ot to
swell the work,--I detest the thought of such a thing;--but by way of
commentary, scholium, illustration, and key to such passages, incidents,
or inuendos as shall be thought to be either of private interpretation,
or of dark or doubtful meaning, after my life and my opinions shall have
been read over (now don't forget the meaning of the word) by all
the world;--which, betwixt you and me, and in spite of all the
gentlemen-reviewers in Great Britain, and of all that their worships
shall undertake to write or say to the contrary,--I am determined shall
be the case.--I need not tell your worship, that all this is spoke in
confidence.

Chapter 1.XIV.

Upon looking into my mother's marriage settlement, in order to satisfy
myself and reader in a point necessary to be cleared up, before we could
proceed any farther in this history;--I had the good fortune to pop
upon the very thing I wanted before I had read a day and a half straight
forwards,--it might have taken me up a month;--which shews plainly, that
when a man sits down to write a history,--tho' it be but the history of
Jack Hickathrift or Tom Thumb, he knows no more than his heels what
lets and confounded hindrances he is to meet with in his way,--or what
a dance he may be led, by one excursion or another, before all is over.
Could a historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on
his mule,--straight forward;--for instance, from Rome all the way to
Loretto, without ever once turning his head aside, either to the right
hand or to the left,--he might venture to foretell you to an hour when
he should get to his journey's end;--but the thing is, morally speaking,
impossible: For, if he is a man of the least spirit, he will have fifty
deviations from a straight line to make with this or that party as he
goes along, which he can no ways avoid. He will have views and prospects
to himself perpetually soliciting his eye, which he can no more help
standing still to look at than he can fly; he will moreover have various

Accounts to reconcile:
Anecdotes to pick up:
Inscriptions to make out:
Stories to weave in:
Traditions to sift:
Personages to call upon:
Panegyricks to paste up at this door;

Pasquinades at that:--All which both the man and his mule are quite
exempt from. To sum up all; there are archives at every stage to be
look'd into, and rolls, records, documents, and endless genealogies,
which justice ever a