VIII 
PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR. 
merits, abounding with singular and remarkable incidents, 
and most celebrated for wonderful vicissitudes and personal 
achievements. 
Biographical essays and tratts on Linnaeus, we certainly 
are not deficient in. The subjoined List contains a review 
of all those which I could procure knowledge of. A variety 
of authentic and valuable information has not yet been no- 
ticed by the literary world. Of this description are the ac- 
counts published at Hamburgh, those contained in the letters 
to Baron Haller, &c. No colledtion of fadfs had ever been 
made, because no plan for a perfedl and complete biography 
Lad all now been projedled. The richness of those merely 
nominal biographical tradls, is therefore reduced to a small 
number of materials of real intrinsic value, consisting of frag- 
ments and sketches, the purport of which is a mere repetition, 
or a copy of two original portraits in miniature. These have, 
however, been so much mutilated and disfigured by false fea- 
tures and imperfedl skill in foreign countries, that the original 
touches of the pencil of truth scarcely remain distinguish- 
able. False statements are always the more prejudicial to ge- 
nuine fadt, if time has so strongly stamped them with credit, 
that they ultimately convert history into fidlion. 
But in this work a favourable circumstance intervenes— 
the surviving friends, pupils and evidences of Linnaeus. I 
had 
