that this nobleman, amidst a thousand curiosities with which his gardens abounded, had the unaccountable whim of placing a kind of artificial hermit in one of its wildest and most solitary recesses.  This hermit it seems was celebrated through the whole neighbourhood, for his ingenuity in the carving of tobacco-stoppers, and a variety of other accomplishments.  Some of the peasants even mistook him for a conjuror.  If I might be allowed in the conjectural licence of an editor, I should be inclined to ascribe the following composition to this celebrated and ingenious solitaire.

Since however this valuable tract remains without an owner, I thought it could not be so properly addressed to any man as your lordship.  I would not however be misunderstood.  I do not imagine that the claim this performance has upon the public attention, consists in the value and excellence of it’s precepts.  On the contrary, I consider it as the darkest and most tremendous scheme for the establishment of despotism that ever was contrived.  If the public enter into my sentiments upon the subject, they will consider it as effectually superseding Machiavel’s celebrated treatise of The Prince, and exhibiting a more deep-laid and desperate system of tyranny.  For my part, I esteem these great and destructive vices of so odious a nature, that they need only be exposed to the general view in order to the being scouted by all.  And if, which indeed I cannot possibly believe, there has been any noble lord in this kingdom mean enough to have studied under such a preceptor, I would willingly shame him out of his principles, and hold up to him a glass, which shall convince him how worthy he is of universal contempt and abhorrence.

The true reason, my lord, for which I have presumed to prefix your name to these sheets is, that the contrast between the precepts they contain, and the ingenuous and manly character that is universally attributed to your lordship, may place them more strongly in the light they deserve.  And yet I doubt not there will be some readers perverse enough to imagine that you are the true object of the composition.  They will find out some of those ingenious coincidences, by which The Rape of the Lock, was converted into a political poem, and the Telemaque of the amiable Fenelon into a satire against the government under which he lived.  I might easily appeal, against these treacherous commentators, to the knowledge of all men reflecting every corner of your lordship’s gardens at Stowe.  I might boldly defy any man to say, that they now contain, or ever did contain, one of these artificial hermits.  But I will take up your lordship’s defence upon a broader footing.  I will demonstrate how contrary the character of your ancestors and your own have always been to the spirit and temper here inculcated.  If this runs me a little into the beaten style of dedication, even the modesty of your lordship will excuse me, when I have so valuable a reason for adopting it.