Chapter 1

MR. CHRYSTAL CROFTANGRY'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF.

Sic itur ad astra.

"This is the path to heaven." Such is the ancient motto attached
to the armorial bearings of the Canongate, and which is
inscribed, with greater or less propriety, upon all the public
buildings, from the church to the pillory, in the ancient quarter
of Edinburgh which bears, or rather once bore, the same relation
to the Good Town that Westminster does to London, being still
possessed of the palace of the sovereign, as it formerly was
dignified by the residence of the principal nobility and gentry.
I may therefore, with some propriety, put the same motto at the
head of the literary undertaking by which I hope to illustrate
the hitherto undistinguished name of Chrystal Croftangry.

The public may desire to know something of an author who pitches
at such height his ambitious expectations. The gentle reader,
therefore--for I am much of Captain Bobadil's humour, and could
to no other extend myself so far--the GENTLE reader, then, will
be pleased to understand that I am a a Scottish gentleman of the
old school, with a fortune, temper, and person, rather the worse
for wear. I have known the world for these forty years, having
written myself man nearly since that period--and I do not think
it is much mended. But this is an opinion which I keep to myself
when I am among younger folk, for I recollect, in my youth,
quizzing the Sexagenarians who carried back their ideas of a
perfect state of society to the days of laced coats and triple
ruffles, and some of them to the blood and blows of the Forty-
five. Therefore I am cautious in exercising the right of
censorship, which is supposed to be acquired by men arrived at,
or approaching, the mysterious period of life, when the numbers
of seven and nine multiplied into each other, form what sages
have termed the Grand Climacteric.

Of the earlier part of my life it is only necessary to say, that
I swept the boards of the Parliament-House with the skirts of my
gown for the usual number of years during which young Lairds were
in my time expected to keep term--got no fees--laughed, and made
others laugh--drank claret at Bayle's, Fortune's, and Walker's--
and ate oysters in the Covenant Close.

Becoming my own master, I flung my gown at the bar-keeper, and
commenced gay man on my own account. In Edinburgh, I ran into
all the expensive society which the place then afforded. When I
went to my house in the shire of Lanark, I emulated to the utmost
the expenses of men of large fortune, and had my hunters, my
first-rate pointers, my game-cocks, and feeders. I can more
easily forgive myself for these follies, than for others of a
still more blamable kind, so