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EARL of ORFORD.

From an Original Picture. Painted by Eckardt.

Pub Feb 1.1807 by J.Scott 442. Strand.

CATALOGUE

OF THE

Royal and Noble Authors

OF

ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND;

WITH

LISTS OF THEIR WORKS:

BY THE LATE

HORATIO WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD.

ENLARGED AND CONTINUED TO THE PRESENT TIME,

BY THOMAS PARK, F. S. A.

"These sheets are calculated for the closets of the idle and inquisitive; they do not
look up to the shelves of what Voltaire happily calls---La Bibliotheque du Monde."
See Vol. II. p. 76.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR JOHN SCOTT, NO. 442, Strand.

ADVERTISEMENT

TO THE

PRESENT EDITION.

RELYING more on the liberal attentions experienced from my literary friends, in editing Harington's Nuga Antiquæ, than on any presumed qualifications of my own, I undertook the arduous charge of preparing an extended edition of lord Orford's Royal and Noble Authors, which was to accompany a series of portraits suitably engraven for the decoration of such a work. The extent of assistance from private libra-. ries, communicated or proffered, having exceeded my previous expectations, an idea suggested itself, that I might, with advantage to the book, enlarge upon lord Orford's

plan of giving a Catalogue only of titled authors, by adding short Specimens of their performances, somewhat after the manner of Cibber's Lives of the Poets. This task of critical delicacy I have been wishful to perform, with a view to the reader's profit as well as the writer's fame; not unaware that it may prove a thankless toil to cater for a multitude of palates:

"since he who writes

Or makes a feast, more certainly invites
His judges than his friends ; and not a guest
But will find something wanting or ill drest."

As lord Orford's Appendix to the posthumous edition of his Noble Authors, could not be transferred to the present, on account of purchased copyright; with the second impression printed for Dodsley I have little interfered, except by the correction of inadvertences, or the insertion of casual omissions; and except, that I have

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