endation of himself, and most probably of both,
that it cannot be improper for me to bespeak the reader's
favorable precaution against so natural a prejudice. My
principal motive for hazarding this production is, indisputably,
gratitude. The approbation with which my endeavours to please in
the dances of my composition have been honored, inspired me with
no sentiment so strongly as that of desiring to prove to the
public, that sensibility of its favor; which, in an artist, is
more than a duty. It is even one of the means of obtaining its
favor, by its inspiring that aim at perfection, in order to the
deserving it, which is unknown to a merely mercenary spirit.
Under the influence of that sentiment, it occurred to me, that
it might not be unpleasing to the public to have a fair state of
the pretentions of this art to its encouragement, and even to
its esteem, laid before it, by a practitioner of this art. In
stating these pretentions, there is nothing I shall more avoid
than the enthusiasm arising from that vanity or self-conceit,
which leads people into the ridicule of over-rating the merit
or importance of their profession. I shall not, for example,
presume to recommend dancing as a virtue; but I may, without
presumption, represent it as one of the principal graces, and,
in the just light, of being employed in adorning and making
Virtue amiable, who is far from rejecting such assistence. In
the view of a genteel exercise, it strengthens the body; in the
view of a liberal accomplishment, it visibly diffuses a graceful
agility through it; in the view of a private or public
entertainment, it is not only a general instinct of nature,
expressing health and joy by nothing so strongly as by dancing;
but is susceptible withall of the most elegant collateral
embellishments of taste, from poetry, music, painting, and
machinery.

One of the greatest and most admired institutors of youth, whose
fine taste has been allowed clear from the least tincture of
pedantry, Quintilian recommends especially the talent of
dancing, as conducive to the formation of orators; not, as he
very justly observes, that an orator should retain any thing
of the air of a dancing-master, in his motion or gesture; but
that the impression from the graces of that art should have
insensibly stoln into his manner, and fashioned it to please.

Even that austere critic, Scaliger, made the principles of it
so far his concern, that he was able personally to sa