Moreover, if they will considerately take into account that as a youth and until middle age I was, from the speech-impediment since overcome, isolated from the gaieties of society, as also that I religiously abstained from theatricals at a time before Macready, who has since purified them into a very fair school of morals,--to say less of having been engaged in marriage from seventeen to twenty-five,--I can have (for example) no love adventures to offer for amusement, nor any dramatic anecdotes such as Ruskin might supply.
The autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini is full of entertaining and highly coloured incidents which could not be possible to one rather of the Huguenot stamp than that of the Cavalier, and so I cannot compete therewith as to any of the spicier records of hot youth: for which indeed let me be thankful.
If then my reader finds me less lively than he had--shall I say uncharitably ?--hoped for, let him take into account that, to quote the splendid but sensuous phrase of Swinburne, I have always been stupidly prone to prefer "the lilies and languors of virtue" to "the roses and raptures of vice." I will now proceed with the self-imposed duty of recording my authorial performances..