Now if any of your readers who are interested in Monk's biography,
will refer to the author's and editor's prefaces of _Skinner's Life
of Monk_, edited in 1723, by the Rev. William Webster; and to Lord
Wharncliffe's introduction to his Translation of M. Guizot's _Essay
on Monk_, they will see the use of this letter of Skinner's.

1. The life is ascribed to Skinner only on circumstantial evidence,
which is certainly strong, but to which this letter of Skinner's is
a very important edition. This letter is indeed direct proof, and the
first we have, of Skinner's having been employed on a life of Monk, in
which he had access to his son's and his relative Lord Bath's papers;
and there can be no serious doubt that the life edited by Mr. Webster
was a result of his labours.

2. This letter would show that Skinner was not on intimate terms with
Monk, nor so closely connected with him as would be implied in Mr.
Webster's and Morant's, the historian of Colchester, description of
him, that he was a physician to Monk. Else he would not have required
Lord Bath's letter of introduction to the son. Lord Wharncliffe has,
I have no doubt, hit the mark, when he says that Skinner was probably
Monk's Colchester apothecary. Skinner says himself, in his preface,
that "he had the honour to know Monk only in the last years of his
life."

3. The previous account of Monk, which gained Lord Bath's approval,
and led to Monk's son soliciting him to write a life, is probably
Skinner's addition of a third part to Bate's _Elenchus Motuum_, to
which he also probably refers in the opening of his Preface to the
_Life of Monk_:--