We think it incumbent on us to acquaint the Public, notwithstanding thetitle of this work, and what the Compiler asserts in his preface, thatwe do not pledge ourselves for the authenticity of this Collection, andthat we have even very forcible reasons to believe it a fiction.
Nay, that the author, who seems studiously to have sought nature, hashimself awkwardly defeated his intention, by the epocha in which hehas placed his events. The morals of several of his personages are socorrupt, that it is impossible they should have existed in this age;an age of philosophy, and in which an extensive diffusion of knowledgehas had the happy effect to render the men famed for morality andintegrity, and the female sex for reserve and modesty.
We are therefore inclined to think, if the adventures related in thiswork have any foundation in truth, they must have happened at someother time and place: and we blame the author much, who, probablyseduced by the hope of interesting us the more, has dared to modernizeand to decorate, with our usages and customs, morals to which we areutter strangers.
To preserve, at least, the too credulous reader, as much as in ourpower, from all surprise on this subject, we will strengthen ouropinion with an unanswerable argument; for though similar causes neverfail to produce the same effects, yet we cannot now find a younglady, with an estate of 60,000 livres a year, take the veil, nor aPresidente, in the bloom of youth and beauty, die of grief.
This Work, or rather Collection, which the Public will, perhaps, stillfind too voluminous, contains but a small part of the correspondencefrom which it is extracted. Being appointed to arrange it by thepersons in whose possession it was, and who, I knew, intended it forpublication, I asked, for my sole recompence, the liberty to rejectevery thing that appeared to me useless, and I have endeavoured topreserve only the letters which appeared necessary to illustratethe events, or to unfold the characters. If to this inconsiderableshare in the work be added an arrangement of those letters which Ihave preserved, with a strict attention to dates, and some shortannotations, calculated, for the most part, to point out somecitations, or to explain some retrenchments I have made, the Publicwill see the extent of my labours, and the part I have taken in thispublication.
I have also changed, or suppressed, the names of the personages, andif, among those I have substituted, any resemblance may be found whichmight give offence, I beg it may be looked on as an unintentional error.
I proposed farther alterations, as to purity of style and diction, inboth which many faults will be found. I could also have wished to havebeen authorised to shorten some long letters, several of which treatseparately, and almost without transition, of objects totally foreignto one another. This liberty, in which I was not indulged, wouldnot have been sufficient to give merit to the work, but would havecorrected part of its defects