ΤΟ SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ. AS A MARK OF RESPECT FOR HIS PATRONAGE OF British Art, (AND FOR HIS APPRECIATION Of the works oF STOTHARD MORE ESPECIALLY,) THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, BY HIS OBLIGED AND OBEDIENT SERVANT, THE EDITOR. ADVERTISEMENT. IN presenting to the Public THE LITERARY SOUVENIR for the seventh time, but little necessity suggests itself for prefatory remark. If experience be of any avail in the production of books of this description, and to the increased facilities it affords be superadded a determination to spare no cost or pains that may be expected to conduce to the improvement of a work, the present volume has certainly the advantage of its predecessors. The degree of success which has been attained on this occasion, must, however, be left for others to determine. The Embellishments will, at once, speak for themselves. They have been engraved, not from slight or hasty designs, but chiefly from Pictures which rank among the most successful productions of their respective Painters. For a leading attraction in this department of the work, the Editor is indebted to the politeness of the Right Honorable Agar Ellis, to whom he takes this opportunity of returning his acknowledgments. It is confidently anticipated, that this engraving (from one of the most splendid specimens of the genius of the late lamented President of the Royal Academy) will be found in every respect worthy of the original. In catering for the literary department of annual volumes, some difficulties, it must be confessed, present themselves; - difficulties, not limited to the task of consulting, within such narrow limits, the tastes of all classes of readers; but arising, for the most part, out of the impossibility of satisfying a particular class of critics; who, whilst they refrain from any comparative estimate of the merits of the various competitors in the race, (for that, they say, would be "invidious,") do not hesitate to visit whatever faults they may chance to * One of these gentlemen, in the spleenful spirit which usually characterises his remarks upon the "Annuals," passing, almost without comment, over every thing else in the book, fastened upon a couple of stanzas in the last volume of the Literary Souvenir, bearing the initials of a popular living Writer, and with a degree of virulence worthy of some very heinous offence, charged the Editor with having first stolen an idea, and then forged the initials of a celebrated poet, to impose upon the Public. It never occurred to this Aristarchus, that both poems might be the productions of the same author. It was, more consonant with his motives to indulge in a false and ungenerous imputation, than to avail himself of so simple and obvious a solution of the enigma. |