r a flowing
and redundant than a concise and stately diction in his prose
exercitations. But notwithstanding these symptoms of inferior taste, and
a humour of contradicting his betters upon passages of dubious
construction in Latin authors, I did grievously lament when Peter
Pattieson was removed from me by death, even as if he had been the
offspring of my own loins. And in respect his papers had been left in my
care, (to answer funeral and death-bed expenses,) I conceived myself
entitled to dispose of one parcel thereof, entitled, "Tales of my
Landlord," to one cunning in the trade (as it is called) of book
selling. He was a mirthful man, of small stature, cunning in
counterfeiting of voices, and in making facetious tales and responses,
and whom I have to laud for the truth of his dealings towards me.
Now, therefore, the world may see the injustice that charges me with
incapacity to write these narratives, seeing, that though I have proved
that I could have written them if I would, yet, not having done so, the
censure will deservedly fall, if at all due, upon the memory of Mr. Peter
Pattieson; whereas I must be justly entitled to the praise, when any is
due, seeing that, as the Dean of St. Patrick's wittily and logically
expresseth it,

That without which a thing is not,
Is Causa sine qua non.

The work, therefore, is unto me as a child is to a parent; in the which
child, if it proveth worthy, the parent hath honour and praise; but, if
otherwise, the disgrace will deservedly attach to itself alone.

I have only further to intimate, that Mr. Peter Pattieson, in arranging
these Tales for the press, hath more consulted his own fancy than the
accuracy of the narrative; nay, that he hath sometimes blended two or
three stories together for the mere grace of his plots. Of which
infidelity, although I disapprove and enter my testimony against it, yet
I have not taken upon me to correct the same, in respect it was the will
of the deceased, that his manuscript should be submitted to the press
without diminution or alteration. A fanciful nicety it was on the part of
my deceased friend, who, if thinking wisely, ought rather to have
conjured me, by all the tender ties of our friendship and common
pursuits, to have carefully revised, altered, and augmented, at my
judgment and discretion. But the will of the dead must be scrupulously
obeyed, even when we weep over their pertinacity and self-delusion.