The public may desire to know something of
an author who pitches at such height his ambitious
expectations. The gentle reader, therefore---for
I am much of Captain Bobadil's humour, and could
to no other extend myself so far---the _gentle_ reader,
then, will be pleased to understand, that I am
a Scottish gentleman of the old school, with a fortune,
temper, and person, rather the worse for
wear. I have known the world for these forty
years, having written myself man nearly since
that period---and I do not think it is much mended.
But this is an opinion which I keep to myself
when I am among younger folk, for I recollect,
in my youth, quizzing the Sexagenarians who
carried back their ideas of a perfect state of society
to the days of laced coats and triple ruffles, and
some of them to the blood and blows of the Forty-five:
Therefore I am cautious in exercising the
right of censorship, which is supposed to be acquired
by men arrived at, or approaching, the mysterious
period of life, when the numbers of seven
and nine multiplied into each other, form what
sages have termed the Grand Climacteric.
Of the earlier part of my life it is only necessary
to say, that I swept the boards of the Parliament-House
with the skirts of my gown for the
usual number of years during which young Lairds
were in my time expected to keep term---got no
fees---laughed, and made others laugh---drank claret
at Bayle's, Fortune's, and Walker's---and eat
oysters in the Covenant Close.
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