the
looser Part of Mankind from having any thing to do with their Writings.
A man must have Virtue in him, before he will enter upon the reading of
a _Seneca_ or an _Epictetus_. The very Title of a Moral Treatise has
something in it austere and shocking to the Careless and Inconsiderate.

For this Reason several unthinking Persons fall in my way, who would
give no Attention to Lectures delivered with a Religious Seriousness or
a Philosophick Gravity. They are insnared into Sentiments of Wisdom and
Virtue when they do not think of it; and if by that means they arrive
only at such a Degree of Consideration as may dispose them to listen to
more studied and elaborate Discourses, I shall not think my Speculations
useless. I might likewise observe, that the Gloominess in which
sometimes the Minds of the best Men are involved, very often stands in
need of such little Incitements to Mirth and Laughter, as are apt to
disperse Melancholy, and put our Faculties in good Humour. To which some
will add, that the _British_ Climate, more than any other, makes
Entertainments of this Nature in a manner necessary.

If what I have here said does not recommend, it will at least excuse the
Variety of my Speculations. I would not willingly Laugh but in order to
Instruct, or if I sometimes fail in this Point, when my Mirth ceases to
be Instructive, it shall never cease to be Innocent. A scrupulous
Conduct in this Particular has, perhaps, more Merit in it than the
Generality of Readers imagine; did they know how many Thoughts occur in
a Point of Humour, which a discreet Author in Modesty suppresses; how
many Stroaks in Raillery present themselves, which could not fail to
please the ordinary Taste of Mankind, but are stifled in their Birth by
reason of some remote Tendency which they carry in them to corrupt the
Minds of those who read them; did they know how many Glances of
Ill-nature are industriously avoided for fear of doing Injury to the
Reputation of another, they would be apt to think kindly of those
Writers who endeavour to make themselves Diverting, without being
Immoral. One may apply to these Authors that Passage in _Waller_, [1]

'Poets lose half the Praise they would have got,
Were it but known what they discreetly blot'.

As nothing is more easy than to be a Wit, with all the above-mentioned
Liberties, it requires some Genius and Invention to appear such without
them.

What I have here said is not only in regard to the P