A history of our vernacular literature has occupied my studies for manyyears. It was my design not to furnish an arid narrative of books or ofauthors, but following the steps of the human mind through the widetrack of Time, to trace from their beginnings the rise, the progress,and the decline of public opinions, and to illustrate, as the objectspresented themselves, the great incidents in our national annals.In the progress of these researches many topics presented themselves,some of which, from their novelty and curiosity, courted investigation.Literary history, in this enlarged circuit, becomes not merely aphilological history of critical erudition, but ascends into aphilosophy of books where their subjects, their tendency, and theirimmediate or gradual influence over the people discover their actualcondition.Authors are the creators or the creatures of opinion; the great form anepoch, the many reflect their age. With them the transient becomespermanent, the suppressed lies open, and they are the truestrepresentatives of their nation for those very passions with which theyare themselves infected. The pen of the ready-writer transmits to us thepublic and the domestic story, and thus books become the intellectualhistory of a people. As authors are scattered through all the ranks ofsociety, among the governors and the governed, and the objects of theirpursuits are usually carried on by their own peculiar idiosyncrasy, weare deeply interested in the secret connexion of the incidents of theirlives with their intellectual habits. In the development of thatpredisposition which is ever working in characters of native force, alltheir felicities and their failures, and the fortunes which such menhave shaped for themselves, and often for the world, we discover what isnot found in biographical dictionaries, the history of the mind of theindividual–and this constitutes the psychology of genius.In the midst of my studies I was arrested by the loss of sight; thepapers in this collection are a portion of my projected history.The title prefixed to this work has been adopted to connect it with itsbrothers, the "Curiosities of Literature," and "Miscellanies ofLiterature;" but though the form and manner bear a family resemblance,the subject has more unity of design.The author of the present work is denied the satisfaction of reading asingle line of it, yet he flatters himself that he shall not trespass onthe indulgence he claims for any slight inadvertences. It has beenconfided to ONE whose eyes unceasingly pursue the volume for him who canno more read, and whose eager hand traces the thought ere it vanish inthe thinking; but it is only a father who can conceive the affectionatepatience of filial devotion.