"If thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge."—ISAAK WALTON. "A lady, resident in Devonshire, going into one of her parlours, discovered a young ass, who had found its way into the room, and carefully closed the door upon himself. He had evidently not been long in this situation before he had nibbled a part of Cicero's Orations, and eaten nearly all the index of a folio edition of Seneca in Latin, a large part of a volume of La Bruyère's Maxims in French, and several pages of Cecilia. He had done no other mischief whatever, and not a vestige remained of the leaves that he had devoured."- PIERCE EGAN. HORAE SUBSECIVAE. RAB AND HIS FRIENDS AND OTHER PAPERS. BY JOHN BROWN, M.D. F. R. S. E. "Ce fagotage de tant si diverses pièces, se faict en cette COPYRIGHT EDITION. LEIPZIG BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 1862. "The treatment of the illustrious dead by the quick, often reminds me of the gravedigger in Hamlet, and the skull of poor defunct Yorick."-w. H. B. "Multi ad sapientiam pervenire potuissent, nisi se jam pervenisse putassent." "There's nothing so amusing as human nature, but then you must have some one to laugh with."-C. 8. B. "Fear is more pain than is the pain it fears."— SIR P. SIDNEY. PREFACE. "SQUEEZE out the whey," was the pithy and sharp advice of his crusty, acute, faithful, and ill-fated friend, William Taylor of Norwich, author of English Synonyms, to Southey, when that complacent and indefatigable poet and literary man of all work sent him the Mss. of his huge quartos. It would perhaps have been better for his fame had the author of Thalaba, Don Roderick, and The Curse of Kehama taken the gruff advice. I am going to squeeze my two volumes into one, keeping it a profound secret as to what I regard as whey and what curd; only I believe the more professional papers, as Locke and Sydenham, Dr. Marshall, etc., are less readable less likely to while the away idle hours of the gentle public, than those now given: they are squeezed out not without a grudge. My energetic friend, J. T. Fields, of the wellknown Boston firm, has done the same act of excision |