Preparing for Publication, THE POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BURNS, CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED. With a Preliminary Essay and Notes. ORIGINAL PREFACE ΤΟ CONSTABLE'S MISCELLANY. WITH LIST OF WORKS ALREADY PUBLISHED. APRIL,-M.DCCC.XXVIII. A REAL AND EXISTING LIBRARY OF USEFUL AND ENTERTAIN- LITERARY GAZETTE, APRIL 12,1828. EDINBURGH: CONSTABLE & CO. 19, WATERLOO PLACE, AND HURST, CHANCE, & CO. LONDON. [CONSTABLE'S MISCELLANY, being intended for all ages as well as ranks, is printed in a style and form which combine at once the means of giving much matter in a small space, with the requisites of great clearness and facility. A Volume, containing at least 324 pages, appears every three weeks, price 3s. 6d., a limited number being printed on fine paper, with early impressions of the Vignettes, price 5s.] DEDICATED, BY PERMISSION, TO THE KING. ORIGINAL PREFACE. THE change that has gradually taken place during the last thirty or forty years in the numbers and circumstances of the reading public, and the unlimited desire of knowledge that now pervades every class of society, have suggested the present undertaking. Previously to the commencement of the late war, the buyers of books consisted principally of the richer classes-of those who were brought up to some of the learned professions, or who had received a liberal education. The saving of a few shillings on the price of a volume was not an object of much importance to such persons, many of whom prized it chiefly for the fineness of its per, the beauty of its typography, and the pa amplitude of its margins-qualities which add to the expense of a work, without rendering it in any degree more useful. But now when the more general diffusion of education and of wealth, has occasioned a vast increase in the number of readers, and in the works which daily issue from the press, a change in the mode of publishing seems to be called for. The strong desire entertained by most of those who are engaged in the various details of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, for the acquisition of useful knowledge, and the culture of their minds, is strikingly evinced by the establishment of subscription libraries and scientific institutions, even in the most inconsiderable towns and villages throughout the empire; and by the extensive sale which several very expensive, though by no means valuable works, published in numbers, have met with. Under these circumstances, it occurred to the projector of this Miscellany, that if STANDARD WORKS, not hitherto accessible to the great mass of the Public, intermingled with ORIGINAL TREATISES on subjects of great general importance, and executed |