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THE PREFACE

THE

HE following Essays have already appeared at different times, and in different publications. The pamphlets in which they were inserted being generally unsuccessful, these shared the common fate, with out assisting the bookseller's aims or extending the writer's reputation. The public were too strenuously employed with their own follies, to be assiduous in estimating mine; so that many of my best attempts in this way have fallen victims to the transient topic of the times; the Ghost in Cock Lane, or the siege of Ticonderago.

But though they have passed pretty silently into the world, I can by no means complain of their circ lation. The magazines and papers of the day have indeed been liberal enough in this respect. Most of these essays have been regularly reprinted twice or thrice a year, and conveyed to the public through the kennel of some engaging compilation. If there be a pride in multiplied editions, I have seen some of my labors sixteen times reprinted, and claimed by different parents as their own. I have seen them flourished at the beginning with praise, and signed at the end with the names of Philantos, Philalethes, Philalutheros, and Philanthropos. These gentlemen have kindly stood sponsors to my productions, and to flatter me more have always passed them as their

own.

It is time however at last to vindicate my claims; and as these entertainers of the public, as they call themselves, have partly lived upon me for some years, let me now try if I cannot live a little upon myself. I would desire in this case, to imitate that fat man whom I have somewhere heard of in a shipwreck, who, when the sailors, prest by famine, were taking slices from his posteriors, to satisfy their hunger, insisted with great justice on having the first cut for himself.

Yet after all, I cannot be angry with any who have taken it into their heads, to think that whatever I write is worth reprinting, particularly when I consider how great a majority will think it scarcely worth reading. 'Trifling and superficial are terms of reproach that are easily objected, and that carry an air of penetration in the observer. These faults have been objected to the following essays; and it must be owned in some measure that the charge is true. However, I could have made them more metaphysical had I thought fit, but I would ask whether in a short essay it is not necessary to be superficial? Before we have prepared to enterinto the depths of a subject in the usual forms, we have arrived at the bottom of our scanty page, and thus lose the honors of a victory by too tedious a preparation for the combat.

There is another fault in this collection of trifles, which I fear will not be so easily pardoned. It will be alledged that the humor of them, (if any be found) is stale and hackneyed. This may be true enough as matters now stand, but I may with great truth assert, that the humor was new when I wrote it. Since that time indeed many of the topics, which were first started here, have been hunted down, and many of the thoughts blown upon. In fact these Es.says were considered as quietly laid in the grave of

oblivion; and our modern compilers, like sextons and executioners, think it their undoubted right to pillage the dead.

However, whatever right I have to complain of the public, they can as yet have no just reason to complain of me. If I have written dull Essays, they have hitherto treated them as dull Essays. Thus far we are at least upon par, and until they think fit to make me their humble debtor by praise, I am resolved not to lose a single inch of my self-importance. Instead, therefore of attempting to establish a credit amongst them, it will perhaps be wiser to apply to some more distant correspondent, and as my drafts are in some danger of being protested at home, it may not be imprudent upon this occasion to draw my bills upon posterity. Mr. Posterity, Sir, nine hundred and ninety-nine years after sight hereof, pay the bearer, or order, a thousand pounds' worth of praise, free from all deductions whatsoever, it being a commodity that will then be very serviceable to him, and place it to the account of, &c.

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I

ESSAY I.

REMEMBER to have read in some philosopher I believe in Tom Brown's works) that, let a man's character, sentiments, or complexion, be what they will, he can find company in London to match them. If he be splenetic, he may every day meet companions on the seats in St. James's Park, with whose groans he may mix his own, and pathetically talk of the weather. If he be passionate, he may vent his rage among the old orators at Slaughter's coffee-house, and damn the nation because it keeps him from starving. If he be phlegmatic, he may sit in silence at the humdrum club in Ivy-Lane; and if actually mad, he may find very good company in Moor-fields, either at Bedlam or the Foundery, ready to cultivate a nearer acquaintance.

But, although such as have a knowledge of the town may easily class themselves with tempers congenial to their own; a countryman who comes to live in London finds nothing more difficult. With regard to myself, none ever tried with more assiduity, or came off with such indifferent success. I spent a whole season in the search, during which time my name has been inrolled in societies, lodges, convocations, and meetings without number. To some I was introduced by a friend, to others invited by an advertisement; to these I introduced myself, and to those I changed my name to gain admittance. In short no coquette was ever more solicitous to match her ribbons to her complexion, than I to suit my club to my temper, for I was too obstinate to bring my temper to conform 'to it.

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