GENERAL The impression of this Book is strictly limited to 525 copies, of which 25 only are on Large Paper. BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. Z2012 ser.2 PREFATORY DEDICATION. ΤΟ WILLIAM HAZLITT, CHIEF REGISTRAR OF THE LONDON COURT OF BANKRUPTCY. It is now, as you know, some four and twenty years since I first entered on my bibliographical career. You entertained grave misgivings as to the prudence of the step; and I now have no hesitation in confessing, that of the magnitude of the enterprise which I was proposing to myself, I was lamentably ignorant. But I had formed my resolution, and nothing could deter me. Eight or nine years elapsed in the accumulation of material for a New Bibliography of Early English Literature; I matured my plan carefully and thoughtfully; no collection of books, public or private, large or small, fell in my way without increasing my stores and at the same time sharpening my appetite; and, at length, in 1867, I felt justified in sending what I had so far done to the Printer. The volume then published is tolerably familiar nowadays to all interested in such matters under the denomination of HAZLITT'S HANDBOOK; it is a thick octavo of 714 pages, in two columns, and supplies descriptions of about 10,000 articles, as far as possible from the originals. This book of mine, at present fifteen years' old, I must say that I continue to regard without shame and without regret. I see its shortcomings and its weaknesses; but such drawbacks are incidental. to every mortal undertaking, superlatively so to one where minutiæ govern, and where of the numerous constituent atoms so many are obscured from the view or placed above the reach of an investigator like myself. A very marked proportion of the HANDBOOK of 1867, indeed, consisted of titles and collations drawn from the fountain-head, and after all deductions the residuum of sound matter was creditably large. 102922 |