The subject presented an occasion to exhibit a minute picture of that age of transition in our national history.
The titles of CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS and QUARRELS OF AUTHORS do not wholly designate the works, which include a considerable portion of literary history.
Public favour has encouraged the republication of these various works, which often referred to, have long been difficult to procure.

It has been deferred from time to time with the intention of giving the subjects a more enlarged investigation; but I have delayed the task till it cannot be performed.

One of the Calamities of Authors falls to my lot, the delicate organ of vision with me has suffered a singular disorder,[A]--a disorder which no oculist by his touch can heal, and no physician by his experience can expound; so much remains concerning the frame of man unrevealed to man! In the midst of my library I am as it were distant from it.

My unfinished labours, frustrated designs, remain paralysed.

In a joyous heat I wander no longer through the wide circuit before me.