I am gone out from Sodom, but I
am not arrived at my little Zoar. "Oh, let me escape thither (is it
not a little one!), and my soul shall live." I do not look back
yet; but I have been forced to stop and make too many halts. You
may wonder, sir (for this seems a little too extravagant and
Pindarical for prose) what I mean by all this preface. It is to let
you know, that though I have missed, like a chemist, my great end,
yet I account my afflictions and endeavours well rewarded by
something that I have met with by-the-by, which is, that they have
produced to me some part in your kindness and esteem; and thereby
the honour of having my name so advantageously recommended to
posterity by the epistle you are pleased to prefix to the most
useful book that has been written in that kind, and which is to last
as long as months and years.
Among many other arts and excellencies which you enjoy, I am glad to
find this favourite of mine the most predominant, that you choose
this for your wife, though you have hundreds of other arts for your
concubines; though you know them, and beget sons upon them all (to
which you are rich enough to allow great legacies), yet the issue of
this seems to be designed by you to the main of the estate; you have
taken most pleasure in it, and bestowed most charges upon its
education, and I doubt not to see that book which you are pleased to
promise to the world, and of which you have given us a large earnest
in your calendar, as accomplished as anything can be expected from
an extraordinary wit and no ordinary expenses and a long experience.
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