“That question, dear Madam, is so sensibly proposed that I will answer it with all serious sincerity. There is nothing exceptionable in these volumes; ‘Certes,’ as Euphues Lily has said, ‘I think there be more speeches here which for gravity will mislike the foolish, than unseemly terms which for vanity, may offend the wise.’ There is nothing in them that I might not have read to Queen Elizabeth if it had been my fortune to have lived in her golden days; nothing that can by possibility taint the imagination, or strengthen one evil propensity, or weaken one virtuous principle. But they are not composed like a forgotten novel of Dr. Towers's to be read aloud in dissenting families instead of a moral essay, or a sermon; nor like Mr. Kett's Emily to complete the education of young ladies by supplying them with an abstract of universal knowledge. Neither have they any pretensions to be placed on the same shelf with Cœlebs. But the book is a moral book; its tendency is good, and the morality is both the wholesomer and pleasanter because it is not administered as physic, but given as food. I don't like morality in doses.” “But why, my good Mr. Author, why lay yourself open to censure?” “Miss Graveairs, nothing excellent was ever produced by any author who had the fear of censure before his eyes. He who would please posterity must please himself by chusing his own course. There are only two classes of writers who dare do this, the best and the worst,—for this is one of the many cases in which extremes meet. The mediocres in every grade aim at pleasing the public, and conform themselves to the fashion of their age whatever it may be.” My Doctor, like the Matthew Henderson of Burns, was a queer man, and in that respect I his friend and biographer, humbly resemble him. The resemblance may be natural, or I may have caught it,—this I pretend not to decide, but so it is. Perhaps it might have been well if I had resolved upon a farther designation of Chapters, and distributed them into Masculine and Feminine; or into the threefold arrangement of virile, feminile and puerile; considering the book as a family breakfast, where there should be meat for men, muffins for women, and milk for children. Or I might have adopted the device of the Porteusian Society, and marked my Chapters as they (very usefully) have done the Bible, pointing out what should be read by all persons for edification, and what may be passed over by the many, as instructive or intelligible only to the learned. Here however the book is,— An orchard bearing several trees, And fruits of several taste.[1] Ladies and Gentlemen, my gentle Readers, one of our liveliest and most popular old Dramatists knew so well the capricious humour of an audience that he made his Prologue say