TO
Sir Hans Sloane Bart.
SIR,
The Serpent [Subject of the following Sheets,] being one part of your celebrated and expensive Collection of Rarities, naturally leads me to beg the Honour of your Name to grace its Entrance into the publick World.
I can’t enter into the vanity of thinking, that the Book can be any improvement to one who has been so long and laborious an Enquirer after Truth, and penetrated so far into the Empire of Nature: but as in Divinity, a willing Mind; so in Learning, the best Endeavour will be accepted. And tho’ the Book cannot recommend it self to you, your Name may recommend it to others.
Happy are the Times, when Knowledge is the study of those who have superior Abilities for it: Happy therefore is the present Age, that has you, among many other Learned, so eminent an Encourager of it.
Tho’ elevated Minds direct all their concern to what they should be, and not to any Applause for what they really are; yet, if to delineate their Excellency be offensive to Modesty, the Sincerity with which it is done, will, it is hoped, secure their Pardon.
Now, what is it that makes the great Character, but Knowledge in all its diversity, a Sollicitousness for the Spread of Arts and Sciences, excelling in one’s particular Station of Life, and being divinely forward to all the high Offices of Humanity? This is the Picture of real Worth, and what can forbid to say, that Sir Hans Sloane is the Life?