Cleomenes, with grief, often owned his fears, that his attachment to the world would never cease whilst he lived; the reasons he gave, were the great regard he continued to have for the opinion of worldly men; the stubbornness of his indocile heart, that could not be brought to change the objects of its pride; and refused to be ashamed of what, from his infancy, it had been taught to glory in; and, lastly, the impossibility, he found in himself, of being ever reconciled to contempt, and enduring, with patience, to be laughed at and despised for any cause, or on any consideration whatever. These were the obstacles, he said, that hindered him from breaking off all commerce with the beau monde, and entirely changing his manner of living; without which, he thought it mockery to talk of renouncing the world, and bidding adieu to all the pomp and vanity of it. The part of Fulvia, which is the third person, is so inconsiderable, she just appearing only in the first dialogue, that it would be impertinent to trouble the reader with a character of her. I had a mind to say some things on painting and operas, which I thought might, by introducing her, be brought in more naturally, and with less trouble, than they could have been without her. The ladies, I hope, will find no reason, from the little she does say, to suspect that she wants either virtue or understanding. As to the fable, or what is supposed to have occasioned the first dialogue between Horatio and Cleomenes, it is this. Horatio, who had found great delight in my Lord Shaftsbury's polite manner of writing, his fine raillery, and blending virtue with good manners, was a great stickler for the social system; and wondered how Cleomenes could be an advocate for such a book as the Fable of the Bees, of which he had heard a very vile character from several quarters. Cleomenes, who loved and had a great friendship for Horatio, wanted to undeceive him; but the other, who hated satire, was prepossessed, and having been told likewise, that martial courage, and honour itself, were ridiculed in that book, he was very much exasperated against the author and his whole scheme: he had two or three times heard Cleomenes discourse on this subject with others; but would never enter into the argument himself; and finding his friend often pressing to come to it, he began to look cooly upon him, and at last to avoid all opportunities of being alone with him: till Cleomenes drew him in, by the stratagem which the reader will see he made use of, as Horatio was one day taking his leave after a short complimentary visit.