precisely in the fame manner in which he would have done himself, had he lived, as there is reafon to believe, from the remembrance I have of many conversations I had with him on this fubject.

The poems written in the early part of his life were printed and published separately, in different fizes, few or none of which are now to be met with; many of them were afterwards, from time to time, collected and printed together, by editors of fugitive pieces, and monthly or annual collections..

Mr. Dodsley made a large and judicious collection of works of this kind, and in his miscellany of poems will be found more of these poems

than in any other of the fame fort.

Three editions of his works were

printed

printed during his life, increasing in fize from time to time, as detached pieces, published in the intervals, were always added to the new edition. The first was printed in a thin small octavo; the second, in two fmall volumes octavo; and the third and laft was printed in the year 1770, in one large octavo volume, containing much more than either of the former. The name of the author was not put to either of thefe editions; but the feveral title-pages of the first and last contain an urn filled with flowers, round which a wreath is entwined, charged with the motto to his arms, Ignavis nunquam." I have collected together all his detached publications fince the year 1770, and added them to thofe contained in the edition of year,

that

On fearching his papers,

large

large as the collection is which he left behind him, I found not any amongst them which, I believe, he would ever have published had he lived, or ever defigned for publication after his death; and except fome fhort Poems, an Effay on the National Debt, and fome curfory obfervations on several paffages in the New Teftament, there is nothing more in this than what is contained in the last edition. I have added here and there, at the beginning of fome of his poems, a short note, to which, in general, though not always, is affixed the letter E. The notes to his profe works are all added by himfelf.

To this volume is prefixed a fhort account of the author's family, and fome sketches of his life and character,

ter, which have no pretence to any merit but that which is due to truth; for they contain few or no anecdotes, and are written in a stile in which the melliti verborum globuli, vibrantes fententiola, fo much admired in the works of fome modern authors, will be found to have no place.

If the reader be not tired, and lay the sketches afide before he arrives at the end, which, fhort as the journey thro' them is, peradventure may haphe will there find an extract from pen, the book in which are registered the burials in the parish of Bottisham, which may make him amends for the patience he hath fhewn, and the fufferings he may have undergone. He will there be presented with a copy of an entry made in that book, by the Reverend William Lort Manfell, A. M. who for fome years before had.

had been, and was then in poffeffion of that vicarage as fequeftrator, and was Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge.

He is public orator of that Univerfity, in the discharge of which character he eminently excels; and hath fhewn, by what he inferted in the registry, not only his liberal anxiety to do justice to merit, but his abilities to do it in the most elegant

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manner.