As we do not disdain to borrow wit or wisdom from any man who is
capable of lending us either, we have condescended to take a hint from
these honest victuallers, and shall prefix not only a general bill of
fare to our whole entertainment, but shall likewise give the reader
particular bills to every course which is to be served up in this and
the ensuing volumes.

The provision, then, which we have here made is no other than _Human
Nature_. Nor do I fear that my sensible reader, though most luxurious
in his taste, will start, cavil, or be offended, because I have named
but one article. The tortoise--as the alderman of Bristol, well
learned in eating, knows by much experience--besides the delicious
calipash and calipee, contains many different kinds of food; nor can
the learned reader be ignorant, that in human nature, though here
collected under one general name, is such prodigious variety, that a
cook will have sooner gone through all the several species of animal
and vegetable food in the world, than an author will be able to
exhaust so extensive a subject.

An objection may perhaps be apprehended from the more delicate, that
this dish is too common and vulgar; for what else is the subject of
all the romances, novels, plays, and poems, with which the stalls
abound? Many exquisite viands might be rejected by the epicure, if it
was a sufficient cause for his contemning of them as common and
vulgar, that something was to be found in the most paltry alleys under
the same name. In reality, true nature is as difficult to be met with
in authors, as the Bayonne ham, or Bologna sausage, is to be found in
the shops.

But the whole, to continue the same metaphor, consists in the cookery