PREFACE. To the frequent and friendly enquiries for a fourth volume, I know not if the following edition will be confidered as a fatisfactory answer. To have continued the work in its original form and feries, would have been more profitable and more pleasant; but refpect to an indulgent public, entailed on me the duty of correcting error, combining scattered articles, giving fubftance to the meagre, and fuppreffing those which have been thought uninterefting. In aiming at improvement, materials accumulated, and, in defiance of indolence or selfdenial, nearly one-fourth part of the prefent publication may be confidered as additional matter. con A short statement of the design of this compilation feems neceffary, for those readers who have not seen my firft preface. The title, though it could not shelter me from cenfure, the title was chofen, that disappointment might not be produced by exciting expectation; deep obfervation, critical acumen, and extenfive information, cannot be co fiftently required in a work, whofe very name is fynonimous, in the vocabulary of fashion, for trifling and fuperficial. To catch, ere it perish, the trifle of the minute; to give hafty sketches of men and things, which, though beneath the dignity of a biographia, deserve to be recorded; to felect from the fcene before me whatever appeared curious, amusing, or applicable to the purposes of human life; to make a book which might be perufed without injury to morals or tafte, is attempted in the following pages. This collection is by no means profeffedly biographical; I have caught names only to identify fact, to imprefs fentiment, to give fashion and form to idea. I have endeavoured to unite the useful and the pleafant; for, in the prefent day, a book merely useful and instructive incurs the rifque of being never perused, and a publication folely entertaining, without any view to improve the understanding or amend the heart, no one ought to write. Though not entirely a compiler, my pretenfions to originality are flender. I offer the Common-place Book as an eafy tooth-pick companion, for idle, diffipated, forgetful men, (and fuch, my friendly critic, there ever will be, in spite of wisdom and grey hairs) who pass their mornings in Hyde-park, the fruit-fhop, *****'s, or St. James's-ftreet; and yet, at the club, or after dinner, with not to appear wholly ignorant of what has been faid or fung on any cafual fubject of private converse, or public difcuffion. If, under the guife of literary bagatelle, I have occafionally called the attention of these gentlemen to important truth, or tried to rouze them by illuftrious example, I affume the merit of fometimes ufefully occupying a clafs more numerous than is generally imagined, who would start at a serious volume, yawn at a moral essay, and flumber over a fermon. To felect and lay before common readers, who, not faftidiously fcrupulous or delicately nice, steal a few hours from business or pleasure, ftriking facts and interesting circumftances, which come home to the bofoms of us all; to point out a path, equally diftant from vicious diffipation and unfocial feclufion; to cry down alike unwarrantable scepticifin and debafing fuperftition; to find the happy mid-way between unconditional fubmiffion, and the mad licentiousness of anarchy; to point out, occasionally, the neceffity of a timely reform, that fure method of preventing revolutions, always hazardous, too frequently fatal and incffectual; to glean in fpots which have been fometimes neglected, and fometimes forgotten; were motives which firft feduced, and, encouraged by public favour, ftill invite, to encounter the teazing delays and irritating minutiae of the prefs. MARCH 30, 1796. |