Albeit, gentle reader, I have lusted earnestly, and endeavoured carefully (according to the measure of such a slender skill as God has vouchsafed me, and as convenient leisure from other occasions of needful profit and healthful pastime have permitted) that these little books which I here put into thy hands, might stand instead of many bigger books--yet have Icarried myself towards thee in such fanciful guise of careless disport, that right sore am I ashamed now to intreat thy lenity seriously--in beseeching thee to believe it of me, that in the story of my father and his christian-names--I have no thoughts of treading upon Francis the First--nor in the affair of the nose--upon Francis the Ninth--nor in the character of my uncle Toby--of characterizing the militiating spirits of my country--the wound upon his groin, is a wound to every comparison of that kind--nor by Trim--that I meant the duke of Ormond--or that my book is wrote against predestination, or free-will, or taxes--If 'tis wrote against any thing,--'tis wrote, an' please your worships, against the spleen! in order, by a more frequent and a more convulsive elevation and depression of the diaphragm, and the succussations of the intercostal and abdominal muscles in laughter, to drive the gall and other bitter juices from the gall-bladder, liver, and sweet-bread of his majesty's subjects, with all the inimicitious passions which belong to them, down into their duodenums.
