LONDON:

Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES,

Stamford Street.

Careto our coffin adds a nail no doubt,
And ev'ry grin, so merry, draws one out;
I own I like to laugh, and hate to sigh,
And think, that risibility was giv'n
For human happiness, by gracious heav'n,
And that we came not into life to cry;
To wear long faces, just as if our maker,
The God of goodness, was an undertaker,
Well pleas'd to wrap the soul's unlucky mien,
In sorrow's dismal crape or bombasine.
Methinks I hear the lord of nature say,
"Fools how you plague me! Go, be wise, be gay.
Mirth be your motto-merry be your heart;
Good laughs are pleasant inoffensive things."

PETER P NDAR.

INTRODUCTION.

ALTHOUGH the rambling Memoirs of this fortunate bookseller belong to a class which principally exhibit the importance of the writers to themselves, it is not without interest as a record of the progress of natural sagacity, industry, and frugality, to riches and independence. Neither is the vanity of the author offensive or unamusing, exposing as it does the manner in which a naturally acute but uncultivated mind extends its stock of ideas, and deals with the new lights, both clear and will-o'-the-whispish, which it may be put into a situation to acquire. Some pleasant anecdotes also occasionally relieve the good-humoured egotism of the cheapest bookseller in the world; and his portraiture of methodism, so singularly qualified and retracted in his subsequent "Confessions," is at least very curious. Of the latter work, so far as it supplies biographical matter, a due use is made in the Sequel, and as the whole will be contained

in a single volume, this eccentric piece of selfdelineation will not assume a bulk disproportionate to its merits. These, although humble, will not be found without their value by the genuine student of human nature. The operation of vague and desultory reading upon native, but altogether undisciplined shrewdness of intellect, was seldom better, because seldom more unconsciously displayed. To conclude, the Life of James Lackington, although a mere etching, has a something special about it, which entitles it to a place amidst a collection of autobiographical portraits, in which originality and variety, rather than high finish and precision, form the leading objects of attraction.