Whims and oddities, in prose and verse. The two ser. complete

N presenting his Whims and Oddities to the Public,

the Author desires to say a few words, which he
hopes will not swell into a Memoir.

It happens to most persons, in occasional lively moments,
to have their little chirping fancies and brain crotchets, that
skip out of the ordinary meadow-land of the mind. The
Author has caught his and clapped them up in paper and
print, like grasshoppers in a cage. The judicious reader will
look upon the trifling creatures accordingly, and not expect
from them the flights of poetical winged horses.

At a future time, the Press may be troubled with some
things of a more serious tone and purpose, —which the Author
has resolved upon publishing, in despite of the advice of cer-
tain critical friends. His forte, they are pleased to say, is
decidedly humorous; but a gentleman cannot always be breathing his comic vein.

It will be seen, from the illustrations of the present work, that the Inventor is no artist ;--in fact, he was never meant to draw”—any more than the tape-tied curtains mentioned by Mr Pope. Those who look at his deugns, with Ovid's Love of Art, will therefore be disappointed ;-his sketches are as rude and artless to other sketches, as Ingram's rustic manufacture to the polished chair. The designer is quite aware of their defects : but when Raphael has bestowed seven odd legs upon four Apostles, and Fuseli has stuck in a great goggle head without an owner ;-.when Michael Angelo has set on a foot the wrong way, and Hogarth has painted in defiance of all the laws of nat re and perspective, he does hope that his own little enormities may be forgiven—that his sketches may look interesting, like Lord Byron's Sleeper, 66 with all their errors.”

Such as they are, the Author resigns his pen-and-ink fancies to the public eye.

He has more designs in the wood ; and if the present sample should be relished, he will cut more, and come again, according to the proverb, with a New Series.

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