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" who can read will of themselves remark that its greatest faults cannot be attributed to me, while those who cannot read will nothing note." With this simple syllogism, which precedes the Roman Comique of Scarron, I may also well begin these more serious pages.

I give here a series of articles and daily bulletins which I wrote for the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung (The Universal, or generally public, Gazette of Augsburg), in stormy circumstance of every kind, with an object which may easily be guessed, under restrictions which may be still more readily conjectured. I am now obliged to publish these anonymous and ephemeral leaves under my own name, lest some other person—as I have been threatened—should do so according to his own fashion or fancy, and change them as he may please, or perhaps mingle with them altogether foreign material which may be erroneously attributed to me.

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