At the conclusion of his Memoirs of 1758, where the Author makes a pause in his work, and seems uncertain whether he should ever resume it or not, he again addresses himself to his readers in the style of an author looking forward to publication. If he should ever continue his work, he warns his readers “not to expect so much intelligence and information in any of the subsequent pages as may have appeared in the preceding.”--“During the former period,” he goes on to observe, “I lived in the centre of business, was intimately acquainted with many of the chief actors, was eager in politics, indefatigable in heaping up knowledge and materials for my work. Now, detached from these busy scenes, with many political connexions dropped or dissolved, indifferent to events, and indolent, I shall have fewer opportunities of informing myself or others.” He then proceeds to give a character of himself, and to “lay open to his readers his nearest sentiments.” He acknowledges some enmities and resentments, confesses that he has been injured by some, and treated by others with ingratitude, but assures his readers, as he probably thought himself, that he has written without bias or partiality, “that affection and veneration for truth and justice have preponderated above all other considerations,” and that when he has expressed himself of particular men with a severity that may appear objectionable, it was “the unamiableness of the characters he blames that imprinted the dislikes,” to which he pleads guilty. Can it be supposed, he asks, that “he would sacrifice the integrity of these Memoirs, _his favourite labour_, to a little revenge that he shall never taste?” Whatever may be thought of the soundness of this reasoning, and whatever opinion may be formed of the impartiality of his work, it seems impossible that anything short of a positive injunction to commit his Memoirs to the Press could have conveyed a stronger indication of the intention and desire of the Author, that, at some future period after his decease, this _his favourite labour_ should be communicated to the public.