A New Atalantis, for the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty

"Love, gallantry, and their gay attendants, have, in all polished nations, made so considerable a figure in the fashionable way of each people's method of living, that without a knowledge thereof, no faithful picture of their manners can be transmitted to posterity. Some memoirs have accidentally fallen into our hands, that were originally collected by a Petronian genius, who had taken uncommon pains to make himself a thorough master of the rise, progress, and vicissitudes of gallantry from the days of Alexander the Great, down to the present times. Although such a subject to a short-sighted reader may promise nothing but scenes of wantonness, yet to all, capable of taking a comprehensive view of the following work, they must allow it to be a most instructive compilation for the youth of both sexes. "