distinguish you on this occasion as a person for whom I have the most
perfect attachment and esteem, you have no cause to complain of the
indelicacy with which your faults are reprehended. And as they are
chiefly the excesses of a sanguine disposition and looseness of thought,
impatient of caution or control, you may, thus stimulated, watch over
your own intemperance and infirmity with redoubled vigilance and
consideration, and for the future profit by the severity of my reproof.

These, however, are not the only motives that induce me to trouble you
with this public application. I must not only perform my duty to my
friends, but also discharge the debt I owe to my own interest. We live
in a censorious age; and an author cannot take too much precaution to
anticipate the prejudice, misapprehension, and temerity of malice,
ignorance, and presumption.

I therefore think it incumbent upon me to give some previous intimation
of the plan which I have executed in the subsequent performance, that I
may not be condemned upon partial evidence; and to whom can I with more
propriety appeal in my explanation than to you, who are so well
acquainted with all the sentiments and emotions of my breast?

A novel is a large diffused picture, comprehending the characters of
life, disposed in different groups, and exhibited in various attitudes,
for the purposes of an uniform plan, and general occurrence, to which
every individual figure is subservient. But this plan cannot be executed
with propriety, probability, or success, without a principal personage to
attract the attention, unite the incidents, unwind the clue of the
labyrinth, and at last close the scene, by virtue of his own importance.

Almost all the heroes of this kind, who have hitherto succeeded on the