my birth, my father's character and misfortunes, and the necessity I was under of making my fortune by my own arts.

But unless discovery of my past (which God avert!) occasion an immature betrayal of these memoirs, I design that posterity alone shall have the reading of them; for I have no desire the history of my life should be known, until the grave has put it beyond the power of the uncandid to injure me.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Of Mr. Boothby; his birth, parentage, education, and

marriage

CHAPTER II.

Of my early life and hardships; with an account of a

street-broil, and its consequences

CHAPTER III.

Concerning Miss Boothby's introduction to Miss Aston,

with a description of Dr. Aston's house in Wimpole

Street

CHAPTER IV.

Of my installation; with a conversation, in which will be

found some hints concerning the tastes of our age

CHAPTER V.

Concerning various conversations; including the introduction

PAGE

I

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45

61

In which will be found matter that even a beau might medi-

tate with advantage

132

Of Mr. Boothby; his birth, parentage, education, and marriage.

I

HAVE always had an aversion to those soft

and sentimental tales of love, with which, from time to time, writers of both sexes have entertained the town; for I could never find it in me to sympathise with love that is fed with pap, and bristles with milk-teeth through so great a number of pages as some of these writings contain.

For my part, I believe we should be diverted with a great many less such stories were the writers who compose them to. freely avow the

B

truth, and set down an uncoloured version of what befel them or their heroes. We should be moved indeed with less fine speeches, but we should be instructed with more veracity; and what tender emotions our sensibilities might have to forego, would be balanced by the sharpening of our judgments and by the enlargement of our understandings. How often are Pancharilla's eyelashes made to sparkle with the crystal drops of despair, when we are sensible that Strephon's unkindness could never have excited her to tears! How often is Flavia's fleecy care made to listen to her tender complaints, when sure her swain's behaviour has been too moderate to provoke a sigh!

Nor have I patience with those writers who seem to want the heart to speak out plainly all that experience has writ on their memory, but must needs fall to devices beneath the dignity of truth; dissembling where candour should appear, and embellishing where the plainest outlines would prove most profitable. The life of every man and woman is a history that demands, and surely deserves, as undecorated an account as the history of a nation. If this be blinked there never can be any profit to arise from the setting down of what a man has