one of his prefaces, that he had found great advantage in this.

Of the small impression of this essay which I had taken off at the beginning of this year, I distributed the greater part among particular friends, from whom I flattered myself that I might receive goodnatured and useful remarks and counsel, touching the numerous defects which I justly apprehended might still have remained after my own repeated revisions; and I have had good reason to be glad that I had indulged that expectation.

Having come to the resolution of throwing myself on the mercy of the grand literary inquest of the nation, of whatever class or cast of his majesty's liege subjects that awful assemblage of rarely unanimous jurymen is composed, perhaps I may seem to have been a little precipitate in carrying such resolution into effect. But Horace's

advice, and Pope's, "to keep your piece nine years," would have been equally inapplicable to my time of life, and to the nature of this ephemeral trifle: that may be a good rule for the works of authors, who, like young Cowley, say to themselves,

"What shall I do to be for ever known, And make the world to come my own!" or who, according to one of Shakespeare's inspired expressions, imagine they "feel immortal longings in them." Though even as to such cases, experience in some noted instances shows the danger of too far exceeding the proper period of retention, and still continuing polishing and re-polishing, or rather altering and re-altering, while confined within the author's closet, works so meant for remotest posterity. It has been said, that Lord Lyttelton printed, and then totally

* That same Cowley, in his less sanguine days, quaintly but strongly exclaimed,

"Who his to-morrow would bestow

For all great Homer's life, even from his death till now?"

cancelled and destroyed, several entire impressions of his elaborate History of Henry II., during the course of twenty or thirty years; and that those who had seen the work in its earlier state, found it had gradually acquired from the author's too anxious ambition to improve it, while he fondly dreamed it was advancing to perfection, the sort of heaviness and languor which is now generally thought to belong to it. A like fate is known to have attended another historical work of more modern date, the History of the Rebellion in 1745, by the author of the tragedy of Douglas. That history, according to many concurrent reports at the time, by the author's continual cancellings, and, as he thought, meliorations, during near half a century, had been in a considerable degree emasculated, and deprived of much of its original interest. So far is it from being universally true, that "Authors lose half the praise they would have got, Were it but known what they discreetly blot."

Yes, it is true, if the blotting out is really done discreetly; and the two writers I have just mentioned no doubt thought theirs a sound and wise discretion; but, after carrying such supposed discretion so far, they would, in the opinion of some splenetic, though in my opinion very unjust, critics, have done better to suppress their said histories altogether.

As to this poor insignificant volume of mine, written at an age from which seldom any thing but what may be quaintly called senile puerilities can be looked for, I trust it will be received with some degree of that indulgence which good nature, still most predominant with the truest masters of the critic's art, generally bestows on the immature exercises of the schoolboy, or newly matriculated collegian.

The chief faults and defects which my friends have had the kindness to point out

to me, either while my translation still remained in manuscript, or afterwards, in the short space of time between the first and the present impression, (about nine weeks, instead of nine years), have been of three sorts:

1. That I have nowhere given any explanation or sketch of the general plan of the original poem. That objection I had in some degree obviated, I thought, by what I have said in the Introduction. The truth is, that Ricciardetto is (like the two Orlandos) a mighty maze, and almost quite without a plan. However, if I live to finish another literary labour which has occupied me at various intervals, during a great many years, amidst the avocations of business professional and official, and many suspensions of all study from ill health and domestic misfortunes, I may yet be tempted to try to make a general abstract, or groundplot, as it were, on a very limited scale, of

b