"A mask," says
Castiglione, "confers a right of acting and speaking with less
restraint, even when the wearer happens to be known." He that is
discovered without his own consent, may claim some indulgence, and
cannot be rigorously called to justify those sallies or frolicks which
his disguise must prove him desirous to conceal.
But I have been cautious lest this offence should be frequently or
grossly committed; for, as one of the philosophers directs us to live
with a friend, as with one that is some time to become an enemy, I have
always thought it the duty of an anonymous author to write, as if he
expected to be hereafter known.
I am willing to flatter myself with hopes, that, by collecting these
papers, I am not preparing, for my future life, either shame or
repentance. That all are happily imagined, or accurately polished, that
the same sentiments have not sometimes recurred, or the same expressions
been too frequently repeated, I have not confidence in my abilities
sufficient to warrant. He that condemns himself to compose on a stated
day, will often bring to his task an attention dissipated, a memory
embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with
anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he will labour on a barren
topick, till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of
invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing
hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce.
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