Page:Petty 1660 Reflections.djvu/168

 SIR,

Take for a great favour your permitting me a sight of your Papers, though I hope it will be but like the first peck of newly ripe Peascods, which shall afterwards become common for satisfying the desires of all; Pray deferre not to publish them, least you prove a greater enemy to your self then your Knight and his Squire: and least what they designedly suggest, you suffer the people to suck in, for want of a certain prevention in telling your own tale: They have no way to be too hard for you, but by your own silence, which if they could by any Stratagem continue you in, they make you of their party: Hitherto they are before-hand with you, but their pre-occupations will soon find dispossession when you are heard to speak for your self. My pleasure in reading of it, is yet to come, which I reckon much upon, having yet but run it over for your sake, there being more delight in hearing the musick, then in observing the descant; It will abundantly please the ingenious, convince the indifferent, and shame those who are prejudiced and prepossest into