But though the names I have chosen are feigned, and the circumstances of the persons fictitious, the characters themselves are real, and as faithfully copied from nature as I have been able to take them. I have known critics find fault with play-wrights for annexing short characters to the names they gave the persons of the drama; alleging, that it is forestalling their pleasure, and that whatever the actors are represented to be, they want no monitor, and are wise enough to find it out themselves. But I could never approve of this censure: there is a satisfaction, I think, in knowing one's company; and when I am to converse with people for a considerable time, I desire to be well acquainted with them, and the sooner the better. It is for this reason, I thought it proper to give the reader some account of the persons that are to entertain him. As they are supposed to be people of quality, I beg leave, before I come to particulars, to premise some things concerning the beau monde in general; which, though most people perhaps know them every body does not always attend to. Among the fashionable part of mankind throughout Christendom, there are, in all countries, persons, who, though they feel a just abhorrence to atheism and professed infidelity, yet have very little religion, and are scarce half-believers, when their lives come to be looked into, and their sentiments examined. What is chiefly aimed at in a refined education, is to procure as much ease and pleasure upon earth, as that can afford: therefore men are first instructed in all the various arts of rendering their behaviour agreeable to others, with the least disturbance to themselves. Secondly, they are imbued with the knowledge of all the elegant comforts of life, as well as the lessons of human prudence, to avoid pain and trouble, in order to enjoy as much of the world, and with as little opposition, as it is possible. Whilst thus men study their own private interest, in assisting each other to promote and increase the pleasures of life in general, they find by experience, that to compass those ends, every thing ought to be banished from conversation, that can have the least tendency of making others uneasy; and to reproach men with their faults or imperfections, neglects or omissions, or to put them in mind of their duty, are offices that none are allowed to take upon them, but parents or professed masters and tutors; nor even they before company: but to reprove and pretend to teach others, we have no authority over, is ill manners, even in a clergyman out of the pulpit; nor is he there to talk magisterially, or ever to mention things, that are melancholy or dismal, if he should pass for a polite preacher: but whatever we may vouchsafe to hear at church, neither the certainty of a future state, nor the necessity of repentance, nor any thing else relating to the essentials of Christianity, are ever to be talked of when we are out of it, among the beau monde, upon