PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. THE present edition of this work has been delayed by the author's absence abroad for some years, and by other causes which need not be detailed here. It has now been carefully revised, and enriched with much new matter. Indeed, nothing is so striking as the alterations which this interval has necessitated-the ravages which death has made in the ranks of our great poets since the last edition was issued. Southey, Wordsworth, Moore, Wilson, Montgomery, Elliott, Joanna Baillie, Caroline Bowles Southey, and Rogers, have since then disappeared from the scene. In Rogers, was snapped the link which bound living authors to a long-past period. He tells us himself that he could remember seeing one of the heads of the rebels of 1745 still remaining on Temple Bar. He had seen Garrick act; he was cotemporary with Johnson and Boswell, Gibbon, Cowper, Horace Walpole, Howard the philanthropist; and saw General Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, who said he had shot snipes in Conduit Street. He had associated with Mrs. Piozzi; heard Sir Joshua Reynolds |