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to pardon or excuse the defects thou wilt perceive in this child of mine

Thou art neither its kinsman nor its friend, thy soul is thine own and

thy will as free as any man's, whate'er he be, thou art in thine own

house andof his taxes and thou knowest

the co;" all which exeation, and thou canst

say what thou wilt of the story without fear of being abused for any ill

or rewarded for any good thou mayest say of it

My ould be simply to present it to thee plain and unadorned,

without any embellishment of preface or uncountable ies, such as are co of books For I can tell thee, though coreater than theMany times did I take up ain, not knohat to write One of these ti with the paper before me, a pen in my ear,of what I should say, there came

in unexpectedly a certain lively, clever friend of ht, asked the reason; to which I,of the Preface I had to make for the

story of "Don Quixote," which so troubled me that I had a mind not to

make any at all, nor even publish the achieveht