PREFACE.

PROBABLY most sensible persons are of opinion

that Memoirs and Remains occur too fre

quently, and that the editors of many such books have given proof of an amiable weakness, rather than of a sound discretion, in presenting them to the public. When a person of merit and distinction is gathered to his fathers, it is natural, almost inevitable, that his immediate friends should fondly exaggerate those merits, and ascribe a greater degree of general interest to his memory than really attaches to it. I cannot, of course, feel absolutely secure that I have not been betrayed into the same error; but if it be So, I may be allowed to draw some excuse from the mortuary notices of Dr. Copleston that appeared in the public prints, and which, in their fulness and warmth of expression, went far beyond what