I am grateful also to the following publishers for permission to quote from the books named: The Clarendon Press, Oxford, for _Boswell’s Life of Johnson_ edited by George Birkbeck Hill, revised and enlarged edition by L. F. Powell; _The Letters of Horace Walpole_ edited by Mrs. Paget Toynbee; and _Satirical Poems Published Anonymously by William Mason with Notes by Horace Walpole_ edited by Paget Toynbee. Constable and Company, Ltd., for _Sheridan: From New and Original Material_ by Walter Sichel. Henry Holt and Company for _Sheridan: A Biography_ by W. Fraser Rae. The Huntington Library for _The American Journal of Ambrose Serle, Secretary to Lord Howe 1776-1778_, edited by Edward H. Tatum, Jr. Hutchinson and Company, Ltd., for _The Farington Diary_ by Joseph Farington, R.A., edited by James Greig. John Lane, the Bodley Head, Ltd., for _The Last Journals of Horace Walpole during the Reign of George III from 1771-1783_ edited by A. Francis Steuart. The Macmillan Company for _The Writings of Benjamin Franklin_ edited by Albert Henry Smyth. John Murray for _Private Letters of Edward Gibbon (1753-1794)_ edited by Rowland E. Prothero. Martin Secker and Warburg, Ltd., for _The Linleys of Bath_ by Clementina Black. The Viking Press, Inc., for _The Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle_ as originally published in a limited edition by William Rudge and to be published in an unlimited edition by The Viking Press, Inc., under the editorship of Professor Frederick A. Pottle. L. H. B. Lancaster, Pennsylvania March 1941 [1] In the present text deleted letters are supplied within square brackets. Originally the use of blanks and asterisks in names of persons was a means of avoiding libel actions. One should never print a man’s name out at length, said Swift in _The Importance of the Guardian Considered_, 1713; “but, as I do, that of Mr. St—le: so that, although everybody alive knows whom I mean, the plaintiff can have no redress in any court of justice.” This was such an easy way to add piquancy to defamation that it became conventional in satire. In 1778 the reviewer of an anti-ministerial poem called _The Conquerors_ observed that the work seemed “designed for the perusal of astronomers; there are more _stars_ in it than the galaxy contains” (_The Critical Review_, XLV, 150). CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD _by Randolph G. Adams_ vii EDITOR’S FOREWORD ix INTRODUCTION 3 NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION 17 ANTICIPATION 21 NOTES 67 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TICKELL’S WRITINGS 85