Page:A Key to the Lock. Or, A Treatise Proving, Beyond All Contradiction, the Dangerous Tendency of a Late Poem, Entituled, The Rape of the Lock, to Government and Religion - Pope (1715).djvu/12

vi his Majesty's Subjects by exposing the whole Artifice of your Poem in publick.

Sir, to address my self to so florid a Writer as you, without collecting all the Flowers of Rhetorick, would be an unpardonable Indecorum; but when I speak to the World, as I do in the following Treatise, I must use a simple Stile, since it would be absurd to prescribe an universal Medicine, or Catholicon, in a Language not universally understood.

As I have always professed to have a particular Esteem for Men of Learning, and more especially for your self, nothing but the Love of Truth should have engaged me in a Design of this Nature. Amicus Plato, Amicus Socrates, sed magis Amica Veritas. I am

Your most Sincere Friend,

and Humble Servant,

E. Barnivelt.