HENRY VAUGHAN, SILURIST, FOR THE FIRST TIME COLLECTED AND EDITED: WITH Memorial-Introduction: Essay ou Life and eritings : AND NOTES: BY THE REV. ALEXANDER B. GROSART, ST. GEORGE'S, BLACKBURN, LANCASHIRE. ΤΟ Sir John Duke Coleridge M. P. HER MAJESTY'S SOLICITOR GENERAL SIR JOHN, In the outset you were kind enough spontaneously to express your interest in my work on the Worthies that form the (now) goodly Series of my privately-printed books and successively I owe you many suggestive and pleasantlyworded letters, that came as so much sunlight into my study. By a gratifying coincidence too, while I was busied in preparations for it, you honoured me with your counsel to include HENRY VAUGHAN'S 'secular' as well as 'sacred' Poetry in the Fuller Worthies' Library. I was overjoyed to find my own decision confirmed by one whose judgment and taste few will challenge. I have now the pleasure to offer you Vols. Ist and IIIrd.-first of Prose and Verse respectively,and in the Autumn I hope to add Vols. IId. and IVth.-Verse and Prose-so making a complete collective edition of the Works of the Silurist: and your approbation of what I have tried to do a worthily and without sparing myself any labour that was likely to yield fruit, whether for the perfecting of the text or Memoir or Essay or Notes, will be itself a life-treasured reward. I like to keep up the ancient usage of an Epistle-dedicatory, and if I were to fall in with the ancient ways of the thing, I should revive for yourself the phrases of golden-mouthed' and silver-tongued', as the Fathers were wont to speak. I rejoice to find such a Chief as WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE surrounding himself with the mighties' that compose his CABINET-and may one temporarily retired be soon restored: it need Further, If the eth not that he be named. present occupant of the wool-sack secures the confidence and reverence of the Nation, the Nation may well be proud of two such sons as SIR JOHN DUKE COLERIDGE and SIR ROUNDELL PALMER, available and destined for the same august post (God sparing). CHARACTER-high and pure, and 'gentle' beyond gentility-does count, especially in union with intellect and eloquence that mate with the giants of the elder time. I am, Sir John, Very respectfully and faithfully, ALEXANDER B. GROSART. |