AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

A Collection

OF THE

MOST INSTRUCTIVE AND AMUSING

LIVES

EVER PUBLISHED,

WRITTEN BY THE PARTIES THEMSELVES.

WITH BRIEF INTRODUCTIONS, AND COMPENDIOT'S
SEQUELS CARRYING ON THE NARRATIVE TO THE
DEATH OF EACH WRITER.

VOL. XVIII.-JAMES LACKINGTON

LONDON:

WHITTAKER, TREACHER, AND ARNOT

AVE-MARIA-LANE.

MDCCCXXX.

CT 101

A93 V. 18

LONDON:

WHITAKER, TREACHER, AND ARNOT

AVE-MARIA-LANE.

MDCCCXXX.

Careto our coffiu adds a nail no doubt,
And ev'ry grin, so merry, draws one out;
I own I like to laugh, and hate to sigh,
And think, that risibility was giv'n
For human happiness, by gracious heav'n,
And that we came not into life to cry;
To wear long faces, just as if our maker,
The God of goodness, was an undertaker,
Well pleas'd to wrap the soul's unlucky mien,
In sorrow's dismal crape or bombasine.
Methinks I hear the lord of nature say,
"Fools how you plague me! Go, be wise, be gay.
Mirth be your motto-merry be your heart;
Good laughs are pleasant inoffensive things."
PETER P NDAR.

010-6-28 BE

INTRODUCTION.

ALTHOUGH the rambling Memoirs of this fortunate bookseller belong to a class which principally exhibit the importance of the writers to themselves, it is not without interest as a record of the progress of natural sagacity, industry, and frugality, to riches and independence Neither is the vanity of the author offensive or unamusing, exposing as it does the manner in which a naturally acute but uncultivated mind extends its stock of ideas, and deals with the new lights, both clear and will-o'-the-whispish, which it may be put into a situation to acquire. Some pleasant anecdotes also occasionally relieve the good-humoured egotism of the cheapest bookseller in the world; and his portraiture of methodism, so singularly qualified and retracted in his subsequent "Confessions," is at least very curious. Of the latter work, so far as it supplies biographical matter, a due use is made in the Sequel, and as the whole will be contained