HE present Work does not assume to be exhaustive, for that would have scarcely been the case, perhaps, had the labours of two or three lives been devoted to it. But it does assume to be a very important advance upon every previous undertaking of the kind. It has been produced, it may be said, quite irrespectively of the time, toil, and even pecuniary outlay which it has entailed; and, whatever faults it may exhibit ought to be criticised, therefore, with a certain share of tenderness and forbearance. Bibliography is essentially a Progressive Science. It was my desire to have refrained from any observations which might seem to impugn the value of former publications, or to exaggerate the value of this one. But I apprehend that readers, as a rule, are rather apt to misunderstand the character, aim, and special usefulness of any new claimant to their patronage, unless the facts of the case are pretty broadly stated; and the twofold consideration of the very arduous labour expended on these pages, and of the very slight probability that this labour will ever be at all adequately recompensed, appeared to me to deprive of some portion of its egotism an explanation purely intended to place the book before the public in its true light -as one which renders some substantial service to Early English Literature, without doing all that might be possible, or even all that I could wish. It will be expected that I should introduce some account of preceding works of reference and books of an analogous description already existing in our language. These are, then (enumerating at random) Ames, Herbert, and Dibdin; Lowndes; Blades; the Bibliotheca Grenvilliana; the Bibliotheca Heberiana; Ritson's Bibliographia; Collier's Bibliographical Catalogue; the Rev. T. Corser's Collectanea Anglo-Poetica; and, lastly, the Catalogue of the Society of Antiquaries' Broadsides, &c., just completed. These are books of very unequal value and weight, and they are so for different reasons. |