only claim what remains when all Boileau's part is taken away. In all his works there is a sprightliness and vigour, and every where may be found tokens of a mind which study might have carried to excellence. What more can be expected from a life spent in ostentatious contempt of regularity, and ended before the abilities of many other men began to be displayed? THE THE PREFACE.. THE celebrating the praises of the dead is an argument fo worn out by long and frequent ufe, and now become fo naufeous by the flattery that usually attends it, that it is no wonder if funeral orations, or panegyrics, are more confidered for the elegance of style and fineness of wit than for the authority they carry with them as to the truth of matters of fact. And yet I am not hereby deterred from meddling with this kind of argument, nor from handling it with all the plainness I can; delivering only what I myself heard and faw, without any borrowed ornament. I do eafily foresee how many will be engaged, for the fupport of their impious maxims and immoral practices, to difparage what I am to write. Others will cenfure it because it comes from one of my profeffion; too many supposing us to be induced to frame fuch difcourfes for carrying on what they are pleased to call our trade. Some will think I drefs it up too artificially, and others, that I prefent it too plain and naked. But, being refolved to govern myself by the exact rules of truth. I fhall be lefs concerned in the cenfures I may fall under. fall under. It may feem liable to great exception that I fhould disclose so many things, that were discovered to me, if not under the seal of confeffion, yet under the confidence of friendship. But this noble lord himself not only releafed me from all obligation of this kind, when I waited or him in his last sickness a few days before he died, but gave it me in charge not to fpare him in any thing which I thought might be of use to the living, and was not ill pleased to be laid open, as well in the worst as in the best and last part of his life, being fo fincere in his repentance, that he was not unwilling to take fhame to himself, by fuffering his faults to be expofed for the benefit of others. I write with one great difadvantage, that I cannot reach his chief design without mentioning some of his faults; but I have touched them as tenderly as occafion would bear, and I am fure, with much more softness than he defired, or would have confented unto, had I told him how I intended to manage this part. 1 have related nothing with perfonal reflections on any others concerned with him: wifhing rather that they themselves, reflecting on the fense he had of his former diforders, may be thereby led to forfake their own, than that they fhould fhould be any ways reproached by what I write : and therefore, though he used very few reserves with me as to his course of life, yet, fince others had a fhare in most parts of it, I fhall relate nothing but what more immediately concerned himfelf; and I fhall fay no more of his faults than is neceffary to illuftrate his repentance. The occafion, that led me into fo particular a knowledge of him, was an intimation, given me by a gentleman of his acquaintance, of his defire to fee me. This was fome time in October, 1679, when he was flowly recovering out of a great difeafe. He had underflood that I often attended on one well known to him, that died the fummer before: he was alfo then entertaining himself, in that ftate of his health, with the first part of the Hiftory of the Reformation, then newly come out, with which he seemed not ill pleased; and we had accidentally met in two or three places fome time before. These were the motives that led him to call for my company. After I had waited on him once or twice, he grew into that freedom with me, as to open to me all his thoughts, both of religion and morality; and to give me a full view of his paft life; and seemed not uneafy at my frequent vifits, So, till he went from London, which was in the beginning of April, I waited on him often. As foon foon as I heard how ill he was, and how much he was touched with a fenfe of his former life, I writ to him, and received from him an answer, that without my knowledge, was printed fince his death, from a copy which one of his fervants conveyed to the prefs. In it there is fo undeserved a value put on me, that it had been very indecent for me to have published it; yet that must be attributed to his civility and way of breeding; and indeed he was particularly known to fo few of the clergy, that the good opinion he had of me is to be imputed only to his unacquaintance with others. My end in writing is so to discharge the last commands this lord left on me, as that it may be effectual to awaken those who run on to all the exceffes of riot; and that, in the midft of those heats which their lufts and paffions raise in them, they may be a little wrought on by fo great an inftance of one who had run round the whole circle of luxury; and, as Solomon fays of himself, Whatfoever his eyes defired, he kept it not from them; and withheld his heart from no joy. But when he looked back on all that on which he had wafted his time and strength, he efteemed it vanity and vexation of Spirit: though he had both as much natural wit, and as much acquired by learning, and both as much improved with thinking and study, as perhaps any libertine of the |