Twyford, at the Bishop of St. Asaph's, 1771
DEAR SON:
I have ever had a pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes
of my ancestors. You may remember the inquiries I made among
the remains of my relations when you me in England, and the journey
I undertook for that purpose. Now imagining it may be equally
agreeable to you to know the circumstances of my life, many of
which you are unacquainted with, and expecting a week's uninterrupted
leisure in my present country retirement, I sit down to write
them for you. To which I have besides some other inducements.
Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born
and bred to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation
in the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable
share of felicity, the conducing means I made use of which with
the blessing of God so well succeeded, my posterity may like to
know, may find some of them suitable to their own situations,
and therefore fit to be imitated. That felicity, when I reflected
on it, has induced me sometimes to say that were it offered to
my choice I should have no objection to a repetition of the same
life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have
in a second edition of the first. So would 1, if I might besides
correcting the faults, change some sinister accidents and events
of it for others more favorable, but though this was denied, I
accept the offer. However, since such a repetition is not to be
expected, the next most like having one's life over again seems
to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection
as durable as possible the putting it down in writing.