With regard to a Preface to his Book, an Author has to contend with three great, but unequal, difficulties. The first and greatest, is to persuade his Publisher to issue it without a Preface; the next, is to write one himself; and the third and least, is to get some one to write it for him. Now there is a wise old saw which says, “Of divers evils choose the least;” and as the learned Slawkenbergius (so says Tristram Shandy) has prefaced his FOLIO on Noses with a clause which exactly explains our own qualifications and reasons for writing on the same important subject, we invoke him to relieve us of the third difficulty: “‘ever since I understood,’ quoth Slawkenbergius, ‘anything—or rather what was what,—and could perceive that the point of Long Noses had been too loosely handled by all who had gone before—have I, Slawkenbergius, felt a strong impulse, with a mighty and irresistible call within me, to gird up myself to this undertaking.’”

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