Since I was first attacked, it has long been a matter of wonder and perplexity to me to find out, why and how men should conceive, that I had wrote with an intent to debauch the nation, and promote all manner of vice: and it was a great while before I could derive the charge from any thing, but wilful mistake and premeditated malice. But since I have seen, that men could be serious in apprehending the increase of rogues and robberies, from the frequent representations of the Beggar's Opera, I am persuaded, that there really are such wrongheads in the world, as will fancy vices to be encouraged, when they see them exposed. To the same perverseness of judgment it must have been owing, that some of my adversaries were highly incensed with me, for having owned, in the Vindication, that hitherto I had not been able to conquer my vanity, as well as I could have wished. From their censure it is manifest, that they must have imagined, that to complain of a frailty, was the same as to brag of it. But if these angry gentlemen had been less blinded with passion, or seen with better eyes, they would easily have perceived, unless they were too well pleased with their pride, that to have made the same confession themselves, they wanted nothing but sincerity. Whoever boasts of his vanity, and at the same time shows his arrogance, is unpardonable. But when we hear a man complain of an infirmity, and his want of power entirely to cure it, whilst he suffers no symptoms of it to appear, that we could justly upbraid him with, we are so far from being offended, that we are pleased with the ingenuity, and applaud his candour; and when such an author takes no greater liberties with his readers, than what is usual in the same manner of writing, and owns that to be the result of vanity, which others tell a thousand lies about, his confession is a compliment, and the frankness of it ought not to be looked upon otherwise, than as a civility to the public, a condescension he was not obliged to make. It is not in feeling the passions, or in being affected with the frailties of nature, that vice consists; but in indulging and obeying the call of them, contrary to the dictates of reason. Whoever pays great deference to his readers, respectfully submitting himself to their judgment, and tells them at the same time, that he is entirely destitute of pride; whoever, I say, does this, spoils his compliment whilst he is making of it: for it is no better than bragging, that it costs him nothing. Persons of taste, and the least delicacy, can be but little affected with a man's modesty, of whom they are sure, that he is wholly void of pride within: the absence of the one makes the virtue of the other cease; at least the merit of it is not greater than that of chastity in an eunuch, or humility in a beggar. What glory would it be to the memory of Cato, that he refused to touch the water that was brought him, if it was not supposed that he was very thirsty when he did it?