Page:Catalogue of five hundred celebrated authors of Great Britain, now living (1788).djvu/6

 nitude, to the memorialists of the dead; but in point of utility we apprehend we may vie with them.

The reader must not expect to find the present performance a finished work. That was never the case with any first attempt of the lexicographical kind, though it were confined to one science, or were a mere dictionary of language. In the present case we have laboured under peculiar difficulties. There were few books that could assist us, and few materials to which we could recur, except those, which were furnished by literary acquaintance and industrious observation. No man thoroughly knows the extent of his own memory. We have recollected more facts, as we talked ourselves more strictly; and others are undoubtedly scattered among those half obliterated traces, which all our efforts have not been sufficient to revive. Some things we have supressed from delicacy; and some will doubt-