I was born in 1740, the same year as James Boswell, whom I actually met in 1764 when he was passing through Berlin together with the great Samuel Johnson. Unfortunately, Boswell immediately developed a strong dislike towards me when he realized how much Johnson valued our common interest in pickles. Consequently, all our interesting conversations on this topic were left out of his Life, or attributed to Goldsmith.

For me, however, this was the most formative and impressive time of my life. Being a fearless scientist, I grasped the secret of eternal life early, and have been surviving in this state ever since. But the hopes and dreams I had been entertaining in connection with this have been sadly disappointed. Instead of uplifting literary discussions, I have been forced to go through the literary stuffiness of the 19th century, and the total decline of words into cheap pictorial symbols in the 20th. Attending Open University courses is my feeble attempt to recapture the mastery of language that has so disloyally left me.