buthnot lost his office at Court. But he was the friend and physician
of all the wits; himself without literary ambition, allowing friends
to make what alterations they pleased in pieces that he wrote, or his
children to make kites of them. A couple of years before his death
he suffered deeply from the loss of the elder of his two sons. He was
himself afflicted then with stone, and retired to Hampstead to die. "A
recovery," he wrote to Swift, "is in my case and in my age impossible;
the kindest wish of my friends is euthanasia." He died in 1735.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

When I was first called to the office of historiographer to John Bull,
he expressed himself to this purpose:--"Sir Humphrey Polesworth,* 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** 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.***

* A Member of Parliament, eminent for a certain cant in his
conversation, of which there is a good deal in this book.

** A cant word of Sir Humphrey's.

*** Another cant word, signifying deceived.

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