Note (return) — PREFACE

My Public—that is, our readers—we have served you seven years, through fourteen volumes; in each renewing our professions of gratitude, and study for your gratification; and we hope we shall not presume on your liberal disposition by calculating on your continued patronage. We have endeavoured to keep our engagements with you—to the letter1—as they say in weightier matters; and, as every man is bound to speak of the fair as he has found his market in it, we ought to acknowledge the superabundant and quick succession of literary novelties for the present volume. There is little of our own; because we have uniformly taken Dr. Johnson's advice in life—"to play for much, and stake little" This will extenuate our assuming that "from castle to cottage we are regularly taken in:" indeed, it would be worse than vanity to suppose that price or humble pretensions should exclude us; it would be against the very economy of life to imagine this; and we are still willing to abide by such chances of success.