of trifling, which I have been utterly unable to sustain, the importance of the things treated of forbade it. I intended to have apologized for the execution as well as for the design of this book ; but already I have written so much, that my remaining explanations must be brief: I will confine them to one subject.

In a note to the second chapter of my first volume, I have anticipated an objection, which, it is more than probable, will be made against that portion of my narrative. Let me now anticipate that anticipation. It will be said that I have represented school-boys

Delivering their decisions from the chair
Of forward youth,"

in language as little likely to proceed from such immature speakers, as are the sentiments which it embodies. I feel that, if I were disposed to do

so, I might make out a case in my favour, and

convince the reader, against his will, that I have not offended against nature so grossly as he supposes in these colloquies. I might tell him what Pascal was in his young days, what Chatterton, what the admirable Crichton; the latter of whom lived but two-and-twenty years on the earth, and the former scarcely eighteen. I might tell him that Percy Shelley was only seventeen when he was expelled from the University, for having written an atheistical dissertation "Upon the being of a God," and that Coleridge, when nothing but a blue-coat boy, would expatiate, for hours together, upon the mysteries of the Platonic Philosophy.* I might tell him that what I have written is not

"How have I seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, intranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula) to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of lamblichus or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar,-while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity-boy!"

CHARLES LAMB.

altogether at variance with my own knowledge of facts, that I myself, upon the theatre of boyhood, have met with more than one youthful thinker, whose glowing periods, I should be proud to see recorded in my maturer pages. But all this would be of no avail, if the reader is once impressed with an idea that the author has offended against

nature.

That school-boys are but too prone to discuss subjects of grave importance, few who have been to school will deny,—that, in these discussions, they are apt to talk a great deal of nonsense, I very readily admit. Well do I remember certain class-fellows of mine who were wont to indulge with me in weighty theological speculations, amongst which the mysteries of Swedenborgianism was one of the most prominent. It was attempted by one, who had himself become a convert to the faith of old Emanuel, to make a proselyte of me;

but it was a failure,-I was too High Church for

the Swedenborgian.

As I find that I am growing egotistical, I shall conclude with this exhortation to the reader; "Shouldest thou think that any of the events recorded in this history are improbable, be sure that they are true; and shouldest thou think that any of my characters are unnatural, be sure that they are drawn from the life." "Truth is strange, stranger than fiction."