TO THE Right Honourable the Countess of Hertford. I BEG leave, Madam, to flatter myself, that the same condescension and goodness which has admitted several of these pieces into your closet in manuscript, will permit them all to make this public appearance before you. Your ladyship's known character and taste for every thing that is pious and polite, give an honour- able sanction to these writings which stand recommended by your name and ap- probation: It is no wonder then that these Essays should seek the favour of such a patronage. Though the author professes himselfmuch a stranger to the great and splendid part of mankind, yet since your ladyship was pleased to indulge him a share in the honours of your friendship, he cannot but take pleasure to have been a witness of those virtues, whereby you bear up the dignity of our holy religion and the blessed gospel, amidst all the tempting grandeuts of this world, and in an age of growing infidelity. He acknowledges it a part of his felicity, that he has had opportunity to learn how happily the leisure which you borrow from the magnificence and cere- monies of a court, is employed in devout contemplations, in the study of virtue, and among the writings of the best poets in our own, or in foreign languages, so far as they are chaste and innocent. But it is no easy task, as a late ingenious pen * has expressed it, "to speak the many nameless graces and native riches of a mind, capable so much at once to relish solitude, and adorn society." May such a valuable life be drawn out to an uncommon length, as the richest of blessings to your noble family! May you shine long in your exalted station, an illustrious pattern of such goodness as may command a reverence and imitation among those who stand round you in higher' or lower life ! And when your spirit shall take its flight to superior regions, and that blissful world whither your medi- tation andyour hope have often raised you, may the court of Great Britain never want successors in your honourable house to adorn and support it. In the sincerity- of these wishes, I take leave to subscribe myself, Madam, Your Ladyship's most obedient Humble servant, I. WATT& * Mr. Thompson, in the dedication of bis poem' on the Spring.
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