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 I carried 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.