SOME ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR, BY HIMSELF. I HAVE always thought, from the time I first read Gulliver's Travels, that one of the most interesting considerations which could attract the attention of a reader, was, what fashion of man was the author himself; whether he rose late, or early, took snuff, or wore spectacles, not to mention the endless varieties of feature and colour, which go to the making up of a conscientious and wellfavoured portrait. I see no good reason why posterity should not feel much the same sort of interest about me and my likeness, that I have often felt, unsolicited, about that of others; and not willing to trust myself to the imagination of most readers, I have thought it a duty to give some kind of etching of my outward self, to be placed at the head of this volume. An innate and invincible modesty has often, indeed, restrained the execution of this project; and if any thing approach in the following sketch to the opinions I entertain on the subject, let the reader set it down, I pray him, quite as much to accident as choice. I had, at first, the intention of substituting an engraving of a cameo, executed for me in my younger days in this self-same city, for a less concise mode of expressing my lineaments. Many interesting recollections were attached to this likeness: it was thought good by dear and deceased critics; and I am, as most men who have lived long and much, a devout worshipper of Lavater. There is an engraver* of some merit in Flo * Raphael Morghen. The cameo was a present from the lady mentioned a little later in the text. rence, whose name is not wholly unknown. to the inhabitants of Scandinavia. I proposed to him, after much preliminary arrangement, the execution of this important work; but finding he could not finish it in such a manner as to do us both credit under the immoderate sum of fifty crowns, and apprehensive he would pass off, into something common-place, the marked traits of my character, I was, on reflection, induced to withdraw it from his hands after he had got every thing in preparation; a trouble which I now remember cost me very nearly twenty. I have consequently preferred the task of being my own artist, which, besides its economy, is likely to prove as accurate a mode as any other; and I sit down to this moral outline with less intention of flattery, and with, I hope, as much chance of hitting off a "striking resemblance" as most other artists It was encrusted on the lid of a plain lava snuffbox, with an inscription inside in praise of fidelity, in rather ill-spelt English. |