I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black[3] or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature that conduce very much to the right understanding (45: 5) of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my following writings, and shall give some account in them of the several persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, (10) and correcting will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own history. I was born to a small hereditary estate, which, according to the tradition of the village where it lies, was bounded by the same hedges and ditches in William the Conqueror's time that it is at present, and has been delivered down from father to son whole and entire, without the loss or acquisition (46: 5) of a single field or meadow, during the space of six hundred years. There runs a story in the family, that my mother ... dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge: whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending[4] in the family, or my father's being a (10) justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighbourhood put upon it. The gravity of my behaviour at my very first appearance in the world, (15) and all the time that I sucked, seemed to favour my mother's dream; for, as she had often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would not make use of my coral[5] till they had taken away the bells from it. (20) [3] _I.e_. of dark complexion. But it will be seen later in the paper that the Spectator decides not to gratify the curiosity of his readers on this point. [4] We should now say, "pending." [5] A child's toy, made of a piece of coral, usually with a whistle at one end and bells at the other.