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 history may find a place in the world, as well as some, who I see are every day read with pleasure, though they have in them nothing so diverting, or instructing, as I believe mine will appear to be.

My original may be as high as any body’s for aught I know, for my mother kept very good company, but that part belongs to her story, more than to mine; all I know of it, is by oral tradition. My nurse told me my mother was a gentlewoman, that my father was a man of quality, and she (my nurse) had a good piece of money given her to take me off his hands, and deliver him and my mother from the importunities that usually attend the misfortune of having a child to keep, that should not be seen or heard of.

My father, it seems, gave my nurse something more than was agreed for, at my mother’s request, upon her solemn promise, that she would use me well, and let me be put to school; and charged her, that if I lived to come to any bigness, capable to understand the meaning of it, she should always take care to bid me remember, that I was a gentleman; and this, he said, was all the education he would desire of her for me; for he did not doubt, he said, but that some time or other, the very hint would inspire me with thoughts suitable to my birth, and that I would certainly act like a gentleman, if I believed myself to be so.