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SOUTHEY'S COMMON-PLACE BOOK.

Second Series.

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.

ODLEIAN

2 3 JUL 1964

LIBRARY

THOUGH THOU HADST MADE A GENERAL SURVEY
OF ALL THE BEST OF MEN'S BEST KNOWLEDGES,
AND KNEW SO MUCH AS EVER LEARNING KNFW,
YET DID IT MAKE THEE TRUST THYSELF THE LESS,
AND LESS PRESUME. AND YET WHEN BEING MOY'D
IN PRIVATE TALK TO SPEAK; TROU DIDST BEWRAY
HOW FULLY FRAUGHT THOU WERT WITHIN; AND PROV'D
THAT THOU DIDST KNOW WHATEVER WIT COULD SAY
WHICH SHOW'D THOU HADST NOT BOOKS AS MANY HAVP,
FOR OSTENTATION, BUT FOR USE; AND THAT
THY BOUNTROUS MEMORY WAS SUCH AS GAVE

A LARGE REVENUE OF THE GOOD IT GAT.
WITNESS SO MANY VOLUMES, WHERETO THOU

HAST SET THY NOTES UNDER THY LEARNED HAND.

AND MARK'D THEM WITH THAT PRINT, AS WILL SHOW HOW

THE POINT OF THY CONCEIVING THOUGHTS DID STAND;
THAT NONE WOULD THINK, IF ALL THY LIFE HAD BEFN
TURN'D INTO LEISURE, THOU COULDST HAVE ATTAIN D
SO MUCH OF TIME, TO HAVE PERUS'D AND SEEN
SO MANY VOLUMES THAT SO MUCH CONTAIN'D."

DANIEL. Funeral Poem upon the Death of the late Noble Earl of Devonshire." WELL-LANGUAGED DANIEL," as BROWNE cas him in his "BRITANNIA'S PASTORALS," was one of Souther's favourite Poets.

JOHN WOOD WARTER.

Preface.

ITTLE prefatory remark is needed to the Second Series of the COMMON-PLACE BOOK of the late Robert Southey. Like the former volume it is complete in itself, and contains matter equally curious, diversified, interesting, amusing, and

instructive. Considerable pains has been given to the Spanish and Portugueze extracts (some of the earliest, and some of the latest, of the gifted Collector's gleanings,) contained under the heading, SPANISH AND PORTUGUEze LITERATURE; but the Editor is afraid, owing to the rarity of the volumes from which many of them are taken, that errors will have escaped his notice. Any corrections forwarded to him by competent scholars will be carefully attended to in a future edition.

It has not been thought advisable to disarrange the several packets which Southey had so laboriously put together, otherwise many extracts would have been transposed. For example, great portions of the Series headed MIDDLE AGES, the Editor would have appended to Collections for ENGLISH MANNERS AND LITERATURE.

It will be observed that the order of the Publisher's Prospectus has not been rigorously adhered to. On examination of the several papers it was found impossible. What is here omitted will be given in the shape of Fragments in the Fourth and last Series. The omissions are chiefly as regards East Indian, Spanish and Portuguese, American, and Miscellaneous, Geography.

I may end these introductory remarks with the words of Barrow: "The reading of books, what is it but consulting with the wisest men of all ages and all conditions, who thereby communicate to us their most deliberate thoughts, choicest notions, and best inventions, couched in good expressions, and digested in exact method?"

VICARAGE, WEST TARRING, SUSSEX,

OCTOBER 29, 1849.

JOHN WOOD WARTER.