PREFACE.
writers have extended it to the verses written in them.
A few Specimens of these are now offered to the public. It would be as vain to deny, as it is perhaps impolitic to mention, that this attempt is owing to the success of the Erse fragments. It is by no means for the interest of this little work, to have it brought into a comparison with those beautiful pieces, after which it must appear to the greatest disadvantage. And yet till the Translator of those poems thinks proper to produce his originals, it is impossible to say whether they do not owe their superiority, if not their whole existence entirely to himself. The Editor of these pieces had no such boundless field for licence. Every poem here produced has been already published accompanied with a Latin ordish
