We are much afraid that we run somewhat loose of our original design in these rambling remarks. But it is always easy to come back to the starting-post. Abandoning metaphor and figure of all kinds, we were endeavouring to express our conviction, drawn from experience, that a company of professed wits might be justly suspected to be a dull concern. Every man is on the alert to guard against surprise. Through all the seven courses laid down, Each jester looks sour on his brother; The wit dreads the punster's renown, The buffoon tries the mimic to smother: He who shines in the sharp repartee Envies him who can yarn a droll story; And the jolly bass voice in a glee Will think your adagio but snory. This is, we admit at once, and in anticipation of the reader's already expressed opinion, a very poor imitation of the opening song of the Beggar's Opera. If this melancholy fact of the stupidity of congregated wits be admitted to be true, the question comes irresistibly, thrown in our faces in the very language of the street, "Who are _you_? Have not you advertised yourselves as wits, and can you escape from the soft-headed impeachment?" We reply nothing; we stand mute. It will be our time this day twelvemonths to offer to the pensive public a satisfactory replication to that somewhat personal interrogatory. Yet-- Having in our minds, and the interior _sensoria_ of our consciences, some portion of modesty yet lingering behind--how small that portion may be is best known to those who have campaigned for a few years upon the press, and thence learned the diffident mildness which naturally adheres to the pursuit of enlightening the public mind, and advancing the march of general intellect;--possessed, we say, of that quantity of retiring bashfulness, it is undeniable that, like one of the Passions in Collins's Ode,--we forget which, but we fear it is Fear,--we, after showing forth in the best public instructors as the Wits' Miscellany, Back recoiled, Scared at the sound ourselves had made. To this resolution we were also led by the fact, that such a title would altogether exclude from our pages contributions of great merit--which, although exhibiting comic faculty, would also deal with the shadows of human life, and sound the deep wells of the heart. We agreed that the work should not be called "The Wits'" any longer. We massacred the title as ruthlessly as ever were massacred its namesakes in Holland: and, agreeing to an _emendatio_, we now sail under the title of our worthy publisher, which happens to be the same as that of him who is by all _viri clarissimi_ adopted as _criticorum longè doctissimus_, RICARDUS BENTLEIUS; or, to drop Latin lore--Richard Bentley. Here then, ladies and gentlemen, we introduce to your special and particular notice BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY.