fortnight, than pay ten shillings once for all. Public spirited as this
proceeding is, I must confess my reasons are more and merely personal.
As my circumstances are very moderate, and barely sufficient to maintain
decently a gentleman of my abilities and learning, I cannot afford to
print at once an hundred thousand copies of two volumes in folio, for
that will be the whole mass of Hieroglyphic Tales when the work is
perfected. In the next place, being very asthmatic, and requiring a free
communication of air, I lodge in the uppermost story of a house in an
alley not far from St. Mary Axe; and as a great deal of good company
lodges in the same mansion, it was by a considerable favour that I could
obtain a single chamber to myself; which chamber is by no means large
enough to contain the whole impression, for I design to vend the copies
myself, and, according to the practice of other great men, shall sign
the first sheet my self with my own hand.

Desirous as I am of acquainting the world with many more circumstances
relative to myself, some private considerations prevent my indulging
their curiosity any farther at present; but I shall take care to leave
so minute an account of myself to some public library, that the future
commentators and editors of this work shall not be deprived of all
necessary lights. In the mean time I beg the reader to accept the
temporary compensation of an account of the author whose work I am
publishing.

The Hieroglyphic Tales were undoubtedly written a little before the
creation of the world, and have ever since been preserved, by oral
tradition, in the mountains of Crampcraggiri, an uninhabited island,
not yet discovered. Of these few facts we could have the most authentic
attestations of several clergymen, who remember to have heard them
repeated by old men long before they, the said clergymen, were born.