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ESSAYS,

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED

IN THE YEAR 1765.

THE

PREFACE.

THE 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, without assisting the bookseller's aims or extending the writer's reputation. The publick 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 circulation. 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 publick through the kennel of some engaging compilation. If there be a pride in multiplied editions, I have seen some of my labours 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 Philautos, Philalethes, Phileleutheros, 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 publick, 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 enter into the depths of a subject in the usual forms, we have arrived at the bottom of our scanty page, and thus lose the honours of a victory by too tedious a preparation for the come

bat.

There is another fault in this collection of trifles, which I fear will not be so easily pardoned. It will be alleged that the humour 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 humour 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 Essays were considered as quietly laid in

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