pages; of additional marginal notes on books, and of copious extracts
from letters hitherto unpublished.

Amongst the effects of her friend Conway, the actor, after his
untimely death by drowning in North America, were a copy of Mrs.
Piozzi's "Travel Book" and a copy of Johnson's "Lives of the Poets,"
each enriched by marginal notes in her handwriting. Such of those in
the "Travel Book" as were thought worth printing appeared in "The
Atlantic Monthly" for June last, from which I have taken the liberty
of copying the best. The "Lives of the Poets" is now the property of
Mr. William Alexander Smith, of New York, who was so kind as to open
a communication with me on the subject, and to have the whole of the
marginal notes transcribed for my use at his expense.

Animated by the same liberal wish to promote a literary undertaking,
Mr. J.E. Gray, son of the Rev. Dr. Robert Gray, late Bishop of
Bristol, has placed at my disposal a series of letters from Mrs.
Piozzi to his father, extending over nearly twenty-five years (from
1797 to the year of her death) and exceeding a hundred in number.
These have been of the greatest service in enabling me to complete
and verify the summary of that period of her life.

So much light is thrown by the new matter, especially by the extracts
from "Thraliana," on the alleged rupture between Johnson and Mrs.
Piozzi, that I have re-cast or re-written the part of the
Introduction relating to it, thinking that no pains should be spared
to get at the merits of a controversy which now involves, not only
the moral and social qualities of the great lexicographer, but the
degree of confidence to be placed in the most brilliant and popular
of modern critics, biographers and historians. It is no impeachment