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 PREFACE.

Nearly twelve years have elapsed since the present edition was undertaken; and it affords me no small gratification to have at length accomplished, however imperfectly, a task which has been attended by a degree of labour proportioned to the difficulty of the work, and the competency of the workman. The delay, though not my own, and incurred in the hope of securing a corresponding advantage to my readers, cannot, I fear, be justified:—and, when I consider how often plans have been defeated, assurances forfeited, and character thus sacrificed, by a spirit of procrastination, I cannot but rejoice that my own intentions have survived that which threatened their frustration, and that I have been permitted, though late, to redeem my pledge by the publication of these volumes.

Respecting the Works of Sir Thomas Browne, I need say the less here, because explanatory prefaces accompany the principal of them. Religio Medici, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, and the volume containing Hydriotaphia and the Garden of Cyrus,