“Sir Humphrey Polesworth[166], I know you are a plain dealer; it is for that reason I have chosen you for this important trust; speak the truth and spare not”.  That I might fulfil those his honourable intentions, I obtained leave to repair to, and attend him in his most secret retirements; and I put the journals of all transactions into a strong box, to be opened at a fitting occasion, after the manner of the historiographers of some eastern monarchs:  this I thought was the safest way; though I declare I was never afraid to be chopped[167] by my master for telling of truth.  It is from those journals that my memoirs are compiled:  therefore let not posterity a thousand years hence look for truth in the voluminous annals of pedants, who are entirely ignorant of the secret springs of great actions; if they do, let me tell them they will be nebused.[168]

With incredible pains have I endeavoured to copy the several beauties of the ancient and modern historians; the impartial temper of Herodotus, the gravity, austerity, and strict morals of Thucydides, the extensive knowledge of Xenophon, the sublimity and grandeur of Titus Livius; and to avoid the careless style of Polybius, I have borrowed considerable ornaments from Dionysius Halicarnasseus, and Diodorus Siculus.  The specious gilding of Tacitus I have endeavoured to shun.  Mariana, Davila, and Fra. Paulo, are those amongst the moderns whom I thought most worthy of imitation; but I cannot be so disingenuous, as not to own the infinite obligations I have to the Pilgrim’s Progress of John Bunyan, and the Tenter Belly of the Reverend Joseph Hall.

From such encouragement and helps, it is easy to guess to what a degree of perfection I might have brought this great work, had it not been nipped in the bud by some illiterate people in both Houses of Parliament, who envying the great figure I was to make in future ages, under pretence of raising money for the war,[169] have padlocked all those very pens that were to celebrate the actions of their heroes, by silencing at once the whole university of Grub Street.  I am persuaded that nothing but the prospect of an approaching peace could have encouraged them to make so bold a step.  But suffer me, in the name of the rest of the matriculates of that famous university, to ask them some plain questions:  Do they think that peace will bring along with it the golden age?  Will there be never a dying speech of a traitor?  Are Cethegus and Catiline turned so tame, that there will be no opportunity to cry about the streets, “A Dangerous Plot”?  Will peace bring such plenty that no gentleman will have occasion to go upon the highway, or break into a house?  I am sorry that the world should be so much imposed upon by the dreams of a false prophet, as to imagine the Millennium is at hand.  O Grub Street! thou fruitful nursery of towering geniuses!  How do I lament thy downfall?  Thy ruin could never be meditated by any who meant well to English