More than half a dozen were mentioned as the models of Doctor Vampus, the ignorant, boasting, _hawking and peddling_ master of an academy. To no one person, I am convinced, the whole of that character could apply; but I am equally convinced, many parts of it might hit a dozen of dozens of that class of the profession. A village male gossip also received an individual application, and perhaps some parts might suit the gossip of that district; but I declare it was applied to gossips in adjacent districts; and some have done me the honour to say, it suits such a nuisance in most villages of England. There were several demireps, one of whom, so far from having any modern individual in view, I copied from Lady Bellaston, only giving her modern manners, and substituting for decayed charms, youth and beauty. Lady Mary Manhunt, I find has been applied to twenty originals, when I really had none in view, but the veteran rival of Sophia Western. Other demireps, of lower account, had also a good many applications; and to persons that I at the time had never heard to be demireps. In one individual case, referring to the hero’s fair fellow-traveller in a stage-coach, a totally erroneous and false application, I have been told, was made. In certain characters, there might be grounds, though I did not know them at the time; in that character, I am thoroughly convinced there never were any grounds. There was a great disposition to apply exhibitions to scenes, with which I was once conversant; and also to other very distant scenes, with which I was conversant at the time of the publication. My hero having first appeared in the Highlands of Scotland, I could not avoid describing Highland manners; and I exhibited the majority as I found them, amiable and respectable, and a few as I found them able and estimable. There, however, as well as in other parts of the world, there are fools and knaves; and among the weak, there is particularly the preposterous folly of supposing, birth and rank a substitute for the want of talents and virtues. That nonsensical absurdity, perhaps, I might expose, though I cannot see why the application should have been made to any individual, unless, indeed, it accidentally happened, that the cap exactly fitted; if it did, it was not my fault; _I made_ the CAP, but I did not make the _head_. With regard to the other district in question, some of its inhabitants were of much more importance to themselves, than either to me or the world, in supposing that I would consider them individually, as suitable objects of satire. I described a certain class in society, in the vicinity of London; and I have not the least doubt, that if the description applied to any, it applies to every one populous village within ten miles of the metropolis, as well as to another. Wherever there is gadding, card-playing, gossiping, half-breeding, mixed with the peculiarities of the tradesmen, and retired shopkeepers of London and Middlesex; in short,