“ ‘I shall take the liberty to avoid seeking, to the contempt of my own reason, a model of thinking and expressing myself. But yet if I advance anything new, it shall not be affectation, but the subject shall have furnished me with it: if I repeat what has been already said, it will be my own thought, as well as it has been that of others. Let not irony come to turn this preamble into ridicule, and accuse me of either not having read, or of having read to no purpose. A Toy like me is not made for reading, or profiting by its reading, or foreseeing an objection, or answering it.

“ ‘I shall not debar myself of reflections and ornaments proportioned to my subject; the rather because in this regard it is extremely modest, and will not admit of any great quantity or brilliancy. But I will avoid sinking into those little minute details, which fall to the share of the barren orator. It would be cause of great grief to me to be suspected of this defect.

“ ‘After having informed ye, gentlemen, of what you are to expect from my discoveries and elocution, some few strokes of the pencil will be sufficient, to sketch you out my character.