public with their own memoirs. From this want of inclination or capacity
to write, in our hero himself, the undertaking is now left to me, of
transmitting to posterity the remarkable adventures of FERDINAND COUNT
FATHOM; and by the time the reader shall have glanced over the subsequent
sheets, I doubt not but he will bless God that the adventurer was not his
own historian.

This mirror of modern chivalry was none of those who owe their dignity to
the circumstances of their birth, and are consecrated from the cradle for
the purposes of greatness, merely because they are the accidental
children of wealth. He was heir to no visible patrimony, unless we
reckon a robust constitution, a tolerable appearance, and an uncommon
capacity, as the advantages of inheritance. If the comparison obtains in
this point of consideration, he was as much as any man indebted to his
parent; and pity it was, that, in the sequel of his fortune, he never had
an opportunity of manifesting his filial gratitude and regard. From this
agreeable act of duty to his sire, and all those tendernesses that are
reciprocally enjoyed betwixt the father and the son, he was unhappily
excluded by a small circumstance; at which, however, he was never heard
to repine. In short, had he been brought forth in the fabulous ages of
the world, the nature of his origin might have turned to his account; he
might, like other heroes of antiquity, have laid claim to divine
extraction, without running the risk of being claimed by an earthly
father. Not that his parents had any reason to disown or renounce their
offspring, or that there was anything preternatural in the circumstances
of his generation and birth; on the contrary, he was, from the beginning,
a child of promising parts, and in due course of nature ushered into the
world amidst a whole cloud of witnesses. But, that he was acknowledged
by no mortal sire, solely proceeded from the uncertainty of his mother,
whose affections were so dissipated among a number of admirers, that she