less authority against me.  Yet if a poem have genius, it will force its own reception in the world.  For there is a sweetness in good verse, which tickles even while it hurts; and no man can be heartily angry with him who pleases him against his will.  The commendation of adversaries is the greatest triumph of a writer, because it never comes unless extorted.  But I can be satisfied on more easy terms:  if I happen to please the more moderate sort, I shall be sure of an honest party, and, in all probability, of the best judges; for the least concerned are commonly the least corrupt.  And I confess I have laid in for those, by rebating the satire (where justice would allow it), from carrying too sharp an edge.  They who can criticise so weakly as to imagine I have done my worst, may be convinced, at their own cost, that I can write severely, with more ease than I can gently.  I have but laughed at some men’s follies, when I could have declaimed against their vices; and other men’s virtues I have commended, as freely as I have taxed their crimes.  And now, if you are a malicious reader, I expect you should return upon me that I affect to be thought more impartial than I am.  But if men are not to be judged by their professions, God forgive you Commonwealth’s-men for professing so plausibly for the government.  You cannot be so unconscionable as to charge me for not subscribing my name; for that would reflect too grossly upon your own party, who never dare, though they have the advantage of a jury to secure them.  If you like not my poem, the fault may possibly be in my writing (though it is hard for an author to judge against himself); but more probably it is in your morals, which cannot bear the truth of it.  The violent on both sides will condemn the character of Absalom, as either too favourably or too hardly drawn.  But they are not the violent whom I desire to please.  The fault on the right hand is to extenuate, palliate, and indulge; and to confess freely, I have endeavoured to commit it.  Besides the respect which I owe his birth, I have a greater for his heroic virtues; and David himself could not be more tender of the young man’s life, than I would be of his reputation.  But since the most excellent natures are always the most easy, and, as being such, are the soonest perverted by ill counsels, especially when baited with fame and glory; it is no more a wonder that he withstood not the temptations of Achitophel, than it was for Adam not to have resisted the two devils, the serpent and the woman.  The conclusion of the story I purposely forbore to prosecute, because I could not obtain from myself to show Absalom unfortunate.  The frame of it was cut out but for a picture to the waist; and if the draught be so far true, it is as much as I designed.