I HAVE no design in this dedication, but to express my gratitude for the pleasure and advantage I have received from your Poem on the Last Judgment, and the Paraphrase on part of the Book of Job. The Author of these Letters is above any view of interest; and can have no prospect of reputation, resolving to be concealed. But if they prove serious entertainment to persons whose leisure hours are not always innocently employed, the end is fully answered. The greatest infidel must own, there is at least as much probability in this scheme, as in that of the Fairy Tales; which, however visionary, are some of them moral 1917 SIR, Your very humble servant, &c. PREFACE THE PREFACE. THE drift of these Letters is, to impress the notion of the Soul's Immortality; without which, all virtue and religion, with their temporal and eternal good consequences, must fall to the ground, Some who pretend to have no scruples about the being of God, have yet their doubts about their own eternal existence, though valuable Authors abound in Christian and moral proofs of it. But, since no means should be left unattempted in a point of such importance, I hope, endeavouring to make the mind familiar with the thoughts of our future existence,. and contract, as it were unawares, an habitual persuasion of it, by writings built on that foundation, and addressed to the affections and imagination, will not be thought improper, either as a doctrine, or amusement :: amusement, for which the world makes by far the largest· demand; and which, generally speaking, is nothing but an art of forgetting that immortality, the firm belief and advantageous contemplation of which this amusement: would recommend. THE THE To Sylvia from Alexis, from Narcissus, To Leonora from Clerimont her guardian, From Cleander to his brother, XIII- To Climene from XIV. From -to his Sister, XV.- From Philander to Henrietta, XVII. From Ibrahim, a Turkish Bassa, to Philocles, XVIII. From the deceased Eusebius to his Son, -38 XIX-To my Lord from Mariana, his deceased wife, 40 XX- From Theodosius to Varius, Thoughts on Death, translated from the Moral Essays of Mess. to to prove that the shining Page. LETTER XVI- From Lady Jane Gray to Lord Guilford Dudley, 99 very just, to communicate, VII. Assuring her, that she compassionates her man- VIII. Acknowledging that the principal motive of - III. To the same, giving her an account how she IV. To the same, on the vanity of all sublunary |