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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
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The difficulties and the expence attending such a compilation are so well illustrated by your Reviewers in vol. LII. p. 554, that it must be evident pecuniary emolument, in publishing the former volume, was wholly out of sight. If it displayed the Compiler’s gratitude to an early and excellent Friend, and added to the stock of useful entertainment, his wishes were fully answered.
“As the intended new edition will of course be considerably augmented, and, it is hoped, proportionably improved; the principal reason of troubling you with this address is, to request your many critical and biographical readers to furnish me with such particulars as may lead to its correction, and extend its utility. Hints in particular of any valuable work, printed by either of the Bowyers, which have escaped my notice, with any authentic anecdotes of the authors, or lists of their writings, will be particularly acceptable; as will also any part of the epistolary correspondence of Mr. Bowyer, which was frequent and valuable; it being my principal desire to render the work, in a considerable degree, a History of the Literature of the Eighteenth Century. Yours, &c.J. Nichols.”
I had some thoughts of continuing the Work to a later period. “But I hear the Cock’s crow proclaiming the dawning day, being now come within the ken of many alive; and when men’s memories do arise, it is time for History to haste to bed[1].”
To enumerate the names of Friends by whom I have been assisted in the present Volumes, would be an endless, though a pleasing task. Yet there
- ↑ Fuller’s Worthies, Essex, ed. 1811, vol. I. p. 349.
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