from me for having excluded from this Pantheon of British Worthies, Inventas-qui vitam excoluêre per artes, such names as Foote, and Shenstone, and Churchill, and Sterne. Even had they not occupied niches wanted for more distinguished characters, they must be pronounced by their warmest advocates discredit ably inferior in dignity to the greater part of their immortal compeers. Of ambiguous or of petty cele brity, they would themselves, if re-invested with earthly feelings, be surprised at their own apotheosis. It shall not be my fault, if a passion be kindled in any ingenuous bosom for pugilism, or profligacy, in or out of canonicals. In the very extreme of her accommodating superstition, Rome never placed the crocodiles and the onions of Egypt by the side of her Capitoline Gods. In several, likewise, of the more important biographies considerable contractions have been made, with the view of leaving a wider space for those of More, Ralegh, Bacon, Strafford, Clarendon, Milton, Hale, Tillotson, Locke, Burnet, &c.; whose Lives, it was judged, might be expanded with great advantage to the youthful reader. With respect, also, to Knox and Walpole, who have lately exercised the able pens of Dr. Macrie and Archdeacon Coxe, copiousness of new and authentic documents invited to diffusion. Of the Seven additional Memoirs, the Life of Colonel HUTCHINSON has enabled me to display a sketch at least of the portrait, which his excellent widow has so admirably drawn, of the manners of the Protectoral age. To Sir John CHEKE I owe the opportunity of inserting valuable extracts from his volume of Letters (now rare) on the Right Pronunciation of Greek; and Viscount NELSON, the only one of my Hundred who has died within the present century, is indebted for his admission to my perusal of the interesting Epitome published in one of our periodical works. Dr. BENTLEY, I avow with a feeling almost amounting to remorse, deserved a far more industrious-alas! a far abler-biographer than myself. Why will not his own Burney give to the world this literary giant in his full dimensions? Of Sir Philip SIDNEY, who had hitherto strangely been omitted, of Bishop BERKELEY, and of Sir William JONES, the pretensions are surely as unequivocal, as the materials are accessible and abundant. With respect to the Lives of Burke, Windham, Pitt, and Fox, of which I have been strongly impor tuned to include some account in the present Collection, the public will perhaps think with me, that it would be to tread upon ashes, under which the fire is not yet sufficiently extinguished to bear the foot of the biographer.' Years upon years must elapse, before their conduct and character can be discussed with the freedom, or appreciated with the temper, of history. The beneficia and the injuriæ, real or imaginary, which they have conferred or inflicted, will for a long period expose them, with equal disadvantage, to undeserved panegyric and undeserved censure. It has been stated, indeed, by the noble relative of the last of them, that "although those who admired him in public, and those who loved him in private, must naturally feel desirous that some memorial should be preserved of the great and good qualities of his head and heart, the objections to such an undertaking at present are obvious; and, after much reflexion, they have appeared to those connected with him to be insuperable." This " applies to the Memoirs of every public man." In the Specimens which I have attached to the earlier Lives in particular, exclusively of the consideration that many of them are made from volumes now seldom to be met with, it has been my anxious wish not only to exhibit a fair sample of their various species of composition, but also to discuss (whenever that could be done within reasonable limits) some great general subject; and such I have invariably preferred, as seemed to me to comprise the best lessons of prudence, or of piety. To the Latin extracts, likewise, versions have usually been subjoined; with the exception however of those, which follow the brief memoir of Sir John Cheke, and which from their very nature could have little interest for the English reader. If, under this head, there should appear an occasional want of uniformity, I may be permitted to plead, that from several books in my secluded situation extracts could only be procured with great difficulty; that, in more than one instance, copies made by a distant friend arrived too late to be forwarded in time for the convenience even of a very accommodating printer; that quotations introduced, on account of their historical character, into the body of a narrative have now and then superseded the necessity of additional ones at it's conclusion; and, above all, that the fear of swelling the Volumes to an undue size has frequently induced the suppression of what had been selected with care, and transcribed with effort. With regard to their orthography, though in a few specimens the antiquated spelling has been retained (as likely to minister gratification to a certain class of students) the greater number, it is presumed, will be glad to possess them in a more intelligible form. 6 It remains for me to avow my various obligations: more especially to the Rev. Dr. Symmons, from whose * Life of Milton,' had I been able to do it justice in an epitome, I should have derived the principal ornament of my work; to the Rev. Dr. Wordsworth, whose Ecclesiastical Biography' needs no eulogium of mine; and to Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart. M. P., for many highly valued acts of literary kindness. In addition likewise to these, whom I am happily permitted to call my friends, and to the authorities specifically accompanying each separate Memoir, I ought to name, as sources from which I generally profited, Aikin's and Chalmers' Biographical Dictionaries (as far as they had respectively extended), the Lives prefixed to the British Essayists and Novelists, the Biographies of Johnson and Anderson, the brief but vivid sketches of Granger, and the too speedily closed labours of Macdiarmid. The small volume, which might have improved the accounts of Selden and of Usher, has never reached my hands. After all-my compilation, which (it may farther be observed) was nearly completed several years ago, is of an extremely unambitious nature. Unlike it's illustrious century of subjects, who may proudly challenge All that insolent Greece or haughty Rome 3 |