In prefaces an affected haughtiness or an affected humility are alike despicable. There is a deficient dignity in Robertson's; but the haughtiness is now to our purpose. This is called by the French, "_la morgue littéraire_," the surly pomposity of literature. It is sometimes used by writers who have succeeded in their first work, while the failure of their subsequent productions appears to have given them a literary hypochondriasm. Dr. Armstrong, after his classical poem, never shook hands cordially with the public for not relishing his barren labours. In the _preface_ to his lively "Sketches" he tells us, "he could give them much bolder strokes as well as more delicate touches, but that he _dreads the danger of writing too well_, and feels the value of his own labour too sensibly to bestow it upon the _mobility_." This is pure milk compared to the gall in the _preface_ to his poems. There he tells us, "that at last he has taken the _trouble to collect them_! What he has destroyed would, probably enough, have been better received by the _great majority of readers_. But he has always _most heartily despised their opinion_." These prefaces remind one of the _prologi galeati_, prefaces with a helmet! as St. Jerome entitles the one to his Version of the Scriptures. These _armed prefaces_ were formerly very common in the age of literary controversy; for half the business of an author consisted then, either in replying, or anticipating a reply, to the attacks of his opponent. Prefaces ought to be dated; as these become, after a series of editions, leading and useful circumstances in literary history. Fuller with quaint humour observes on INDEXES--"An INDEX is a necessary implement, and no impediment of a book, except in the same sense wherein the carriages of an army are termed _Impedimenta_. Without this, a large author is but a labyrinth without a clue to direct the reader therein. I confess there is a lazy kind of learning which is _only Indical_; when scholars (like adders which only bite the horse's heels) nibble but at the tables, which are _calces librorum_, neglecting the body of the book. But though the idle deserve no crutches (let not a staff be used by them, but on them), pity it is the weary should be denied the benefit thereof, and industrious scholars prohibited the accommodation of an index, most used by those who most pretend to contemn it." EARLY PRINTING.