PREFACE.
He who has expended learning and industry in making known the lives and labours of others, deserves the record he bestows. It forms a debt of honour, if not of gratitude, which literary men are bound to bestow upon each other. The neglect of it is injustice to their class. And in this instance, it would be to sin against an eminent literary antiquary and critic, an amiable man, and the intimate personal friend of several of the very first characters of their time.
No name is more suggestive than that of Malone whenever we take up a volume of Shakspeare, of Dryden, of the history of the stage, of Boswell, or of biographical sketches of a few eminent contemporary friends who had just passed away. Upon Pope, Aubrey, and others of a previous age, considerable labour had been expended without having its results ushered into light. While to works of more varied general information, such as the Biographia Dramatica, he had contributed largely in personal anecdote.
Of his own career I found little. The only connected sketch was an article in the Gentleman’s Magazine afterwards enlarged into a pamphlet, by
