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look forward, till, wrapped in future vision, we fancy it, at length, to have escaped the ravages of time-to have survived more generations than the Pylean sage-to have overlived removals, revolutions, wars, fires, floods, and worms, till its lacerated covers, yellow paper, perforated leaves, and rounded angles, no less than its antique orthography and obsolete style, declare it full three hundred years old. Then we know it becomes invaluable, of course, especially, if age has rendered it illegible. It then is purchased by Dr. Flummery, a descendant of the present family of that name, which I know will never become extinct, and is worthy of scholiasts, readings, glossaries, and notæ variorum. shall say nothing of succeeding and splendid editions; it is among the old authors, and that is sufficient. Thus, again, it goes on, rising from dust and ashes, like a Phoenix, once or twice in six hundred years, and triumphing over every thing, till it swells the flame of the last conflagration. Animated by such prospects, no wonder men are willing to write in a garret, dine on a crust, direct their pen by the light of vellum, and sleep on a pallet of straw.

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I have mentioned these things, Gentlemen, that you may perceive I am no stranger to the feelings of an author. Sed nunc ad propositum : You are to know, that the Triangle has had a tolerable circulation in this country; but the grand desideratum is to get it beyond the Atlantic, and to have it read, if possible, in England. Whether it is because books cannot move against the sun, I do not know, but few of our books perform transatlantic journeys. As I have no great faith in the subject I have chosen, to give it an interest in distant countries, nor have I full confidence in the execution of the work to accomplish that end, I must rely on a dedication, as many others have done, to carry the book where, otherwise, it would probably never go. And when you understand these to be among my motives for selecting you, I presume you will justify my conduct, and accept the offering humbly laid at your feet.

I beg permission to dedicate to you, Gentlemen, from the grand consideration of your amazing longevity, which, though it has never occurred to any one before, (and I admire that it has not,) will be considered by every reader as a proper motive. Your career began before the reigns of the Henrys and Edwards; and you witnessed the conflicts between the red and white rose; you lived through the Republic and the storms raised by Cromwell; you witnessed the calamaties of the inauspicious house of Stuart-saw the Restorationthe Revolution-and have known the times ever since. You saw and heard all the controversies of Papist and Protestant, Episcopalian and Presbyterian, Roundheads, Independents, Covenanters, Puritans,~ Friends, &c. You witnessed the agitations and intrigues of the Ryehouse plot; saw the fall of Sydney and Russell; the bigotry and folly of the second James, and the vices and vagaries of the second Charles; the feverish greatness and doubtful glory of William, and the uncertain, inconsistent, and anxious administration of Anne. You must have frequented the courts adorned and dignified by the presence of Bacon, Hale, Coke, Mansfield, and Blackstone. You have often stood by when the elder Pitt thundered in the ear of the nation, and you. saw the conflict of talents and stupidity, of corruption and integrity, of pride and folly, when the British empire was severed, and our country declared independent.

With such experience, Gentlemen, as you have had, and such observation as you must have made, what may I not expect? I have frequently alluded to the times of the Reformation; you lived through

all those times, and, no doubt, could write a history that would instruct, if not surprise, the world. To you I confidently, and may safely, appeal for the correctness of my declarations and statements.

To almost antediluvian longevity you add an unimpeached, and, of course, an unimpeachable reputation. Though you have been the constant attendants of the grandest courts of justice for many centuries, without ever absenting yourselves on any occasion, your names are always pronounced with respect and gravity, both in doors and out, by the bench, bar, clients, and spectators: a felicity which never fell to the lot of any other men. This singular felicity you derive from your impartiality, which is as far beyond all comparison, as are your longevity and reputation. Your sole object is to guard the liberties and repose of honest men against the rash and litigious; to see that suits, which are legally commenced, should be duly prosecuted, and not to suffer a man to harass his neighbour awhile, and then skulk in silence behind the curtain. Of course, there would have been a peculiar propriety in dedicating every part of this work to you.

But, Gentlemen, that trait which I especially admire in your characters, is that independence of mind which never has forsaken you in the worst of times, when tyrants frowned and threatened, nor in the softest and most luxurious, when dissipation allures the brave, and flattery circumvents the wise. Even when the stern Henry sent the lovely and virtuous Ann Boleyn to the block, and the worthy, but too yielding, Cranmer to the flames, you stood your ground, and felt no fear; when the bloody Mary illuminated England with the flames of martyrs; when the perjured and horrid Jeffries rendered the circuit of his court like the path of the destroying angel, you, Gentlemen, never deviated from the path of justice, and no one impeached your conduct, entertained a suspicion of your integrity, or a thought prejudicial to your welfare.

As you have never swerved in storms of despotic fury or republican ferocity; as papal pride, episcopal power, independent arrogance, and libertine licentiousness, could never affect you; as you are always the same in the calm of peace and rage of war, the quietude of esta→ blishment and whirl of revolution, the night of anarchy and the noon of order, it is to such men as you I may safely look to patronize my work.

I have duly considered, Gentlemen, that you are not lawyers, though that class certainly excels all others in point of eloquence; and a real orator cannot be a bigot, though many of them are no incompetent judges of theological opinions and doctrines: yet, they are generally engaged in professional business, and have not leisure to divide their attention, or bestow their patronage on any side of a religious controversy. And I heartily wish that a less number of them were like Gallio, "who cared for none of these things." I am likewise consoled by the consideration that you are not popular men: "For," says Sir William Temple, come not too near to a man studying to rise in popular favour unless you can aid him in his grand object, lest you meet with a repulse." There may be, indeed, contrived a reciprocity of interest and obligation, and then you can advance with the proper overture," Titilla me et titillabo te," then it will do. But you, Gentlemen, are in pursuit of no man's favour, suffrage, influence, or patronage. You have seen, from the raised platform of solid reputation, numerous generations of ambitious men grasping for dominion,

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* Tickle me, and I'll tickle you.

disappear, like insects swept into the lake, by the sudden wing of the tempest, while yourselves remain unmoved.

Moreover, you are not authors-from whom an author as rarely gets patronage as a hungry man does food from ravens; for, says Johnson, few things can be published, however exalted or mean, however contemptible or meritorious, however great or little, from which an author will not fancy some obstruction in some channel of his fame, some diminution of the splendour of his reputation. The public mind cannot be more than occupied, and, as each author hopes to seize a hemisphere at least, and some more, as you see, every new candidate for notice and applause must take, perhaps, a share from those that occupied it before; and great authors act on one another like the disturbing influences of the planets on the centre of gravity, by which it is often caused to vacillate. Well it is that some of them do not drag it beyond the orbit of Saturn. But you, Gentlemen, are no authors,homines viventes estis-and living men are you likely to remain. You have none of these low prejudices and selfish fears. You do not say of one excellent book, it is very well, but the author was a plagiarist; of another, it is dull and tedious, and not worth reading; of a third, it is written withability, but the sentiments are false; of a fourth, the author meant well, but his subject was badly handled: and so on to the hundredth, with a but to every one of them. Not but that there may, indeed, be such buts in reality, for most human things have a but; but all these buts of authors, are generally expounded by one, viz., but I am an author, which may properly be called the author's but.

Equal cause have I to rejoice, that you are not princes or nobles; in which case, among numerous candidates of patronage and favour, I should have cause to fear that one so obscure and remote might be overlooked, or, perhaps, easily outbid by skilful flattery, or, perhaps, by arguments more shining and solid, and motives addressed more home to the heart. Yet, when it is considered that any man of wealth has substantially the same ability to patronise books and literature that princes have, and, perhaps, fewer demands on their liberality in proportion to their ability, it is not to be doubted that a full share of princes have been patrons of learning.

I scarcely need say, that you, Gentlemen, are not clergymen, otherwise there would have been the greatest temerity and presumption in this dedication. Had you been clergymen, and upon a careful enumeration of your sides and angles had found them to be six, instead of threatening to prosecute the Investigator, as some clergymen, after counting up, have done, you would, perhaps, have done what would have been much worse- you would have taken no notice of it. It is with clergymen as with all other classes of men; some of them are very good men, and some are quite the other way, as you, in a life of several hundred years, must doubtless have observed. The good clergymen, which I hope, in some countries, bear some respectable proportion to the whole number, in a degree resemble the elect; they are mingled with a numerous class, from which no mortal eye can certainly distinguish them. Few men are viler in the sight of heaven, or more full of mischief among men, than an impious clergyman; and hone have done more to obstruct the progress of truth, and the interests of religion, than this ill-fated class. They derive their extraordinary power, to this end, from their successful endeavours to establish a high reputation for piety and zeal: and you, Gentlemen, no doubt, well remember the time when Bonner and Gardner were gazed at and adored, by a deluded multitude, as saints next in holiness to the

apostles-nay, when Alexander the Sixth and Cæsar Borgia were thought still much greater and better, perhaps, than even the ordinary apostles.

You will not understand, Gentlemen, that I mean to fix an equal indiscriminate censure on all triangular men. I am far from such thoughts or feelings. But that some among them are wholly given to pride, ambition, intrigue, and wickedness, I have not a doubt. And if they will read these pages they will probably find a more faithful monitor, and a truer portrait, than will again meet their eyes till they stand at the bar of God.

I am not insensible that many clergymen are among the noblest patrons, promoters, and proficients, in elegant literature and the arts. But, perhaps, with an individual exception, as far as relates to this city, these men are not found amongst the Trigonoi, a name by which I sometimes distinguish them. For, Gentlemen, their scheme is so intolerably narrow, so frozen and so dark, that the mind which puts it on is immediately and terribly shrunk from its ordinary size, however small or great it might have been before. For the soul seems to bear some resemblance to the ethereal element; it has an elastic spring, and is capable of great compression: and, perhaps, on that account, the ancients called them by the same name. A principal feature of the scheme of these teachers is, that the understandings of men are as much depraved by sin as the heart or the will. They have never exhibited but one argument which seems difficult to answer; and whether that is "argumentum ad hominem," or not, I shall leave you to judge; it arises not from what they say, but from what they are. They show such darkness of understanding, that all the dictates of charity and mercy loudly plead in their behalf that it might, if possible, be ascribed to some other than voluntary causes.

I have only to apprize you of one fact, Gentlemen, and I shall close. It has not been, neither will it be, the object of this work, in any stage of it, either present, past, or to come, to enter into theological discussions, or controversies, properly so called: on this account regular details of argument have been avoided; besides, that the writer is well aware, that whenever people are disposed to read for the sake of examining arguments, books, at hand, are not wanting in which these points are professedly argued and unanswerably demonstrated. I have perceived, with inexpressible regret, the people of a great and flourishing, a free and enlightened city, not only deprived of the means of information, but sinking continually deeper into the absurd and gloomy prejudices which covered the eyes of men three hundred years ago. This object is effected by art and intrigue, by vague surmises and absurd rumours, by public declamations and ecclesiastical censures. The public, though somewhat of an unwieldy body, and composed of crude materials, will ultimately judge correctly, when furnished with

the means.

Let the history of this business be stripped of its covering, and its enormity will quickly appear. It cannot be for the interest of mankind to be deceived: the interest of the soul, and the concerns of religion, are too vast to be sacrificed, as any one may see, to the pride and ambition of a reptile whose infamy and misery will be proportioned to his success, and will afford but a wretched consolation for the multitudes who have been seduced by his wiles.

As you, Gentlemen, have long personated the eye of public Justice, you can have no prejudice, and can desire nothing but that truth

should prevail. The truth, which had made some progress in this city, bas been attacked by various means, and by violent measures. While the adversaries have shown no disposition to fair and liberal discussion, or to put the prevalence of conflicting sentiments on the proper issue of superior conviction, they have gradually put in motion all the means which artful ambition ever derived from prejudice, ignorance, and wilful blindness. For many years past their career has been with a high hand, and pursued with a supposed ascendant influence, corroborated with a pride of superiority, and insolence of success, intolerable to such as were placed in a situation to feel the secret sting of their contumely, or the lash of their public recrimination.

Their ascendancy was supposed, because their little comparative omnipotence was never attempted. You are not to suppose that this city was void of all intellect; but while objects of a nature far different from theological discussion principally engrossed the public attention, and while a great body of people saw nothing about these men but the snowy robes and angelic meekness of peerless sanctity, and a still greater number rendered careless about a religion equally repugnant to reason and common sense, and independent of every province of the human mind, cared little through what conduits this turbid stream of inconsistency, mystery, and fanaticism flowed, the ignorant were silent through veneration, the irreligious through indifference, the pious from love of peace, and the interested from motives of popularity. And all were silent:

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