The world is so taken up of late with novels and romances, that it will
be hard for a private history to be taken for genuine, where the names
and other circumstances of the person are concealed, and on this
account we must be content to leave the reader to pass his own opinion
upon the ensuing sheet, and take it just as he pleases.
The author is here supposed to be writing her own history, and in the
very beginning of her account she gives the reasons why she thinks fit
to conceal her true name, after which there is no occasion to say any
more about that.
It is true that the original of this story is put into new words, and
the style of the famous lady we here speak of is a little altered;
particularly she is made to tell her own tale in modester words that
she told it at first, the copy which came first to hand having been
written in language more like one still in Newgate than one grown
penitent and humble, as she afterwards pretends to be.
The pen employed in finishing her story, and making it what you now see
it to be, has had no little difficulty to put it into a dress fit to be
seen, and to make it speak language fit to be read. When a woman
debauched from her youth, nay, even being the offspring of debauchery
and vice, comes to give an account of all her vicious practices, and
even to descend to the particular occasions and circumstances by which
she ran through in threescore years, an author must be hard put to it
wrap it up so clean as not to give room, especially for vicious
readers, to turn it to his disadvantage.
All possible care, however, has been taken to give no lewd ideas, no
immodest turns in the new dressing up of this story; no, not to the
worst parts of her expressions. To this purpose some of the vicious
part of her life, which could not be modestly told, is quite left out,
and several other parts are very much shortened. What is left 'tis
hoped will not offend the chastest reader or the modest hearer; and as
the best use is made even of the worst story, the moral 'tis hoped will
keep the reader serious, even where the story might incline him to be
otherwise. To give the history of a wicked life repented of,
necessarily requires that the wicked part should be make as wicked as
the real history of it will bear, to illustrate and give a beauty to
the penitent part, which is certainly the best and brightest, if
related with equal spirit and life.
It is suggested there cannot be the same life, the same brightness and
beauty, in relating the penitent part as is in the criminal part. If
there is any truth in that suggestion, I must be allowed to say 'tis
because there is not the same taste and relish in the reading, and
indeed it is to true that the difference lies not in the real worth of
the subject so much as in the gust and palate of the reader.