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PREFACE.

MR. HAZLITT observes, in treating of the Elizabethan period of literature, which he likens to the "RICH STROND" of Spenser, that "it only wants exploring to fill the inquiring mind with wonder and delight, and to convince us that we have been wrong in lavishing all our praise on new-born gauds, though they are made and moulded of things past*; and in giving to dust that is a little gilded, more laud than gilt o'er dusted:"—that it "will be found amply to repay the labour of the search, and it will be hard if in

This is extremely applicable to the genteel and somewhat cloying poems published under the assumed name of Cornwall.-This author, whose forte lies in tasteful selection, and who is original in imitation, would do well to read and mark page 26 of Mr. Hazlitt's Elizabethan Lectures.

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most cases curiosity does not end in admiration, and modesty teach us wisdom." Here very likely some of the profane will shake their heads and exclaim, "We have had specimens in plenty of the ore, and the mine does not pay the trouble of working!" and indeed there does seem some reason for the above complaint, when one refers to the dryness of many articles in the British Bibliographer, the Restituta, and the Archaica, and several of the reprints entire, which have issued from the Lee Priory private press of Sir Egerton Brydges. For this it is not very difficult to account.-The writer of these remarks is no way deficient in respect for the talents of the author of "Mary de Clifford" and "The Ruminator;" and, in his opinion, the vulgar jaded stomach of the age, which has no appetite but the false one induced by drams and cayenne, is miserably shown by its neglect of the last mentioned elegant series of papers*. He has sym

*The fickleness of our reading public is well censured in the following sentence from "Eastward Hoe :""They are borne on headlong in desire, from one no

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