_Seville, ---- 1806._
As, in order to help my memory, I have been for some time collecting
notes under different heads, relative to the customs, both public
and private, which are most remarkable in the annual circle of
_Sevillian_ life, I find myself possessed of a number of detached
scraps, which, though affording abundant matter for more than one of
my usual dispatches, are much too stubborn to bend themselves into
any but their original shape. After casting about in my mind for some
picturesque or dramatic plan of arrangement, I had, most cowardly, I
confess, and like a mere novice in the art of authorship, determined
to suppress the detached contents of my common-place book, when it
occurred to me that, as they were no less likely to gratify your
curiosity in their present state than in a more elaborate form, a
simple transcript of my notes would not stand amiss in the collection
of my letters. I shall, therefore, present you with the following
sample of my _Fasti Hispalenses_, or Sevillian Almanack, without,
however, binding myself to furnish it with the three hundred and
sixty-five articles which that name seems to threaten. Or, should you
still find the title too ambitious and high-sounding for the mere
gossip and prattle of this series of scraps, I beg you will call
it (for I have not the heart to send out my productions not only
shapeless, but nameless)