The public may desire to know something of an author who pitches
at such height his ambitious expectations. The gentle reader,
therefore--for I am much of Captain Bobadil's humour, and could
to no other extend myself so far--the GENTLE reader, then, will
be pleased to understand that I am a a Scottish gentleman of the
old school, with a fortune, temper, and person, rather the worse
for wear. I have known the world for these forty years, having
written myself man nearly since that period--and I do not think
it is much mended. But this is an opinion which I keep to myself
when I am among younger folk, for I recollect, in my youth,
quizzing the Sexagenarians who carried back their ideas of a
perfect state of society to the days of laced coats and triple
ruffles, and some of them to the blood and blows of the Forty-
five. Therefore I am cautious in exercising the right of
censorship, which is supposed to be acquired by men arrived at,
or approaching, the mysterious period of life, when the numbers
of seven and nine multiplied into each other, form what sages
have termed the Grand Climacteric.
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