May I have leave to do myself the justice--since my enemies will do me none, and are so far from granting me to be a good poet, that they will not allow me so much as to be a Christian, or a moral man--may I have leave, I say, to inform my reader that I have confin'd my choice to such tales of Chaucer as savor nothing of immodesty.

If I had desir'd more to please than to instruct, the Reeve, the Miller, the Shipman, the Merchant, the Sumner, and, above all, the Wife of Bath, in the prologue to her tale, would have procured me as many friends and readers, as there are beaux and ladies of pleasure in the town.

But I will no more offend against good manners: I am sensible, as I ought to be, of the scandal I have given by my loose writings; and make what reparation I am able, by this public acknowledgment.

If anything of this nature, or of profaneness, be crept into these poems, I am so far from defending it, that I disown it.

_Totum hoc indictum volo._[25] Chaucer makes another manner of apology for his broad speaking, and Boccace makes the like; but I will follow neither of them.