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DE COVERLEY love not these ungenial revelations. They like to feel that the fine-hearted creation comes from a single source; - from those nicely-balanced stores of touching pathos and refined humour; of sound common-sense and polished wit; of keen satire and kind words; of sharp observation and genial description, which exist in the single gentleman who paints his own portrait in the first pages, and who is known wherever English letters can be read, as

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THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem
Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat.

HOR.

HAVE observed, that a Reader seldom peruses a

Book with Pleasure, until he knows whether the Writer of it be a black or a fair Man, of a mild or cholerick Disposition, Married or a Bachelor, with other Particulars of the like Nature, that conduce very much to the right Understanding of an Author. To gratify this Curiosity, which is so natural to a Reader, I design this Paper and my next as Prefatory Discourses to my following Writings, and shall give some Account in them of the several Persons that are engaged in this Work. As the chief Trouble of Compiling, Digesting, and Correcting, will fall to my Share, I must do myself the Justice to open the Work with my own History.

I was born to a small Hereditary Estate, which, according to the Tradition of the Village where it lies, was bounded by the same Hedges and Ditches

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