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Rejected Addresses by James Smith;Horace Smith
page 7 of 139 (05%)
Theatre, the new era means the reign of ears. If the past affords
any pledge for the future, we may confidently expect from the
Committee of that House every thing that can be accomplished by the
union of taste and assiduity. {0}



PREFACE TO EIGHTEENTH EDITION {1}



In the present publishing era, when books are like the multitudinous
waves of the advancing sea, some of which make no impression whatever
upon the sand, while the superficial traces left by others are
destined to be perpetually obliterated by their successors, almost as
soon as they are found, the authors of the Rejected Addresses may
well feel flattered, after a lapse of twenty years, and the sale of
seventeen large editions, in receiving an application to write a
Preface to a new and more handsome impression. In diminution,
however, of any overweening vanity which they might be disposed to
indulge on this occasion, they cannot but admit the truth of the
remark made by a particularly candid and good-natured friend, who
kindly reminded them, that if their little work has hitherto floated
upon the stream of time, while so many others of much greater weight
and value have sunk to rise no more, it has been solely indebted for
its buoyancy to that specific levity which enables feathers, straws,
and similar trifles to defer their submersion until they have become
thoroughly saturated with the waters of oblivion, when they quickly
meet the fate which they had long before merited.

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