Imagining it may be
equally agreeable to<1> you to know the circumstances of my life,
many of which you are yet unacquainted with, and expecting the enjoyment
of a week's uninterrupted leisure in my present country retirement,
I sit down to write them for you. To which I have besides some
other inducements. Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity
in which I was born and bred, to a state of affluence and some
degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through
life with a considerable share of felicity, the conducing means
I made use of, which with the blessing of God so well succeeded,
my posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them
suitable to their own situations, and therefore fit to be imitated.
<1> After the words "agreeable to" the words "some of" were
interlined and afterward effaced.--B.
That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes
to say, that were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection
to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking
the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults
of the first. So I might, besides correcting the faults, change some
sinister accidents and events of it for others more favorable.
But though this were denied, I should still accept the offer.
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