me, whenever I pleased, to draw on his extensive knowledge of the
history and the literature of the eighteenth century. Mr. C.G. Crump,
B.A., of Balliol College, Oxford, has traced for me not a few of the
quotations which had baffled my search. To Mr. G.K. Fortescue,
Superintendent of the Reading Room of the British Museum, my most
grateful acknowledgments are due. His accurate and extensive knowledge
of books and his unfailing courtesy and kindness have lightened many a
day's heavy work in the spacious room over which he so worthily
presides. But most of all am I indebted to Mr. C.E. Doble, M.A., of the
Clarendon Press. He has read all my proof-sheets, and by his almost
unrivalled knowledge of the men of letters of the close of the
seventeenth and of the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, he has
saved my notes from some blunders and has enriched them with much
valuable information. In my absence abroad he has in more instances than
I care to think of consulted for me the Bodleian Library. It is some
relief to my conscience to know that the task was rendered lighter to
him by his intimate familiarity with its treasures, and by the deep love
for literature with which he is inspired.

There are other thanks due which I cannot here fittingly express. 'An
author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and
married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and
disappointments, griefs and joys like a courtier or a statesman[49].' In
the hopes and fears, in the expectations and disappointments, in the
griefs and joys--nay, in the very labours of his literary life, if his
hearth is not a solitary one, he has those who largely share.

I have now come to the end of my long labours. 'There are few things not
purely evil,' wrote Johnson, 'of which we can say without some emotion
of uneasiness, _this is the last_[50].' From this emotion I cannot feign