isposed 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
English stage, are characters of transcendent worth, conducted through
the vicissitudes of fortune, to that goal of happiness, which ever ought
to be the repose of extraordinary desert.--Yet the same principle by
which we rejoice at the remuneration of merit, will teach us to relish
the disgrace and discomfiture of vice, which is always an example of
extensive use and influence, because it leaves a deep impression of
terror upon the minds of those who were not confirmed in the pursuit of
morality and virtue, and, while the balance wavers, enables the right
scale to preponderate.

In the drama, which is a more limited field of invention, the chief
personage is often the object of our detestation and abhorrence; and we
are as well pleased to see the wicked schemes of a Richard blasted, and
the perfidy of a Maskwell exposed, as to behold a Bevil happy, and an
Edward victorious.

The impulses of fear, which is the most violent and interesting of all
the passions, remain longer than any other upon the memory; and for one
that is allured to virtue, by the contemplation of that peace and
happiness which it bestows, a hundred are deterred from the practice of
vice, by that infamy and punishment to which it is liable, from the laws
and regulations of mankind.

Let me not, therefore, be condemned for having chosen my principal
character from the purlieus of treachery and fraud, when I declare my
purpose is to set him up as a beacon for the benefit of the unexperienced
and unwary, who, from the perusal of these memoirs, may learn to avoid
the manifold snares with which they are continually surrounded in the
paths of life; while those who hesitate on the brink of iniquity may be
terrified from plunging into that irremediable gulf, by surveying the
deplorable fate of Ferdinand Count Fathom.

That the mind might not be fatigued, nor the imagination disgusted, by a
succession of vicious objects, I have endeavoured to refresh the
attention with