, "She should admire him as much for the
beauty he commends in her as if he himself was possessed of it."

The gentleman answered, he could not refuse him what he had so much
right to insist on; and after some of the common apologies, which are
the usual preface to a story, he thus began.



CHAPTER III.

_In which the gentleman relates the history of his life._


Sir, I am descended of a good family, and was born a gentleman. My
education was liberal, and at a public school, in which I proceeded so
far as to become master of the Latin, and to be tolerably versed in the
Greek language. My father died when I was sixteen, and left me master of
myself. He bequeathed me a moderate fortune, which he intended I should
not receive till I attained the age of twenty-five: for he constantly