PREFACE 



TO 



THE SECOND EDITION- 



On the first publication of this Journal, the author 

 took occasion to acknowledge its deficiencies, and 

 to disclaim all pretensions to the honours of author- 

 ship. He stated that it was prepared in haste, and 

 published without revisal, to gratify his friends 

 rather than as a tribute to his own vanity. 



The work was never republished in England^ 

 and therefore did not naturally come under the 

 notice of an English Reviewer. The Quarterly Re- 

 view states, that it is believed the copy in possession 

 of the Reviewer, " is the only one which has crossed, 

 or is ever likely to cross, the Atlantic." Yet notwith- 

 standing, it was singled out for the purpose of 

 making a pretended review of it, the vehicle for a 

 bitter attack, not only on the person, but likewise 

 on the veracity, honour, and humanity of the author. 

 How far such a procedure may accord with the mo- 

 rality of criticism, the author knows not, nor wishes 

 to know. But, in the ordinary course of things, it 

 would seem that wantonly to stigmatize a work 

 which the readers of a Review are never likely to 

 me. is a species of reviewing equally unjust toward 



