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into the world, was announced as the only complete edition of Cowper.

Meantime, the present Editor was receiving assistance, to an extent beyond his expectations, from the surviving friends of Cowper, and the representatives of those who were departed. Collections of letters were entrusted to him, and portraits lent for the engraver's use. His progress had been arrested by domestic circumstances; but if this had not been the case, a sense of what was due to the author, and to the public, would have withheld him from hastily performing the work in which he had engaged.

Had Messrs. Baldwin and Cradock completed the purchase upon which they were so long held in treaty, his intention was to have inserted, in the Life of Cowper, only such extracts from his letters as might be spun into the thread of the narration; and after the biography, to have arranged the whole correspondence; which, with the large additions that he was enabled to make, might then indeed have been called complete. Finding it not in his power to proceed upon this plan, it became necessary for him to extend the biographical part of his design, and to work more in mosaic: he has made such use of the letters in Dr. J. Johnson's collection as he had an unquestionable right to do; he has extracted from them as largely as suited his purpose, and has brought

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