PREFACE.

As the whole of this Volume, with the exception of forty pages, has been composed, corrected, and printed, in little more than three months, I cannot flatter myself that it will not betray, here and there, traces of haste, which a more severe revision would have obliterated. If such blemishes had been the consequence of needless precipitation, or of wilful negligence, I should feel that I had no right to solicit the indulgence of my readers; -as they are not, I have no hesitation in doing so.

For certain reasons, with which it would be unpardonable in me to trouble the reader, it was exceedingly desirable, not to say necessary, that this work should be published in the spring of the present year. I began it at a period which would have allowed ample time to effect my purpose; but scarcely had I written the first chapter, when I was visited

with a calamity which, it is scarcely figurative language to say, paralyzed for a considerable time all power of thought and action; at all events, left me in a state in which I dared not resume occupations so terribly associated with the thought of a happy past.

After an interval of some months, it became absolutely necessary that I should resume the work. I did so with inexpressible reluctance; but I found, as I proceeded, that I became interested in that my attention was

spite of myself, and

sometimes so com

that I enjoyed, for No sooner

pletely absorbed by it,
hours, a sort of happy oblivion.

did I find it attended with this result, than I was impelled by the strongest motive-that of excluding the terrific images which haunted me-to pursue my task almost without intermission. At this voluntary endurance of almost incessant toil, some may perhaps be surprised. They know not-and I heartily wish that all my readers may share in their happy ignorance that there are states of mind in which labour, more exhausting and severe than that of a galley-slave, affords a species of relief.

I do not know that I should mention these

circumstances, were it not to record my experience, (confirmed by that of many sufferers better known to fame,) of the absorbing effect of literary labour; and to encourage those who, under any similar circumstances, may be able to avail themselves of the same remedy, to use it unsparingly. Oblivion, alas! cannot be had, but unceasing occupation produces something like it. It is not the fabled Lethe, but it is a tolerable substitute.

This volume, therefore, however little value it may possess in the eyes of others, will never be without deep interest in my own. The toil it has imposed upon me has had the effect of a most precious anodyne.

ὦ φίλον * θέλγητρον, ἐπίκουρον νόσου,
ὡς ἠδύ μοι προσῆλθες ἐν δέοντί γε.

But though the peculiar circumstances under which this work has been produced, justify me in asking the reader's indulgence towards the little inaccuracies or blemishes which he may detect in it, I ask none for the opinions I have expressed on the various important topics which have come under consideration, or for the general views which I have given of the character and conduct of the extraordinary

P

man, who forms the subject of the narrative. These have not been hastily adopted; if erroneous, they are erroneous upon mature deliberation, and can have, therefore, no claim to indulgence.

In the course of the work, I have, of course, been compelled to touch on many points which have often excited the utmost bitterness of party-spirit. In these cases, I can sincerely say, I have endeavoured to maintain a tone of historic impartiality. I should have felt myself utterly unworthy of being the biographer of Howe, had I not been emulous of imitating, in some humble measure, that calm, candid, dispassionate temper of mind for which he was so justly eminent.

Howe was a Nonconformist; I have endeavoured faithfully to represent his reasons for his nonconformity: but it has been infinitely far from my purpose to employ his name in subserviency to party purposes. To enlist him,-whose temper and spirit were so transcendently catholic; whose whole life was devoted to the cause of our common Christianity; and who abhorred all excess of party feeling, whether displayed by those with