for their task in every other respect, have failed in their
account of his private life, and their
appreciation of his individual character, from the want of a
personal acquaintance with their author.

The life contained in Sir Walter Scott's Biographical Sketches
of the English Novelists labours under the same disadvantages.
He had never seen Lord Orford, nor even lived with such of his
intimates and contemporaries in society as survived him.

Lord Dover, who has so admirably edited the first part of his
correspondence with Sir Horace Mann, knew Lord Orford only by
having been carried sometimes, when a boy, by his father Lord
Clifden to Strawberry Hill. His editorial labours with these
letters were the last occupation of his accomplished mind, and
were pursued while his body was fast sinking under the
complication of disease, which so soon after deprived Society
Of One Of its most distinguished members, the arts of an
enlightened patron, and his intimates of an amiable and
attaching friend. Of the meagreness and insufficiency of his
memoir of Lord Orford's life prefixed to the letters, he was
himself aware, and expressed to the author of these pages his
inability then to improve it, and his regret that
circumstances had deprived him, while it was yet time, of the
assistance of those who could have furnished him with better
materials. His account of the latter part of Lord Orford's
life is deficient in details, and sometimes erroneous as to
dates. He appears likewise to have been unacquainted with
some of his writings, and the circumstances which led to and
accompanied them. In the present publication those