bable manner, in order to allure my readers into the very substance and marrow of this most admirable and necessary art.

I am heartily sorry, and was much disappointed to find, that so universal and polite an entertainment as cards has hitherto contributed very little to the enlargement of my work. I have sat by many hundred times with the utmost vigilance, and my table-book ready, without being able, in eight hours, to gather matter for one single phrase in my book. But this, I think, may be easily accounted for, by the turbulence and justling of passions, upon the various and surprising turns, incidents, revolutions, and events of good and evil fortune, that arrive in the course of a long evening at play; the mind being wholly taken up, and the consequences of non-attention so fatal.

Play is supported upon the two great pillars of deliberation and action. The terms of art are few, prescribed by law and custom; no time allowed for digressions or trials of wit. Quadrille in particular bears some resemblance to a state of nature, which we are told is a state of war; wherein every woman is against every woman; the unions short, inconstant, and soon broke; the league made this minute without knowing the ally, and dissolved in the next. Thus, at the game of quadrille, female brains are always employed in stratagem, or their hands in action. Neither can I find that our art has gained much by the happy revival of masquerading among us; the whole dialogue in those meetings being summed up in one (sprightly, I confess, but) single question, and as sprightly an answer. "Do you know me?" "Yes, I do." And, "Do you know me ?" "Yes, I do."

For this reason I did not think it proper to

give my readers the trouble of introducing a masquerade, merely for the sake of a single question and a single answer; especially when, to perform this in a proper manner, I must have brought in a hundred persons' together, of both sexes, dressed in fantastic habits for one minute, and dismiss them the next.

Neither is it reasonable to conceive that our science can be much improved by masquerades, where the wit of both sexes is altogether taken up in contriving singular and humorous disguises; and their thoughts entirely employed in bringing intrigues and assignations of gallantry to a happy conclusion.

The judicious reader will readily discover, that I make Miss Notable my heroine, and Mr Thomas Neverout my hero. I have laboured both their characters with my utmost ability. It is into their mouths that I have put the liveliest questions, answers, repartees, and rejoinders, because my design was, to propose them both as patterns, for all young bachelors, and single ladies, to copy after. By which I hope very soon to see polite conversation flourish between both sexes, in a more consummate degree of perfection than these kingdoms have yet ever known.

I have drawn some lines of Sir John Linger's character, the Derbyshire knight, on purpose to place it in counterview or contrast with that of the other company, wherein I can assure the reader, that I intended not the least reflection upon Derbyshire, the place of my nativity. But my intention was only to show the misfortune of those persons who have the disadvantage to be bred out of the circle of politeness, whereof I take the present limits to extend no further than London, and ten miles round; although others are

pleased to confine it within the bills of mortality. If you compare the discourses of my gentlemen and ladies, with those of Sir John, you will hardly conceive him to have been bred in the same climate, or under the same laws, language, religion, or government; and, accordingly, I have introduced him speaking in his own rude dialect, for no other reason than to teach my scholars how to avoid it.

The curious reader will observe, that, when conversation appears in danger to flag, which in some places I have artfully contrived, I took care to invent some sudden question, or turn of wit, to revive it; such as these that follow: "What? I think here's a silent meeting! Come, madam, a penny for your thought;" with several others of the like sort. I have rejected all provincial or country turns of wit and fancy, because I am acquainted with very few; but indeed chiefly, because I found them so much inferior to those at court, especially among the gentlemen ushers, the ladies of the bedchamber, and the maids of honour; I must also add the hither end of our noble metropolis.

When this happy art of polite conversing shall be thoroughly improved, good company will be no longer pestered with dull, dry, tedious storytellers, nor brangling disputers: for a right scholar of either sex in our science, will perpetually interrupt them with some sudden surprising piece of wit, that shall engage all the company in a loud laugh; and if, after a pause, the grave companion resumes his thread in the following manner: "Well, but to go on with my story," new interruptions come from the left and the right, till he is forced to give over.

I have likewise made some few essays toward the selling of bargains, as well for instructing those who delight in that accomplishment, as in compliance with my female friends at court. However, I have transgressed a little in this point, by doing it in a manner somewhat more reserved than it is now practised at St James's. At the same time, I can hardly allow this accomplishment to pass properly for a branch of that perfect polite conversation, which makes the constituent subject of my treatise; and for this I have already given my reasons. I have likewise, for further caution, left a blank in the critical point of each bargain, which the sagacious reader may fill up in his own mind.

As to myself, I am proud to own, that, except some smattering in the French, I am what the pedants and scholars call a man wholly illiterate, that is to say, unlearned. But as to my own language, I shall not readily yield to many persons. I have read most of the plays and all the miscellany poems that have been published for twenty years past. I have read Mr Thomas Brown's* works entire, and had the honour to be his intimate friend, who was universally allowed to be the greatest genius of his age.

Upon what foot I stand with the present chief reigning wits, their verses recommendatory, which they have commanded me to prefix before my book,

*The facetious Tom Brown gave up, for the character of a London wag, the pretensions which he might really have set up to talent and learning. He led a dissolute and indigent life, in the course of which he often saw (as he expresses it) his last Carolus reduced from an integer to decimal fractions; and died about 1704.

will be more than a thousand witnesses. I am, and have been, likewise particularly acquainted with Mr Charles Gildon, * Mr Ward, † Mr Dennis, ‡ that admirable critic and poet, and several others. Each of these eminent persons (I mean those who are still alive) have done me the honour to read this production five times over, with the strictest eye of friendly severity, and proposed some, although very few amendments, which I gratefully accepted, and do here publicly return my acknowledgment for so singular a favour.

* Gildon, a well-known hero of the Dunciad, was brought up at the catholic seminary at Douay. It cost him, by his own account, seven years close study to overcome the prejudices of this education; after which he emerged a wit, a dramatist, and a deist. He wrote three plays, which, meeting with little attention, the corruption of a poet became in this, as in other cases, the generation of a critic. By Remarks upon Pope's Rape of the Lock, he drew down the vengeance of that irritable author. Posterity is, in some degree, obliged to Gildon for a continuation of Langbaine's account of Dramatic Poets, in which, though not very accurate, he has preserved some literary anecdotes. He died 12th Jan. 1723.

† Edward Ward, a poetaster, who wrote doggrel verses upon the political occurrences of the day. He was a keen Tory, and as he had some occasional glimmerings of humour, was not an altogether useless partizan. Jacob described him as keeping a public-house in the city, with which Ward was much affronted, and confuted him, by shewing that it was situated in Moorfields. He wrote, among other things, a blackguard work, called the London Spy, which contains some good pictures of low life, and of London manners, in the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Poor Dennis ill deserved the unqualified severity with which he has been treated by Pope and Swift. "Let us remember," says Mr Bowles, with just feeling, "what is due to disappointment. Dennis came into the world with ardent hopes as a man of literature, and with respectable connexions. He found all his expectations crossed, though he was conscious of his acquirements; and after long and ineffectual struggles towards attaining what he considered his deserved rank of literary eminence, he sunk at last, poor and unfriended, into old age."-Notes on POPE's Prologue to the Satires, vol. iv. p. 28.