THE PREFACE,

OR

THAT PART OF A BOOK WHICH IS NEVER READ.

WHAT a delightful thing it is to feel free and unconfined !-to be able to write just what one pleases-to publish it too—and yet, at the same time to feel, that no creature existing anywhere throughout the whole system of planets, will ever read it, or know anything about it!

I'faith, this is delightful:-talk not to me of secrecy-the Holy League is a joke. Let

me curvet and frisk now as much as I choose

-no person ever reads a preface: "Preface and botheration!" is the word; "turn it over, and let's dive into the book-let's look at the story." I like this idea-yet it is not uncommon among readers. I feel as private and safe here as Eneas and Dido in the cave after the hunting party-indeed, much more so,for I have no Dido here-no Dulcinea-to share the retirement of my preface with me. Tol de rol lol! Now for a bit of fun-what shall we do? Here we go-let's have a song -Rum ti iddity iddity !-Stay, there's no sen

timent in that. Let's have another, this is "There was an old man," your sorts!

-no

“There was an old woman,”—no--I forget just now. Never mind, we can roar, if we can't sing 'twill serve. I could go on jumping and prancing like a frisky colt in a meadow,

till I dropped down exhausted with the sweet fatigue of excessive frolicking. No earthly being has the slightest notion of my undignified and unmanlike pranks :-a prefaceah! a most secret preface! Oh, it is sweet to relax and sometimes make oneself a little bit of a fool! No one will know it-what shall we do next? My heart is full-huzza! yoicks! -here we go again!-hoc est vivere !

I am almost out of breath-let me pauselet me rest-let me take the ebullitious kettle of my spirits off the fire. Just look-the bubbles soon subside when I do so. And here -with cessation comes gravity—and with gravity comes thought-and with thought comes reflection-and reflection carries a man back to the retrospection and overhauling of his own deeds. And what then?—Why, we perceive we have relaxed a trifle in our dig

nity and austerity-we have a little eased the tensity of our rank among "creatures of clay" as Byron calls us. Can't help it-let's be merry whilst we are able—we can always cry -not always laugh: besides, there is nothing like being a little outré and eccentric, or "original." Thousands of clever and wise men have lived and died in oblivion, because they followed the herd-let's try the opposite course. But Horace writes that Apollo sometimes loosened his bowstring, and Homer sometimes nodded--this is consoling.

But now we are grave and reflecting; and although we feel positive that no flesh-andblood biped in the varsel 'orld will at all venture to taste the nut whose shell looks in the slightest prefatorial-yet, it is possible-just possible that some unprecedented and truly strange being may, by a species of million-to