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PREFACE.

THIS little lounging miscellany aspires to the fingular praise of being beneath all cri•ticifm:

For who would break a fly upon the wheel?

It is, in most instances, a mere transcript of literary chit-chat, fent to the prefs in the original careless and unstudied expreffion. Horace Walpole was not one of those who regard conversation as an exercise of gladiatorial talents, or who study moral maxims, and arrange bons-mots, to be introduced into future colloquies. Complete eafe and carelessness be regarded as the chief charms of conversation. To have employed therefore a more elevated Style,

B 2

Style, or more formal arrangement, in these trifling pages, would have been so far from an improvement, that it would have destroyed their genuine effect. Buffon has remarked, that a man's clothes are a part of the individual animal, and pass into the idea of the character. As this work walks forth in deshabille, it will afford a more faithful refemblance, than if it were pranked in velvet and gold lace.

If criticism can be applied to fuch a production as the present, it must proceed upon a just idea of its feeble nature, and hesitating pretenfions. It cannot be estimated as a literary production :

Nos hac novimus effe nihil.

It must be weighed folely as a transcript of conversation, which may be both amusing and instructive, and yet never afpire to the rejearch, felection, and arrangement, neceffary for the public ear.

This apology may be requisite for the editor's disregard of any plan, or connexion of parts, in the present miscellany, which contains anecdotes, remarks, letters, &c. &c. just as they were registered, or happened to Start from memory, or from the drawer. It would have been a matter of flight toil to have arranged the whole under distinct heads, had

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