THE value of your good opinion is so well known and so duely estimated among Literary Men, that by thus returning thanks for the permission your Lordship has given me, to prefix your name to these Volumes, I am certain of rendering them the most important service. I am also, from the circumstances in which I have incidentally A 2 been been placed, both proud and anxious to have it more generally known, that the kindness and friendship with which for many years your Lordship has condescended to distinguish me, has undergone no diminution. It will be my constant solicitude, by pursuing that conduct and those studies which first introduced me to your attention, still to deserve the honour of being allowed to subscribe myself, MY LORD, Your Lordship's most obliged And most faithful Servant, WILLIAM BELOE. PREFACE. IF ever there were a time when I might wish for the unclouded use of my faculties, and to be divested of all prejudice and passion, it would surely be the present. I am about to give an account of a work which was commenced under the most auspicious prospects, with the most favourable hopes of its successful and protracted continuation, with the best possible means to give it every aid of variety, with the opportunity of choice among almost infinite materials; and finally, with every thing I could possibly desire to cheer the present, and to animate me to future exertion. My situation at the conclusion of these two volumes is very different. But I hasten to give the following concise account of the matter. Having, as I may presume to affirm, led an irreproachable life in my profession, and having manifested my Literary diligence by my versions of Herodotus and Aulus Gellius, and by various other works, I had the good fortune to number among my friends and protectors, some of the most eminent, and some of the most estimable characters of my country. These, I am proud to say, still remain-I have not lost one. A few years since, the venerable and learned Prelate, to whom these volumes, with his permission, are inscribed, and who has invariably demonstrated a warm and friendly zeal towards Literature and its disciples, asked me if I should wish for a situ ation |