n life can be more
exact than life itself is? He may be allowed sometimes to err, who
undertakes to move so many characters and humours, as are requisite in
a play, in those narrow channels which are proper to each of them; to
conduct his imaginary persons through so many various intrigues and
chances, as the labouring audience shall think them lost under every
billow; and then, at length, to work them so naturally out of their
distresses, that, when the whole plot is laid open, the spectators may
rest satisfied, that every cause was powerful enough to produce the
effect it had; and that the whole chain of them was with such due
order linked together, that the first accident would naturally beget
the second, till they all rendered the conclusion necessary.

These difficulties, my lord, may reasonably excuse the errors of
my undertaking; but for this confidence of my dedication, I have an
argument, which is too advantageous for me not to publish it to the
world. It is the kindness your lordship has continually shown to all
my writings. You have been pleased, my lord, they should sometimes
cross the Irish seas, to kiss your hands; which passage (contrary
to the experience of others) I have found the least dangerous in the
world. Your favour has shone upon me at a remote distance, without the
least knowledge of my person; and (like the influence of the heavenly
bodies) you have done good, without knowing to whom you did it. It is
this virtue in your lordship, which emboldens me to this attempt; for,
did I not consider you as my patron, I have little reason to desire
you for my judge; and should appear with as much awe before you in the
reading, as I had when the full theatre sat upon the action. For, who
could so severely judge of faults as he, who has given testimony he
commits none? Your excellent poems have afforded that knowledge of it
to the world, that your enemies are ready to upbraid you with it, as
a crime for a man of business to write so well. Neither durst I have
justified your lordship in it, if examples of it had not been in the
world before you; if Xenophon had not written a romance, and a certain
Roman, called Augustus Caesar, a tragedy, and epigrams. But their
writing was the entertainment of their pleasure; yours is only a
diversion of your pain. The muses have seldom employed your thoughts,
but when some violent fit of the gout has snatched you from affairs
of state; and, like the priestess of Apollo, yo