This is the first collected edition of a series of works which have
separately attained to a great popularity: volumes that have been always
delightful to the young and ardent inquirer after knowledge. They offer
as a whole a diversified miscellany of literary, artistic, and political
history, of critical disquisition and biographic anecdote, such as it is
believed cannot be elsewhere found gathered together in a form so
agreeable and so attainable. To this edition is appended a Life of the
Author by his son, also original notes, which serve to illustrate or to
correct the text, where more recent discoveries have brought to light
facts unknown when these volumes were originally published.