If in the long course of my literary labours I had been less studious to adhere to nature and simplicity, I am perfectly convinced I should have stood higher in estimation with the purchasers of copy rights, and probably been read and patronized by my contemporaries in the proportion of ten to one. To acquire a popularity of name, which might set the speculating publishers upon out-bidding one another for an embryo work (perhaps in meditation only) seems to be as proud and enviable a pre-eminence as human genius can arrive at: but if that pre-eminence has been acquired by a fashion of writing, that luckily falls in with the prevailing taste for the romantic and unnatural, that writer, whosoever he may be, has only made his advantage of the present hour, and forfeited his claim, upon the time to come: having paid this tribute to popularity, he certainly may enjoy the profits of deception, and take his chance for being marked out by posterity (whenever a true taste for nature shall revive) as the misleader and impostor of the age he lived in. The circulation of a work is propagated by the cry of the many; its perpetuity is established by the fiat of the few. If we have no concern for our good name after we have left this world, how do we greatly differ from the robber and assassin?--But this is nothing but an old man’s prattle. Nobody regards it--We will return to our history. END OF THE SECOND BOOK. BOOK THE THIRD. CHAPTER I. _The Mother of our Hero, being at the Point of Death, takes her last Farewell of her Father-in-law._ The order of our history requires us to attend upon the worthy grandfather of our hero to the death-bed of his daughter-in-law, who had expressed a wish to see him. She took his hand, and pressing it to her heart, said--I thank you, sir, for this and all the proofs of kindness, which you have uniformly been pleased to show me, though I am conscious it has never been my happy lot to contribute to your comforts, or to reflect either grace or ornament upon your family, even in the slightest degree. Of your son my husband I forbear to speak; when he took his departure, and left me on the plea of providing a retreat for me upon the continent, I was too well apprised of my situation not to know that we should meet no more, and under that impression I took leave of him for ever. I have given an heir to your name and family, for whose dear sake, from his birth to the present moment, my agitated heart, though I have laboured to appear composed, has secretly been racked with sad forebodings. I am a woman, sir, and those presentiments, which your strong sense would spurn, sink deep in my weak mind--