EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VIGNETTES By Austin Dobson 1892 TO MY WIFE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF 1892. |Sixteen of the twenty papers comprised in this volume appeared in America; but only one of these--'The Citizen of the World'--has been reprinted in England. Of the four papers remaining, one was published (in part) in the _Saturday Review_, and the other three in _Longman's Magazine_, the _National Review_, and the _Library_ respectively. Where permission to reprint was required, it has been obtained; and it is hereby gratefully acknowledged. With the exception of the last two, which are more general in character than the rest, the papers are now chronologically arranged. They do not by any means exhaust the list of subjects originally drawn up by their writer for the kind of episodical treatment at which they aim; and should these first experiments find a public, it is not impossible that they may be followed by a further collection. |The first series of 'Eighteenth Century Vignettes' was succeeded in 1894 by a second, and in 1896 by a third series. The second and third series were printed at the Chiswick Press; the first was printed from American plates. In issuing a second and revised edition of this first series, it has been thought desirable to print the book in England. It has also been extended by a further paper--'At Leicester Fields.' This originally appeared in the _English Illustrated Magazine_ for August, 1886, but has now been corrected to date and very materially enlarged. I. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VIGNETTES.