as of friendship. With most of these, it will ever constitute the chief
pride and happiness of the author's life, that he is also permitted to
boast a considerable degree of intimate friendship; and, in the
delightful retreat of Merton Place, surrounded by all who were most
dear to the heart of the hero, in consanguinity as well as amity, have
many of those valuable anecdotes been obtained, with which the work is
so abundantly enriched.

Prompted to this undertaking, by a strong sense of conviction, that our
chief hero, when his character was clearly understood, would be found as
eminently good as great, the biographer has fearlessly endeavoured
freely to investigate transactions of the utmost delicacy in private
life; and he is fully prepared to assert, and as far as possible to
prove, that there seldom has existed any human being adorned by the
practice of so many positive virtues, so little sullied by any actual
vice, as that immortal man, the chief particulars of whose history will
be found, the author may, at least, be permitted to maintain, most
faithfully recorded in the work now confided, with all it's
imperfections, to the just judgment of the world; a tribunal which
seldom fails doing compleat justice, either sooner or later, to all the
merits both of heroes and of authors, of men as well as of books.

THE LIFE
OF
_LORD NELSON_,
DUKE OF BRONTE, &c.

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