Biographical Preface.

OTHING can be more interefting than this little book, containing a lively picture of the opinions and converfation of one of the most eminent scholars and most distinguished patriots England has produced; living at a period the most eventful of our hiftory. There are few volumes of its fize fo pregnant with fenfe, combined with the moft profound learning; it is impoffible to open it without finding fome important fact or difcuffion, fomething practically useful and applicable to the business of life. It may be faid of it, as of that exquifite little manual, Bacon's Effays, "after the twen

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tieth perusal one feldom fails to remark in it fomething overlooked before."

Such were my feelings and expreffions eight and twenty years fince, in giving to the world an edition of Selden's Table Talk, which has long been numbered in the lift of scarce books, and that opinion time has fully confirmed. It was with infinite fatisfaction therefore I found that one whofe opinion may be safely taken as the highest authority, had as fully appreciated its worth. Coleridge thus emphatically expreffes himself: "There is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than I ever found in the fame number of pages of any uninfpired writer." And in a note on the article Parliament, he writes: "Excellent! O! to have been with Selden over his glass of wine, making every accident, an outlet and a vehicle of wif dom."*

Its merits had not escaped the notice of Johnson, though in politics opposed to much that it inculcates, for in reply to an

*

Coleridge's Literary Remains, vol. ii. pp. 361-2.