first heard of ten years ago, are so much out of the usual road that not
one reader in a million can ever fear they will happen to himself.

Gentlemen critics, I thank you. In the present volumes I have served you
with a dish agreeable to your own receipt, though I cannot say with any
sanguine hope of obtaining your approbation.

The following story consists of such adventures as for the most part
have occurred to at least one half of the Englishmen now existing who
are of the same rank of life as my hero. Most of them have been at
college, and shared in college excesses; most of them have afterward run
a certain gauntlet of dissipation; most have married, and, I am afraid,
there are few of the married tribe who have not at some time or other
had certain small misunderstandings with their wives.[A] To be sure,
they have not all of them felt and acted under these trite adventures as
my hero does. In this little work the reader will scarcely find anything
to "elevate and surprise;" and, if it has any merit, it must consist in
the liveliness with which it brings things home to the imagination, and
the reality it gives to the scenes it pourtrays.

[Footnote A: I confess, however, the inability I found to weave a
catastrophe, such as I desired, out of these ordinary incidents. What I
have here said, therefore, must not be interpreted as applicable to the
concluding sheets of my work.]

Yes, even in the present narrative, I have aimed at a certain kind of
novelty--a novelty which may be aptly expressed by a parody on a
well-known line of Pope; it relates:

"Things often done, but never yet described."