I have read your Two Volumes of _Alciphron_, or, The _Minute Philosopher_ with Attention. As far as I am a Judge, the Language is very good, the Diction correct, and the Style and whole Manner of Writing are both polite and entertaining: All together bespeak the Author to be a Man of Learning, good Sense and Capacity. My Design in troubling you with this tedious Epistle in Print, which perhaps will be longer than you could have wish'd it, is to rescue the Publick from a vulgar Error, which Thousands of knowing and well-meaning People, and your self, I see, among the Rest, have been led into by a common Report, concerning _The Fable of the Bees_, as if it was a wicked Book, wrote for the Encouragement of Vice, and to debauch the Nation. I beg of you not to imagine, that I intend to blame you, or any other candid Man like your self, for having rashly given Credit to such a Report without further Examination. The _Fable of the Bees_ has been presented by a Grand Jury more than once; and there is hardly a Book that has been preach'd and wrote against with greater Vehemence or Severity. When a Work is so generally exclaim'd against, a wise Man, who has no Mind to mispend his Time, has a very good Reason for not reading it. But as your second Dialogue is almost entirely levell'd at that Book and its Author, and you have no where declar'd in Words at length (at least, as I remember) that you never read _The Fable of the Bees_, it is possible I might be ask'd, why I would take it for granted, that you never had read it, when many of your Readers perhaps will believe the contrary. If this Question was put to me, I would readily answer, that I chose to be of that Opinion, because it is the most favourable I can possibly entertain of _Dion_. It is not, Sir, believe me, out of Disrespect, that I call you plain _Dion_; but because I would treat you with the utmost Civility: It is the Name under which, I find, you are pleas'd to disguise your self; and offering to guess at an Author, when he chuses to be conceal'd, is, I think a Rudeness almost equal to that of pulling off a Woman's Mask against her Will.