An ancient author tells us somewhere, with the tone of a pedagogue, if
you have not done anything worthy of being recorded, at least write
something worthy of being read. It is a precept as beautiful as a diamond
of the first water cut in England, but it cannot be applied to me,
because I have not written either a novel, or the life of an illustrious
character. Worthy or not, my life is my subject, and my subject is my
life. I have lived without dreaming that I should ever take a fancy to
write the history of my life, and, for that very reason, my Memoirs may
claim from the reader an interest and a sympathy which they would not
have obtained, had I always entertained the design to write them in my
old age, and, still more, to publish them.

I have reached, in 1797, the age of three-score years and twelve; I can
not say, Vixi, and I could not procure a more agreeable pastime than to
relate my own adventures, and to cause pleasant laughter amongst the good
company listening to me, from which I have received so many tokens of
friendship, and in the midst of which I have ever lived. To enable me to
write well, I have only to think that my readers will belong to that
polite society:

'Quoecunque dixi, si placuerint, dictavit auditor.'

Should there be a few intruders whom I can not prevent from perusing my
Memoirs, I must find comfort in the idea that my history was not written
for them.

By recollecting the pleasures I have had formerly, I renew them, I enjoy
them a second time, while I laugh at the remembrance of troubles now
past, and which I no longer feel. A member of this great universe, I