er
studies of the learned by matters not unworthy of their curiosity.

The LITERARY CHARACTER has been an old favourite with many of my
contemporaries departed or now living, who have found it respond to their
own emotions.

THE MISCELLANIES are literary amenities, should they be found to deserve
the title, constructed on that principle early adopted by me, of
interspersing facts with speculation.

THE INQUIRY INTO THE LITERARY AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST
has surely corrected some general misconceptions, and thrown light on some
obscure points in the history of that anomalous personage. It is a
satisfaction to me to observe, since the publication of this tract, that
while some competent judges have considered the "evidence irresistible," a
material change has occurred in the tone of most writers. The subject
presented an occasion to exhibit a minute picture of that age of
transition in our national history.

The titles of CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS and QUARRELS OF AUTHORS do not wholly
designate the works, which include a considerable portion of literary
history.

Public favour has encouraged the republication of these various works,
which often referred to, have long been difficult to procure. It has been
deferred from time to time with the intention of giving the subjects a
more enlarged investigation; but I have delayed the task till it cannot be
performed. One of the Calamities of Authors falls to my lot, the delicate
organ of vision with me has suffered a singular disorder,[A]--a disorder
which no oculist by his touch can heal, and no physician by his experience
can expound; so much remains concerning the frame of man unrevealed to
man!

In the midst of my library I am as it were distant from it. My unfinished
labours, frustrated designs, remain paralysed. In a joyous heat I wander
no longer through the wide circuit before me. The "strucken deer" has the
sad privilege to weep when he lies down, perhaps no more to course amid
those far-distant woods where once he sought to range.

[Footnote A: I record my literary calamity as a warning to my sedentary
brothers. When my eyes dwell on any object, or whenever they are closed,
there appear on a bluish film a number of mathematical squares, which are
the reflection of the fine network of the retina, succeeded by blotches
which subside into printed characters, apparently forming distinct words,
arranged in straight lines as in a printed book; the monosyl