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Goldolphin was welcomed with enthusiasm by the London world. His graces, his manners, his genius, his bon ton, and his bonnes fortunes, were the theme of every society. Verses imputed to him, -- some erroneously, some truly, -- were mysteriously circulated from hand to hand; and every one envied the fair inspirers to whom they were supposed to be addressed.
It is not my intention to reiterate the wearisome echo of novelists, who descant on fashion and term it life. No description of rose-coloured curtains and buhl cabinets -- no miniature paintings of boudoirs and salons -- no recital of conventional insipidities, interlarded with affected criticisms, and honoured by the name of dramatic dialogue, shall lend their fascination to these pages. Far other and far deeper aims are mine in stooping to delineate the customs and springs of polite life. The reader must give himself wholly up to me; he must prepare to go with me through the grave as through the gay, and unresistingly to thread the dark and subtle interest which alone I can impart to these memoirs, or -- let him close the book at once. I promise him novelty; but it is not, when duly scanned, a novelty of a light and frivolous cast.