MEMORIALS, AND OTHER PAPERS, VOL. I.

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY




FROM THE AUTHOR, TO THE AMERICAN EDITOR OF HIS WORKS.



These papers I am anxious to put into the hands of your house, and, so
far as regards the U.S., of your house exclusively; not with any view
to further emolument, but as an acknowledgment of the services which
you have already rendered me; namely, first, in having brought together
so widely scattered a collection--a difficulty which in my own hands by
too painful an experience I had found from nervous depression to be
absolutely insurmountable; secondly, in having made me a participator
in the pecuniary profits of the American edition, without solicitation
or the shadow of any expectation on my part, without any legal claim
that I could plead, or equitable warrant in established usage, solely
and merely upon your own spontaneous motion. Some of these new papers,
I hope, will not be without their value in the eyes of those who have
taken an interest in the original series. But at all events, good or
bad, they are now tendered to the appropriation of your individual
house, the Messrs. TICKNOR & FIELDS, according to the amplest extent of
any power to make such a transfer that I may be found to possess by law
or custom in America.

I wish this transfer were likely to be of more value. But the veriest