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BARNARD AND FARLEY, Skinner Street, London,

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ORIGINAL DISQUISITIONS, ARTICLES OF BIOGRAPHY,

AND OTHER LITERARY ANTIQUITIES.

BY

SIR EGERTON BRYDGES, BART. K. J. M. P.

SECOND EDITION.

WITH THE ARTICLES CLASSED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
UNDER THEIR SEPARATE HEADS.

VOLUME I.

London:

PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN,

PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1815.

!

.
(UNIVERSITY

ALIFORNIA

PREFACE

TO THE

SECOND EDITION

OF

Censura Literaria.

A FEW words will suffice for the Preface of this Second Edition of Censura Literaria. The Prefaces to the successive Volumes of the former Edition will shew its original progress, and the views and feelings of the Editor. The materials that he thus gradually accumulated, to an extent which on a retrospect excites his own astonishment, but which were necessarily collected without order, are now disposed in a chronological series, under their proper classes. This, with all the Indexes gathered into one, will very materially improve the

VOL. I.

Work for the purposes of reference, and embody, in a regular form, a store of information, illustrative of the literary antiquities of England, too various ever to lose its value. The fatigue of carrying through the press, a second time, this multifarious matter, in its nature dry and repulsive, has been great; and if the Editor's attention to it has sometimes, amid his various avocations of an uncongenial kind, slumbered, no liberal critic will accuse him of unvenial errors.

It is difficult to attract the notice of readers of a lively and animated turn, to this sort of lore. But still these Volumes deal principally with that kind of literature, which is of all others the most interesting and delightful. Poetry forms the principal head of the works here registered. With what sentiments this study ought to be pursued, and of what instruction it may be productive, the Editor has expressed in a paper in the former impression, with more energy than he probably could exert at the present moment; and therefore considers this the best place in which he can reprint it.

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