A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry. Now, good Peter Quince, call
forth your actors by the scroll: Masters, spread yourselves.

Find them out whose names are written here? It is written, that the shoemaker
should meddle with his yard, and the tailor with his last; the fisher with his pencil,
and the painter with his nets; but I am sent to find those persons whose names are
here writ; and can never find what names the writing person hath here writ. I must
to the learned.Shakespeare.

London:

PUBLISHED BY W. SIMPKIN & R. MARSHALL,

STATIONERS' HALL COURT.

1826.

W. M'DOWALL, PRINTER, PEMBERTON-ROW,

GOUGH-SQUARE.

31 Dec 45 Baker's

Bookshop

120

.Q431

586154

PREFACE.

SUCH a length of time has elapsed-six long years by the mark!-since my name first appeared in print, that I am afraid my Cheltenham friends have almost forgotten me; although I am now about to prove I have not forgotten them, by redeeming the pledge which accompanied the publication of the mysterious MAIL-BAG, in the year 1820, and giving to the world a few more extracts from the valuable MSS. that I became possessed of, by the singular chance to which I then alluded; and which I have only deferred, lest I should be suspected of a desire to trespass upon the attention of a liberal and enlightened public, whose favourable consideration I have duly to acknowledge, &c. &c. &c.

BEFORE I proceed farther, it may be right to premise, that I had long entertained the most serious scruples as to the propriety or delicacy of satirical publications; and so strong was my repugnance to that system of moral censorship, that I did once firmly persuade myself that nothing on earth could subdue the feeling that was within me. If the perusal of the original letters found by me, (as described in my preface of 1820,) had no other effect, it at least taught me the folly of such a prejudice, and the absolute nécessity there arises, -from the wilful dereliction of all principle in some parts of society, and the proneness in others to display the worst qualities of the mind, in compliance with some fashionable caprice,—for the correcting influence of the pen of some satirist, honest and uncompromising enough to lay bare the infirmities of mankind, and candid enough to counterbalance the evil by the laudable manifestation of whatever excellent and ennobling attributes he may meet with.

DISCLAIMING, as I do, all Pseudonymous affectation, it may nevertheless be my fate, as it hath been the fate of many before me, to have this work ascribed to the pen of any other than the actual writer. To this destiny I must submit myself, with what good grace I may.-Of such mistakes, such wilful and obstinate perversions, hath mankind been guilty inall ages; and we learn, amongst innumerable instances, that it was doubted whether ST. THOMAS AQUINAS was the author of his own celebrated Treatise," Summa Theologia," a point which might to this day have remained dubious and in dispute, had not Cassimir Oudin*, in his very accurate examition of the difficulties which induced this scepticism, determined in favour of Aquinas.

By way of caution to the heedless, headlong, and precipitate reader, I would observe,- that, in a work of this nature, a great deal may fairly be attributed to chance in the aptitude of some descrip

*See his "Commentarius de Scriptoribus, &c."