aining: All together bespeak the
Author to be a Man of Learning, good Sense and Capacity. My Design in
troubling you with this tedious Epistle in Print, which perhaps will be
longer than you could have wish'd it, is to rescue the Publick from a
vulgar Error, which Thousands of knowing and well-meaning People, and
your self, I see, among the Rest, have been led into by a common
Report, concerning _The Fable of the Bees_, as if it was a wicked Book,
wrote for the Encouragement of Vice, and to debauch the Nation. I beg
of you not to imagine, that I intend to blame you, or any other candid
Man like your self, for having rashly given Credit to such a Report
without further Examination. The _Fable of the Bees_ has been presented
by a Grand Jury more than once; and there is hardly a Book that has
been preach'd and wrote against with greater Vehemence or Severity.
When a Work is so generally exclaim'd against, a wise Man, who has no
Mind to mispend his Time, has a very good Reason for not reading it.
But as your second Dialogue is almost entirely levell'd at that Book
and its Author, and you have no where declar'd in Words at length (at
least, as I remember) that you never read _The Fable of the Bees_, it
is possible I might be ask'd, why I would take it for granted, that you
never had read it, when many of your Readers perhaps will believe the
contrary. If this Question was put to me, I would readily answer, that
I chose to be of that Opinion, because it is the most favourable I can
possibly entertain of _Dion_. It is not, Sir, believe me, out of
Disrespect, that I call you plain _Dion_; but because I would treat you
with the utmost Civility: It is the Name under which, I find, you are
pleas'd to disguise your self; and offering to guess at an Author, when
he chuses to be conceal'd, is, I think a Rudeness almost equal to that
of pulling off a Woman's Mask against her Will.

Whoever reads your second Dialogue, will not find in it any real
Quotations from my Book, either stated or examined into, but that the
wicked Tenets and vile Assertions there justly exposed, are either such
Notions and Sentiments, as first, my Enemies, to render me odious, and
afterwards Common Fame had already father'd upon me, tho' not to be met
with in any Part of my Book; or else, that they are spiteful
Inferences, and invidious Comments, which others before you, without
Justness or Necessity, had drawn from and made upon what I had
innocently said. I f