LETTER IX.
Seville, —— 1806.
As, in order to help my memory, I have been for some time collecting notes under different heads, relative to the customs, both public and private, which are most remarkable in the annual circle of Sevillian life, I find myself possessed of a number of detached scraps, which, though affording abundant matter for more than one of my usual dispatches, are much too stubborn to bend themselves into any but their original shape. After casting about in my mind for some picturesque or dramatic plan of arrangement, I had, most cowardly, I confess, and like a mere novice in the art of authorship, determined to suppress the detached contents of my common-place book, when it occurred to me that, as they were no less likely to gratify your curiosity in their present state than in a more elaborate form, a simple transcript of my notes would not stand amiss in the collection of my letters. I shall, therefore, present you with the following sample of my Fasti Hispalenses, or Sevillian Almanack, without, however, binding myself to furnish it with the three hundred and sixty-five articles which that name seems to threaten. Or, should you still find the title too ambitious and high-sounding for the mere gossip and prattle of this series of scraps, I beg you will call it (for I have not the heart to send out my productions not only shapeless, but nameless)