My Public--that is, our readers--we have served you seven years, through
fourteen volumes; in each renewing our professions of gratitude, and
study for your gratification; and we hope we shall not presume on your
liberal disposition by calculating on your continued patronage. We have
endeavoured to keep our engagements with you--_to the letter_[1]--as
they say in weightier matters; and, as every man is bound to speak of
the fair as he has found his market in it, we ought to acknowledge the
superabundant and quick succession of literary novelties for the present
volume. There is little of our own; because we have uniformly taken Dr.
Johnson's advice in life--"to play for much, and stake little" This will
extenuate our assuming that "from castle to cottage we are regularly
taken in:" indeed, it would be worse than vanity to suppose that price
or humble pretensions should exclude us; it would be against the very
economy of life to imagine this; and we are still willing to abide by
such chances of success.
[1] This is not intended exclusively for the _new type_ of the
present volume.
Cheap Books, we hope, will never be an evil; for, as "the same care and
toil that raise a dish of peas at Christmas, would give bread to a whole
family during six months;" so the expense of a gay volume at this season
will furnish a moderate circle with amusive reading for a twelvemonth.
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