HENRY SMITH, Esq. SECRETARY TO THE HON. THE BOARD OF ORDNANCE, IN THE KINGDOM or IRELAND. SIR, A DEDICATION wears, at all times, fo much the air of flattery, that 'tis hard to distinguish between the language dictated by Sincerity, and the fawnings of the Parafite-between the respect paid by personal gratitude to perfonal merit, and the aukwardimitations of it offered at the foot of Wealth and Title by the hungry expectant. I fhall, for these reasons, only make one short obfervation on the propriety of my offering these sheets to your patronage— That although nothing doubting but the innate beauty of my favourite author, is capable of attracting the admiration and feizing A 2 feizing the attention of every rank and age --yet having had an opportunity (through the honour of a personal intimacy with you) of observing, not only how reducible, but reduced to practice, is that philanthropy he fo fweetly recommends in every page of his writings,-I have beer. induced to prefix your name, as a fit head to fuch a body-feeling with what force precept comes home to the heart, ftrengthened by such an example. I have therefore to beg you will attribute the liberty I here take with your name to its proper motive-a defire to hold up to the world a mirror, in which they should endeavour to behold their own likeness and to believe me, with every fentiment of gratitude and respect, SIR, Your most obliged, And most humble fervant, A. F. PREFACE. PREFACE. THE very many editions that have al ready paffed the prefs, of the "Beauties of Sterne," fufficiently evince the fentiments of the public at large upon the propriety of fuch a work, and remove those objections which at firft might have been fupposed to exist-it therefore only remains to point out the amendments the world has à right to look for in the prefent edition. It has been a matter of much general complaint, that the selections hitherto made were of rather too confined a caft,-and that, contrary to the original, the utile and the dulce were not fufficiently blended, or in equal quantities. That as the work was intended both for the recreation of our riper years, and the improvement of the more juvenile mind, it dragg'd on rather too serious a fyftem of grave morality, unmix'd with those sprightlier fallies of fancy, which A 3 which the great Original knew fo judicioufly and equally to fcatter in our way. It has been likewise observed, that the dread of offending the ear of Chastity, fo laudable in itself, has, in the prefent cafe,, been carried to an excefs, thereby depriving us of many moft laughable scenes, though in themselves totally free from any objections on the score of indelicacy-and that, upon the whole, the past compilers of Sterne, keeping their eye rather upon his morality, than his bumour-upon his judgment, than his wit, had liken'd the work to his Cane Chair, deprived of the one of its knobs-incomplete and ununiform.-Giving us rather those plants which may be found in all climates and in every soil, than those which are more estimable, because more rare, and which have been brought to perfection in but a very few indeed fuch skilful hands as his. To obviate in some measure those founded objections, has been the object of the prefent edition, in which, the reader, whesher of a grave or gay complection, will find |