AS narrated in the introduction to the first volume of _Letters and Miscellanies_, Mrs. Draper was induced to print some of the letters that she received from Sterne in the spring of 1767. The slight volume, with the dedication and preface reproduced here, made its appearance in February, 1775. Except for the ten letters that this volume contained, the correspondence between Sterne and Mrs. Draper seems to have been lost. Among the lost letters, were several from Sterne, and all of Mrs. Draper’s replies covering the same period. The latter were so many that Sterne spent an entire afternoon in sorting and arranging them. And to be lamented much more is the disappearance of the long ship letters that passed between the Bramin and Bramine in the summer and fall of the same year. In May, Sterne took four days for an overland letter to Mrs. Draper and in August he dispatched another to _chaperon_ one from Mrs. James. While in his retreat at Coxwold he wept for an evening and a morning over Eliza’s narration of the dangers and miseries of her voyage. “Thou wouldst win me by thy Letters,” he records in his journal to her, “had I never seen thy face or known thy heart.” The ten letters that have survived bore when written no date except the hour of the day or the day of the week, and they were published by Mrs. Draper without any indication of date whatever. The first brief note, sent with a present of the _Sermons_ and _Tristram Shandy_, evidently belongs to January, perhaps to the last week of the month when appeared the ninth volume of _Shandy_. And very soon afterwards, no doubt, Sterne dispatched the second note in which he would persuade Eliza to admit him as physician in her illness, notwithstanding “the etiquettes of this town say otherwise.” The succeeding eight letters were daily missives from Sterne to Eliza while she was at Deal waiting for the signal of embarkation from the _Earl of Chatham_, which was to bear her to India. On her departure the blood broke from poor Yorick’s heart. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTRODUCTION THE GIBBS MANUSCRIPTS. THESE manuscripts are by far the most important Sterne discovery of the nineteenth century. They are named from their former owner, Thomas Washbourne Gibbs, a gentleman of Bath, into whose possession they came midway in the century. How this piece of good fortune happened to him, we leave to his own pen to relate: