But as this work is chiefly recommended to those who know how to read
it, and how to make the good uses of it which the story all along
recommends to them, so it is to be hoped that such readers will be more
leased with the moral than the fable, with the application than with
the relation, and with the end of the writer than with the life of the
person written of.
There is in this story abundance of delightful incidents, and all of
them usefully applied. There is an agreeable turn artfully given them
in the relating, that naturally instructs the reader, either one way or
other. The first part of her lewd life with the young gentleman at
Colchester has so many happy turns given it to expose the crime, and
warn all whose circumstances are adapted to it, of the ruinous end of
such things, and the foolish, thoughtless, and abhorred conduct of both
the parties, that it abundantly atones for all the lively description
she gives of her folly and wickedness.
The repentance of her lover at the Bath, and how brought by the just
alarm of his fit of sickness to abandon her; the just caution given
there against even the lawful intimacies of the dearest friends, and
how unable they are to preserve the most solemn resolutions of virtue
without divine assistance; these are parts which, to a just
discernment, will appear to have more real beauty in them all the
amorous chain of story which introduces it.
In a word, as the whole relation is carefully garbled of all the levity
and looseness that was in it, so it all applied, and with the utmost
care, to virtuous and religious uses. None can, without being guilty
of manifest injustice, cast any reproach upon it, or upon our design in
publishing it.
The advocates for the stage have, in all ages, made this the great
argument to persuade people that their plays are useful, and that they
ought to be allowed in the most civilised and in the most religious
government; namely, that they are applied to virtuous purposes, and
that by the most lively representations, they fail not to recommend
virtue and generous principles, and to discourage and expose all sorts
of vice and corruption of manners; and were it true that they did so,
and that they constantly adhered to that rule, as the test of their
acting on the theatre, much might be said in their favour.
Throughout the infinite variety of this book, this fundamental is most
strictly adhered to; there is not a wicked action in any part of it,
but is first and last rendered unhappy and unfortunate; there is not a
superlative villain brought upon the stage, but either he is brought to
an unhappy end, or brought to be a penitent; there is not an ill thing
mentioned but it is condemned, even in the relation, nor a virtuous,
just thing but it carries its praise along with it. What can more
exactly answer the rule laid down, to recommend even those
representations of things which have so many other just objections
leaving against them? namely, of example, of bad company, obscene
language, and the like.