ΤΟ CLEMENT C. MOORE, LL. D., MY FATHER'S FRIEND, WHOSE REGARD FOR HIS MEMORY HAS PROMPTED MANY KINDNESSES TO HIS SON, THESE VOLUMES ARE INSCRIBED, WITH SENTIMENTS OF GRATITUDE AND RESPECT, BY THE AUTHOR. INTRODUCTION. The present final collection of his miscellaneous papers, originally written for, and printed in the American Monthly Magazine, Arcturus, the Church Record, the Democratic and Whig Reviews, Boston Miscellany, Union Magazine, Literary World, and other periodicals, is intended to include such of the writer's papers (chiefly of literary criticism) as have appeared to him worthy of preservation. With the exception of a few comparatively recent articles, they were mostly written and printed 1838-1845, and comprise a little more than one-half of his entire contributions to the press up to the present date. Most of the papers here collected (since the publication of The Analyst, anonymously in 1839, and which was made up of lucubrations written the year and a half previously) have appeared already in the volumes of Literary Studies and Essays upon Authors and Books. Holding the doctrine of Hazlitt, however, to be sound, that a first edition is as good as MSS., as the impressions of all these three miscellanies were limited, and have been long since out of print, and as numerous typographical errors had crept in, as well as mistakes of fact and opinion, it was thought a new and correct edition might be favorably received by the present generation of readers, young students in particular, in college, the lovers of the choice old English literature, and those cultivated general readers to whom these miscellanies are unknown. |