Gentlemen, for so you all write your selves; and indeed you are your own Heralds, and Blazon all your Coats with Honour and Loyalty for your Supporters; nay, and you are so unconscionable too in that point, that you will allow neither of them in any other Scutcheons but your own. But who has ’em, or has ’em not, is not my present business; onely as you profess your selves Gentlemen, to conjure you to give an Adversary fair play; and that if any person whatsoever shall pretend to be aggrieved by this POEM, or any part of it, that he would bear it patiently; since the Licentiousness of the first Absolom and Achitophel has been the sole occasion of the Liberty of This, I having only taken the Measure of My Weapon, from the Length of his; which by the Rules of Honour ought not to offend you; especially, since the boldness of that Ingenious Piece, was wholly taken from the Encouragement you gave the Author; and ’tis from that Boldness only that this POEM takes its Birth: for had not his daring Pen brought that Piece into the World, I had been so far from troubling my self in any Subject on this kind, that I may justly say in one sence, the Writer of that Absolom, is the Author of this. This favour, as in Justice due, obtain’d from you, I shall not trouble you with a long Preface, like a tedious Compliment at the Door, but desire you to look in for your Entertainment. Onely I cannot forbear telling you, that one thing I am a little concern’d for you, Tories, that your Absoloms and Achitophels, and the rest of your Grinning Satyres against the Whiggs, have this one unpardonable Fault, That the Lash is more against a David, than an Achitophel; whilst the running down of the PLOT at so extravagant a rate, savours of very little less (pardon the Expression) than ridiculing of Majesty it self, and turning all those several Royal Speeches to the Parliament on that Subject, onely into those double-tongu’d Oracles that sounded one thing, and meant another. Besides, after this unmannerly Boldness, of not onely branding the publick Justice of the Nation, but affronting even the Throne it self, to 14 push the humour a little farther, you run into ten times a greater Vice, (and in the same strain too) than what you so severely inveigh against: and whilst a POPISH PLOT through want of sufficient Circumstances, and credible Witnesses, miscarries with you, a PROTESTANT PLOT without either Witness or Circumstance at all, goes currant. Nay you are so far now from your former niceties and scruples, and disparing about raising of Armies, and not one Commission found, that you can swallow the raising of a whole Protestant ARMY, without either Commission, or Commission-Officer; Nay, the very When, Where, and How, are no part of your Consideration. ’Tis true, the great Cry amongst you, is, The Nations Eyes are open’d; but I am afraid, in most of you, ’tis onely to look where you like best: and to help your lewd Eye-sight, you have got a damnable trick of turning the Perspective upon occasion, and magnifying or diminishing at pleasure. But alas, all talking to you is but impertinent, and fending and proving signifie just nothing; for after all Arguments, both Parties are so irreconcileable, that as the Author of Absolom wisely observed, they’ll be Fools or Knaves to each other to the end of the Chapter. And therefore I am so reasonable in this point, that should be very glad to divide ’em between ’em, and give the Fool to the Tory, and the Knave to the Whigg. For the Tories that will believe no POPISH PLOT, may as justly come under that denomination, as They, that David tells us, said in their Hearts there was no God. And then let the Whiggs that do believe a Popish Plot be the Knaves, for daring to endeavour to hinder the Effects of a Popish Plot, when the Tories are resolved to the contrary. But to draw near a conclusion, I have one favour more to beg of you, that you’ll give me the freedom of clapping but about a score of years extraordinary on the back of my Absolom. Neither is it altogether so unpardonable a Poetical License, since we find as great slips from the Author of your own Absolom, where we see him bring in a Zimri into the Court of David, who in the Scripture-story dyed by the Hand of Phineas in the days of Moses. Nay, in the other extream, we find him in another place talking of the Martyrdome of Stephen, so many Ages after. And if so famous an Author can forget his own Rules of Unity, Time, and Place, I hope you’ll give a Minor Poet some grains of Allowance, and he shall ever acknowledge himself

Your Humble Servant.

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