Eloisa

Great cities require public theatres, and romances are necessary to a corrupt people. I saw the manners of the times, and have published these letters. Would to heaven I had lived in an age when I ought rather to have thrown them in the fire!

Though I appear only as the editor of this work, I confess that I have had some share in the composition. But am I the sole author, and is the entire correspondence fictitious? Ye people of the world, of what importance is it to you? Certainly, to you, it is all a fiction.

Every honest man will avow the books which he publishes. I have prefixed my name to these letters, not with a design to appropriate them to myself, but that I might be answerable for them. If they deserve censure, let it fall on me; if they have any merit, I am not ambitious of the praise. If it is a bad book, I am the more obliged to own it: I do not wish to pass for better than I am.

As to the reality of the history, I declare that, though I have been several times in the country of the two lovers, I never heard either of Baron D’Etange, his daughter, Mr. Orbe, Lord B----, or Mr. Wolmar. I must also inform the reader that there are several topographical errors in this work; but whether they are the effect of ignorance or design, I leave undetermined. This is all I am at liberty to say: let every one think as he pleases.

The book seems not calculated for an extensive circulation, as it is not adapted to the generality of readers. The stile will offend people of taste, to austere men the matter will be alarming, and all the sentiments will seem unnatural to those who know not what is meant by the word virtue. It ought to displease the devotee, the libertine, the philosopher; to shock all the ladies of gallantry, and to scandalize every modest woman. By whom, therefore, will it be approved? Perhaps only by myself: certain I am, however, that it will not meet with _moderate_ approbation from any one.

Whoever may resolve to read these letters ought to arm himself with patience against faults of language, rusticity of stile, and pedantry of expression; he ought to remember that the writers are neither natives of France, wits, academicians, nor philosophers; but that they are young and unexperienced inhabitants of a remote village, who mistake the romantic extravagance of their own imagination, for philosophy.