Page:Hudibras - Volume 1 (Butler, Nash, Bohn; 1859).djvu/12

vi from a manuscript key, annexed to a copy of the first edition, and attributed to Butler himself.

The Biographical Sketch of our poet is a mere rifacimento of old materials, for nothing new is now to be discovered about him. Diligent researches have been made in the parish where he lived and died—Covent Garden—without eliciting any new fact, excepting that the monument erected to his memory has been destroyed.

This volume has been more than two years at press having dribbled through the editor's hands, not during his leisure hours or intervals of business, for he never had any, but by forced snatches from his legitimate pursuits. An old affection for Hudibras, acquired nearly half a century ago, at a time when its piquant couplets were still familiarly quoted, had long impressed him with the desire to publish a really popular edition;

the public therefore now have the result.

It has happened, from the want of consecutive attention, that two or three notes are all but duplicate such as that on Wicked Bibles at pages 326 and 371 Mum and Mummery, 385 and 406; and, He that fights and runs away, at pages 403 and 106. But the publisher hopes that his readers will not quarrel with him for giving too much rather than too little.


 * York Street, Covent Garden,
 * April 28th, 1859.