has got the better of all others:—for indeed the circumstances in this history are so various, and follow in such quick succession, that really if I do not use some expedition to bring him forward, I might as well have no hero at all. Just so far however I have nothing to reproach myself with; for, though hitherto he has said very little, I can assure the reader he has thought a great deal. To what purpose will hereafter appear. At present I shall proceed to the examination of his good and bad qualities, a portion of each—for I am afraid there is nothing perfect in this world—he certainly had;

and having cleared away the shores, and made every other proper preparation—for we may well give him fair play—fairly launch him on the ocean of life, where we shall see him steming many adverse gales of fortune, in which it will be difficult to determine whether most to admire his distress or his fortitude.
I certainly had some apprehensions that having suffered a fourth part of this work to pass without approaching to such a necessary business, the reader might perhaps be given to imagine that I called Charles Hazard the hero out of facetiousness, and merely by inference and deduction, and so use him as a painter does a layman, which stands in all the attitudes, bears the helmet, drapery, or poll parrot of the hero or heroine, and yet, though he play this respectable part, is never known personally to the spectators.
To say the truth, I have often been wickedly inclined to wish that many heroes I have met with in my life had been so dealt with, and it is not impossible but some of my readers may retort the courtesy; for it so happens that particular people find in these said heroes particular qualities, which generally being adventitious, it is fifty to one if a hero-maker thinks of them, and, in the absence of these

qualities, though the gentleman should be possessed of ever so long a catalogue of real and permanent virtues, he sinks to a nonentity, in the opinion of such critics, because he does not happen to be enlivened with their favourite animating principle.
I cannot give a stronger instance of what I have advanced than by producing the names of two of the greatest men in their way that ever lived:—I mean ALEXANDER of Macedon the great warrior, and ALEXANDER of Twickenham the great poet.
ALEXANDER the warrior would not have given three-pence for all the noisy applause and bellowing acclamations of the largest populace that ever assembled, if they had not hailed him son of Jupiter; and ALEXANDER the poet—according