Of that part of our author’s life, which includes the last two years he spent in England before his going abroad, I am enabled to give the reader a more satisfactory account from his own papers. During almost the whole of this time, he kept a diary, and though this diary is not filled with great events, or striking reverses of fortune, it exhibits a perfect picture of the life, habits, and amusements of a literary man. It is my wish to bring the reader as nearly acquainted as I can with the subject of these memoirs; and I know no better way of doing this, than by exhibiting in his own words almost every thought or circumstance which passed through his mind during the above period. From hence we may form some notion of the rest. This diary will occupy a very disproportionate space to the rest of the work; but if it should be found tedious, I shall have erred grievously in judgment. There are some personalities in the original which are omitted; and others which may still be thought improper. But I believe no greater liberties are taken with the names of living characters, than are to be found in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and other sources of literary anecdote. Mr Holcroft began his Diary in June, 1798.—It is as follows. ‘I have long felt a desire to keep memorandums of the common occurrences of life, and have now made a determination which I think will not easily be shaken, to keep a DIARY. 1798. JUNE _22nd._—Called on Mr Armstrong, relative to my disease; advises me to take oil of almonds, and rhubarb. Called on Mr Shield, saw him—On Mr and Mrs. Opie, both ill.—Wrote to Mr Reynolds, bookseller, to settle the account—Wrote to Mr Colman, who called when I was out.—Went to Debrett’s: the opinion of Mr Weld is, that the force sent over by government will be sufficient to quell the Irish insurrection _for the present_: believes Dundas averse to the coercion used in that country, and to the Beresfords, &c. R. Ad—says Windham, out of the house rails at the Irish system, that Lord Fitz—the D— D— &c. are averse to it; that the D— P— is for it, as well as that part of the cabinet, called the King’s friends. Professor Porson dined with me: made as usual numerous amusing quotations, and among the rest cited the following passage from Middleton’s preface, as one of the most manly, beautiful, and full of genius that he had ever read. “I persuade myself that the life and faculties of man, at the best but short and limited, cannot be employed more rationally or laudably than in the search of knowledge; and especially of that sort which relates to our duty, and conduces to our happiness. In these inquiries, therefore, wherever I perceive any glimmering of truth before me, I readily pursue and endeavour to trace it to its source, without any reserve or caution of pushing the discovery too far, or opening too great a glare of it to the public. I look upon the discovery of any thing which is true, as a valuable