cessation of my performances will raise any
inquiry, for I have never been much a favourite of the publick, nor can
boast that, in the progress of my undertaking, I have been animated by
the rewards of the liberal, the caresses of the great, or the praises of
the eminent.

But I have no design to gratify pride by submission, or malice by
lamentation; nor think it reasonable to complain of neglect from those
whose regard I never solicited. If I have not been distinguished by the
distributors of literary honours, I have seldom descended to the arts by
which favour is obtained. I have seen the meteors of fashions rise and
fall, without any attempt to add a moment to their duration. I have
never complied with temporary curiosity, nor enabled my readers to
discuss the topick of the day; I have rarely exemplified my assertions
by living characters; in my papers, no man could look for censures of
his enemies, or praises of himself; and they only were expected to
peruse them, whose passions left them leisure for abstracted truth, and
whom virtue could please by its naked dignity.

To some, however, I am indebted for encouragement, and to others for
assistance. The number of my friends was never great, but they have been
such as would not suffer me to think that I was writing in vain, and I
did not feel much dejection from the want of popularity.

My obligations having not been frequent, my acknowledgments may be soon
despatched. I can restore to all my correspondents their productions,
with little diminution of the bulk of my volumes, though not without the
loss of some pieces to which particular honours have been paid.

The parts from which I claim no other praise than that of having given
them an opportunity of appearing, are the four billets in the tenth
paper, the second letter in the fifteenth, the thirtieth, the
forty-fourth, the ninety-seventh, and the hundredth papers, and the
second letter in the hundred and seventh.

Having thus deprived myself of many excuses which candour might have
admitted for the inequality of my compositions, being no longer able to
allege the necessity of gratifying correspondents, the importunity with
which publication was solicited, or obstinacy with which correction was
rejected, I must remain accountable for all my faults, and submit,
without subterfuge, to the censures of criticism, which, however, I
shall not endeavour to soften by a formal deprecation, or to overbear by
the influenc