PREFACE. 



AT is a misfortune, the consequences of 

 which are rarely overcome by any merit 

 whatever, on the part of an individual, 

 whose fate it is to have his way to seek 

 into life, after having lost that parent who 

 alone was capable of giving to him his due 

 direction ; and to whose fostering care, in 

 the performance of which duty, a child 

 becomes scarcely less indebted, than it 

 has already been for its original existence. 

 This serious truth will apply in a manner 

 still more forcibly to a man's literary 

 offspring. A posthumous work has all 

 the difficulties of the orphan to contend 

 with. It comes out exposed to all the 

 consequences of its own uncorrected 

 errors, and the mistakes of the person 



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